Healer design is still terrible and I'm tired of apologizing for it.

[HappyHubris]

Agreed. Not only is every bit of damage scripted, but fight mechanics are very punishing if you fail them. The general sense I get from FF14's encounter design is that the dev team really, really, super-duper does not want healers to be able to compensate for failed mechanics. That's why so damn many mechanics are one-shots or "this must be done perfectly by all 8 party members or it's a wipe" mechanics (think the meteors in SoSEX). Look at the first boss of Breach, back in ShB: the big telegraphed beam is a one-shot, the other major mechanic yeets you off the platform if you're not hugging a cube.

If I had to describe healing, and to a lesser extent, tanking, in FF14 right now, I'd call it perfunctory. You're just going through the motions. You're a healer/tank because this is an MMO and MMOs have healers/tanks. What you actually do most of the time is DPS in both cases, and just hit one of your "Role oGCDs" every 30-60 seconds as needed. At this point, the roles exist just because it's a genre convention that they exist.

A good healer should be able to pull their party through failed mechanics and compensate for mistakes. That is the traditional purpose of healers in MMOs. But Square doesn't want players to clear fights without perfectly AAAing Max300 executing the mechanics.

This is close, but I would say that healers should be busy whether or not mechanics are aced. And then pushed to the limit if people screw up.

[Hammerhorn]

I disagree with the OP healers are fun and busy to play. Spam one or 2 buttons for dps but they almost do as much damage as tanks for wayyyyy less work. More dps buttons with heals attached to them would feel better though.

[Deceptus]

It's not like FF14 hasn't been through this phase.

The problem is if too many mechanics are too easily recoverable, it becomes "Healer adjust, we're eating this for uptime". People will ignore every mechanic they can for more DPS uptime and just more DPS generally.

Not that I wouldn't like to see some system-level changes to healing, but this ain't the answer.

The answer is simple and SE has done it in the past but refuse to re-implement it:

The Damage Down Debuff as opposed to the (current) Damage Taken Increase debuff.

Punish players who fail a mechanic. Don't punish the healers requiring them to heal more. I guarantee you 100% if dps start getting the damage down debuff in any serious content (private groups), raid leaders will sort that out quick, especially if a sub 5% wipe happens with multiple damage down debuffs.

[Rilifane]

The only thing I don't want to see again is something like e10s orbs.
One person failed it but the others, who didn't, get the damage down. Same on towers and someone standing wrong with a shadow before the side cleave.
People that fail the mechanic should get the damage down, not the ones playing it correctly.
Damage downs hit where it really hurts but only if the person failing is held accountable. I'm not a fan of vuln ups as it once again punishes players who didn't fail.

They did it nicely with mechanics like E8s cleaves, gaze and kicks: you fail, your shiny parse is ruined.
Stun, damage down, non dispellable paralysis or slow... Those are far better than vuln ups which end up being a slap on the wrist and something for healers to adjust for.

[Hammerhorn]

Damage downs are lame , healers deserve some glory to heal people through massive amounts of damage for more up time with the raid coordinating defense cool downs so their healers can pull the trick off.

[elioaiko]

The combat is not changing. Healer community means little to the devs than appeasing the dps crowd, the majority of the playerbase.

Sadly, healers will likely never get a major rework until the queues become unbearable.

Having unique gameplay styles should be the main goal but they're too scared to upset their current balance and prefer their nice and organized homogenized kits.

One thing I heavily disagree with is the desire to GCD heal more. Spamming one button isn't fun but is spamming Cure II as fun. GCD healing is boring as well. Healers are not =/= healbots, they should be SUPPORTS. People need to get of the mindset that healers can't do more than dps/heal. But considering how many times they changed AST's cards, it's not even shocking.

[Anhra]

Healers arent even needed anymore for most Content anyway, with how overpowered PLD, WAR and GNB currently are, in terms of self sustainment. From this point onward, i am straight up convinced that Squeenix is genuinely incapable of both understanding, as well as designing both Healers and Tanks.

[Grimoire-M]

All you need to understand the difference in how bad things are now and how they were in prior expansions is to look into the history of Arcanist, as it's problems are a useful reflection on the flaws of XIV's core gameplay as a whole. The problems of the ARR/HW very much were very much due to clunky QoL and tuning problems, whereas in ShB and Endwalker they're mainly down to design choices that ultimately take away from player engagement. That shift started in Stormblood and that expansion is riddled with the flaws of both.

[FTP]

It's not like FF14 hasn't been through this phase.

The problem is if too many mechanics are too easily recoverable, it becomes "Healer adjust, we're eating this for uptime". People will ignore every mechanic they can for more DPS uptime and just more DPS generally.

Not that I wouldn't like to see some system-level changes to healing, but this ain't the answer.

I'll bite. Why is that a problem? Serious question.

It would mean as the healer gets better at healing the encounter, through skill, gear, knowledge of the mechanics, or whatever, the total dps increases and kill time is faster. So you have a skill curve, not just alive/dead. And the healers contribute to that dps increase through better healing. That is not a problem.

If this happens because the dps are selfish, or just bad at mechanics, the healer carries the day through better healing, once again no problem.

[Saefinn]

I'll bite. Why is that a problem? Serious question.

It would mean as the healer gets better at healing the encounter, through skill, gear, knowledge of the mechanics, or whatever, the total dps increases and kill time is faster. So you have a skill curve, not just alive/dead. And the healers contribute to that dps increase through better healing. That is not a problem.

If this happens because the dps are selfish, or just bad at mechanics, the healer carries the day through better healing, once again no problem.

It's a problem because when you get to that DPS uptime, what you have is...well...underwhelming. Maybe for a time it might feel rewarding because you've achieved something, but what happens when it becomes the norm?

You go from "I have this great healing kit of diverse things I can use that are interesting and engaging" to "I am spamming Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis most of the time and not getting the full use of my kit".

Or when I look in another thread I see the advice, "you should never use your GCD shields on SGE, you don't need them, because your oGCD's are enough" it shows the problem of what happens when you improve as a healer, your kit shrinks. And that would be okay if we had something interesting to fall back on.

I don't think the healers are poorly designed as suggested by the OP, but the healing design and healing requirements match.

The way I've described it pre-EW is:
Healing jobs are designed to favour healing over DPS
Encounters are design to favour DPS over healing

What we end up with is long periods of time with a lackluster DPS kit.

As for post-EW, I am still getting a handle on, but it feels akin to early ShB, where there's this period where healing feels good because people are undergeared, are new to the content, jobs and job changes and the balance feels fine but the way it went with ShB is that with time we got a balance that was like 30% healing, 70% DPSing for the majority of content and it was dull. And there's evidence already that this is going to be a continuation of that.

The devs need to either:
Make healing more engaging - balance stats and content to allow this.
Make DPSing on a healer more engaging.

But personally? I am healer, so I'd actually like to get more use out of my healing kit, but the DPS suggestion is accepting that they will always be a level of healer down time so might as well do something with it.