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

[ASkellington]

I think you overestimate how busy AST is, sure the cards involve needing to switch between players and assign them, but honestly it's not that hard as long as you don't have issues clicking the party list consistently and know which card goes to who without having to think on it too hard

Plus the cards are meant to be done on the OGCD, meaning that they're just another thing to weave instead of a legitimate part of your DPS rotation

I don't think I am. While we know the CDs of Minor Arcana and Astrodyne (and the cards have never changed) I'd rather wait to feel out the 6.0 changes before I immediately say yes to more dps.

Personally, I don't think it'll change much. Quite the opposite I don't think it'll change how I feel about being bored on AST at all. But I'm usually very negative and am trying a positive approach. I don't think you are wrong. And I still welcome dps to do other than Malefic and Combust, but I'mma play the waiting game (and probably be disappointed).

[Ayche]

I really think it's a shame, because FFXIV allows you to play every class on the same character. This model is pretty convenient for MMOs where you have to adapt your party roster depending on the content you're going for.
"Oh, we need strong heals for this one ? Sure, i'll switch to WHM", is what i wish i was saying instead of "Darn, i can't join as AST because there's already one in the party ? Well it's ok i'll just switch to WHM, it's the same anyway lol"

But even if the game lets you swap jobs with minimal friction, it still won't give you all of them at max level for free. There is still the time sink to max level that costs something to the user.

I think you are absolutely right about the reasons why the game is like now, and I would go further and say that it had to be this way, interchangeable jobs within a role is the progress the game had to go into. The only other alternative would be NO NEW JOBS IN THE GAME, not after Heavensward atleast. I can kinda imagine a FFXIV where DRK, MCH and AST were the very last jobs added to the game forever. Then you weave heavy interdependencies between all the jobs and maybe bump raid party sizes to 3 tanks, 3 healers and 6 dps. Maybe in this timeline Ninja also never existed so now you can fit all jobs in the game into the savage raid!

So we can go mad. White Mage is the only healer who can actually heal raid wides, but the party will not even survive if there was no preemptive succor and of course AST has a party wide damage reduction card to play to combine with it. We can force all jobs to a single niche that they do till the end of time, nothing will change, we got the game solved. I hope SCH and WHM players enjoy running out of mana in dungeons when they are alone because we tuned all MP usage based on BRD and AST mana recovery utility.

And expansions will truly have more hype than before when they can never include new jobs because there is no design space to add new roles and the whole raiding breaks the moment something comes along and disrupts the formula. Dip the game into amber, let it set, put it into a museum.

But anyway, make Gravity, Holy and Art of War very expensive and do tons of damage, like quadruple the potency number and put a 3-5 second cast time on them. If you want to add DPS options to healers, I want people to name one or two actions from each job that they first remove so there is room for replacement, if you ask for black mage action set to be attached to white mage whole hog, you are not to be taken seriously.

[Silver-Strider]

But anyway, make Gravity, Holy and Art of War very expensive and do tons of damage, like quadruple the potency number and put a 3-5 second cast time on them. If you want to add DPS options to healers, I want people to name one or two actions from each job that they first remove so there is room for replacement, if you ask for black mage action set to be attached to white mage whole hog, you are not to be taken seriously.

Ok, you can take Cure 1 and Divine Benison and give me Aero 3 and Banish.

[Sebazy]

<snip>

The time commitment to level each job in this game (And just about any other modern subscription theme park MMO that I'm aware of) is minuscule compared to the time we will spend at the end game. I suspect levels 54 and 59 in OG Everquest took almost as long individually as it took me to take Dancer from Limsa to 80 TBH.

The thing is we did actually have situations where different jobs were better in certain raids than others even within a specific tier. Midas was a great example because AST and WHM were competitive with each other at this point. WHM had the advantage of better reach which it's healing kit. AST struggled with AoE radius by comparison but bought the raid buffs and MP/TP recovery to the table instead. I used to switch between to the two throughout the raid evening depending on the turn we were entering and it was great.

This just isn't a thing now because all 3 healers have kits that are highly overtuned for anything this game throws at us. The only difference that matters right now between the 3 healers currently (and probably the 4th come next month) is the combined raid dps. That's a sad sad state of affairs that's come about thanks to SE not paying attention to the corner they've been designing healers into for the past 2-3 years.

I'm not really sure where you're going with the rest of your post though? I can't say I remember anyone asking for full a BLM rotation?

[AikenDrum]

repose, fluid aura, cure 1, medica 1, afflatus rapture + solace -> one "afflatus next cure2/medica2" button
5 free buttons:
(1.b3) > t3=dia > (2.b4) > (3.f3) > f4=glare x3 > (4.f1) > f4=glare x3 > (5.despair) > xeno=misery
works ^^

[Payadopa]

People here can argue until the are blue in the tits. I would like more evolved job design and such but at the same time I
do die in raids and the like because our healer (mainly WHMs, funnily enough) decided they hast to spam their damage abilities. It does happen often enough so I'm not sure where I stand on the issue, honestly.

Dumbing down content certainly isn't the way, though.

[GrimGale]

People here can argue until the are blue in the tits. I would like more evolved job design and such but at the same time I
do die in raids and the like because our healer (mainly WHMs, funnily enough) decided they hast to spam their damage abilities. It does happen often enough so I'm not sure where I stand on the issue, honestly.

Dumbing down content certainly isn't the way, though.

The fact that some healers often decide to spam their abilities even with this dumbed down kit, must prove the dumbing down didn't prevent healers from tunnel visioning in the first place or made healers "heal more". So using healers that don't heal as a reason for the dumbing down isn't a useful argument.

[IDontPetLalas]

The fact that some healers often decide to spam their abilities even with this dumbed down kit, must prove the dumbing down didn't prevent healers from tunnel visioning in the first place or made healers "heal more". So using healers that don't heal as a reason for the dumbing down isn't a useful argument.

Using the "oww i died" argument doesn't even necessarily mean that the healer was tunnel visioning. It can happen, healers can definitely make mistakes, however party members can also ignore mechanics or stand out of range of heals.

All of this to say that it's not an argument for limiting us to 2 DPS skills. I could then say that I've seen a lot of tanks that can't mitigate, they must have too much on their minds with DPSing. Let's take away a few DPS skills, they won't mind and just beef them up with more CDs.

[Payadopa]

The fact that some healers often decide to spam their abilities even with this dumbed down kit, must prove the dumbing down didn't prevent healers from tunnel visioning in the first place or made healers "heal more". So using healers that don't heal as a reason for the dumbing down isn't a useful argument.

Yes and no. It's the DPS indoctrination that leads some healer to stress out so much that they neglect the very reason why they are in a group in the first place -> to heal.

I think I wouldn't mind more DPS skills. The problem is that it's so ingrained in one part of the community to always DPS that it be ones a double edged sword.

Increasing the difficulty would go a long way, though. I did Coils on min ilvl/no echo all the way through and using DPS skills was a luxury. lol But I can see that that kinda challenge would turn off too many. So, yes, healers need more to do outside healing or the encounters need to change.

Still don't like the whole DPS mentality. All it does is stifle job creativity.

[GrimGale]

Yes and no. It's the DPS indoctrination.

The "DPS indoctrination" is the result of game design. There is no other avenue for a Healer Job to be useful when heals are not needed. You can certainly blame individuals for pushing DPS too far and fail to keep their party alive, but you can't blame the healer community as a whole for pushing the idea that maximizing DPS contribution is a virtue a healer should aspire to.

There is nothing else a healer can optimize around.

Optimizing heals leads to the same result as optimizing DPS: Minimizing overhealing, freeing GCDs, minimizing MP cost of survival. That leads to free time a healer can only employ in the only thing that is useful and available to them: Doing damage.