Has anyone quit healing?

[ty_taurus]

Actually to be faire. thats pretty much how healer has been intended since day one. I'm not a fan of that but it is simply how they designed the class. Probably to suit the originals final fantasy that never had a character doing only heals.

During normal dungeon grouping you probably won't get called for not dpsing. But healing requirement are so low during dongeons that I find myself starring at my screen doing nothing when I'm not dealing damage.
Seems like you won't reach the damage requirement if your healer don't deal damage in harder content but I couldn't tell since I'm not participating int hose.

Honestly, it's kind of impossible to tell what on Earth the design team actually wanted from the healer role out of the get-go, what they want of it now, and what they would like to do, but feel like they can't.

That said, this is my guess as to what they wanted.

When ARR released, they wanted healers to dance between offensive windows and healing windows. I infer this because all fights, even during ARR, dished out damage to the party and the tank infrequently rather than constantly which is what WoW did at the time. Yoshida and the design team spent a lot of time in WoW before redesigning FFXIV, so perhaps they felt the amount of healing required back them felt too demanding and/or maybe didn't feel fun to them to be healing for almost--if not the entire time.

This take was pretty new for healing at the time, and a lot of people coming from past MMO experience weren't expecting this. Going into mid-late ARR and into HW, the awareness of not only how much freedom healers had to add damage to fights, but how valuable this was started spreading, and Cleric Stance in particular became a frustrating experience for quite a few people who either weren't used to dancing between offense and healing, or who just weren't familiar enough with FFXIV yet.

Since then, I think the design team feels traumatized by that experience and are afraid that any amount of lateral movement back in that direction will backfire, and this bleeds into this idea that healers need to be coddled. And the coddling isn't just us not being allowed DPS buttons... It's constantly bloating our free healing tools with each expansion, making healing buttons stronger and stronger, removing mroe and more non-healing-non-DPS utility buttons like Disable, Virus, and Eye for an Eye, and refusing to repeat any old healer mechanics or add new ones that isn't just "each healer targeted by two stack markers" Remember Searing Wind? Remember Briny Mirror?

Of course, this is all just assumptions. That all said, healers that are also responsible for offensive duties is not bad design, nor is it exclusive to FFXIV. Healing-only healers aren't bad design either if done correctly, but the actual content doesn't really create an environment for that playstyle to thrive, and I think the design team can't really do that without creating a schism between new and old content, and also they probably fear that decision would drive even more people away than they already have, so they're feeling stuck in this sort of sterile middle ground where most aren't bothered enough to leave, but everyone wants more from the healers for different reasons. Some want DPS rotations, some want to remove the DPS requirements from healers, and no one can be 100% happy because making one camp happy means the other won't be, even if it compliments the way this game is designed.

[Renathras]

Actually to be faire. thats pretty much how healer has been intended since day one.

This is just more proof of what I said above. We hear this a lot, but there's no actual truth to it. I've explained it in depth before, but the shorter version is healing in ARR was not like that, and that wasn't how Healers were all played. It's a much more complicated topic, though. The highlights are probably:

1) For that era, Healers were given a handful of damage spells for soloing content but weren't expected to use them in Raids (this was also largely true of most Healers in WoW during that same timeframe, which was Wrath of the Lich King, I believe, where WoW Healers had likewise very skimpy damage rotations; Paladin famously only had 2 DPS buttons, Judgement and Holy Shock, 3 against Undead since you could add Exorcism once every 30 seconds or so)

2) WHM was never designed to play as a DPS Job. We even saw this as late as SB, and really even as far as 6.0 (Lilies not being DPS neutral because the Devs felt that DPS shouldn't be the focus of the Job). In ARR, the only WHM oGCD heal was Benediction once every 6 minutes or so. There was no way you were healing a raid with one cure every 6 minutes. WHM was very much designed from the ground up for GCD healing. Even moreso if you look at 1.0 as its proto-type. 1.0 WHM was...well, I'll let this video speak for itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unpWwn00mJs

That was WHM healing in FFXIV originally.

You could argue the game was changed away from that, but I've also seen (and posted before) 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 WHM end game gameplay in Hard/Extreme Trials and First Coil. That was the prototype upon which ARR's WHM was built. With a few changes, you can still see all our ARR staples were there. Shroud of Saints, Cleric Stance, Benediction (as a full PARTY Fullcure, but on a 15 min CD), Cure, Cura, Curaga, Regen, Stoneskin; the gang's all here. Well, except Medica/Medica 2. Apparently (if you pause you can see) they have an ability with a 90 sec CD that makes their cast spells take longer to cast but become AOE. They also seemed to have some "Lifetap" type ability that would take a chunk of HP off but give you MP regen from it.

But here's some early 2.0 gameplay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPEBRF6zL1Y

Note this is a solo healing WHM, but while there are plenty of Cure casts and the odd Regen, note how little Stone/Aero is going on here. There are plenty of other cases like this. I've got a couple tabs open with other healing configurations and the same basic idea. They aren't hard to find on YouTube. Here's a THREE (?!) healer setup Titan run:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nIo0vFmQlw

Notice again the lack of Stone/Aero. Even the SCH is casting Adlo and Physic (?!) a ton. (And I felt that "DON'T BREAK ME YET!!") I'd like to say "Look at Titan's healthbar/debuffs to see", but this WHM didn't even TARGET TITAN, much less cast damage spells on him.

This wasn't 1.0. This was 2.X. This was FFXIV when I started playing it.

You can argue people weren't playing optimally, but you can't argue the encounters at the time required them to do damage (because they weren't doing damage and were still clearing). This seems to be how the game, with the ARR redesign was designed to be played. Note that what the Devs intend/design and what is optimal are not always the same. I remember when NIN was released there being a brew-ha-ha because the community determined there was a more optimal rotation than the one the Devs intended, leading to NIN being able to do higher damage than they had tuned it for. But it's clear what the intent was. Notice how much less movement intensive these fights were, allowing for Healers to stand and hardcast more reliably.

From "day one", Healers in FFXIV (1.X) were clearly not designed as "Green DPS", and from "day one" of ARR, even after the redesign, they were clearly not designed as "Green DPS". Like NIN, SCH happened to have some capability to do that due to the quirk that Lustrate was a flat percentage heal and Eos...existed. But that was more a quirky accident that allowed a second style of healing gameplay, not the intended method of gameplay.

As I've pointed out before, FFXIV wasn't the game you guys say until late HW at the earliest. It was actually SB where that shift really started to occur, and only for SCH and AST. WHM was still a GCD focused healer that did not have a damage focus. This didn't change for WHM until ShB, and because of Misery. And even in ShB, it was still a GCD focused healer, just it had Lilies for those GCDs, a playstyle it has retained today.

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When I say "The game wasn't designed this way, it was designed for the 'pure/Sylphie' Healers; it's only changed from that over time", this is what I mean. You cannot appeal to history of the game to support the "Green DPS" model, since it wasn't even accepted by the Raiding community until HW with only late ARR Coils runs flirting with it, and it wasn't accepted by the general community until SB. And it arguably STILL isn't accepted by the Devs.

The "appeal to history" favors the "Healers are for Healing" side, not the "Healers are Green DPS" side. That wasn't solidified until SB, and even then only at the very high ends of gameplay and only for 2 of the Healer Jobs. "Healers are Green DPS" has only be absolutely true since ShB...ironically, considering their damage kits were gutted going into that expansion...

Honestly, it's kind of impossible to tell what on Earth the design team actually wanted from the healer role out of the get-go, what they want of it now, and what they would like to do, but feel like they can't.

Not really. As pointed out above, from the get-go, it was clear they wanted a "Healers are for Healing" model. The base kits were largely designed for that, and Lustrate getting around Cleric Stance was a quirk (like NIN's optimal rotation), not an intended design feature. To their credit, the Devs didn't squash it and allowed it to grow. They very clearly did NOT "want(ed) healers to dance between offensive windows and healing windows". Recall at the time auto-attacks were pretty potent and could crit. Watch the Titan clear video above. Notice the Tank's health bar and how he basically has one WHM dedicated to casting Cures on him constnatly. Where is this "infrequent" damage to the Tank in that video? The damage to the Tank seems to be CONSISTENT, not infrequent. The same is true of the Ifrit video. What is clear is they did not, in fact, intend or want Healers to be acting as part-time damage dealers (or full-time ones) in ARR. The clunk of Cleric Stance indicated they wanted it to be a toggle, probably for soloing, rather than a stance that was danced in an out of. If they wanted it to be just a damage boost, they wouldn't have crippled healing while it was in effect and it might have been something more like "Increases attack magic potency by 25% while increasing mana cost of attack spells by 50%", sort of like how Arcane Mages in WoW worked in Cata-Mists-Warlords (probably still do, but I haven't played WoW in a while to be sure.)

It's also pretty clear that's true now. The Healer kits are are heavily tilted towards healing power and variety, not damage, and even the "heals by doing damage" SGE has a slimmed down but powerful and robust healing toolkit vs a damage kit that can best be described as "minimalistic".

The reason for the "healers need to be coddled" mentality derives from a healer shortage in late HW and going into (and through) SB. The Devs (rightly or wrongly) decided it was because there became too great a focus on damage and it was alienating players that wanted to heal. That's why they simplified Cleric going into SB since late HW was seeing a lot of Healers quit because they were being bullied into being Green DPSers or berated for not being so. This led to Cleric being outright removed and the DPS kits simplified going into ShB. If that's not proof the Devs don't want "Healers are Green DPS" as the mentality, I'm not sure what is.

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I do agree that the modern encounter design doesn't really mesh with this well...but the fact that Healers are producing the required damage to clear the content essentially by pressing one button seems to indicate that the Devs don't want Healers to be Green DPSers. All the arrows are pointing to that, including "Go play Ultimate". Healer DPS doesn't even contribute as much as a Tanks. While Tanks are about 50% of a DPSer's output, Healers are only around 1/3rd (give or take)

Now, you can argue whether it's a good design intent or not, but it's pretty clear the Devs are not trying to make a game where Healers have a huge focus on DPS, even now.

The only solution that would make (most) everyone happy would be to split healers like ARR did between WHMs and SCHs, as I've proposed before. But that was alienating to you guys on the contra side, so I honestly don't see healing changing at all from what it is today because they realize that even the solution that would give everyone some of what they want would alienate people. And they aren't going to make a change that 100% appeals to the "more DPS rotations" crowd because they know it would cause a massive crash in Healers that would be very unhealthy for the game. So since a partial solution is rejected by the pro-DPS side, we won't likely get any change at all other than some very minor nibbling around the edges maybe...but probably not.

[RinaShinomiya]

Kind of funny to still have people delusional enough to believe Green DPS hasn't been a thing for ages. I guess it's only slightly more obvious with Blue DPS aka tanks now that stance dancing and enmity mechanics were so simplified they basically dont exist anymore.

[ty_taurus]

Not really. As pointed out above, from the get-go, it was clear they wanted a "Healers are for Healing" model. The base kits were largely designed for that, and Lustrate getting around Cleric Stance was a quirk (like NIN's optimal rotation), not an intended design feature. To their credit, the Devs didn't squash it and allowed it to grow. They very clearly did NOT "want(ed) healers to dance between offensive windows and healing windows".

If you don't want to design a car to drive, don't put wheels on it, or install an engine in it. If they really didn't want healers doing damage, why design fights to give you an exorbitant amount of time where no one needs healing? Why include a tool like Cleric Stance? Why make the moral of the entire Conjurer class questline, the first and only questline available for the healer role at level 1 that introduces fresh players to FFXIV's world and its gameplay state, that healing is not about only healing--but about balancing healing with defense and destruction?












This was not a coincidence, nor was it a mistake. This was very intentional from day 1, else this entirely storyline makes no sense. "Learn to embrace your elemental spells and master the balance of destruction and salvation... lol jk."

This isn't about what you, I, or anyone wants from the healer role or expects from it. This is carved into the Rosetta Stone of this game. The devs clearly aren't happy that this direction created conflict and try to keep the role sterilized, but this was the direction they chose in the beginning, whether you, I, they, or anyone else liked it then, or likes it now.

E-Sumi-Yan was going to exile Sylphie from the Conjurer's guild for learning Raise without learning Stone, Aero, and Fluid Aura. What does that say of the stance the designers had for the healing role at launch?

[Renathras]

Kind of funny to still have people delusional enough to believe Green DPS hasn't been a thing for ages. I guess it's only slightly more obvious with Blue DPS aka tanks now that stance dancing and enmity mechanics were so simplified they basically dont exist anymore.

I'm arguing game history and Dev design intentions via Job kits and actual statements made. /shrug

EDIT:

If you don't want to design a car to drive...

Healers have damage spells for when they do solo content. It's like giving a pilot a handgun. They aren't supposed to shoot people with it as their job, but they have it in case they have to bail out and get stranded behind enemy lines.

And we've literally had this conversation before about the Conjurer questline. I went through it in great detail - with you (and others) - showing you the moral was "don't use your own soul to heal people because it will consume you" not "Healers are supposed to kill people". I even quoted E-Sumi-Yan and multiple parts of the CNJ quests showing this.

They didn't put those quests in there with some grand intention to super subtly so much so most people missed it hint that Healers should use damage spells. That honestly borderlines on a ridiculous conspiracy theory. The moral wasn't some meta commentary on gaming mechanics of Healers. It's an in-universe lore about the distinction between drawing on one's personal aether (as THMs and RDMs do) vs the ambient aether around us (that CNJs do in a limited way and WHMs and BLMs do moreso), and how casting a Raise spell with one's life energy would likely entirely deplete it, killing the caster (as BLUs do).

As I told you at least once before and as is apparent from that quest text, E-Sumi-Yan was not going to exile Sylphie because she learned Raise without learning Stone, Aero, and Fluid Aura. It's because she was going to use her own life force to attempt to raise someone, which would kill her. The quests even make it so blindingly apparent I'm somewhat shocked you got the wrong message there.

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Moreover, it's not even true of all the Healer questlines.

Take the SCH quests, for example. If anything, they're a commentary of the horrors of battle and war. In every one of them, you're paired with a damage dealing, tanking partner (or more) that you are to keep alive with healing and protective magics. Alka Zolka even comments after the level 60 quest how he felt protected and cozy due to all your shielding. Go to your Inn and watch the second cutscene of the Level 60 quest. You and Lily literally HEAL THE VOIDSENT TO DEATH. That green glow the two of you cast is clearly not an attack spell (of which Lily had none), it's curative. The quest text describing the event reads:

With a burst of blinding light, yourr faerie dispels the spell concealing the voidsent. The foe now visible, the Royal Marines charge. Alka Zolka and his soldiers deliver punishing blows, whilst your spells defend them. The battle is fierce, but soon the fiend lies dying. With its last breaths, it makes ready to release the sickness-yet before it can, the tonberries come to your aid. The killing blow is theirs. Now, as you stand victorious, congratulate your fellow combatants for putting an end to this specter of Mhach.

No mention of your blistering battle magics or your masterful tactics leading your company. No mention of balancing offense and defense or healing and damage. None. None at all. Was this also "not a coincidence, nor was it a mistake"? Was this them telling prospective SCHs that their job is to heal and protect their allies, who are the ones doing the "real" fighting?

By the way, this commentary on war and destruction doesn't end there. Take the next quest cutscene in the next quest. Setoto:

I thought I had lost nearly everyone to that godsforsaken war and the terrible disease that followed... Yet, in spite of all odds, here she is-the last of my family, sitting right in the palm of my hand. I would give anything to see her again.

And we further see the emphasis on healing and medicinal knowledge:

You and Alka return to Camp Tranquil with Setoto, and the marauder asks that you use your knowledge to diagnose what is wrong with her. You conclude that, despite the lack of physical injuries, it will be a while before the young tonberry girl wakes.

Later...

According to Surito Carito, the gemstone is the crystal core of the statue that you defeated and contains potent white magic. He surmises that Lilac, a part of Setoto's father's consciousness, was driven by a strong desire to see Setoto cured of the Green Death. As such, the phantom faerie led you through the lost city that you might discover this gem, which may contain a remedy to the condition afflicting the inhabitants of the Wanderer's Palace.

Certain it holds the key to curing the Green Death and reviving the scholarly arts, Surito Carito vows to begin his analysis of the red gemstone straightaway. He thanks you, going on to say he stands by his choice in bequeathing Lily onto you.

It's not until the level 80 quest description that you agree "as one can never know too many martial tactics", but note this quest was at the end of ShB. But the quest itself is entirely about developing a cure, not waging battle. That and a kind of adorable little love story. And the experiment transpires thus:

Back at the Wanderer's Palace, Setoto reiterates her commitment to undergoing the experiment. This time, Surito Carito is convinced by her logic, and Alka Zolka by her heartfelt words. Thus, the test begins, Setoto drinking the concoction to destabilize her own aether, Alka Zolka holding the Amdapori focus aloft, and you and your faerie channeling as much restorative aether as you can manage together. Though the experience appears to be excruciating, Setoto bears the pain, and in the end stands before you a Lalafel, with nary a trace of green to be seen.

The quest ends with Alka Zolka, bashful about his feelings, running off to train, Setoto finding it adorable and ready to live her life and EVENTUALLY tell him how she feels, and with Surito Carito being pleased with the success of the experiment and vowing to continue his research based on your healing of Setoto to eventually try and restore all the Tonberries to their former Lalafellan Nymian forms.

Note in ALL this the closest thing to talking about damage dealing is to decry war, biological warfare, and the combat focus of Mhach and Amdapor that led to it all, not to embrace it.

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No where is the "Rosetta Stone of this game" saying what you want it to say. The combat didn't say it. The Job design and mechanics didn't say it. And the questlines didn't at all say it. The direction they chose from the beginning I've already explained using the game encounters and mechanics of that time. Your only real rebuttal here is a pretty blatant misinterpretation of the CNJ questline, which I've already explained is wrong and why - indeed, the quests themselves say as much. E-Sumi-Yan outright says if she cast that spell she would die. That was why he considered expelling her. So she wouldn't die as she'd basically be using the BLU Transfusion spell if she tried to cast Raise with her own life force as the energy source.

You can argue that it's this way now - which I would contest noting that seems to be in spite of the Dev's intentions, not because of them - but you certainly cannot appeal to ARR to uphold that argument.

Though...there is a bit of an irony in the CNJ/WHM quests being more battle focused than the SCH ones, given the way everything turned out in the end. Strange irony, that.

[fatvalentine]

What makes a Damage Dealer is you're not responsible for anything but dealing Damage.

This technically means several of our DPS Jobs aren't DPS Jobs (they're Support Role), but most of them are still only dealing damage. NIN's Trick/Mug is about dealing damage, etc.

If you're a DPS, and you don't use Feint/Addle/Tactician-equivalent, I hate you.

[ty_taurus]

Moreover, it's not even true of all the Healer questlines.

Take the SCH quests, for example.

Why would the SCH job quest available at level 30 feel obligated to teach you how to attack when you've already "mastered" the art of arcane magic as of completing the ACN class questline? If anything makes perfect sense that the one job in the game that starts as a DPS and transitions into a healer would canonically need a teacher to help them become accustomed to mending wounds on the battlefield since they're already capable of inflicting them. None of the examples you listed say anything remotely close to "you better not attack your enemies or you're a bad healer." If anything, they're reminding you that since you're on healing duty now, that it's okay to stop, take a moment, and assess the situation as attacking is now your second priority.

You shared video of footage in another post, but I really don't understand how that's supposed to prove your point. You've got some WHM's spamming Cure on full-HP tanks or near full-HP tanks, not relying on Regen all that much which would be far more effective back in the day at keeping the tank healthy and conserving MP for you in the long run, and otherwise are just I guess taking breaks to pick their noses? How is that supposed to represent what the designers intended for their design? If that was all they wanted healers to be capable of, then that's all they would've given healers to do.

There's so much time where no one's getting hurt in those fights, and in all fights in this game. What is the design intention for those big empty spaces? In case the Healer needs to grab a snack? Take a bio break? So that healer is a role you can play while you make yourself dinner, or are taking your dog for a walk? If healers were ever meant to only heal, the game would be designed so that they are required to only heal. Yet that's clearly not the case even in your videos. Just because the healers in that video were nearly catatonic does not mean that's all healers were capable of or that's only what was expected of them from the actual game.

Sure, all footage of early ARR content has healers playing terribly, but the secret is that all of us were bad at the game. It takes a long time for a brand new MMO to have its community develop knowledge and skill. Someone who's started playing tennis 3 months ago is not going to be as good as a tennis player who's been playing for a year. That's normal. And what's more, logic taken into the game was largely taken from other MMOs like early WoW and FFXI where you didn't have fixed parties, scripted encounters, built-in resource management systems... Even in its more crude shape back then, FFXIV was a different beast.

You can fold a cup out of notebook paper and pour coffee into it, but that doesn't instantly make it the apex of how coffee is meant to be drank nor is it a representation of how the coffee roaster expects their drinkers to consume the product. You can play a healer terribly or using logic from a different game, but that doesn't make it the intended way to play.

No where is the "Rosetta Stone of this game" saying what you want it to say. The combat didn't say it.

Yes, actually, the combat does say it. In fact we don't even need to translate it from Sanskrit. It's plastered all over fight design in every corner of this game that it's not even funny, written in magic ink that conforms to your first langauge, gives you a free pen with a green cross that has a smily face and the quote "remember to DPS when you can" and a sticker that reads "I healed. I DPSed. I conquored." There are looney tune style massive neon red arrows pointing to that copious amount of healing downtime with a sign above that lights up and says "DPS now!" and turns off as soon as a raid wide goes off.

EDIT: Also on the topic of "but it's for solo content." Well actually, FFXIV's format would've perfectly enabled healers to have 0 DPS buttons if that was the intent, because of the job change system. If the designers really wanted healers to only heal, all they had to do was kill the idea of Arcanist. Conjurer is a DPS who branches into Black Mage or White Mage and share levels. Thaumaturge would've instead branched into Summoner and Scholar instead of Arcanist. Thaumaturge and Conjurer are hybrid DPS with heals, and lose their DPS when going healer while losing their healing while going DPS. They share levels, so bam. You don't solo as a healer since there's nothing to heal when solo.

[Renathras]

Why would the SCH job quest available at level 30 feel obligated to teach you how to attack when you've already "mastered" the art of arcane magic as of completing the ACN class questline?

Oh my god, you're...frustrating. >_<

Dude, just no.

You CANNOT use one questline to insist it was some message to the playerbase but ignore one that completely negates that argument. You said one healer questline tells you, in effect, that Raising people is bad and damage is more important than Raising - as that would be the message from "don't use Raise without using Stone, Aero, and Fluid Aura first" - which is you completely misunderstanding it wasn't even Raise, it was Transfusion. You can't appeal to that then turn around and ignore contradictory evidence because it suits you.

There wasn't a focus on attack in the SCH quests because "ACN taught you to attack things", that's insane. You're smarter than this.

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The videos were to show you how people played at the time, which disagrees with how you are saying Healers were played at the time. It disproves your position that Healers have always been played as Green DPS. And note that those encounters, on release, were very difficult with high damage output. That's probably why they brought three healers to a Titan fight. And as I've said, there are plenty more. How many do I have to link before you admit that?

You can argue it wasn't optimal, but that doesn't change the fact that was how people played and how the fights were designed for. They didn't fall to an Enrage because the Healers weren't doing enough damage. The fights were not designed that way at the time. But you can only argue that that wasn't optimal - you can't prove it because we can't go back to that time in those gear levels and run those encounters to see if Regen would have done the job or not. There were several points that them not casting Cures and Medicas would have led to party member deaths.

You keep insisting there was all this time where no healing was needed, yet we see the Tank's health going down in large chunks every autoattack, meaning there was not, in fact, all this time with no damage that you are insisting.

"then that's all they would have given Healers to do" - that WAS what they gave Healers to do. You mention the Job change system, but you can't do solo Class/Job quests as a different Job, in case you've forgotten, and many people didn't play through the MSQ leveling two Jobs at once. Maybe you've forgotten, but in ARR, the MSQ didn't give you enough experience to do all of it. You'd get to "next quest = your level +1" somewhat frequently, meaning you'd have to go do some Leves or sidequests or FATEs or dungeons to get another level before continuing. People weren't simultaneously leveling two Jobs so they could go through the MSQ on a combat Job while leveling a Healer if their main intent was Healer.

I get you want this to be true, but your arguments...don't hold up to even basic scrutiny here, man. I've been playing since 2.3 or so. I'm guessing by your join date you did as well. Surely you remember that? When I got to 50, I had one Job at 50, WHM. The next highest thing I had was ACN at 15 to unlock WHM. That was it. After that, after I had finished the MSQ and the patch content for it (which all required level 50 and is why it gave garbo exp to people doing it in HW), I leveled ACN to 30 to unlock SCH and level with it. I think I paused around level 35-40 because I decided to level THM to 15 to unlock SMN, then I finished leveling them as SCH, only doing SMN for its story quests. Then I started on PLD because I already had the CNJ levels (CNJ being its secondary you had to have to 15), and that took me basically all of 2.5 to do as a side project to get it to 50 just around when HW came out after I took a break to get THM to 36 or whatever for Swiftcast after I got my Twintania kill and was told by one of my FC mates that Swiftcast is useful and Cross-Class so I could level THM to get it. Leveling THM was a PITA because, unlike ACN, it didn't have a Tank pet to prevent you getting punched in the face. (I really miss old SMN sometimes...)

Some people did, but a lot of people didn't have a stable of alt Jobs. Many people only had one or two.

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Yes, actually, the combat does say it.

Except it doesn't:

- No tight enrage timers.

- No slate of oGCD heals for Healers to use to weave in between damage abilities.

- Few DPS spells for Healers compared to damage dealers of the era.

Note I said "The combat didn't say it". Past tense, not present tense. You're using present tense to argue that ARR fight design did a thing that ARR fight design didn't do. P8S was not in ARR. Ex4 was not in ARR. Healers that have more oGCDs than GCDs were not in ARR.

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Here's the reality - the game seems to have been designed from the outset (1.0) for Healers to heal. It seems from the redesign outset (2.0) for Healers to heal. This was true then, and was true in all of the community until late ARR. Over the course of HW, the high end raiders transitioned to a "Green DPS" mentality, but the rest of the community did not, nor did the Devs. That was the era of the famous "We don't take Healer damage into account when balancing encounters" quote. That indicates as late as HW, the Devs still felt that way confidently enough to make that their on the record position. That was after the CNJ (and SCH) quests from ARR, indicating those ARR quests were not trying to impart the message you insist they were trying to impart. It wasn't until SB that the Devs started throwing their hands in the air (the change to Cleric, shifting to a more oGCD healing focus), and it wasn't until EW that they fully transitioned all the Healers (more or less) to this model and made one that heals by doing damage...only for those designs to all still be slim on DPS options and after in ShB going the opposite direction, reducing the DPS kits of the Healers. And as recently as this last tier, we have Yoshi P's "Try playing Ultimate" quote, the shift this tier to bleeds and higher healing focus (in direct opposition to your premise), and Yoshi P's "WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE EVEN WANT?!?! YOU TELL ME?!?!" statement, indicating he's clearly exasperated with the "Healers are Green DPS" community that keep pressing the issue - the "Healers should mostly be healers and do simple damage on the side" people aren't pressing him on the issue to generate such a response.

The game's history says you're wrong.

The Dev's history of past and recent statements say you're wrong.

And the Job design history says you're wrong.

But note very specifically what I'm saying you're wrong about:

I'm not saying you're wrong in that this is how encounters seem to be designed today (in conflict with Job design, indicating there's not entirely agreement within the Dev community as to what they want to do, or possibly the encounter designers don't understand the healer design - though again, this last tier shifted to a greater healing focus), and the Job kits are very dissonant/conflicted with the encounter and game design. You're not wrong about that.

What I'm saying you are wrong about is different:

You're wrong that the game's history is that, or that the game was originally designed for that. You're trying a false Appeal to Authority fallacy, with the problem being all the direct statements of the actual authority (Yoshi P) contradict you, the original (2.0, 2.1, etc) encounter design contradicts you, in-game materials/quests contradict you, and the actual game's history and meta-history (player views over time and videos of fights from that time) contradict you.

I know you want to be right about this, but you aren't.

That doesn't mean you are wrong about now, but it means you can't appeal to the original game or suggest people who have stuck with it sense then were always wrong about what healing in FFXIV was.

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But let me ask you this:

Do you have any direct proof of your position from that era?

And let me be clear, by direct, I mean "Statement from the Developers this was their intent"?

Not "cleverly hidden in a questline that pretty much no one took that as the moral of and the questline states that was not the moral of and it was contradicted by other questlines", not "we were just bad and didn't know what we were doing"; do you have a direct, ironclad statement from the Devs that was their intent?

Because I have a direct ironclad statement from 2 years later - when the game was arguably moree DPS focused, that it was not, and both my arguments and period history suggests you are wrong.

And secondary question:

Why is it so important to you that you're right about this thing you're wrong about?

Games can evolve over time, so it's not like the game being designed not in accord with "Green DPS" would mean that it can't be now. You just can't (falsely) try to appeal to a history that, at best, can only offer muddled support to your position and, at worst, seems to outright contradict it.

[ASkellington]

At this point, it doesn't matter what their intent is.

The game is objectively not designed to have one (1) healer use all of their healing tools in content let alone 2.

That needs to be fix. Period. That the devs refuse to do so is their own folly. Look at how you design battle content and make healers match it. Because they don't. Its been two expansions. Your vision for healers HAVE FAILED.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

At this point, it doesn't matter what their intent is.[...]Your vision for healers HAVE FAILED.

Pretty much.

Putting this into a different perspective, imagine having a Melee DPS job with a total of 16 buttons consisting of 13 all cool, powerful melee buttons and 3 ranged buttons then tossing them into a battle designed to kill anybody at melee range. Now that DPS has to rely on their only 3 ranged buttons because everything else will just kill them.

Same with healers where we have $h!tton of "push HP to right" button but spend 85% of time pressing "push HP to left" button because there's only so much health bar we can push to the right meaningfully. It.Just.Does.Not.Make.Sense.