Has anyone quit healing?

[Saefinn]

Simple solution, give healer DPS rotations a high floor and low ceiling.
Even if it's a two button combo with an occasional oGCD, have perfect execution be about 10-20% more damage than merely spamming the base dps skill.
Those who want to optimise and challenge themselves can do so, just like a DPS, but failure to do so is not punished as much as a DPS, because you're not a DPS.

I consider that reasonable. Nobody's gonna cry if a healer is doing 20% less damage than what they could be achieving. If they do, then they can do one. At least outside of content where it matters, but for that content, people are already going to be of the right level to handle it anyway.

[Rilifane]

The only problem with this is what does it mean to overgear and overskill content. That is, take a healer that is not ready to take on Savage, but is able to get through an expert dungeon with zero deaths with a party that makes no mistakes in regards to mechanics. Replace that healer with one that clears Ultimate content.

How does the run change?
Do the party feel that the run is improved?
Does the Savage healer feel that their skill makes a difference in this easier content?

I might have missed something, but it seems like there might be a hard skill cieling, where for a given piece of content, better skill and gear only allows you to carry worse players through content, if you were able to get through it before.

There always is.
If someone outgears content, they will be able to carry weaker players.
If someone outskills content, they will be able to carry weaker players.
At some point, content is simply 'beneath' you in terms of both gear and skill. It doesn't matter wether you have healing as a full time job or a mix of dpsing and healing. If you have good gear and skill you will steamroll casual content. And as all healers must have some sort of dps skills, even with the full time healer design people will eventually switch to dpsing more. It's bound to happen.
Do you feel the difference? You should be able to answer that. Have you never noticed how much faster big pulls meld if the healer is able to go all-out with dps? The difference between a careful zero dps healer and someone who maximizes uptime without endangering the party is huge and noticable for both the player and the party.
That doesn't change with healer design, a dpsing healer will always fasten the run.
But you will obviously reach the skill ceiling at some point. A 'hard cap' is what a skill ceiling is. At some point, there's nothing more you can do. But you're mistaken if you think you've reached the skill ceiling for a full time healer of you managed to keep everyone alive.
Even in games where healing was a full time job, you had things to do during downtime. Be it support or dps. The classes were usually designed with with support and dps abilities from the start (you can hardly heal mobs to death while leveling) but because of the healing > support > dps priority, you simply didn't have the time at first when lacking gear/ practice to make much use of it while as you got better, you started to utilize it more.
And that's not even counting in trade-off mechanics that were also part of this design which let you chose wether to use a spell offensively or defensively.
But as I already said (and you seemed to have missed?): I'm not for full time healers anyway. Not in this game.

[Truen]

I consider that reasonable. Nobody's gonna cry if a healer is doing 20% less damage than what they could be achieving. If they do, then they can do one. At least outside of content where it matters, but for that content, people are already going to be of the right level to handle it anyway.

I consider it reasonable too, but the one's that matter are mute on the issue and are ignoring us. Say what you want about Final Fantasy, but the reality is they shove these mechanics down our throats and really don't give a hoot what those of us on the ground floor think/feel about the jobs they make. Just look at how long we've been "broiling" away already...I've must of cast it 100,000 times since 5.0...

[Jirah]

Quit White Mage as it was getting far too popular and thought the Astro changes weren’t so bad. 5.0 Astro and 5.2 Astro are not synonymous. But we need a 4th Healer please

[ty_taurus]

I wouldn't say I've completely abandoned healer, but my main job has certainly shifted to Dancer. This wasn't so much a response to the healer changes as Dancer is just my favorite job and I was adamant to play it regardless of its role. I am very pleased with how it turned own, but I do have some lingering feelings of sorrow that it wasn't made to be a more unique, melee healer that would've helped add variety to the healing pool. That said, I'm also not entire sure if a healing dancer would've turned out as fun as the job is, seeing as the stance on Healer DPS in Shadowbringers is to reduce it to the barest of bones it could possibly be without removing it outright.

There's a deep rift in the healer community regarding the topic of DPS, but something that I think would make a lot of sense and please everyone is to separate healers into the passive healers who contribute to raid DPS through buffs or tools gated behind healing while there are others who work to build DPS windows and contribute just through selfish DPS. With a 4th healer, we could create a great opportunity to have 2 passive and 2 aggressive healers.

That said, I do think the DPS tools all healers have deserve to be at least a tiny bit more engaging--if not for raid content then at least for Solo content. Those that played through the main story as a healer were forced to do little but button mash their Glare/Broil/Malefic through any of the story scenarios, and I don't think that's the right solution. An example of what I imagine could add that touch of engagement, using White Mage as an example...

First, let's turn Fluid Aura into an oGCD DPS tool that can be water themed pre-Glare/Dia and change into Banish at level 72. Next, let's add one new ability that has the White Mage place a seed on an enemy. This seed will blossom into a flower as an 'explosion' of sorts for damage, but the effect of the flower will change depending on whether you next hit your opponent with Glare, Dia, Holy, or Banish. Dia, for example, causes the seed to apply a second DoT while Holy causes the seed to explode as an AoE. This adds a single ability to our hotbars, but the flexible application of the effect keeps our DPS rotation interesting.

[Kinks]

I recently tried playing Astro again; the new card system is kinda meh, but its a little more engaging than my Scholar at 80. And that sucks because I miss playing my Scholar; I developed such a love for that class, and I loved that you could dps, dot, bane, miasma, heal, shield- like it was so engaging, it was really fun. My hubby plays warrior and the two worked really well together even lore wise. I don't want/need op dps numbers, I just want my fun again- just to be clear.

Now? Scholar is super clunky feeling, and I was SO annoyed that Astro can draw a card outside of combat but Scholar can't use Aetherflow? Pahhh...

Its been months; I literally only keep my sub for the house (and a small small hope that they restore Scholar).

[Aurturia]

I recently tried playing Astro again; the new card system is kinda meh, but its a little more engaging than my Scholar at 80. And that sucks because I miss playing my Scholar; I developed such a love for that class, and I loved that you could dps, dot, bane, miasma, heal, shield- like it was so engaging, it was really fun. My hubby plays warrior and the two worked really well together even lore wise. I don't want/need op dps numbers, I just want my fun again- just to be clear.

Now? Scholar is super clunky feeling, and I was SO annoyed that Astro can draw a card outside of combat but Scholar can't use Aetherflow? Pahhh...

Its been months; I literally only keep my sub for the house (and a small small hope that they restore Scholar).

I miss old Scholar too, I quit right after shadowbringers launched. But if you want to take a break now isn't a bad time, housing demo is frozen right now.

[Recon1o6]

As of a few hours ago I finally hung up my cane and with that, all healing jobs until SE stops beating on healers like players do to Rhitatyn in Cape Westwind.

The final two insults being my whm relic being a conjurers stick complete with crystal of light (the removal of all elements being something that's bothered me for ages about whm) this got me really in the mood to quit
and when I realised that I was having more fun in a difficult battle with a stripped down 4.5 Ast for dungeons and dragons 5e than I had any of the healers this expansion. All I had was malefic as a cantrip, a 3 turn hot to represent Asp benefic, a single gravity cast and 2 card draws.
For those of who who don't play dnd, thats roughly the same stuff you get when you roll into brayflox, but with gravity in place of combust.
When I realised this, that's when I made my decision

If there's one thing I find both upsetting and interesting in equal measure, its this forum's many ideas on how to improve jobs, not just healers, but jobs as a whole. Yet the devs are always silent, but at least we have things out there and a consensus filters through even if details can be a bit trickier to pin down.
We don't complain because we hate it, we do it because we want to love our classes and love our role, being the backbone of the team that tops the party off and then has a bit of fun during the ~80% of the fight we don't need to do any healing, whether that's by buffing, debuffing, CC, damage rotation etc...

I just hope that one day a dev stumbles across these and actually takes the feedback for when the jobs get changed again. It would be nice to have an apology too and for us to start the next expansion looking forward to playing with more skills than before, not less.

But they are burying hteir heads in the sand to the point of hiding changes in patch notes, and focusing rdps, homogenisation "balance" and dumbing down for accessibility to even the most stupid of players who need to go back and learn how to play through the hall of novice.

So I'm not holding my breath.

[LalafellDown]

WHM is my favorite healing. The amount of damage you can do and the quick response to healing at the same time is perfect. AST would be second with the damage and healing. SCH I struggled to enjoy it. I love switching between healing and damage dealing on the fly. With SCH I felt locked more to healing. Maybe it’s just me and I didn’t perfect the class or something.

[SMOrcolaio]

I started playing in stormblood and was healing all the time. Now I tried leveling all the healers and these are my considerations.
White mage is still the same.. you just heal and press your dps button, which is fine, but not my taste.
Astrologian is a little less engaging than it was in stormblood because the cards feel... soulless, but it's still fine. The buff giving you both sects is a fitting addition for astrologian tho.
Scholar used to be my main in stormblood and it was a really cool class because you knew you were a dps with a green icon and had lots of tools for every occasion. Now you still have the healing tools, but with the loss of the dps ones... I feel like being a white mage with less healing and some more shield and ogcds. I loved to switch fairies once in a while depending on the party I had; it wasn't really that useful since Selene was weak anyway, but it was nice. Every time I see more than 2 mobs, spamming art of war gives me crippling depression.

Now I heal only to shorten the queue time if I don't have much time, but I play black mage otherwhise.