Worthless Live Letter

[Sebazy]

Healers don't need raid buffs to be useful to the team. Healers are useful when they heal. Healers are useful when they mitigate. Healers are useful when they are helping to contribute raid damage.

Which takes us right back to the root of this whole issue.

Healer's aren't healing healing for large chunks of content at all levels of the game. We aren't debuffing because SB took that away, we are barely buffing because SE are deathly afraid of giving healers anything significant after the whole Creator Balance thing. All that's left is mashing that Glare hotkey into a smouldering stump.

Every healer that makes an effort to optimise their gameplay and gear will hit a point where the game devolves into little more than cookie clicker whilst they wait for their next chance to 'be useful'.

[GrimGale]

Which takes us right back to the root of this whole issue.

Healer's aren't healing healing for large chunks of content at all levels of the game. We aren't debuffing because SB took that away, we are barely buffing because SE are deathly afraid of giving healers anything significant after the whole Creator Balance thing. All that's left is mashing that Glare hotkey into a smouldering stump.

Every healer that makes an effort to optimise their gameplay and gear will hit a point where the game devolves into little more than cookie clicker whilst they wait for their next chance to 'be useful'.

Now we have Tanks carving away at that usefulness with potent self sustain options too. PLD has so many self healing options I expect them to essentially be able to complete runs without a healer. WAR is also a sustain god. GBN less so, but still get quite a few options. DRK however seems to lack much self sustain options beyond their still potent Darkest Knight. (Though they have to pay a hefty DPS price for that, where the other tanks dont.)

[ItMe]

PLD has so many self healing options I expect them to essentially be able to complete runs without a healer.

They already can.
PLD and WAR can solo Pagl'than right now.
The newest duty, and our max possible iLVL has not gone up since it was introduced.

And some ShB Savage raids were cleared while current without a healer. We have the infamous E4S SMN party of PLD, WAR, DNC, and 5 SMN as the most obvious example.
(Link for those who haven't seen the vid yet)
https://youtu.be/zdDxjXMMWgU

(Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "runs.")

[Aword3213]

They already can.
PLD and WAR can solo Pagl'than right now.
The newest duty, and our max possible iLVL has not gone up since it was introduced.

I rarely put my attention on solo dungeons run, but shouldn't healers be able to solo them as well?

TBs in 4 man dungeons are a joke. As long as healers don't get one shot, they can solo everything due to limitless sustain( unless there's an enrage timer)

[Deceptus]

Now we have Tanks carving away at that usefulness with potent self sustain options too. PLD has so many self healing options I expect them to essentially be able to complete runs without a healer. WAR is also a sustain god.

Which is hilarious because they TOOK AWAY THAT TANK SUSTAIN IN SHADOWBRINGERS. . .

Only to bring it back in Endwalker.

Again, another example of they really don't have an overall vision for jobs. They're literally just throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks.

[Calysto]

Every healer that makes an effort to optimise their gameplay and gear will hit a point where the game devolves into little more than cookie clicker whilst they wait for their next chance to 'be useful'.

To be fair, nowadays I think Cookie Clicker has more depth then XIV healers.
-Random timed buff (golden cookies)
-Decisions making (spells)
-Stances managment (pantheon and apocalypse)
-Ressources optimisation (upgrades/building choices)
-Ressources stock/dump (stock exchange, wrinklers, garden)
edit : and they all synergize with each other

Sure you can click a few thousand times between thoses events ; but it isn't reall worth it outside of a burst window (frenzy).
The big difference if that CC is an iddle game ; FFXIV is not yet

[Aword3213]

Healer's aren't healing healing for large chunks of content at all levels of the game.

Part of the reason is relative to high IL even when synched.

Not saying all contents are well designed though. Eden's Verse is notorious for huge healing downtime.