Live letter expectations.

[Imora]

For the life of me, I never understood why they gave us it. It thematically and kit wise never made sense. It was something that never should have been given to Scholar; this is coming from an original 2.0 to 2.3 White Mage Main, to 2.3 to 5.2 Scholar Main.

I never understood why they kept nerfing Holy into the ground, why they removed Aero 3, and especially why they kept removing abilities from lower levels and giving them back at higher levels. I had always said that White Mage damage wise should have been the definitive king of big damage for healers. Afflatus Misery is a long time coming, and really should have been a Stormblood ability. Holy has long since needed an upgrade to 2, and Aero 3 should have been Diaga. Fluid Aura should have changed to an actual spell, and become Flood in Stormblood, being a 30 second cooldown that triggered faster cooldowns on Lily Procs, and should have been upgraded into Light Wave in Shadowbringers. The whole job should have revolved around Lily's, with each giving you a stack increase to damage and spell speed, synergizing with Presence of Mind. White Mage should have a channel damage spell like Astro's Dome either Wind based or Water based. It should have all tied into its conjurer roots with the only job having an AoE Esuna, but instead they keep removing abilities or just ignoring then outright.

I have LONG since been an advocate for White Mage even after I stopped playing it, but with the devs, it doesn't do much, because they really just don't care about the role.

They're not giving an aoe esuna after removing the one we already had with the fairy nerf. Apparently that concept is OP.

[Deceptus]

They're not giving an aoe esuna after removing the one we already had with the fairy nerf. Apparently that concept is OP.

More that it was extremely unreliable.

First: You had to have Selene out to begin with, and most people didn't because in non-raid content Eos was better, hands down.

Second: You had to have a raid wide cleansable debuff which doesn't exist because that would require scholars to be in specific content.

Third: Even if you activated the ability, Selene would wait a few seconds before actually using it because pet AI is terrible. If it's a short duration debuff (Doom perhaps) the recipient could easily die before Selene used her ability. And that cleanse had a range centered on Selene. Guess what happens to DPS who stand at the edge of the arena? No cleanse.

Just faster to use a GCD on a 1.5s cast Esuna.

[FoxCh40s]

They're not giving an aoe esuna after removing the one we already had with the fairy nerf. Apparently that concept is OP.

I just don't understand why the devs are so adverse to lateral ability progression like with other FF as they are in this game. While the story has very much been brought up to Final Fantasy standards, the combat is decidedly anti-final fantasy as much as possible.

I get that it is an MMO, but they have soooooo much content and ideas they could pull from, and instead they elect to ignore it, and make it as absolutely completely bare bones as seemingly humanly possible.

It's just not healthy for the game overall, it will come to a head, and it will meet with a most horrible crash.

[Imora]

More that it was extremely unreliable.

First: You had to have Selene out to begin with, and most people didn't because in non-raid content Eos was better, hands down.

Second: You had to have a raid wide cleansable debuff which doesn't exist because that would require scholars to be in specific content.

Third: Even if you activated the ability, Selene would wait a few seconds before actually using it because pet AI is terrible. If it's a short duration debuff (Doom perhaps) the recipient could easily die before Selene used her ability. And that cleanse had a range centered on Selene. Guess what happens to DPS who stand at the edge of the arena? No cleanse.

Just faster to use a GCD on a 1.5s cast Esuna.

I played SCH in HW. You macro'd your pet heavily and prayed.

And my fairy was in range of the tanks. Dps had spots to stand in, moving her around was part of the whole thing. I hated micromanagement of the fairy. It's why I went PLD.

I want situational fairy choice back though. Having two fairies only to really use one over the other if she matches my glam is sad.

I have many issues with scholar, despite it being my favorite healer.

[Semirhage]

I've always found it odd that Square designs its encounters and jobs to interact the way they do. The job switching system affords them a unique opportunity that other MMOs don't have: they can really just say "play another job". You don't need alts, you don't need to pay for more character spaces, etc. They can design encounters that make different job kits much more attractive than others. Who cares whether an encounter is easy to clear with a near-universal variety of party compositions when the same character can play whatever they want? Instead they've leaned hard into the opposite direction: homogenization.

Of course, to make something like that work you'd need to design your jobs within a role to have unique capabilities, and...well...WHM's unique contribution has always been more overhealing than the other two, so what can you do.

[QooEr]

I just don't understand why the devs are so adverse to lateral ability progression like with other FF as they are in this game. While the story has very much been brought up to Final Fantasy standards, the combat is decidedly anti-final fantasy as much as possible.

I get that it is an MMO, but they have soooooo much content and ideas they could pull from, and instead they elect to ignore it, and make it as absolutely completely bare bones as seemingly humanly possible.

It's just not healthy for the game overall, it will come to a head, and it will meet with a most horrible crash.

i think its funny how they keep saying ffxiv is "an rpg first and an mmo second" and yet the combat is the least rpg thing ever, and they keep actively removing rpg elements from it. i wouldn't be surprised if at some point stats get deleted and item level is the only thing that determines damage and HP, since it wouldn't be any different functionally from what we have.

[Drkdays]

Give us a turned based boss encounter like in FF7. That would be awesome.

[Truen]

Healing in FF14 is the most boring, worst experience in any MMO on the market. I hate what they've done to healing since 5.0.

[Mansion]

DPS wise, I have a hard time imagining how they could make it worse for healers as there is nothing left to take out. So any addition here would be welcome for me.

Healing wise,I can already say I don't like the principle of barrier vs regen duality, it forces jobs into a shape and limits them. Neutral Sect and Intersection are for me the best things that happened to AST in 5.0 and I'd hate to have it go away because of that. Also, shields are just unnecessary most of the time apart from the occasional Morn Afah or something. Making it a full identity for two jobs where most of the content won't need it, it feels odd to me. But healing design in general needs to change. We keep getting more powerful healing oGCD that we barely use outside of Savage, yet nothing to do in downtime.

In specifics:
WHM- appears in the better position because they nerfed AST and SCH so bad that WHM's slight tweaks made it the better job. Still, I think it is fine identity wis, but it could do with a bit more depth in its Lily-managing system, and could get more love to keep it busy when there is nothing to heal. I don't think Misery should be a DPS loss in most full uptime context (900 potency in 4 GCDs compares to 1 200 with 4 Glares).
SCH- pet AI needs to go. They could have made it a copy of SMN with two Egi spells that would change depending of the active fairy, on the GCD so it avoids ghosting. Seraph could work like a SMN transe, clear out the ghosting of actions, revert the quick Aether trait, add something to pump the fairy gauge (I sit at 100 so much in casual content).
AST- great healing at level 80, but the cards are still a painful topic for me. I'd love Royal Road, old Minor Arcana and Time dilatation back to have more depth for cards. Seals and Divination can go away, or be separated from each other. The ranged vs melee is awkward in some cases.

[tinythinker]

I've been a healer main since starting in 3.2, but I have also been in and out of the game a lot and play casually, so I have no weight in calling for changes for the more challenging content.

What I can say is that I got WHM to cap first then immediately worked on getting SCH to cap. I have enjoyed WHM as being intuitive with some panic buttons, but I don't see how resolving the clipping issue or adding more mobility or building more rewarding play into the lily system is going to hurt me at all.

I also enjoyed SCH before 5.0 because it had a low floor like WHM (or seemed that way to me) but had a much higher ceiling. So I could take a break from WHM to try a different play style with Shadowflare, spreading some DoTs, with a faerie co-pilot to replace panic buttons. It really felt different visually and with the flow of play. The current SCH feels disappointing in comparison - way less interesting.

Anyway, like I said, I don't remotely know or understand savage or ultimate raid level healing so I can't offer anything on that, but what people are asking for in this thread doesn't sound like it would really affect me at all unless I moved into an upper tier gameplay. SE could give you your wishlists and players like me would get along just fine.

Sorry that you are expecting another expansion of joyless healing. I sincerely hope that SE surprises you (in a good way).

Healing in FF14 is the most boring, worst experience in any MMO on the market.

Oh, I can think of a challenger but don't want to discuss another game.