Is it fun?

[SieyaM]

I am a bit late in responding to some people, been doing other things. What I am kind of hoping for, which probably will never happen here, is to recapture the immersion I felt when I played Everquest way back when it was at it's height. The class I enjoyed most was Enchanter, which is the most indirect spellcasting class you could possibly play. I enjoyed that my class had a lore that it adhered to and no the raw numbers werent the most important aspect of it, it was how it fit into the world and how it played with the party. I think what would really help the healing jobs is to roll more support elements into them rather than continue stacking them with healing skills and amping up their DPS numbers. Support skills are incredibly hard to balance though and so it is unlikely that SE will add any more of those.

[Anhra]

I am a bit late in responding to some people, been doing other things. What I am kind of hoping for, which probably will never happen here, is to recapture the immersion I felt when I played Everquest way back when it was at it's height. The class I enjoyed most was Enchanter, which is the most indirect spellcasting class you could possibly play. I enjoyed that my class had a lore that it adhered to and no the raw numbers werent the most important aspect of it, it was how it fit into the world and how it played with the party. I think what would really help the healing jobs is to roll more support elements into them rather than continue stacking them with healing skills and amping up their DPS numbers. Support skills are incredibly hard to balance though and so it is unlikely that SE will add any more of those.

I am hoping for this as well, but unfortunately, there are way too many casuals arround in this game, which never played another MMO aside from FFXIV which have more attitude than clue, that would state otherwise and simply say "Numbers are everything and balance is important".

[SieyaM]

I am hoping for this as well, but unfortunately, there are way too many casuals arround in this game, which never played another MMO aside from FFXIV which have more attitude than clue, that would state otherwise and simply say "Numbers are everything and balance is important".

I'm not going to get into casuals or anything but it does seem like a lot of people who are very vocal about the balance and the numbers game haven't played much else in the way of MMOs, at most they have play Wow. It could be nostalgia or some other bias but I really feel that older MMOs were much more focused on world building and immersion of the player than making sure all classes could play within a few hundred DPS of each other. There was also much more attention spent on detail and play style of classes, they all felt different and did very different things.

[ItMe]

It could be nostalgia or some other bias but I really feel that older MMOs were much more focused on world building and immersion of the player than making sure all classes could play within a few hundred DPS of each other. There was also much more attention spent on detail and play style of classes, they all felt different and did very different things.

Ha ha yeah... I remember when the issue swung the other way. Back when balance wasn't a concern and flavor justified most decisions.
Those time had plenty of their own issues and I honestly don't wanna to back to that.

[Semirhage]

I've been one of those perennial voices calling for job balance, but that's mostly because I'm a WHM enthusiast. It's hard to tease out the nuance when someone's complaining, but there's definitely a difference between "everyone needs to have the same output or the game is unplayable" and "hey, why is it that two out of the three jobs in this role are jacks of all trades that have hilarious fake tradeoffs like 'very slightly lower personal damage' for their grand piano keyboards of utility, while the third has almost none of that for no reason other than this weird healer-role-only belief that one of the jobs has to be basic?"

I mean, FFS, we're two years into those aforementioned jobs getting ganked into the same relative job design position that third one is, and I'm STILL hearing "we should barely touch WHM and then also restore AST and SCH back to their old levels of complexity" like they learned literally nothing about WHM's former position as the role's bad design sinkhole from how boring their jobs currently are. A reasonable compromise between job balance and job lore are possible...but this "WHM has to suck because we said so" needs to go the way of the dodo, both in the community's and the job designer's collective consciousness. I maintain it's the biggest dam upstream from nearly all other issues with the healing role.

[Brandedblade]

"Is it fun?" Will always be a matter of subjective opinion. I find it fun despite the fact I do agree and miss some of the older complexity, I'm still fundamentally filling the same role I've always had, and despite how much they've neutered sch's dps rotation, to me the healing aspect of it is relatively the same, the only difference being having to weave the fairy skills, and that's enough for me. WHM for me is boring and I only play it when i want to zerg old content with Holy spam, and AST, ast is alright, i don't hate playing it but SCH has been my comfort pick and very likely will continue to do so even with SGE ( i won't even be touching it until i get SCH to cap)

[Teno]

"Is it fun?" Will always be a matter of subjective opinion. I find it fun despite the fact I do agree and miss some of the older complexity, I'm still fundamentally filling the same role I've always had, and despite how much they've neutered sch's dps rotation, to me the healing aspect of it is relatively the same, the only difference being having to weave the fairy skills, and that's enough for me. WHM for me is boring and I only play it when i want to zerg old content with Holy spam, and AST, ast is alright, i don't hate playing it but SCH has been my comfort pick and very likely will continue to do so even with SGE ( i won't even be touching it until i get SCH to cap)

I find even the healing aspect boring. Ghosting being such a pain in the ass, but also the sheer amount of ogcd makes the use of gcd heals kind of irrelevant, as ogcd are enough most of the time.

Gcd heals used to have some weight before. In essence you put your dots on, let them running, and then you had to choose between gcd dps or gcd heal.

[Side-Eye]

I am a bit late in responding to some people, been doing other things. What I am kind of hoping for, which probably will never happen here, is to recapture the immersion I felt when I played Everquest way back when it was at it's height. The class I enjoyed most was Enchanter, which is the most indirect spellcasting class you could possibly play. I enjoyed that my class had a lore that it adhered to and no the raw numbers werent the most important aspect of it, it was how it fit into the world and how it played with the party. I think what would really help the healing jobs is to roll more support elements into them rather than continue stacking them with healing skills and amping up their DPS numbers. Support skills are incredibly hard to balance though and so it is unlikely that SE will add any more of those.

I too am a relic of the past, having played EQ from a few months after its release in '99 until 2010. I have a great appreciation for what developers did to make "crowd control" classes like chanter feel needed without worrying too much about their place in the overall picture of DPS. It seems FFXIV players are very one-track-minded when it comes to DPS -- regardless of role, people have a great need for DPS above all else, because that is the only metric by which they are judged by their peers. I long for the day when Squeenix bucks the trend, and creates the need for support classes without fear that a lower damage output would make them undesirable.

[Mimilu]

My problem with answering this question is that what I view as fun as a healer doesn't seem to jive with the dev teams idea of what a healer is/should be: I enjoy spending most of the GCD on DPSing and weaving oGCD heals between them. I would go as far to classify myself as more of a Green DPS then a Healer and I'm more then fine with that.

An example of when I had fun as a healer would be my run of Paglth'an yesterday; The tank pulled wall-to-wall whenever a gate opened and used their cooldowns competently, while the DPS avoided most telegraphed AoEs while using their party buffs on cooldown and focusing on AoEing large groups. This allowed me to focus more on DPS and cards, use Celestial Intersection's shield on cooldown, and heal by either manually detonating upgraded Earthly Stars or Essential Dignity (with random Celestial Opposition or Aspected Benefic HoTs thrown in and Horoscope for boss AoEs).

[Semirhage]

I too am a relic of the past, having played EQ from a few months after its release in '99 until 2010. I have a great appreciation for what developers did to make "crowd control" classes like chanter feel needed without worrying too much about their place in the overall picture of DPS. It seems FFXIV players are very one-track-minded when it comes to DPS -- regardless of role, people have a great need for DPS above all else, because that is the only metric by which they are judged by their peers. I long for the day when Squeenix bucks the trend, and creates the need for support classes without fear that a lower damage output would make them undesirable.

This is a natural consequence of Squeenix's job design philosophy. If all party comps are supposed to be viable, then nobody's exclusive capabilities are mandatory. If you make specific mitigation, debuffs, or what-have-you points of distinction between jobs, then those things will never be required/make clearing an encounter significantly easier due to point number one. The only thing that everyone can do is DPS. It's the only metric that ends the encounter faster, and the only metric that (with the occasional exception of weird boss behavior when you phase early) doesn't have a cap on its usefulness. You're basically always rewarded for doing more damage in FFXIV. That's why the community values DPS. It's the only metric that makes a difference after you've covered your bases.

Edit:
To be fair, this is also a common design problem in other single player Final Fantasy games. There comes a point where...why would you Silence or Slow an enemy? Just kill them. You can one or two shot them anyway. Don't waste MP on crowd control, etc etc.