AST (and DRG) had their improvements pushed to 7.0 PLD are getting theirs in 6.3

[Renathras]

I don't understand your analogy.

You're looking at the problem mechanically and ignoring the non-mechanical side of the puzzle. The best way I can explain it is imagine a doctor with no bedside manner. One who is competent in the treatment of illness, but shows neither empathy nor compassion to Human patients, and thus it interferes with their recovery as Humans (being social creatures) need that as well as mere physical ministrations.

Your belief is that mechanically, by perfecting an oGCD healing plan for an encounter, you are able to devote more GCDs to healing, and thus optimizing healing in this way leads to optimizing DPS. What you aren't taking into account is that many people don't enjoy DPSing. They optimize healing because they like healing, and then when they've done that, they will hit a one or two button DPS rotation as filler in the truest sense of the word - something they don't enjoy but they put up with on a basic level because it's not too obtrusive.

People can arrive at a similar destination by different routes. But the distinction here is that if the DPS rotations were more involved, many people would not enjoy that and wouldn't optimize it. Further, the optimizations themselves are different. For example, across my 20ish years of playing healers in MMOs, I've gotten fairly good at it. And by it, it mean healing, not DPSing on a healer. I learned about what my heals do to healthbars of my targets and so figured out what to use that is most MP efficient, thus freeing up more MP for future heals if needed, and also adapting to the group and comfort level, such as using Succor on practice/clear groups doing new content, knowing that those shields can actually save people from mistakes while I would omit that step with more experienced parties. Comparing cast times vs healing needed - I can say I've legitimately used Cure 1's shorter cast time before to spot heal someone who would have died before a Cure 2 would have landed - MP costs, and how much healing actually is needed.

This is optimization, is it not?

But it's not optimization to optimize DPS. It's optimization to optimize healing. If that means I can use an extra GCD on a Glare, so be it, and that's fine and good, but that is neither the focus of the effort nor would I relish having to fill that GCD with "Comboglare" or "Dia 2 refresh".

EDIT:

I mean I wouldn't exactly toss around any numbers or percentages as I haven't polled the playerbase or anything, but I've been here since ARR and I've seen how people have reacted to job changes both good and bad--a lot of people.

Indeed, but we both have that same story. I have been playing since the patch before NIN was released (which I think was 2.4). I distinctly remember the "7 NIN lf healer for FATE train" in Northern Thanalan because of the legendarily bad DPS ques. I was drafted into one of those a Saturday afternoon, getting from the lower 40s up to level 50 from it. Which made finishing the MSQ more streamlined (remember how bad the level gating was on quests where you'd have to grind out a level every so many quests so you could continue the MSQ?)

In that time, I've interacted with quite a few people as well.

The general position is that people want to do well, but people's minds work differently. I'm great at optimizing healing. I'm mediocre at optimizing damage dealing. That's part of why I play healers in games. (The other and main reason is that I like helping people in need with healing and raising - when I go into Eureka, I'm generally one of those people replying in shout with an "omw" when someone's asking for a Raise)

While I WILL use my damage buttons, I prefer them to be as streamlined and unobtrusive as possible, since they're interfering with or, at beast, as side plate to my main objective, which is ensuring my party members are hale and whole so they can complete their objective of defeating the big bad boss. But that only goes to an extent that the rotations AREN'T obtrusive and AREN'T overly convoluted. It is the reason I don't play DPSers, because I genuinely don't enjoy DPSing as a thing. When I play WAR, I like Fell Cleave and Primal Rend because they look and sound cool. I pay so little attention to damage numbers I couldn't even tell you what my average damage when using them is. Come to think of it, I can't on WHM, either.

On the contrary, though, I CAN tell you that Cure 2 does a bit less than 20k healing, 30k on my crits, as does Solace and (roughly) Tetra. Or approximately 1/4 to 1/3 of a tank health bar (depending on their gear) or 1/3 to 1/2 of a Healer/Caster's. Those are the numbers my mind works for and I'm most concerned with. I accept my Dia uptime and Glares are killing bosses, but I can't see 0.01% change increments on the boss health bar the way I can see 25% increments on a Tank's, nor can I even tell you offhand what that damage number that pops up on enemies I hit with Glare even is in a ballpark way. I dunno, 15-25k? Legitimately no idea.

I do agree with you, though, about players driving away from overly complex Jobs. It's why my position is still WHM should be left alone while SCH, AST, and SGE can be changed to have more involved DPS rotations, as that would at least provide a haven for people that don't want that.

And fair enough on that elaboration. When we're talking about FFXIV and the word "community" comes up, I'm thinking "the community of players of FFXIV as a whole". If you meant only those who come to the official forums and Reddit (which...seem to be the ones most likely to be jaded and/or disappointed with the game - those who enjoy it seem not to be on the forums defending or even talking about it), then you're probably right. However I would caution against the Devs making any changes as requested by such a small portion of the community that WOULD affect the whole, which such changes as these would, make no mistake.

I'd also caution about relying too much on ARR. When games are in their infancy, a lot of weird stuff happens. Molten Core circa 2004 was considered the pinnacle of raid design at the time. But many bosses were tank and spank + gimmick, which was something like "remember to dispell this one thing every 5 minutes". Many classes had simple, or even no rotation. Hunters were expected to autoattack because their damage attacks would often pull threat from the Tanks, and bosses could only hold 8 debuffs, so only a few select debuffs were allowed to be applied to the boss, no DoTs or similar. ARR wasn't as bad, but theorycrafting and optimization was far from what it is today. Moreover, healing wasn't, either. Modern FFXIV healing can often be done with oGCDs, to the point people complain about GCD healing outside of WHM Lilies. Back then, GCD healing was not only expected, it was the norm, especially for WHM. The only oGCD heals at the time were Benediction on a 6 min or something CD and Lustrate which was a % heal not a potency based heal (and thus bypassed Cleric Stance limitations)

Encounter design damage was also completely different. And healers even in HW were not being "regularly praised" for not being curebots. They were being regularly CONDEMNED if they were being curebots, to the point that the Devs removed Cleric Stance from the game because it was creating such a toxic environment.

I find this statement quite callous to be honest with you.

You may find it callous if you wish, but that isn't my intent. From talking with a great many people, it seems to be the truth.

People that like healing - and by that I mean making health bars go from somewhat empty to somewhat full or applying shields or mitigation (there's something amazingly satisfying, if moderately fruitless, about Recitation + Critlo + Deployment + Soil a party before a boss ultimate and seeing the shields not even fully consumed after the attack lands - THAT is the kind of thing that I enjoy) - tend to like the healer kits in the game right now. They're powerful, functional, and capable, and with minimal obtrusiveness of non-healing mechanics (e.g. damage)

People that don't EXACTLY like healing - and by that I mean, and I quote from prior conversations, "I don't want to be the party's heal b-tch while they have the fun pulling big numbers" - are the ones largely complaining. People that, if FFXIV was more like FFXI, would likely enjoy playing on RDM in that game as a hybrid that throws out clutch heals to save the party ("The only health point that matters is the last one!" mentality folks) while pushing their kit to the highest level to deal damage on enemies. The people that take great pride if they can "keep the party alive and do it while out-DPSing tanks and even some damage dealers!"

Folks that would enjoy something like an Everquest Bard or a Guild Wars Mesmer that really shift the course of a battle if they're highly skilled in leveraging their sometimes-finicky, often highly nuanced, but powerful when executed well, toolkit.

I'm sure you've met a few people like that, given your above statement on your history and conversations?

You say "If I wanted to play as a DPS, then I'd play a DPS", but this is just as true of folks saying "If I wanted to damage the boss instead of heal party member healthbars, I'd play a damage dealer", right?

If there were Jobs in FFXIV that DID work that way, would you not find yourself likely enjoying them more? Reading your post, it seems like you might. "characters like..." "spread debuffs, create evasion fields, and could heal the party, all while still dealing moderate damage". Does my statement above not well encapsulate your mindset?

And note, I don't mean it as an insult, so please don't take it as one. In my mind, there are four types of players in MMOs (well, besides the spade/heart/club/diamond):

Tanks, Healers, Supports, and Damage Dealers.

But for whatever reason, games tend not to like having Supports (probably harder to balance, but it's not like MMOs are ever perfectly balanced anyway...) This forces Support minded players into other roles that they have to make a best fit with. A FFXIV friend of mine has that mindset and his favorite Jobs are RDM and PLD, and he likes it when we let him RDM-heal 4 man dungeons. We could probably add BRD and DNC to that list of Support-oriented Jobs.

So it's not me "writing off" people like you.

I'm merely pointing out that you don't exactly speak for all healers, since you (to my way of thinking) speak for Supports as a group - as I'd wager Support minded people would agree with your positions.

The unfortunate truth is that FFXIV doesn't have such a role. It really SHOULD, but...

So we're stuck fighting over the Healer role.

It's not me saying you're "lesser" or anything. I don't say Tanks are "lesser" than Healers. But if a Tank minded player picked up a Healer and started complaining that they don't have enough mitigation and agro generation, we'd both agree that they're barking up the wrong tree and should play Tanks instead.

It's kind of a tough spot for Support people, though, since the closest thing they have in FFXIV to a dedicated role is Ranged (DNC and BRD, specifically), but SE won't just make that a thing already, so we're stuck fighting over Healers.

Which also plays into my continued proposal to leave WHM and shift each of the others to different aspects. I'd personally like to see AST go all in as a buffer/Support, SCH as a DoT juggling class, and SGE as a RDM-lite Healer/Damage Dealer semi-hybrid (just from the healing side where RDM is from the DPS side). I feel like that's the best way to appeal to and make the most people happy. And to clarify on this:

I find it kind of rude that you are writing off those of us who fight for more DPS options on healers as effectively 'not real healers,' because the true healer mains are apparently the casuals who don't want DPS at all.

This is the strawman that's obnoxious.

I didn't say "not real healers", though I do think "would be happier as Supports" is correct. That isn't an insult or a "writing off". If I was "writing off" those people, I wouldn't be suggesting no less than 3/4ths of the Healer Jobs be shifted to tailor to them, now would I?

The second part is only true in people who don't ENJOY dpsing, but will throw dps spells if it's unobtrusive and uncomplicated.

No, that's not narrow minded - it's me looking at reality. And I'm even trying to please people with that other mindset with the lion's share of the Healing Jobs as a compromise position - a compromise position that offers 75% to the other side is a pretty good compromise, one would think...

That said, this game does not support heal-only healers on any level and there's no way around that without quite literally redoing the game's encounter design from scratch which is just not reasonable. It's like playing Super Smash Bros and complaining about its platforming elements. That's a part of the package, just as DPSing is a part of the package with FFXIV's healer design. I would love to see one of the healers fulfill a gameplay style that could better satisfy people who want a healer that only heals or supports, but it will still realistically need to rely on some amount of DPS.

That's hardly true - ARR encounters and HW encounters required far more Healer healing GCDs, and (in THEORY if not in PRACTICE) was supposedly balanced around healers contributing no DPS.

That said "it will still realistically need to rely on some amount of DPS" - if we kept WHM as it is today, I wouldn't be upset with that. I still hate DoTs and would honestly prefer a 1-2 rotation over a 11111211112 rotation, but no one's arguing to strip healers of all their damage buttons when someone says to have one healer (generally WHM because it's already there and is the only healer in the game right now that seems designed to actually USE GCDs for healing) remain with the current system.

In fact, the Devs have said since ShB that's what they want for all the healers - again, their encounter design, we agree, has not met that design goal - so a compromise position would probably be the best answer.

At the end of the day, if you are content with the healers as they are, then that's your right. But they are still terribly designed for this game. You can like something that is poorly designed just like how you can like food that's bad for you, like clothes that don't match, or like a movie with bad acting.

Now who's being rude, callous, and writing off?

Some people like vanilla and some like rocky road moosetracks. Neither is good or bad, they're just different flavors.

WHM is pretty well designed for the game right now, imo. The only changes I'd honestly make is give Plenary Indulgence a 10% damage mitigation as well (basically Protect/Shell on a 60 sec CD that does some bonus healing), make Regen not a DPS loss (either generate Blood Lily or be oGCD), and...that'd honestly be about it. The rest of the kit I find fun and enjoyable to use.