Quote Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso View Post
Does nobody use Dots, AOE, or skills like Assize when they play Healer?
I mean I get it, Healer lacks DPS skills and Variety in Combat outside of their Main Role but I think its silly, or just weird that it sounds like everyone just hits 1 Button as a healer.
This is a semanthics nitpick.

Yes, people use other skills. People heal. People use utility. But that's virtually every other class. The issue is that other classes rely on far more than that, often making use of 90% of their kit (not counting the AoE variety).

Healers, on the other hand, do nothing but throw rocks and that's it. Their DoT? Comes up every 30s. All the rest is pure nuance that doesn't give them any complexity whatsoever. Stuff like Phlegma, Assize or Earthly Star aren't the main thing you'll do. They're not your rotation. They're not the bare basic skillset, they're just OGCDs tacked onto them (a GCD in the case of Phlegma, which does shake up the monotony of pressing 1 all the time... for the exact same effect of pressing 1 all the time, just with a bit more potency and the potential to hit more than one target. Yipee.)

At lv 50 you have a solid base for most DPS, which gets expanded upon up to lv 90. Healers have a solid base at lv 30, barely get anything extra, just stronger ways of doing the same thing. The use of their initial spells becomes a bit more esoteric: they're still very much used, just not as common because now you have more effective things.
You're still doing nothing but throwing rocks and caring for a DoT every 30s and a cooldown every 45s on WHM. Peak gameplay.

Yes, comparing a healer to DPS isn't fair. Healers' main priority is keeping people alive, damage is secondary-ish. A DPS's job is almost never to keep people alive, but rather to maximize the damage output. So yes, I understand that you can't have anything major or complicated, you can't up and give Healers anything too over the top. Healer rotations would definitely get interrupted by their primary job.
But nothing they have is robust. Nothing they have interacts with their kit. Oh, I'm sorry, "Afflatus Misery does" -_-; It's just a replacement for all the 3 rocks you didn't throw while healing someone. Except realistically you're just throwing 3 rocks in one go and making up for lost damage. BRD has Blast Arrow and BLM is rewarded with Foul. Stuff that's actually impactful. The only other healer that has their healing kit interact with their damaging kit is Sage, and barely so at that: Kardia procs, and Toxikon stacks when a shield breaks.

No, healers can't afford to have over the top damaging rotations. But their kits should be more complex than just throwing rocks. Their kits can afford being more interactive between the offensive and healing aspects. More so than minor gains that prove inconsequential half the time. They can afford to do more with their skills, and have their healing kits not be repetitive and bloated.

Because even healing is just "what different variation of regen or cure 1 do you want this time?". Even AST who arguably has a more interesting and creative kit is straightforward all things considered, with half its healing kit being overshadowed by the new stuff you gain.