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

[Fukuro]

and I get the Druid Healer that FFXIV teased me with for years only to blue ball me in ShB with Glare mage.

It feels like healers in general have lost a lot of identity compared to other jobs. Scholar (Dot/dps healer) lost its identity to Summoner, to differentiate the two and to make them feel like 2 completely different jobs. White mage lost all of its druid theme and is now basically a Lilly/light themed job - which for me at least was such a drastic change aesthetically that I can‘t identify myself with anymore.
Astrologian lost all the skills that made it cool to begin with, like different cards giving different buffs and also the time magic to extend buffs, which made it engaging and you had at least another useful skill to use…

[GoatOfWar]

Except many of us think it's fine and have no problem with it. I love being a healer right now. And I press far, far, far more than one button

Wonderful. I'm glad you're enjoying playing healer and by all means continue to do so. However, that does not invalidate any previously aforementioned complaints, nor does that mean that nothing should be changed about their current state. And for those who share the sentiment that they need to change, it is in their best interest to just stop playing them. The devs have already heard our complaints and they're not changing anything. They know people want change but the devs don't care because those same people are still playing healer anyway.

[Rilifane]

That’s great. I’m happy for you and those many of you—however many they actually amount for…— for truly enjoying the gameplay. These folks in here? Clearly don’t feel the same.



I’d very much do the same.. except I couldn’t bring myself to. It’s a bit of a weird kind of paradox: when you love the role so much you just can’t move on without it despite all the glaring drawbacks. And then there’s this vague sense of bitterness when coming across (a) random healer who’s evidently had played the role for hundred of hours but is doing every prime example of utter, total bad healing practices. You know.. ”My favorite MMO role had been reduced to dust for these folks..???”-feel.

On top of that, I get burnt out real quick with any other roles. /shrug

I feel the same actually.
At first I never wanted to be a healer, I didn't start out as one. I was an Affliction Warlock and a Shadow Priest but when I respec'd to Holy to sub for a static whose healer had just left and forgot to spec back to Shadow and it lead to me subbing a few more times and ultimately thinking that it's not worth to respec every time (because that was expensive ) and suddenly I was stuck on healer and enjoyed it to the point of maining it, of playing all healer specs and sometimes raiding in two different statics at once just so I could play another heal spec as well. That was over 15 years ago and I haven't dropped healer once since then. Not in a single MMO.

And every time I'm in content and see a really bad healer it hurts to know that my favourite role got butchered so these people can lick windows and eat crayons while getting a fast ticket through content.
I don't care if someone calls it elitism or arrogance - it just feels like a kick to the face. It's not even a vague sense of bitterness for me, it's outright salt. A gigantic mountain of salt.

Fortunately I enjoy BLM but there's always this feeling of something missing. I enjoy it, I really do but there's this underlying feeling of it being a rebound class.

[Nethereal]

You know why I'm here.

[ASkellington]

You know why I'm here.

Same time next... I dunno. Whenever?

[MintnHoney]

Where else is there to go?

I spend more time in PSO2 than here, and even act more as a combat medic there than I do here (despite only having maybe 4 support abilities for healing, even as a TEC).
I've also gone back to Granado Espada, and I feel so fresh making frogfishes disappear again. It's been nice being able to play a game where I can feel viable while having fun.

[Silver-Strider]

It feels like healers in general have lost a lot of identity compared to other jobs. Scholar (Dot/dps healer) lost its identity to Summoner, to differentiate the two and to make them feel like 2 completely different jobs. White mage lost all of its druid theme and is now basically a Lilly/light themed job - which for me at least was such a drastic change aesthetically that I can‘t identify myself with anymore.
Astrologian lost all the skills that made it cool to begin with, like different cards giving different buffs and also the time magic to extend buffs, which made it engaging and you had at least another useful skill to use…

Oh believe me, I hate the whole Holy Magic Aesthetic WHM has now. I understood Holy since that's the signature WHM spell but why strip it of its Elemental Roots in ShB just to give it a skill like Aqua Veil in EW, especially since the Water Magic Aspect of WHM was always the least explored aspect of the job that we'd been asking for years to be expanded upon. They remove Fluid Aura after YEARS of killing it slowly and then decide, "here's a water barrier".
Not only that but they went hard on the whole Lily theme as well. Holy looks like a Flower Blooming and Lilybell is literally a plant.

They obviously can't commit to what aesthetic they want for Healers, with the lone exception being that Healers just have to be in a Dress/Robe of some kind. I would kill for some Chainmail Armor that doesn't end in a Skirt tyvm.

[Deceptus]

Oh believe me, I hate the whole Holy Magic Aesthetic WHM has now. I understood Holy since that's the signature WHM spell but why strip it of its Elemental Roots in ShB just to give it a skill like Aqua Veil in EW, especially since the Water Magic Aspect of WHM was always the least explored aspect of the job that we'd been asking for years to be expanded upon. They remove Fluid Aura after YEARS of killing it slowly and then decide, "here's a water barrier".
Not only that but they went hard on the whole Lily theme as well. Holy looks like a Flower Blooming and Lilybell is literally a plant.

They obviously can't commit to what aesthetic they want for Healers, with the lone exception being that Healers just have to be in a Dress/Robe of some kind. I would kill for some Chainmail Armor that doesn't end in a Skirt tyvm.

I'm pretty sure the whole "Holy" WHM spells came from the fact we were on the First Shard, surrounded by Light and since CNJ/WHM bases their spells off of the nature of the environment they're in it would make sense they'd pick up more light based attacks.

[Silver-Strider]

I'm pretty sure the whole "Holy" WHM spells came from the fact we were on the First Shard, surrounded by Light and since CNJ/WHM bases their spells off of the nature of the environment they're in it would make sense they'd pick up more light based attacks.

I was asking more about Aqua Veil and the Flower motif being included. The Flower part I can kind of understand with the whole "I'll give you a beautiful Flower" thing with Meteion but it just feels like WHM's aesthetic design is all over the place.

[AnotherPerson]

I was asking more about Aqua Veil and the Flower motif being included. The Flower part I can kind of understand with the whole "I'll give you a beautiful Flower" thing with Meteion but it just feels like WHM's aesthetic design is all over the place.

To be fair, people did want White Mage to get some nature-based skills back during Shadowbringers after noting our Earth spells were replaced for Light-spells, especially for water element-skills - which there was a severe lack of in our toolkit. This resulted in Aquaveil.

If you want to go indepth, a plant requires water, earth, air, and light to survive. This indirectly means we have all the tools necessary to make a flower bloom. You can treat the "Secret of the Lily" as a secret technique that combines all the elements a White Mage possesses to utilize a healing lily.

Liturgy of the Bell looks like a combination of water, earth, and air based on how the animation plays out, but you can also say it comprises of light too if it's based on the lily-system (and if the name is anything to give away).

For Light-based magic in particular, it seems that's part of A-Towa-Cant's repertoire of spells due White mages being more religious in their practices in their storyline (Holy, Benediction, Divine Benison, Tetragrammaton, Plenary Indulgence, and Confession all hint towards this idea towards a Divinity of sorts). The Holy spell was a result of A-Towa-Cant teaching us that through the soul crystal or something. Supposedly, our nature makes our affinity to Light-based/Divine-based magic stronger as we go through expansions, which resulted in us learning Glare, Dia, and eventually Afflatus Misery. So our version of White Mage comprises of Water, Earth, Air, and Light.

Though, my headcanon for White mage having light-based spells in Shadowbringers is due to being too attuned to the light. Since a White Mage's ability borrows elements from the surrounding area, we just naturally started using Light-based elements since that's the only abundant element remaining in Shadowbringers. We learn that depending on whether the element is Astral or Umbral, light magic can be more offensive in nature in creating flowing aether or stagnating aether. So now, not only do we have divine healing, we have debilitating light spells too.

In Endwalker, we got more access to the elements again, which resulted in other elements coming back. ... That being said though, I figure the upgrade path for Glare to Glare III was because the developers wanted to continue with 1 DPS skill path rather than give us a variety of spells.