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

[ForteNightshade]

Your ideals of what a healer should be does not match that of the devs. It does not mean they don't play their own game.

Time to bring up the holy trinity of incredibly bad design decision that suggest otherwise!

First on the docket we have Stormblood Lilies, everybody's favourite mechanics! So well thought out, new players were advised to take their brand new job gauge and pitch it into the corner of their screen and never look at it again. This iteration of Lilies weren't simply bad, they were completely and utterly useless. They literally made an entire mechanic out of original Spear, you know, the card they had to change in Heavensward because everyone hated it for being, well... useless. Even with a full three Lilies, you'd gain a measly twelve seconds on Assize. All while incurring a massive DPS loss to accomplish it. There was never any reason to even touch this system, which remained for the entire expansion despite constant criticism.

Next on the list is Piercing. Remember that curious little debuff that contributed to Bard, and to a lesser extent, Machinist's overwhelming dominance through two full expansions? The dev team openly acknowledged they never took it into consideration when balancing either of their respective damage. I repeat, they didn't consider a 10% (later 5%) flat damage buff that only a single job could offer might be why Bard continuously slotted into the meta for years nor that it would all but guaranteed Dragoon a permanent spot in practically every group.

And last to the stage, though far from the least. We have Monk. Just... Monk. A job that spent six years living in the shadows of two far superior jobs; whose many, [i]many[/] adjustments did absolutely nothing to actually alter its gameplay in the way players asked. A job that leading into Shadowbringers, the dev team praised as being their most proud change despite the widely maligned Riddle of Fire being exactly the same. It's reception proving to be so poor, they were forced to buff Monk into the moon while finally overhauling the aforementioned Riddle a mere month into the expansion. Even then, this "most proud" job spent all of Shadowbringers being completely gutted into the new version we see today.

Some dishonorable mentions must include, Astro's laughably bad MP economy in 5.0, Ninja's dealing physical range damage in 5.0, Summoner dealing physical range damage 6. (still depending!) and Living Dead being hilariously worse than Holmgang. Suffice it to say, people didn't conclude the dev team doesn't communicate when it comes to job design out of thin air. There's a litany of evidence to suggest they don't.