Quote Originally Posted by Dearche View Post
Every healer has big single target healing, weaker AOE healing, and everything else is just a variation of the two, with the bulk of abilities veering towards the latter. There's no synergistic effects between the abilities to promote using them in a particular order, or to use certain combinations together to improve the effect. They're all more or less the same abilities with differing effects put on them.

You can argue that the management of all these abilities is the skill of the healer, but frankly, there's not much difference between what we have right now and just consolidating all these skills into four abilities. A single target and AOE heal that uses MP, and a single target and AOE heal that is on a 15s or so CD with 2-3 charges.

This change would make learning healer infinitely easier, but it would also expose just how little there is when it comes to healer design.
I think you're underestimating the diversity in our healing toolkit. It seems like you're saying "every healing ability is either single-target or AOE, so there are only two kinds of healing ability". But surely there are other relevant differences between healing abilities besides the number of targets they heal.

Take SCH, for example. Sure, Indom and Whispering Dawn are both AOE heals. But Indom has lower potency and heals instantly, whereas WD has higher potency and heals over time. So Indom is preferable when raidwide damage is imminent, but WD is preferable otherwise. WD and Sacred Soil are both HOTs with roughly the same potency. But SS has the added benefit of damage reduction, whereas WD doesn't require your party to remain in a tightly circumscribed location. So SS is preferable in situations where your party stacks for multiple raidwide hits. It's not rocket science, but working out which healing ability to use in which situation still requires some thought and planning.

I don't understand why you say that reducing the healing abilities to only four would be "not much difference" but also that it would be "infinitely easier". That seems like a big difference.