Healer changes

[Semirhage]

I feel as if FFXIV is progressing toward a more action-y combat model. It's moved away from "traditional" RPG elements such as debuffs, crowd control, MP management, item usage, etc. More toward simplified rotations in between dodges like an action combat game. Setting aside my utter dislike for most action combat games, this is a model that works (more or less) for DPS jobs. Keep your rotation up, dodge, and keep attacking the enemy. That's pretty much the action combat model in a nutshell. What it doesn't work for is tank and healer jobs. Action combat tends to cut things like positioning, in-combat healing, buff spells, etc down to the minimum the developer can get away with. Every class wants to keep up the rotation and dodge most of the time.

I think Square's balancing and design teams, as a group overwhelmingly represented by DPS mains, see the fun they want in an action combat model, but they don't understand how this craps all over the trinity in favor of DPS. I think different roles could work in a system like this, but not shoehorned into their old RPG style combat roles while the game is asking them to do something completely different most of the time.

[RinaShinomiya]

I feel as if FFXIV is progressing toward a more action-y combat model. It's moved away from "traditional" RPG elements such as debuffs, crowd control, MP management, item usage, etc. More toward simplified rotations in between dodges like an action combat game. Setting aside my utter dislike for most action combat games, this is a model that works (more or less) for DPS jobs. Keep your rotation up, dodge, and keep attacking the enemy. That's pretty much the action combat model in a nutshell. What it doesn't work for is tank and healer jobs. Action combat tends to cut things like positioning, in-combat healing, buff spells, etc down to the minimum the developer can get away with. Every class wants to keep up the rotation and dodge most of the time.

I think Square's balancing and design teams, as a group overwhelmingly represented by DPS mains, see the fun they want in an action combat model, but they don't understand how this craps all over the trinity in favor of DPS. I think different roles could work in a system like this, but not shoehorned into their old RPG style combat roles while the game is asking them to do something completely different most of the time.

At this point it'd be nice if they committed and went one way or another but i'm afraid they might be stuck in this limbo for much longer because it works and the general player base seems to be fine with it.
What you say is absolutely true based on the games I've played so far. It seems PvP already made that jump into everyone being a DPS and there being a complete lack of tanking and healing so maybe that is imminent on PvE as well but i doubt they'd wanna overhaul 10 years of content to accommodate these fundamental changes.
If they wanted to go the other way around and strengthen the Trinity system they'd have to improve a lot of other things too. Role actions like Repose & Sleep have no purpose because the only CC that matters is Stun & Slow. Esuna collects way too much dust. Interject is the most cruel role action collecting dust thought since they overhauled the UI not 2 years ago to more easily display interject-able attacks only for them to not exist in endgame content. Class fantasy for healers is also in shambles due to the bloated healing kits which could've been made more concise if they build it around a core healing system rather than keep piling ogcds on top of each other. Yeah managing cooldown can be fun but i'd rather have buttons that interact with each other. Double Cast on PvP AST only has like 3 abilities to combo with but it already provides much more exciting and thoughtful gameplay than just pressing 2-1-1-1-1 and waiting for oGCD windows.