What's your preferred change?

[BooPoo]

For starters, I want the design to reflect how the game is actually played. To make a long story short there will ALWAYS be significant downtime where you're DPSing unless they fundamentally redesign combat in this game from the ground up. Straight up, with the ways encounter, gearing, and stats are designed there is no way around this. So embrace it, realize that DPS is as much a part of our play as it is for tanks and make combat more interesting.

Now, beyond that I'd also say give us more ways to contribute, and ideally I'd wrap the two together. Sage is actually a step in the right direction with DPS spells providing passive healing, but ideally I'd go with something similar: Allow our DPS during downtime to contribute meaningfully to our support role. It could be something simple like DPS actions contributing to fairy gauge or lilies, or something a bit more complicated like having combos for our spells with the finisher granting a party-wide buff.

Recognize that we'll spend a fair amount of our time DPSing especially as player skill and gear rises, but wrap that into the core support mentality.

I also have something in mind for the players who religiously hate DPSing as a healer. We can go further with the buff system AST currently has, and have a few healer whos damage contrib came from themselves (Sage etc.) and a few others that don't do complex damage rotation but buff teammates significantly.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-healer-issues

^ this first post (regularly updated) summaries almost everything.

[Dyvid]

Change the devs mindset from pure healer to healer/support.

[MellowMink]

I enjoy playing as a green DPS, which the game currently incentivizes, so I wish that I had more attack variety for a majority of the fights. Limiting attack options doesn't alone translate to the player attacking less; it just means their attacking will become way more repetitive and boring. Even if they raise healing requirements for the next expansion's contents, that still won't retroactively fix the first 80 levels of still actively played content.

[LaylaAlder]

My preferred change is pretty simple, honestly.

Medica II learned between level 47 and 49 instead of at 50. Benediction can stay 50, I'm fine with that. But really - Medica II between 47 and 49 for when I sync. That's all I ask.

[Hurrican]

1 or 2 additional DPS spells would be nice, but no more
Please make more Tumult mechanics. Clutch healing feels so good

[hynaku]

Remove all there dps skills in dungeons so they can focus on healing. Reason keep seeing healers only doing dps and not healing anyone.

[Aword3213]

Remove all there dps skills in dungeons so they can focus on healing. Reason keep seeing healers only doing dps and not healing anyone.

I believe it's possible to make healers engaging without having any dps skills, though I doubt it fit the environment of FFXIV or the philosophy of current healer design.

When I was playing Ragnarok online 11 years ago, the only healer in the game was Priest. There was a spec called Miracle Priest and it was my main. It was so engaging whenever I was in a party despite not having any offensive spells ( they added 1 offensive spell for leveling 1 year later) . All Miracle priest did back then were healing and buffing. The reason it was engaging is because there were lots of buffs that work in various timers. You have party buffs that boost crit chance for 30 seconds, mitigation for 15s, mp regen for 10s. You also needs to reapply various single target buffs when you're not healing. Speed boost only lasts 60 seconds. Stats boost for 30 seconds. Attack boost for 15s. Enchantment for 15s. Shields for 10s. An optimized Miracle priest had to maintain both party buffs and personal buffs while healing. It was a lot of stress, but in the meantime, very satisfying and engaging to play.

[Saefinn]

My choice is '3', both.

Remove all there dps skills in dungeons so they can focus on healing. Reason keep seeing healers only doing dps and not healing anyone.

We could also reduce the DPS rotation of DPS jobs to simple 1, 2, 3 rotations to alleviate the pressure and focus from maximising their DPS in their rotation to focus on mechanics and similar, do it with tanks. I'd end up carrying fewer groups as a healer that way and more runs could go more smoothly. But this would be dull and remove a level of challenge/difficulty.

I don't think making the role even less engaging than it is now is the right answer. Your healers then end up twiddling their thumbs 70% of the time, except they probably won't because they'll find other ways of being occupied such as playing with their phone, goofing off etc.
Then you'll also find people getting more and more frustrated in DPS checks and enrage mechanics, because when you get those 3% wipes? Your healer is going to be standing there saying "there were these times I was doing nothing at all, I'd have helped if I could".

I think there are more productive ways of mitigating this problem. Making their down time less monotonous is one way because they won't have to tunnel vision, the most times I've ever said "woops, I forgot I was a healer" was in ShB. What they've done with Sage is another.

[Bsrking5]

I'd just like a full dps rotation as healer. They should just make it proc based. Base heal or damage procs second level boost. If boost is active second level damage spell or heal procs third level. Third level procs a bonus to first level. So you have a dps/healing rotation which don't interrupt each other but just moves to the next part of the rotation and you can choose to dps or heal.

Like as example stone or cure would proc say empowered which makes stone 2 do 100 more pot or could be used on cure 2 for 200 more pot heal. Stone 2 and cure 2 if used under empowered proc would proc in tuned which makes stone 3 hit harder or cure 3 heal more. So you could cure>stone 2> cure 3 and get procs. Or. Stone> cure 2> stone 3 and still be working the rotation as intented.