So sick of 1-button spam I'm not even looking forward to the expansion...

[WaxSw]

Maybe Sage will turn out to be that type of healer, but ultimately... the role is to be a Healer first and foremost. All the "intricacy" should revolve around healing. Obviously SE would need to make some fundamental adjustments to how content is designed so that healing was necessary much more of the time than it currently is, but I'd rather SE devout time and resources to making healing more interesting for Healers rather than devoting time and resources to expanding the dps aspect (unless that dps aspect is part of how the healing happens such as in Sage's case).

The problem of that is that healing is situational, if the fight needs little to no healing then all the intricacy goes to waste, same happens when a healer becomes good as we want to be efficient and that imply using the less resources possible, in other words, interacting with the healing kit less so once again the intricacy goes to waste. If the fight needs more healing is when that design could work but in order to make that consistent the game's damage would have to increase a lot, intimidating a lot of the newer and less experienced healers, something the devs doesnt want.

In the way the game currently works dps be it by buffs, interactions within the kit, cooldowns and such is the way to go as its the only way to have something that you can interact with consistently on any kind of content without increasing the hps requirements of the game on all the content

And then there is the whole problem of having all the healers play the same which shoudnt happen in any design but somehow devs think its ok

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

If only this game had a dozen other classes that you could play.

Alas.

I guess you'd be fine with queue wait times doubling or tripling from what they are now. I for one would love for the devs to make the healers more entertaining so it can reduce my dps queue times.

I would expect SGE to outnumber SCH by a good margin though.

Until people realize Scholar will inevitably out dps Sage later on in the expansion due to Chain Stratagem still being a thing and Sage being significantly less mobile than Scholar because Toxicon is locked behind a very strict requirement unlike Ruin 2. Sage will also have Phlegma which is essentially a melee range spell which could clash with certain players playstyles and Icarus having a very long 45 second cooldown with no charges. I personally see Scholar being more popular than Sage after the initial hype wears off due to Scholar, how things have changed, being easier and, more importantly, more mobile.

[Liam_Harper]

And I need to use macros to make RDM and BRD comfortably playable for me (I'm old and have hand issues).

Which is absolutely fine. But it isn't fair that class design should be centered around the few with hand issues or other difficulties when the bulk of content is already designed to cater for this. Even if they added a few more dps buttons, you could stroll through MSQ and Normal barely using them and get by just fine.

Maybe Sage will turn out to be that type of healer, but ultimately... the role is to be a Healer first and foremost. All the "intricacy" should revolve around healing.

There is no rule on this. "Healers should only HEAL" is a player invented concept. Sure, healers should heal first so people don't die, that's obvious, but why must the depth end there? What if you master healing and you want to contribute even more and you can? That makes classes more interesting and always gives you a goal to strive for.
Ideally the average player can just heal and maybe mash random dps if there's nothing to do and that's plenty. But the skilled player could aim even further. In this way, both types of players are satisfied and even the casual player might one day find they can push their class even further.

Also "All the "intricacy" should revolve around healing." is something I hear a lot from people who like simple dps, but it's often only the dps healers who actually seem to bother with intricate healing. Such as developing a healing oGCD map or plan for the entire fight, coordinating with your co-heal, knowing the HoT's and buff icons, timers, toolkit, ground heals and so on of the other healers so you don't conflict or overheal, fast reactions with burst heals within a second or two when mistakes happen before a raidwide, understanding how Living Dead actually works and so on.
Many healers who speak about wanting to heal just spam Medica II and Cure III and pat themselves on the back for "doing their job" without understanding what intricate healing really means.

[Rilifane]

Until people realize Scholar will inevitably out dps Sage later on in the expansion due to Chain Stratagem still being a thing and Sage being significantly less mobile than Scholar because Toxicon is locked behind a very strict requirement unlike Ruin 2. Sage will also have Phlegma which is essentially a melee range spell which could clash with certain players playstyles and Icarus having a very long 45 second cooldown with no charges. I personally see Scholar being more popular than Sage after the initial hype wears off due to Scholar, how things have changed, being easier and, more importantly, more mobile.

WHM regularaly got out-dpsed by both SCH and AST while being a deadweight in terms of free healing and was still by far the most popular healer across all tiers and bosses. It only recently saw a decline in participation with Endwalker coming up. There were many times when you saw as many WHMs as ASTs and SCHs combined. And current SGE would feel like a phys ranged compared to current WHM.
SCH still has a conflicting toolkit and in most fights, the displaced healing doesn't offset the horrible and slow pet AI one bit, even with the slight changes to responsiveness.
There will still be plenty of SCH players but I'm pretty sure SGE will end up more popular.
Not better, popular.
Efficiency was never the primary concern of most people when picking a class, ootherwise WHM wouldn't haven been so popular even after years of constantly being behind the other two.
Even if rDPS ends up slightly behind SCH, SCH still has many issues that haven't been adressed with Endwalker and that alone is reason enough for many SCH mains to switch to SGE.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

WHM regularaly got out-dpsed by both SCH and AST while being a deadweight in terms of free healing and was still by far the most popular healer across all tiers and bosses. It only recently saw a decline in participation with Endwalker coming up. There were many times when you saw as many WHMs as ASTs and SCHs combined. And current SGE would feel like a phys ranged compared to current WHM.
SCH still has a conflicting toolkit and in most fights, the displaced healing doesn't offset the horrible and slow pet AI one bit, even with the slight changes to responsiveness.
There will still be plenty of SCH players but I'm pretty sure SGE will end up more popular.
Not better, popular.
Efficiency was never the primary concern of most people when picking a class, ootherwise WHM wouldn't haven been so popular even after years of constantly being behind the other two.
Even if rDPS ends up slightly behind SCH, SCH still has many issues that haven't been adressed with Endwalker and that alone is reason enough for many SCH mains to switch to SGE.

Pet AI can only be fixed by upgrading the game's engine, not happening, or by gutting the pet entirely like they are doing with Summoner, which quite a few Summoner mains aren't a fan of. Scholar mains are going to need to be very careful with what they ask for or you'll see Eos/Selene become Embrace bots, because Kardia exists and each healer needs to be a copy of each other. With Whispering Dawn/Angel's Whisper, Fey Illumination/Seraphic Illumination and Fey Union inevitably becoming generic Scholar oGCDs that are entirely unlinked from the fairy or completely removed from the game and changed into totally different Scholar oGCDs that mirror Sage's non-addersgall oGCDs. While Fey Blessing and Consolation would end up sharing a button and be the only abilities you can command the fairy to use just like 6.0 Summoner with Bahamut's Akh Morn and Phoenix's Revelation. Which would make Seraph become an even more generic super Eos. Because that's the cheapest, dirtiest, quickest and easiest solution to the pet problem. At least then Dissipation would only lock you out of 10 Embraces and Fey Blessing and Summon Seraph for 30 seconds. Who knows, maybe Scholar's would actually like that.

[AFuzzyMu11in]

Anyone feel me on that? Anyone sick to tears of casting: Broil, dot, broil, broil, heal-type spell, broil, broil, broil, heal-type spell, broil, dot, broil...endlessly?

Nope! I’m even more hype now that we can weave it.

[Doragan]

Pet AI can only be fixed by upgrading the game's engine, not happening, or by gutting the pet entirely like they are doing with Summoner, which quite a few Summoner mains aren't a fan of. Scholar mains are going to need to be very careful with what they ask for or you'll see Eos/Selene become Embrace bots, because Kardia exists and each healer needs to be a copy of each other. With Whispering Dawn/Angel's Whisper, Fey Illumination/Seraphic Illumination and Fey Union inevitably becoming generic Scholar oGCDs that are entirely unlinked from the fairy or completely removed from the game and changed into totally different Scholar oGCDs that mirror Sage's non-addersgall oGCDs. While Fey Blessing and Consolation would end up sharing a button and be the only abilities you can command the fairy to use just like 6.0 Summoner with Bahamut's Akh Morn and Phoenix's Revelation. Which would make Seraph become an even more generic super Eos. Because that's the cheapest, dirtiest, quickest and easiest solution to the pet problem. At least then Dissipation would only lock you out of 10 Embraces and Fey Blessing and Summon Seraph for 30 seconds. Who knows, maybe Scholar's would actually like that.

I agree, I don't think we'll ever see a properly working pet AI. Knowing that, I still lament why on earth was Embrace entirely given to the unreliable AI. The pet bar system was perfectly fine. If apparently, the pet ghosting is an issue that needs to be addressed in EW (which probably won't be, it didnt happen since ARR, I don't see it being fixed here), why closing the pet orders in a finite system with no recourse? What was the purpose here?
I will say it until I grow grey and old, please give us access to the pet bar once again.

If the job is currently in this state, it's purely on self-inflicted wounds. And bad AI.

[Adeacia]

Funny thing. I did a leveling roulette on my DRG last night. Ended up in one of the later ShB dungeons, and I was bored the whole time. I had more things to press in terms of dps than my usual WHM sure, but that's all I did. Exact same mechs I'm used to from the enemies, just doing my rotation to make them die ASAP.

There was nothing interesting that happened. No elements of randomness, it was entirely static and thus, boring. I'll take the glare spam if it means I have something more interesting to do. Which is deal with the randomness of other players since I don't know how poorly they'll play and how much I'll have to work to keep them alive as a result.

[CrimsonGunner]

Funny thing. I did a leveling roulette on my DRG last night. Ended up in one of the later ShB dungeons, and I was bored the whole time. I had more things to press in terms of dps than my usual WHM sure, but that's all I did. Exact same mechs I'm used to from the enemies, just doing my rotation to make them die ASAP.

There was nothing interesting that happened. No elements of randomness, it was entirely static and thus, boring. I'll take the glare spam if it means I have something more interesting to do. Which is deal with the randomness of other players since I don't know how poorly they'll play and how much I'll have to work to keep them alive as a result.

if you need to hope you get a bad party or hope you party will fail so you wont need to be stuck in spamming glare when playing a healer then its quite literally a bad design without a doubt.
true when everything is predicted you can pretty much get bored doing the same thing but doing several different stuff is still better then doing just 1 thing the entire time.

[Jirah]

Yeah, Sage is clearly the solution. Dosis spam, but lasers!

Pretty lights, me likes.

this is utterly the biggest issue with the game. their overreliance on "pretty particles" negating and often juxtaposing what your really doing which is often the one button spam or a gcd or in SMN EW case both