Why is the healer class basically a one spell dps class?

[BlueMageQuina]

This question is a little complicated.. The truth is that it’s this way now for many reasons; it has been a reaction to player complaints, a result of unpopular design choices, a change from mechanics reworks, and a reduction to button bloat.

For player complaints, for example, for a long while (ARR, HW, SB) healers kept complaining about the skill gap especially since it justifies leaving players out of content they wanted to try. When healers had more DPS spells, good healers very obviously outclassed bad ones and bringing a good SCH was like bringing a 5th DPS. (Yes, the did DPS like a DPS.) Even so, reducing our damage output to 1 button has not extinguished the skill gap, which is still often very evident.

For unpopular design choices, SE had had the notion for a while that “healers should only heal,” which only exacerbated the previous issue. Slowly our DPS and utility toolkits were nerfed and hallowed out into oblivion while the healers themselves have been homogenized. There was a time where only SCH had a bubble (Sacred Soil), but then WHM was given one (Asylum) and AST was given 2 (Collective, Star). But that still wasn’t enough. ShB made it so that now SCH’s bubble also regens like the other two healers. Sacred Soil is now the most overpowered healing cooldown for the sake of homogeneity. Likewise, WHM was often stripped of its own utility to be spread to other healers and roles: Cleric Stance was given away then deleted, Shroud of Saints became Lucid Dreaming, Esuna replaced AST and SCH’s unique status heals, etc. WHM even had a cooldown to increase its healing potency that was first given to other healers and renamed Largesse, and then split and renamed again for a second time to be unique to WHM and AST in the forms of Temperance and Neutral Sect.

The utility we do/did have is continuously reworked; it is continuously removed, rebranded or repurposed onto other roles. To be fair, sometimes the rework is required. Old NIN is a good example. Tanking used to be a whole lot more difficult and unlike now, you couldn’t just turn on tank stance to hold the aggro. DPS and healers both used to pull aggro off the a tank who didn’t have a good aggro rotation. NIN solved this somewhat by being able to directly mitigate and empty party members’ aggro. NIN actually had a mechanic that was neat and unique to it. Then—of course—it’s utility was reduced by giving other DPS Diversion (aggro dump for DPS role) and tanks Ultimatum (AOE Provoke). Then, reworked again so that tank stance is enough so all aggro related abilities have been deleted from all jobs but tanks.

Unlike NIN, for healers a rework of utility wasn’t comparatively required though it happened anyway. Old AST utility was that it buffed 6 unique aspects—every card wasn’t a damage up the way it is now—and AST could extend the duration of its own buffs, shields and regens through card buffs, Time Dilation, and Celestial Opposition (which incidentally used to have an AOE stun). This was taken away because of player complaints about the RNG aspect of fishing for the right card, and for the balance aspect that the other healers would never buff that way, especially WHM which was planned to never offer true comparable utility. But more to the point, AST and SCH both had mitigation tools that have been repurposed into other roles. AST’s Disable and SCH’s Eye for an Eye have both been deleted in place of giving DPS more responsibility: Troubadour, Shield Samba, Tactician, Feint and Addle.

The little remaining utility was slowly weeded out too. WHM had a Heavy+40% with Stone 1, which became healer role Break, which became gone. Fluid Aura had a knockback and a damage potency, gone. Aero III, gone. Cleric Stance is gone so badly that people say “healers should only heal,” forgetting that the original design for one of the healers had a DPS stance that raised damage output and lowered healing output. SCH had a Shadowflare, Bane, Miasma II, Energy Drain, Rouse, an AOE haste, an AOE Esuna, and an AOE silence (interrupt). All gone, though Energy Drain returned because of MP issues. And we already spoke on AST.

Lastly, the final reason we have nothing less to do as a healer, and don’t let this reason be overlooked: button bloat. We have too many buttons and the “less useful” utility and DPS buttons have been the first to go.

All these things gone. All for balance. All for rework. All for button bloat. All because we complained.