It's time to kill the argument that DPS abilities keep healers from healing.

[ForteNightshade]

People complain about dungeons being mass pull hallways, but then resent the less linear ARR dungeons when they get them in roulette. People complain about raids all being arena fights, but then bitch about mobs. People complain about how gear trivializes fights, but will still gear as best they can. So long as damage is predictable and manageable by healers of less skill, more skilled healers will figure it out and optimize and get bored. No?

This is an incredibly disingenuous argument, and completely disregards any context as to why people dislike older ARR dungeons nowadays. Being synced down to lower level content removes a good portion of most jobs toolkis, leaving several complete shells of themselves. Bard, Dancer, Black Mage and pretty much every tank all are extremely lacking at or below 60 simply because they're missing far too many of their core skills. Take Gunbreaker, for example. What makes the job fun is Continuation. Below 70, you're essentially doing 123 Burst Strike and nothing else. Bard and Dancer have laughably low proc rates (I believe 20%) at these level ranges. Granted, Standard Step isn't remotely balanced for low level content. So that gives Dancer something. Bard is little more than a Heavy Shot simulator.

Even with all the aforementioned issues, the dev team simply doesn't incentivize non-linearity. Adding a few branching pathways is nice... if it leads to something. A lore dump or an extra accessory 30 ilvls lower than what most players will have isn't going to entice anyone. Sure, the lore dump can be fun but it's a one and done occurrence. People have run the dungeon 50-10-200 times aren't going to slow down so you can read lore. They just want it over with.

Likewise, raid mobs were equally pointless because they were nothing but AoE fodder. You blew them away in seconds. Hence why people complained. They weren't made to be interesting; instead being more of an annoyance. If the dev team actually did something with them, perhaps people would be more receptive.

Lastly, of course people prioritize gear. That's literally the entire purpose of raiding. It's the dev team's responsibility to design fight mechanics around the knowledge we'll inevitably outgear them. They have, at least not for healers who are denied any form of meaningful gameplay progression. Optimizing their healing throughput means spamming the same nuke button more frequently. They aren't being given debuffs, buffs, utility or DPS to actually manage. Just a simple DoT and 200 Glare casts.