Time to expand a little on my comments about SE needing to hire a healer designer.

[Jonathan_Clover]

The silence, however, is frustrating and disappointing. Feels like the entire role is a burden nobody cares to approach. And soon I too will stop approaching it.

Honestly, that's me right now. I LOVE playing healers in games. It's what I've almost always done when I had the chance, be it in DnD, or other MMOs.

But since healers in this game feel like booty to play, combined with the silence/lack of acknowledging anything, it's seriously making me not want to keep playing, let alone keep healing. :/

[Risvertasashi]

Honestly, that's me right now. I LOVE playing healers in games. It's what I've almost always done when I had the chance, be it in DnD, or other MMOs.

But since healers in this game feel like booty to play, combined with the silence/lack of acknowledging anything, it's seriously making me not want to keep playing, let alone keep healing. :/

Hey, exact same boat here but I went through it a bit earlier. I'll still play FF14 for the story, and playing a supporting DPS that can raise or otherwise do things outside of just DPSing is a bit fun, but at this point I've given up on getting my healing fix from FF14. I hope you find a path you enjoy.

I hope someday another MMO will come along, of FF14's caliber but with better healing etc, but I'm also not blind to the harsh reality of the market conditions that make this exceptionally unlikely. Well, one can dream...

[Iedarus]

The silence, however, is frustrating and disappointing. Feels like the entire role is a burden nobody cares to approach. And soon I too will stop approaching it.

Same here. Sage to me, even without Chain Stratagem, literally feels like Scholar+. As it was already confirmed that we forum users are hardly even a sliver of the total population, maybe healing in this game is just not for us. It's especially devastating since I too love playing healers in any game.

It is strange, though. I recently got back into Wizard101 and even as a Life wizard, I have significantly more to do when I'm not healing. A frigging kids game makes me think more than Final Fantasy XIV.

[RinaShinomiya]

Same here. Sage to me, even without Chain Stratagem, literally feels like Scholar+. As it was already confirmed that we forum users are hardly even a sliver of the total population, maybe healing in this game is just not for us. It's especially devastating since I too love playing healers in any game.

It is strange, though. I recently got back into Wizard101 and even as a Life wizard, I have significantly more to do when I'm not healing. A frigging kids game makes me think more than Final Fantasy XIV.

It really isn't.
I made the mistake replying under a r/FFXIV tweet what issues healers have and the general ideas I'm getting from people who disagree with those issues are either "I don't care, WHM is simple & fun go BRRRRRRRR" or "lack of understanding how DPS works. Toxicon is fine guys! It's stronger than Ruin 2!!!"

At least my post isn't getting ratio'd but it just shows what the silent majority of healers are like. Healers will never leave this swamp of mediocrity because frankly people don't care and people who do care are being told to "go touch grass".

[MintnHoney]

Don't make me tap the sign SE =/

You're going to need to upgrade that sign into one of those 3D displays, that rest on top of buildings, for SE to really notice. Otherwise, Yoshi-P will inevitably say "I had no idea [this was a thing]" again.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

I don't healer main but I've been playing one since HW and what I have observed is this:

ARR: Jobstone shenanigans to manipulate cross class skills. Healer main? HA! Not if you don't have a lvl 15 Thauamaturge (for Swiftcast)

HW: Cross class skills were reworked a bit but hey, that new healer we came out with? Doesn't have Esuna. Better get that CNJ to 15. And if we see you using Selene (other than very specific instances), you will get heckled. Best times.

SB: Cross class skills become role skills. Most for healer get stolen from WHM. They add instant heals to make up for it (to WHM), and a new nuke. Pet actions go away (because only 10% of hardcore mains used anything beyond Sic) and Selene losses the one thing that made her great (the instant multi esuna). Now you can use the fairy that matches your glam! Red mage becomes ad hoc third healer in clench situations.

ShB: Support skills are abused (by idiots/Tanks) to the point that they are taken away and the roles are stripped down to their most basic functions. Still no new healer class. The community is traumatized by reddit talk to the point that new healers feel pressured to dps to the point that they let people die. Tanks start asking/pleading for healers to heal them (this is real and happens multiple times). Tanks are removed from god tier and more 'green healers' emerge to... Do mediocre dps I guess.

EW: Shield/Mitigation Heals and HoT heals are now two distinct schools of healing. Bloat is reduced. SCH finally loses that last fig leaf that connected it to ACN. Other than Sage, nothing exciting happens. But healing is a lot easier (or not too different anyway). It's just...meh.

And thus is the path of the healer. RDM is still 3rd healer and SMN is now a completely different animal. But I can't say the journey has been bad. Just interesting. Hopefully they'll add some flavor back someday.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't healer main but I've been playing one since HW and what I have observed is this:

ARR: Jobstone shenanigans to manipulate cross class skills. Healer main? HA! Not if you don't have a lvl 15 Thauamaturge (for Swiftcast)

HW: Cross class skills were reworked a bit but hey, that new healer we came out with? Doesn't have Esuna. Better get that CNJ to 15. And if we see you using Selene (other than very specific instances), you will get heckled. Best times.

Why the misinformation? The "new healer [they] came out with," Astrologian, got its answer to Esuna, Exalted Detriment, before SCH could even get Leeches. (It also had its Heavy debuff to compare against Miasma/Miasma II and Stone, Stella, and pretty much other direct equivalent you could think of for capacities shared by SCH and WHM.)

Selene also wasn't particularly "heckled". You were expected to use Whispering Dawn as necessary, as often as per 2 minutes, but Selene's haste wasn't scoffed at and the GCD each way was worth it at the time, especially among SpS-based BLMs. (50% uptime of 20% added Spell Speed was far from insignificant.)

ShB: Support skills are abused (by idiots/Tanks) to the point that they are taken away and the roles are stripped down to their most basic functions.

Utility reduction did not result from "abuse", let alone by tanks.

RDM is still 3rd healer

WAR can heal 2000 potency each across self and an ally in 4 GCDs (500 healing ppgcd), but RDM's 350 potency cure makes it the "3rd healer"? A gaggle of Dancers can still better replace a healer than an RDM in most 8-man content, and in the few exceptions, a Warrior still does better than the RDM.

[Hawuhawuu]

I would love to see more diversity between healers making them feel like unique jobs and not a shared job. For regen healers what if one focused on more gcd healing and buffed others to make up for the dps loss. The other had has strong regen and more ogcd based. The barrier healers should be skewed more. Keep sage the same but maybe change scholar through its summons. A dps/heal/barrier pet rotation into a buff summon. I enjoyed the original wow approach giving each faction a different play style based on unique faction healers. Paladins the best single target healers and buffed the groups base stats. Shamans were terrible at single target healing but amazing at aoe healing. They had the worst mana efficiency but greatly buffed the groups dps to end fights sooner.

[RobynDaBank]

I made the mistake once of saying my take that the longer I played WHM the more I began disliking how "glaringly" (pun intended) obvious the issues were, in one of the more massive FFXIV Discords. You died and have Lucid Dreaming on CD? Chug an Ether, just going to ignore that you said that recovery is near effortless for SCH and more especially AST. Lilies and Misery are... misery? Was worse in Stormblood, deal with it, you're a bad player and you're baiting. Lily gameplay is amazing fun and your opinion is wrong because you aren't a triple Legend and didn't parse 100 in every Savage that has ever existed.

They'd punctuate every single disagreement with "???????".

[Liam_Harper]

I made the mistake once of saying my take that the longer I played WHM the more I began disliking how "glaringly" (pun intended) obvious the issues were, in one of the more massive FFXIV Discords.

The WHM playerbase has been gradually replaced with more and more bad players. No other way to put it. The class has attracted the most "I don't want to think" type of players who don't actually understand how healers work. They'll ignore facts, numbers and comparisons because it feels comfy for them. Obviously good WHM's exist too, those who like the aesthetic or idea behind it and hope for better days, or those who simply don't like AST and their team has a SCH/SGE. But thanks to how the class has been designed over the years, good, sensible and competent WHM's are a dying breed.