So, what's your opinion on current healer jobs

[Lilseph]

Who's the majority you speak off? Most of us healer mains were fine. Other people who loved to dps hated it, but who cares, healers =/= dps.

It's partially because of the complaints and feedback about Healers refusing to do dps. While I liked Cleric Stance, it did push the skill floor a tad bit too high. It wasn't very accessible to most players and was super clunky to use for solo play unless you were Sch which the fairy completely bypasses the negative effects.

And that's the issue. AST was supposed to work with either cohealer. Even with another AST. It's not supposed to be a replacement for a SCH or WHM.

This basically. The potential issue regarding Healers is that the devs want any healer composition to function. It's not the same as balancing the other roles from what I can understand, and the main reason why duplicates don't synergise well together. A lot of it boils down to the fact that the devs have sectioned healing into either "pure healing" or "shield healing". If they introduce a fourth healer designated as a "shield healer" and force Ast into a permanent Diurnal Sect, then you'll never be able to run with a Whm/Ast comp because it wouldn't be feasible. Similarly, making all four healers have their own niche can possibly end up with similar results.

lAlso, do you know how many people knew about the arrow? It was so good when expanded in normal content, solo, and big pulls.

It was fun to use, but I don't think it'll work with how some of the jobs work right now especially Machinist. Back during Stormblood, I even raided with people who played jobs like Mch and Drg that had macros to forcibly click off Arrow and Fey Wind because it messes up rotation timings or something like that.

[Seraphor]

This basically. The potential issue regarding Healers is that the devs want any healer composition to function. It's not the same as balancing the other roles from what I can understand, and the main reason why duplicates don't synergise well together. A lot of it boils down to the fact that the devs have sectioned healing into either "pure healing" or "shield healing". If they introduce a fourth healer designated as a "shield healer" and force Ast into a permanent Diurnal Sect, then you'll never be able to run with a Whm/Ast comp because it wouldn't be feasible. Similarly, making all four healers have their own niche can possibly end up with similar results.

Likewise this new shield healer + SCH would be prohibitive.

They need to do what they've done with tanks (where any tank can MT or OT) and basically have all healers have a certain capacity for pure healing, regen and shields. And this seems to be what they're going for with the latest job forms.
AST now has two skills that do the opposite of their current sect, and WHM has a proper single target shield skill.
Of course SCH still has it's Tactics skills that turn shields into pure heals, and the fairy which is basically an elaborate regen, so SCH was kinda already there.
They just need to be able to differentiate them enough via job mechanics and dps skills.

With this in mind, I think the next healer should be based around a mechanic that allows them to use either regens or shields at will.

[Mansion]

They need to do what they've done with tanks (where any tank can MT or OT) and basically have all healers have a certain capacity for pure healing, regen and shields. And this seems to be what they're going for with the latest job forms.

I kind of agree, although WHM still got left behind there as Divine Benison isn't comparable to SCH's regens on the fairy and Sacred Soil (plus its direct heals).

The Regen vs Shield mentality has to go. I actually like what they did to AST with Intersection and Neutral Sect, the Cooldowns on these abilities are enough not to make them OP, and it brings a bit more planning and reflexion to AST (although you can still power heal with earthly Star almost everything significant). This could be expanded further into a real job identity, healing wise.

I also think shielding should change. In the current state where mitigation, oGCD heals and regens are so strong when used correctly, unless a particular damage NEEDS shielding, GCD shields are often a loss.

[EaMett]

They need to do what they've done with tanks (where any tank can MT or OT) and basically have all healers have a certain capacity for pure healing, regen and shields. And this seems to be what they're going for with the latest job forms.

I have to disagree here. That would be homogenizing the healers even more, in fact that's exactly what SE gunned for this expansion and -exactly- what everyone is complaining about. If anything the exact opposite needs to happen.

The reality of the matter is that healers, in the holy trinity occupy a very unique role. One that can't be measured by the performance of a single class but as a combination of factors. How healer skills synergies, how tank skills synergies with the healers, what the damage spread in the content is, how dps mitigation can be leveraged, etc.. Unlike other roles, you can't look at a single healer in a vacuum and decide how the skill set should work, equally (and this is directly tied to your suggestion) you can't look at healers in a vacuum unless you plan on essentially making them the same.

What the healer roles in MMOs require are a specialized set of tools that estimate mobility, positioning, downtime, damage, etc. based on party comp and encounter design. With this, it makes it possible to offer a lot of diversity (be it in skill type, uptime, positioning, mobility, HPS, DPS) while keeping practical balance. "Practical" is the keyword here. It's ok to have unbalanced (lets say weaker) healer comps for some content as long as other healer comps are weaker in other content. When you achieve overall balance over multiple types of content you have a balanced game.
It seems, very strongly, that this is not something SE finds worth investing in, and here we are as per usual, eternally unhappy healers.

[Lilseph]

SE have failed to expand upon the unique and interesting facets of jobs, for example the buff extension capabilities of old AST, and instead completely axed them in order to throw Stormblood WHM abilities into the AST kit (Celestial Intersection/Divine Benison, Horoscope/Plenary Indulgence) for the sake of job balance.

As much as anyone would like to admit, the buff extension for Ast was not as extensive as you'd think. Ast had MP issues in previous expansions too, and Opposition was exclusively saved for Lucid because of it. Dilation wasn't super interesting either since you can't use it on yourself—and places where you would get value out of it were few and far between. I personally really liked the idea for buff extending as a concept, but it was pretty redundant in practice honestly.

I have to disagree here. That would be homogenizing the healers even more, in fact that's exactly what SE gunned for this expansion and -exactly- what everyone is complaining about. If anything the exact opposite needs to happen.

They really can't if the devs want to keep the philosophy of "you can clear with any reasonable party configuration". It's the main factor for the split between "pure healing" and "shield healing" in the design, and is similar to the "Main/Off Tank" concept.

The moment they distance Ast specifically from either design concept is the moment it can't compete with the other two healers anymore. Both design concepts are heavily integral to a lot of the current encounter design, so making that kind of change would require a rework on a massive scale to implement. Sure it'll be cool for a while to have all three (and potentially a fourth) healers having their own niche, but designing encounters around four different unique kits is extremely restricting.

[Recon1o6]

As much as anyone would like to admit, the buff extension for Ast was not as extensive as you'd think

Actually, yes, it was. Not so much in savage for those dps numbers everybody craves too much (though I strongly suspect were roll dps the thing back in hw and sb, it would shine better), but in alliance and dungeons it was amazing. Stacking your buffs on the mt followed by a CO and TD meant you go entire pulls with barely a heal if you really tried.

Ast had mp issues in previous expansions

Ast's were only slightly mp negative in diurnal and more so in nocturnal on account of it being objectively inferior in being unable to stack its shields unlike diurnal's regens which do. Slight mp negative is a good thing, as mp management is both fun when balanced right and integral part of healer balance.
Whm has practifcally infinite mp. It will run dry, but only if you aren't using your kit to even a basic level, which no player should be doing at 70 nevermind 80

Astro's ewer was excellent mana regen and boostable at that, at the cost of it being unreliable. But that's what made it fun, you had redraw to adjust your cards to as of when you needed htem, failing tha tin sb minor arcana could grant a free heal.
Luminerferous aether was the mp restorative in HW. It did the equivalent of 1/5 to 1/4 of your mp depending on a few factors

[Lilseph]

Stacking your buffs on the mt followed by a CO and TD meant you go entire pulls with barely a heal if you really tried.

It was nice to have and and satisfying to pull off (no amount of effort can overwrite bad luck), but again, where would you use it outside of that one specific instance? What if you never get the exact card combination for the entire dungeon? Are you going to just hold onto both abilities indefinitely till you get it? Genuinely curious.

Ast's were only slightly mp negative in diurnal and more so in nocturnal on account of it being objectively inferior in being unable to stack its shields unlike diurnal's regens which do.

Eh, it's about the same as it is right now. The reason why its so noticeable in ShB is that they removed both Ewer and the ability to extend Lucid while not giving any other external source of MP recovery to compensate. Adding on to buff extenders, there were posts like this regarding MP issues such as always pairing Opposition with Lucid.

[Recon1o6]

Longer aspected helios regen so you can spend more time on attacking spells, Extended balance on everyone in a group during a raid (6 seconds makes a difference), longer crit boost on a bard or monk, or arrow buff so that player could perform better for longer, extend the mp regen ewer on that poor rdm who you just revived from a lag spike induced death...

There's loads of ways it could be used and it required careful thinking to see who'd get the best benefit.

And if you actually read that post, you would have seen that it was likely the player not using their abilities correctly rather than actual mp negativity because SB astrologian required proper management of her tools to function well, which said player was not given they kept the expensive Aspected benefic up as much as possible (very high mp cost)

Lastly Astro has no mp recovery whatsoever now outside of lucid. That's down from having luminerferous and ewer in hw, and further down from just ewer of sb outside of the role action.

[EaMett]

They really can't if the devs want to keep the philosophy of "you can clear with any reasonable party configuration". It's the main factor for the split between "pure healing" and "shield healing" in the design, and is similar to the "Main/Off Tank" concept.

The moment they distance Ast specifically from either design concept is the moment it can't compete with the other two healers anymore. Both design concepts are heavily integral to a lot of the current encounter design, so making that kind of change would require a rework on a massive scale to implement. Sure it'll be cool for a while to have all three (and potentially a fourth) healers having their own niche, but designing encounters around four different unique kits is extremely restricting.

You can have different kits without having different healing spreads. AST being the middle ground is also perfectly fine, it does not need to excel at either since the past, current, and most likely future content doesn't require one to leverage their full healing kit anyways. It just means that AST's skill floor will be a bit higher than that of the other two, and that's perfectly acceptable.
Not only is diversifying healers doable without a huge rework but it's how things were -in this game- to some extent before ShB, the ONLY real issue in healer balance at the time was WHM's rdps (and lily mechanic) which could have been easily fixed/avoided if they had taken a closer look at the role. Not only that but this exists in other games. It's not like they need to reinvent the wheel, it's really just a resource issue.

[Awha]

Likewise this new shield healer + SCH would be prohibitive.

They need to do what they've done with tanks (where any tank can MT or OT) and basically have all healers have a certain capacity for pure healing, regen and shields. And this seems to be what they're going for with the latest job forms.
AST now has two skills that do the opposite of their current sect, and WHM has a proper single target shield skill.
Of course SCH still has it's Tactics skills that turn shields into pure heals, and the fairy which is basically an elaborate regen, so SCH was kinda already there.
They just need to be able to differentiate them enough via job mechanics and dps skills.

With this in mind, I think the next healer should be based around a mechanic that allows them to use either regens or shields at will.

Please no. Tanking use to be one my favorite roles because every class played overall differently and had varying strengths and weaknesses which was cool. Now they are more or less the same, sure they look different but they are simoly inter changeable. Play one played them all.