If you're having fun with healer, great! I want to have fun again, too.

[GideonWilhelm]

Edited because I made a remark about Cleric Stance being cool, and... it really wasn't. It was janky. I'm glad the original ARR Cleric Stance is gone.
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I see so many people rebutting healer criticism with "healers heal, why do you want dps skills?" Or "well, I'm having fun.", or "I think dungeons are plenty challenging!" And that's great, there should absolutely be some set of classes in this game that play exactly like the healer design that's bringing you joy. What we have now should absolutely be an existing option in the game, I want you to have fun!

The problem is that Square decided you and I can't both have fun.

Scholar used to be my absolute favorite part of the game, finding opportunities to weave in damage because you've got healing taken care of. Finding room to use Selene instead of Eos because you've got this, you can safely sacrifice some heals for raid buffs. It felt like the tactician the Arcanist's Guild always wanted you to be.

Astrologian was something I never got the hang of, but that's okay. A number of people out there had a blast with it. It's design was intricate, and I loved the idea of tweaking various types of cards on the fly to manipulate your raid buffs into whatever combination you desired.

White Mage was what I played when I wanted to turn my brain off and just heal. It was a chill time, and while I still had to pay attention a bit, it was super nice having this option in the game.

The thing is... all of that is gone now. That's what I really want people to understand: the healer you love came at the cost of the healer I loved. They took away the scholar that I enjoyed to give you the scholar you enjoy. They took away the widely varied cards and almost D&D metamagic aspect of altering those cards, which I enjoyed, to give you the quick melee/ranged cards you enjoy.

None of us are out here telling you that you shouldn't be enjoying the game. We're not here telling you you love the wrong thing. We're telling Yoshi-P that we want you to have your own perfect class, instead of watching the devs destroy our perfect class and make a new one for you with the remaining pieces.

At the end of the day, I think you can agree that my fun shouldn't come at the cost of your fun, and neither should your fun come at the cost of mine. We should both get to have fun.

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Also "idk play Ultimates I guess" isn't the answer, Yoshi-P. Please, please hear what we're actually saying.

[SpiralMask]

(agreeing with OP)
downtime activities are optional.
adding an option of something to do when healing isnt required takes nothing away from the class.
adding an option doesn't mean that the more casual players can't also just continue to play as chill as they are currently and have the same level of fun doing so.
there is no reason an "i'm already having fun with healing" and a "i like mechanical depth/engagement in healing" can't both exist on the exact same job.

[Darnath]

I'm down with what you're preaching.

As I said in the other thread, whenever I'm doing my roulettes as AST (most of the time outside MSQ roulette) most of the time I'm busy healing tanks or DPS that mess up.

But hey, if they can add extra DPS buttons to healers to at least allow the more skilled/lucky healers who are actually bored with the content, give it to them!

[Limonia]

The problem is when they make some healers more fun again, but keep others super simple just because they want allow beginners to have an easy time to play healer without having to put in any effort, it'll become impossible to balance.

...

I really like WHMs aesthetics the most, and the base kit is nice as well. I would like the devs to make it more fun without adding something like a fairy or cards. I want to play a DPS/healer hybrid kind of class with buffs and other things to play around with. But I also want to cast earth, water, wind and light elemental spells with a staff. But because they decided CNJ/WHM is the only starter healer and thus must be kept braindead simple and clunky at the same time (and be still worse at healing than AST) I will never be able to play the class that brings me joy.

And I still don't understand why they even removed dps buttons from healers. They don't want to overwhelm casual players...? Those players who don't care about better play anyway. They wouldn't have touched those 'optional' buttons anyway. Honestly, why can't the healers have more interesting gameplay mechanics while keeping the core healing spells a bit on the easy side? But whatever, I have long given up about healers, and I don't think the devs will ever give them an overhaul. I only do story content anymore and while WHM feels so suboptimal to play it still gets the job done. I just feel sorry for those who still have hope and are still fighting for more fun healing classes.

[Anxin]

Throughout what I watched of the LL, accessibility kept coming up in responses. I suspect this is why we have dance-dance fights and patch-up, one-button healers. I don't touch extremes, savages, ultimates, and similar content. I can't dance well enough for them. I don't find memorization and aoe-dodging fun anyway, so I won't follow the "play ultimates to heal" advice. My fun comes from when everything goes wrong--random chaos, which rarely happens. Perhaps I'm an outlier, but I find the trash mobs more entertaining (wall-to-wall pulls anyway) than the boss fights.

All said, despite my love for healers, I've considered changing my main from AST to Dancer. I can still get my healer jollies sometimes and feel more impactful the majority of the time on Dancer. Perhaps if the majority of healers get tired enough to stop healing, change will happen. Of course, the rewards for healers on the roulettes would prevent a mass exodus, so I doubt this will happen.

[pinkbubblegum]

I don't touch extremes, savages, ultimates, and similar content. [...] My fun comes from when everything goes wrong--random chaos, which rarely happens.

Aw I think you should give Ex trials a try though! In my data center a lot of people still queue for the old ARR trials and a number of the people doing them are sprouts so there's a lot of people doing them who don't know mechs and get hit by avoidable stuff xD
Very chaotic, but I'm also in the camp that finds healing through stuff like that really fun. I'm a big fan of joining fresh prog or A2C PFs. The unpredictability of player error is part of the fun in these fights if you're starting to find the fights too scripted haha.

[QooEr]

i havent touched scholar since shadowbringers, and it was pretty much my secondary class for all content back in HW and Stormblood. why do we need 4 healers that almost play the same? theres enough jobs to let both kinds of players. and no, sage doesnt have an "involed" downtime activity. its literally dosis spam with phlegma thrown in every 45 seconds

[GrimGale]

My fun comes from when everything goes wrong--random chaos, which rarely happens.

Interestingly "random chaos" and ultimates are not compatible. If you have random chaos, people dying to mechanics and such in ultimates its a wipe. No amount of healing will fix it. You either complete mechanics perfectly or we all die- That goes for unavoidable damage too, that's why its understood that Ultimates offer more challenge in terms of healing, but really it's not the case. There is no "chaos" in ultimates. You either run through the hoops or its reset and back to the start.

[Anxin]

Interestingly "random chaos" and ultimates are not compatible. If you have random chaos, people dying to mechanics and such in ultimates its a wipe. No amount of healing will fix it. You either complete mechanics perfectly or we all die- That goes for unavoidable damage too, that's why its understood that Ultimates offer more challenge in terms of healing, but really it's not the case. There is no "chaos" in ultimates. You either run through the hoops or its reset and back to the start.

That was what I was told by some FC mates. It doesn't sound fun to me. I've tasted Ex before I took a break and found they weren't for me. If I can't heal through aoe hits (I have bad reflexes for dodging and latency on my connection), I can't do them. I miss the games that didn't rely on dodging things and instead on, admittedly simple, AI that tried to kill people. I do enough hoop running in real life .

[Mapleine]

A large, commonly overlooked issue and the reason healing likely works the way it does: Controller users can heal perfectly fine on current design: spot heals, OGCD weaving and DPS but if you alter things to be about single target, hard targeting and places where mouse-over macros rule the domain that parity is gone. It isn't a fun answer, and it puts some heat on console players, but it's def a part of why things are the way they are.

A solution is probably to take the current path to the point of hybrid design, making responsibility roles more of a toggle and accepting DPS as the games core (which it already is). That iis what I figured the end goal of current combat revamping was was until Yoshi P also told healers they shouldn't have to DPS and showed heavy reluctance to offer more DPS options.

So, now I don't have even a faint guess on what he wants anymore, which is worrying. Healers don't have to heal, healers don't have to DPS so what do we do? I really don't want to sit and just push one button for the entirty of combat. I was farming Zodiark yesterday and all I could think of was "Gee, this reminds me of Frost Mage in Molten Core back in the day, ten minutes of pressing the 1 key.

The thing is I really like a lot of of the newer job design, it focuses on fun, flash and the actual fight difficulty rather than frustration but Healers are too far in the wrong direction. We don't have cool primals and melee combos and finishers. We get to Broil IV 180 times in one fight.