Just remove healers.

[Nadda]

Fair enough. But this has largely been my own argument, has it not? To have four variations of DPS across the four healers and let people gravitate to the one they like best.

Sadly I think that would still end up with White mage being in the same state it is now. Which is how it has been in the past. People never seemed to mind that as much before. I wonder why...

But that's what they did with SGE. FFXIV's SGE is nothing like the normal FF series Sage, which more or less an advanced arch-wizard. Thing RDM without melee that has more BLM and WHM spells. Or think of taking a BLM and WHM and smashing them together. That's arguably what a Sage generally is. FFXIV's SGE is more a Greek doctor with magic foci that double as AERODs (Xenogears) or Gundam laser things.

Off-topic but can I add Red Mage was the only job I ever looked forward to being added to the game and was disappointed by it. It's supposed to be a jack of all trades but really feels like Black Mage with more utility and a melee rotation tacked in at the end instead of a mix of White Mage and Black Mage. But people love it for some reason... I can understand the utility. People really love their weird janky job gauges I don't really understand it. I mean I think they are cool mechanic, but people have an odd obsession with them.

[Amenara]

Off-topic but can I add Red Mage was the only job I ever looked forward to being added to the game and was disappointed by it. It's supposed to be a jack of all trades but really feels like Black Mage with more utility and a melee rotation tacked in at the end instead of a mix of White Mage and Black Mage. But people love it for some reason... I can understand the utility. People really love their weird janky job gauges I don't really understand it. I mean I think they are cool mechanic, but people have an odd obsession with them.

It has to do with it having a unique playstyle with a well designed toolset. The casters are probably the most unique feeling role in the game because of how different all 3 play and how defined their jobs are compared to the other roles.

[Nadda]

It has to do with it having a unique playstyle with a well designed toolset. The casters are probably the most unique feeling role in the game because of how different all 3 play and how defined their jobs are compared to the other roles.

To be honest the only one I like is Summoner. Granted I haven't gotten far enough to say much about either three. Red Mage just didn't meet the aesthetic I would have wanted personally. To me, it feels too similar to Black Mage. I know it's not! mind you - has nothing to say about the function or mechanics just what it feels like to me.. but that's why I haven't gotten into it.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Off-topic but can I add Red Mage was the only job I ever looked forward to being added to the game and was disappointed by it. It's supposed to be a jack of all trades but really feels like Black Mage with more utility and a melee rotation tacked in at the end instead of a mix of White Mage and Black Mage. But people love it for some reason... I can understand the utility. People really love their weird janky job gauges I don't really understand it. I mean I think they are cool mechanic, but people have an odd obsession with them.

I'm just another RDM enjoyer, not necessarily a main. But I can still think of what makes me like RDM:
- It's not a fulltime caster, something that I appreciate as it reminds me of their past iteration of being half-physical half-magical job.
- Aesthetically it pleases me.
- Interactive buttons. You do not solely go by each buttons' potency per GCD. You also take account of what the generated mana can potentially lead to.
- The challenge of keeping Fleche and Contre on cooldown. Being both a cooldown divisible by 5 & adding the fact our melee combo duration is not, simply by filling up mana bar & spending them for melee combo will eventually force us to drift these two buttons by 1 GCD that adds up over time. Swiftcast and/or Acceleration exist to alleviate this, which tells me I should not use these willy nilly just for procs. E.Reprise also exist for this but they come at the cost of mana expenditure.
- The potential to push as much highly damaging portion of the melee combo into Embolden+Manafication window (2 combo) and/or tincture window (3 combo) as possible, this give me another thing to keep track on.
- The job is easy to learn but has surprisingly considerable room for improvement. This room keeps me occupied longer with the job to be better.

EDIT adding more
- Pocket raises when the situation calls for it. But rarely happens because I'm not fond of wasting the healer's swiftraise or their 8s cast time.

[Renathras]

Sadly I think that would still end up with White mage being in the same state it is now. Which is how it has been in the past. People never seemed to mind that as much before. I wonder why...

Perhaps, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of people DO like healing as it is now. To rip that away from them and tell them to pound sand and have not even one healer option left to them seems unnecessary and vindictive when it could easily be left alone. Especially since WHM arguably "just works" as-is. It's they very no frills, "just the facts, ma'am" of the healers, and always has been. And why people didn't mind as much before comes down to each individual, but I think it's because SCH and AST were there for people that wanted more complexity so they had their outlet and there wasn't an echo chamber amplifying effect causing people that were content with it to become disgruntled. In SB, the biggest complaint of WHM was that the Lilies were garbo (the initial rollout was just terribad) and that it needed a damage buff by the end of the expansion since SCH/AST buffs (being amplified by player gear) had grown so much over the tiers.

Off-topic but can I add Red Mage was the only job I ever looked forward to being added to the game and was disappointed by it. It's supposed to be a jack of all trades but really feels like Black Mage with more utility and a melee rotation tacked in at the end instead of a mix of White Mage and Black Mage. But people love it for some reason... I can understand the utility. People really love their weird janky job gauges I don't really understand it. I mean I think they are cool mechanic, but people have an odd obsession with them.

It's funny that to this day, I feel RDM should have been a healer.

In normal FF games, it's a caster with low to mid-level (around 3-5th level) White and Black Magic spells. So basically Cure, Cure 2, Esuna (or at least the "lesser" stat effect cleanses like Poisona and Soft), the low level buff spells (lower level Protect and maybe Shell), and then the first two tiers of Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder, along with some BLM utility spells like Frog or maybe Drain/Osmose. They also can wear medium armor (leather as well as cloth) and use better weapons than just staves/rods (swords and bows) to deal more damage in melee or ranged/back rank.

EDIT:

Well, this is basically how HW era WHM worked - Cure 1, Cure 2, Cure 3, Medica, Medica 2, and Stone/Aero (and in theory, Water) spells. Remove Medica 2 and replace Stone, Aero, and Water with Fire 1 and 2, Blizzard 1 and 2, and Thunder 1 and 2, and give it a 1-2-3 melee combo for when its out of MP/to buff its spells somehow, and that would basically be a traditionally FF RDM transplanted into FFXIV. RDM and Chemist were the two Jobs I thought could most readily be added to FFXIV as healers without really altering their class fantasy much considering that HW (when I was thinking all this) WHM basically worked more or less that way already, just without the melee.

As to your question:

Because RDM still scratches that itch for a lot of people. You CAN Vercure. You won't in much content, but you CAN. You CAN Verraise. You...will do that in a lot more content, lol And sure, you aren't a SAM or DRG, but you can melee. If you don't do it in the right part of your rotation, it sucks, but you still have that. I've thought for a long time they should adapt the playstyle (maybe with a stance) where you could lean into one or the other. Like a melee stance where your weapon strikes are all enchanted and after doing the rotation 3 times or something you gain access to the finishers, a caster stance where you skip the melee phase of today entirely and just go into Verholy/Flare + after building up mana, and a hybrid stance (or maybe stancless) which would be the hybrid playstyle of today. But as I've noted before, FFXIV's combat engine/Job design is rather rigid and doesn't really allow for alternate playstyles so much.

I know I, for one, would LOVE RDM if I could cut out the melee phase and just play as a caster. Played lots of games and MMOs at this point and I prefer ranged no matter the game. Healer as casters, snipers in FPS, I just like having distance and being able to get a good overview of the field and not be right up in the enemy's grill. I get that some people love that, though...so I play WHM instead of RDM and SMN instead of RDM...then they added the Ifrit charge... <_< Don't get me wrong, it's cool looking...but I don't like being in melee unless I'm tanking. >_< I wish there was ONE full time caster in this game other than BLM. I think BLM is the only one that (of the casters) that does that.

Of the healers, I think only AST? WHM still has to go melee for AOE (Holy) or in PvP (Seraph Strike), and SCH/SGE both have melee AOE, with SGE also having to go near-melee for Plegma. Don't get me wrong, I drift into boss hitbox to get AOE spreads and the like when needed, but I don't like being forced there as part of my rotation. Tanking I tolerate it because...well, enemies tend to want to hug whoever has agro. No real getting around that one, lol

But back to RDM; even so, people can heal if they need/want to (imagine if they added Vermedica to RDM, they could solo heal 4 mans; 2x Vercure is roughly as powerful as a Cure 1.5), can Raise if they need, and more or less on demand (the only time it's really iffy for them is in the middle of their melee/burst phase since it would break them out of it), and can get their caster/melee hybrid fantasy in. I had a friend that we'd routinely allow (since he loved doing so) to solo-heal 4 man runs we did (as a full party) on RDM since he just got such a kick out of doing it. SMN can't fill that fantasy because (a) SMNs are pretty different than normal spells and it has no melee "rotation" other than Ifrit's 1-2 combo and (b) Physic on SMN is so pathetic it's really nonsensical they haven't either made it scale on INT or removed it from the game - it isn't the same ability ID in the code as SCH's anymore, and hasn't been since at least ShB.

My one consistent complaint is that they don't get Vercure until level 54 and Verraise until 64.

If I was a multiclasser dabbling in both attack and defensive magic, either the first or second spell I learned would be basic Cure. It's the whole draw of practicing White Magic, imo, the ability to heal. Yet you master somewhat advanced spells like Aero and Thunder (both learned at a higher level on CNJ/THM respectively than when CNJ learns Cure) like 40 levels earlier. And Verraise they should get at level 50, because as it is, you can't even support heal through all the CT raids, and you can't Raise in the HW 24 mans (or other HW stuff). I remember complaining to RDMs early on for not helping raise in HW 24 mans and one pointed out (to my embarrassment, I must admit) that RDM doesn't get it until 64, to which I apologized as I genuinely thought they'd have it earlier (I hadn't played it at that point) since it was so core to their overall identity.

[Nadda]

words

I couldn't agree more with you friend. I said it somewhere that the thing about White Mage is that we've had the same kit at least since I started back in HW to now and it plays slightly different each time.

I can't say as much as others have that I haven't enjoyed healing or felt like my impact wasn't needed. I'm sorry for those who want a bit more engagement but I think there still is plenty. I don't really find the gameplay of tanking to be all that interesting and with dps I'm just focusing on doing my damage which I'm already doing as a healer. The nature of the fights let me plan accordingly to the rhythm of the dance but there are always disruptions and that's when the role gets really fun. There's nothing better than clutch healing or rescuing someone who was about to take the hit, or putting that regen shield on the melee dps so he doesn't have to move for his positional. It's good stuff.