Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[IDontPetLalas]

While I don't want to disregard people who may *only* want play as one class, that is definitely not a point of appeal for XIV. And at least as far as my experience goes, it is extremely rare to encounter that sort of player.

Moreover, this analogy seems a bit underserving since the job design in XIV changes. Just because I liked vanilla PLD through earlier leveling doesn't mean I didn't switch for chocolate DRK when it became available. Just because I liked strawberry RDM in ShB doesn't mean the EW version ticks my job fantasy boxes. Right now, I voluntarily abandoned DRK and RDM because I am waiting on the next expansion to fill in holes I see in their design (as far as my personal job fantasy tastes go). And I'm okay with that because there are other jobs that appeal more to me in this current iteration of the game.

Put another way, in reality what you are describing is someone going into a Baskin Robbins wanting chocolate ice cream. Then, when discovering that they are out of chocolate ice cream because it melted on the way over, they instead to throw a tantrum or leave. It's somehow the store's fault that they have a very narrow and unadventurous palette, whereas most normal people either already like other flavors of ice cream that are in stock, or otherwise are open to trying new flavors.

if you read my example, in no place did i say that the customer 'throws a tantrum and leaves'. What I was trying to state , is that when a customer expresses a need, do not take the approach of trying to sell them something by trying to convince them that they want something completely opposite without (a) trying to understand their needs and (b) in fact, trying to convince them that they should take it because it fits someone else 's needs, which may be completely different to theirs- isn't the correct approach, and is even worse on multiple levels.

Most people will understand that jobs evolve over time. at any time, that could introduce a change that someone likes , or may not like. Many people like multiple jobs, I agree with you, I am one of them. However it is also true that many people have strong prferences for a particular job, and the fact that people may play more than one job doesn't mean that design changes should get sloppy.

[Rilifane]

When talking about the healer role and especially WHM, it's not about a few animations or a bit of flavour here and there.
Every class will constantly undergo change and some like it, some don't. That's normal.
If a change caused an uproar for good reason (= design failures) and clearly doesn't resonate well with a large part of its playerbase it was not treated as "Tough luck, buddy. Play something else". It got fixed. MNK underwent multiple reworks, some of them mid-expansion, NIN got fixed quite fast at the start of ShB because it was the least popular melees caused by poor design choices.
But having a clunky clip mage that was both last in dps and healing while having atrocious mobilty for an entire expansion with only one very brief moment of glory in speedruns that lasted only a few weeks was a-okay.
That's not a matter of personally not liking something.

What is an objectively poor design choice is that the vast majority of a healer's toolkit is designed around fights that don't exist.
To give a comparison: imagine being melee but the majority of the fight, you can't stand near the hitbox because there's a death zone. So while you have 15 melee skills, you end up using your 2 ranged skills the majority of the time. That is objectively bad design.

A business generally aims to please as many people at once as possible.
The FFXIV playerbase is heterogeneous and you have everything from a grandma with slowpoke reaction playing her first MMO once per months to hardcore players that raid on multiple chars for 1st week clears and that is where "easy to play, hard to master" comes into play. A job can absolutely be accessible to grandma while still being fun and interesting for experienced players.
They chose only to please the lowest end of the playerbase that doesn't even stick with the role for most part with their healer design choices while alienating many, many veteran healers that made up a signifcant and reliable part of the healer playerbase and that is bad.
That has nothing to do with feelings, not liking the new flavour or some changes to the class fantasy like WHM going from earth/ wind/ water elementals to light.
Telling someone to "just play something else lol" doesn't work here, not when the entire role suffers from the same issue in every content, at every difficulty level and not when they have bend over backwards to adjust other jobs mid-tier to please the vocal players that were unhappy with some choices because they simply weren't thought through properly and couldn't hold up in practice (looking at you, oGCD Mudras) and certainly not when we know that it's possible to find a middle ground that keeps it accessible for new players while being interesting for veteran players.

You don't like having to be near melee range on a caster? No problem, BLM got you.
You don't like being rooted to the ground for 30s every 2min? Unlock RDM, win.
Love to play piano on your keyboard? NIN is for you.
Cycle with multiple combos instead of a rigid rotation? Try SAM.
Fan of buttons lighting up from procs? DNC.
Don't like to spam 1111? Tough luck, chose another role or another game.

We have different classes for each role so they can appeal on more than just a superficial aesthetics level to players: through unique gameplay like low APM vs high APM, flexible priority lists vs rigid rotations, meaningful class gimmicks like AF/ UI etc. And they succeeded with the dps role and to an extend with tanks as well.
But there isn't even a single healer that accounts for the insane amount of downtime the entire role has by design.
We keep getting more buttons to heal scratches and the incoming damage keeps getting lowered while dps and tanks also get more skills to help with mitigation and healing - which is fine, mind you. I wholeheartedly support tanks and dps being able to play a more active role in party mitigation/ healing.
But the fact remains that they succeeded in making the role accessible but utterly failed at keeping it fun and interesting at gameplay levels above "I have no idea what I'm doing hehe".
For some unfathomable reason it's completely fine that this is true for an entire role while they bend over backwards to make dps accessible, fun, engaging and full of variety.
And healers certainly don't lack the vocal part of the community, nobody can say that the devs could possibly be unaware of this issue because nobody mentions it. Nor can they accuse the vocal part of wanting to make everything super-hardcore and roadblock newbies when most suggestions point to the contrary.

Why has the vocal part of the healer playerbase been asking for years for more downtime options? Because that's the one thing that wouldn't make the primary function (healing) unneccessarily hard for new players.

[Adeacia]

Why has the vocal part of the healer playerbase been asking for years for more downtime options? Because that's the one thing that wouldn't make the primary function (healing) unneccessarily hard for new players.

Well possibly because the players always seem to say: "You are forbidden to press any key that doesn't do damage. If you dare to use a gcd heal you are a terrible healer who should quit the game."

I'm obviously exaggerating there but more dps options on healers will just cause everyone to complain if they aren't used basically 100% of the time.

Also, people always say they are just pressing 11111 on healer. Not the case for me at all. Never was as my dps skill isn't on 1.

[Rilifane]

Well possibly because the players always seem to say: "You are forbidden to press any key that doesn't do damage. If you dare to use a gcd heal you are a terrible healer who should quit the game."

I'm obviously exaggerating there but more dps options on healers will just cause everyone to complain if they aren't used basically 100% of the time.

Also, people always say they are just pressing 11111 on healer. Not the case for me at all. Never was as my dps skill isn't on 1.

It's good that you are aware of your exaggeration because that poor straw man has been beaten to death and back. Give it a break.
Friendly reminder that we not only had a lot more dps options in ARR/ HW but also Cleric Stance while far less oGCDs - and for some reason it did not lead to players demanding you to perfectly manage everything. That is a strawman people love to make up to excuse bad design.

On the contrary: the easier something is, the less excusable it is to not do it and so people are more likely to want to see you do it (not demand it, mind you. Huge difference).
You have full mobility on a physical ranged. Naturally people want to see you press buttons while moving instead of only moving or only dpsing.
You only have one dot with 30s duration. Naturally people want to see you use it.
However neither a phys ranged not dpsing while moving nor a healer not keeping their dot up will get called out in casual content barring some extreme (and quite possibly reportable) cases that have less to do with "the community demanding it" and more with someone probably encountering the occasional a-hole.

[Adeacia]

Friendly reminder that we not only had a lot more dps options in ARR/ HW but also Cleric Stance while far less oGCDs - and for some reason it did not lead to players demanding you to perfectly manage everything. That is a strawman people love to make up to excuse bad design.

On the contrary: the easier something is, the less excusable it is to not do it and so people are more likely to want to see you do it (not demand it, mind you. Huge difference).
You have full mobility on a physical ranged. Naturally people want to see you press buttons while moving instead of only moving or only dpsing.
You only have one dot with 30s duration. Naturally people want to see you use it.
However neither a phys ranged not dpsing while moving nor a healer not keeping their dot up will get called out in casual content barring some extreme (and quite possibly reportable) cases that have less to do with "the community demanding it" and more with someone probably encountering the occasional a-hole.

A lot more DPS options. Oh I got to press aero 3 from time to time. With that gone and the blood lilly being added, I've still got the same number of dps skills as back then. Just can't use one of them nearly as often.

Community DOES demand it. Ever read these forums? "Using a lilly is a dps loss" Same with PLD and Clemency. There are more than that.

The moment someone says that using a GCD is a dps loss, they are saying don't use it.

[Rilifane]

A lot more DPS options. Oh I got to press aero 3 from time to time. With that gone and the blood lilly being added, I've still got the same number of dps skills as back then. Just can't use one of them nearly as often.

Since Aero II and Aero III had different durations and Aero I also had its place for mobility: yes, you did have a noticeably more varied dps rotation on the simple and straightforward WHM. Fluid Aura also had a damage compenent and its knockback was great when used properly to knock ranges close to the tank and bosses were immune to it anyway. That's all ignoring any cross-class skills.
Pressing one skill at maximum once every 90s, far less in optimized and/ or low required healing settings, and one skill every 24 is a big difference.

Community DOES demand it. Ever read these forums? "Using a lilly is a dps loss" Same with PLD and Clemency. There are more than that.

The moment someone says that using a GCD is a dps loss, they are saying don't use it.

You are confusing two things that shouldn't be confused:
1) demanding ingame that everyone does something to perfection
2) discussing optimized gameplay in a forum

I do read the forum, as you may have noticed just now.
Saying "it's a dps loss" is not the same as saying "you CAN'T use it, you are bad if you do". That is your interpretation and not what was said. In fact, you will find many examples of the exact same people asking for more varied downtime rotation saying that it is completely fine to focus on healing and slowly ease into it, I could even give you several names of forum regulars that are able to participate in optimization discussions while also advocating to just heal by whatever means necessary if healing is required.
So I wonder... do you really read the forum or are you simply glossing over things, pulling them out of context and misinterpretating them to your liking?
A lily is a dps loss. That is a fact, like it or not. Same with Clemency.
But nobody said to not use it under any circumstances. Feel free to point me to posts stating the opposite and feel free to count posts that do that compared to posts stating that if healing is required, you should just heal, dps loss or not.
I have a feeling that the vast majority will be the latter.

[Irenia]

While we discuss "DPS loss" and the like, remember that DPS is only used to approximate ones contribution to the one true metric, instance clear time.

So unless you are in a parse party and are focusing on DPS to the detriment of all else, any good healer knows that deaths and wipes greatly extend the timer, and should be avoided. It won't show up on any DPS logs, but there is a reason that saving a run feels good.

That said, knowing what skills are free, what skills are a DPS loss, and the degrees of the lost DPS are important because at healer DPS is your next avenue to end the instance quicker, after keeping everyone alive.

[Liam_Harper]

Well possibly because the players always seem to say: "You are forbidden to press any key that doesn't do damage. If you dare to use a gcd heal you are a terrible healer who should quit the game."

No, this is the anxiety based interpretation players get when they read posts about GCD heal dps loss or optimization and panic that they can't play that way and everyone will think they're bad. They tend to lash out defensively to defend their playstyle.

GCD heals are absolutely fine. Ideally however, you use them when the healing is actually needed and you've exhausted all your free resources. I say "ideally" because it's also fine to GCD heal when it wasn't necessary by mistake, as long as you have the right mindset and you're trying to learn.

Many healers just spam Medica II when the party is completely healthy as a "just incase an aoe happens". 90% of the time the aoe doesn't happen and even if it does, your remaining few ticks of the HoT won't heal it. That's a dps loss. It did nothing and you could have used Glare or Holy which would be useful. If you want to be a good player you should be aiming to trim and cut down wasted actions and fill that time with useful abilities instead. That's basic.

The moment someone says that using a GCD is a dps loss, they are saying don't use it.

They're saying try not to use it if it does literally nothing. What's unreasonable about this?

[Semirhage]

SE has always made some jobs easier than others.. this isn't a new concept. WHM is DESIGNED to be the entry level healer, just as PLD was designed to be the entry level tank(probably WAR now).

Add another "WHM is terribly designed and Square Enix did it intentionally I don't know what you're complaining about stupid things are fine as long as they aren't new" on top of the pile of "WHM is a horribly designed garbage baby-tier 11111111111 job and here's why that's a good thing" takes.

Stating "I want WHM to be fun, designed to flow well, and have a refreshingly high skill ceiling while not alienating casuals" is the fastest way to summon "how could you possibly ask for something so insane" out of the woodwork. Yeah, I know the request is insane. Sue me, I don't want to water my requests down to a 5 potency bump on Glare because the job would still be embarrassingly, stupidly, horribly designed. There *IS* no excuse. Small Indie Dev Company my foot. Terrible cashgrab Korean MMOs have more engaging healers. PHONE GAMES have more engaging healers. Redesign. It.

[Raoabolic]

No, this is the anxiety based interpretation players get when they read posts about GCD heal dps loss or optimization and panic that they can't play that way and everyone will think they're bad.

And this is why Trusts are becoming so popular in the west. People get very upset if they can't clear content in the most efficient way to the point it's no longer a game to them.