Do you want healers to be reworked from the ground up?

[Semirhage]

But why can't all the healers just have utility?

You'll get nothing but thunderous agreement from me.

But Square Enix and generous portions of this forum think giving WHM utility is rocket surgery beyond the feeble minds of poor overworked White Mages. One of the three "has" to have no utility. It's WHM's "identity" to have no utility. It's a design corner the healer dynamic is painted into through nothing more than sheer, total refusal to give WHM an identity. I've said ever since Shadowbringers dropped that THIS is the ugly elephant in the room that will prevent healing design from leaving the trap it's entered as long as it goes unaddressed. Because current healing design is the only logical conclusion to the contradictory paradigms that go into current healing design.

If A) All healers must be reasonably balanced with respect to healing and damage contribution, and B) WHM cannot ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever have utility because reasons, what conclusion is there to be had except stripping all other healers down to a level as simplistic as the one we've defined as the mandatory lowest common denominator?

If WHM bringing the uncontested most damage (like BLM and the caster DPS hierarchy does it) isn't acceptable, and WHM can't have utility (for...reasons only clear to Square Enix), then the healers are fundamentally unbalanceable unless they're all three boring healbots. *shrug*

[Veis_Alveare]

... then the healers are fundamentally unbalanceable unless they're all three boring healbots. *shrug*

I mean not that I find AST as boring as WHM right now, but the Sleeve Draw nerf has definitely made it more accessible. I'm not wholly against that in theory but I think doing things like giving more oGCDs earlier, or even Sleeve Draw earlier, could just better prepare people for complexity instead of simplifying at cap because people havent managed to learn how to use an ability over the course of their whole ShB leveling process.