The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[ty_taurus]

Can you cite evidence proving or strongly supporting this? I think it IS true many players are unbothered by the current state of healers. I'm not sure how many would respond positively to more offensive spells. Especially if they had no opt out other than "you now can't clear content or have to be carried".

During the 6.1 trailer, Crystalline Conflict was revealed, and there was a clip of WHM using Afflatus Purgation, a giant laser attack. My FC includes quite a few healers, including many who are perfectly content with WHM right now. ALL of them drooling over that and wishing they could have it in PVE. Anecdotal? Maybe, but I'm also just going off the logic of gamers in general. Most gamers are not hardcore numbers gamers. Most games are casual gamers, and you need to really make a game unplayable for casual gamers from within that market to be upset. Just look at Pokemon for example. The newest games are held together by silly string and are some of the ugliest games on the Switch, but most people don't care, because it's not broken enough to disrupt the experience. Inversely, so long as a game isn't intentionally challenging or frustrating to play, casual players are pretty happy with improvements as well. Look at Super Smash Bros for example. Did Nintendo ever need to release a single patch ever? No. Did any casual players complain about a character getting stronger? I've never seen it. The only ones that commented were the hardcore players.

This is just how gamers are, and it's something you come to understand the more you expose yourself to gaming audiences.

I neither want a free ride nor stealth into savage doing a fraction of the work of other roles.

I've now proven you wrong TWICE

First and foremost, how have you "proven" anything if my statement wasn't considered "proof" and required evidence to support it? Isn't that hypocritical?

Regardless, if you don't care about getting a free ride then just don't use whatever new offensive spells get added. No one is going to force you to use your healer rotation if all you want to do is spam your filler spell. If you don't care about stealthing your way into savage and are content proving your skill, then what's the issue? People who seek savage level difficulty are looking for challenges and ways to prove their skill. You should be elated at the idea of having a higher skill ceiling that allows you to further support your party by playing better. If you aren't looking for challenges, then you aren't playing savage, then that's all the more reason to just spam 1 button if you want to. Behind the extremely generous enrages of EX, there's no other enrage mechanics in content below savage, so there's no pressure for you to optimize your gameplay.

If you're not looking for a free ride, nor are trying to stealth your way into savage, then you have no reason to be bothered by optimized gameplay expecting more from you than thoughtless button mashing, because you'd either rise to the challenge, or continue playing the way that satisfies you. It could only upset you if you're appalled by the idea that the lack of gameplay that's currently expected for top performing healers is now the skill floor and no longer the skill ceiling, which means you would be upset with either not performing as well playing the way you want to play, or that you'd be forced to try harder to perform at the current level you're performing at, which equates to wanting a free ride or wanting to stealth your way into savage.

But as you said, this isn't you, so logically, you'd be content either continuing to play with 1 button DPS or simply rising to the higher expectations of the skill ceiling. The talk of free riders is not referencing you in this case. If you're in the camp of not wanting offensive healer gameplay, then it begs the question of why you're playing FFXIV where you're objectively expected to be attacking with 80%-100% of your GCD casts in all forms of content instead of a game where you can just focus on the healing like WoW. Regardless of whether you have 1 button, 20 buttons, or 100 buttons to DPS with, the frequency that you spend attacking is the same because we don't take damage every few seconds in this game.

What if - just pretend for a minute - they actually ENJOY FFXIV's story, aesthetic, and gameplay and CAN play it the way they like and enjoy it, despite you insisting to them that they cannot? What if quitting FFXIV would be them punishing themselves? What if playing WoW would be them punishing themselves? What if you're wrong?

Healer gameplay is a lack of gameplay. You are objectively not engaging with the systems of FFXIV for the majority of your gameplay. Players who aren't seeking to optimize can be far more content with the game because they can overheal like crazy, not use their OGCD heals and focus on their GCD heals instead, and break up that offensive monotony through suboptimal gameplay choices, which ultimately don't matter in the content they play in because there are no enrage timers. So if you're not looking to optimize, then go ahead and just use the tools you want to use. No one is going to care. I certainly won't, but at least the apex of each job's gameplay can offer something to the players that want engagement. If you're seeking optimal play and enjoy what we have its because there is no gameplay and thus there are no expectations other than just use your cooldowns, which is half the work every other job in this game has to put into raiding if not less.

You can't "like" a lack of gameplay. You can be unbothered by it if you are a reward-focused player who just likes getting your dailies complete, or seeing what you get from treasure maps, but if you're that type of player, then you won't care what's added to the healers as long as it doesn't make them mechanically difficult to play, like ASTs constant single target focused buffs. Having to constantly swap targets in a game that doesn't support that very well is why most players don't like AST. Everyone LOVES the aesthetic but can't bring themselves to play the job because it's not fun to constantly be swapping between party members for cards. Giving AST a subtle rotation is not mechanically difficult. You can ONLY be upset if you're focused on performance and the expectation, because if you're not focused on either of those aspects, then you'd have no issues, or your issues are things that aren't resolved with the current healer design either.