Has anyone quit healing?

[Renathras]

Weird, I see them as...

That's because we see things differently. And you may also be thinking CC while I play Frontlines exclusively.

WHM: Another "set up to knock down" Job, WHM also doesn't have the capability of taking an enemy from 100% to 0% on their own. They have beautiful synergy with their other party members though. Stun an enemy team in a line for your party to either withdraw or kill, an AOE damage to throw to chop down some health so your team can finish them off (or, rarely, getting in a freebie kill from a wounded enemy), a partywide Protect, a partywide Heal, a partywide Regn attached to the stun, a Esuna + Barrier, and a 2 second turn your enemy into a flee. A harmless, little flee...so your allies can kill them without them self-healing to 100% again, which is what would happen if you just used your own attacks on them. WHM can take out targets of opportunity, but seems to work best setting up opportunities for their team to capitalize on.

SCH: Buff team damage, debuff enemy damage, debuff enemy healing, mild healing, damage buffing, speed buff your allies while giving them damage mitigation, and shielding LB with an AOE Esuna (or Wanderer's Paean, I guess, which has an AOE Excogitation attached). SCH is actually the least offensive of all the PvP Healers in a somewhat odd twist. Mummification's power is its debuff, not its 6k damage that requires melee range to even use; Biolysis' damage is, what, 15k or 18k over time? It can be boosted 50%, but the real prize here is the 8% damage dealt Addle you inflict on the enemy team, and it's got a MASSIVE radius when Deployed.

AST: I often keep party members alive with AST's HoT and Barrier. Aspected Benefic is an Essential Dignity with a Regen, and Double Casting it adds a second (slightly smaller) heal with a Barrier. If used when an ally is super low health, you can fill most of their health bar while shielding them from the next attack and having the HoT tick to keep them going. You can provide some pretty ridiculous healing on AST if you're back from the front line and not getting focused, and because its heals are instant cast (unlike Cure 2), you can actually get in clutch heals much more often than you can on WHM. Conversely, it's REALLY hard in Frontlines to catch an entire enemy team in Gravity, especially if you're planning to be close enough to use Macrocosmos. That tends to result in you getting yanked into the middle of the enemy blob by one of their Tanks and then deleted by their party. AST is absolutely a buffer/healer, and Gravity's strongest use is setting up targets for your party to kill - "damsel in distress", I think, is your favorite way of putting it. As you note, it takes off HALF a health bar, meaning you then are stuck spamming Malefics until your party kills the enemies for you while you try to buff and heal/shield them. All those things you said you don't like. And their LB is the most buff/synergy minded one of all the healers: A massive 30% damage taken reduction and damage dealt increase, both of which last for 15 seconds, becoming 10% weaker after each 5 seconds. That's a lot of mitigation as well as boost to your party's outgoing damage.

SGE: No argument there. SGE is the one case of "This is a DPS. You can call it a Green DPS, but it's a DPS." It has no direct heals (the closest thing is Pneuma), and its LB is more of an attack and area denial spell than anything. In theory, it can be used in a "defensive" sense, but in practice, this just means the enemy is going to run into it and be taking chip damage while they try to fight anyway (making it a damage ability) or go around it and try to get more favorable position/pull you out of it/push you out of it (had a MNK do that the other day...perhaps not realizing or not banking on me using the free move to just relocate it to our new position.) SGE is the one of the PvP Healers I can't stand playing.

or keep them alive, which means they're doing more damage

Ah, I see you've found a new way of saying "mitigation" that you can pretend means "damage". That's...literally what the word "mitigation" means, and it's generally considered a form of defensive utility/buffing, not offensive. By nature, something that reduces damage...is defensive. I genuinely don't understand why...well, never mind. Anyway, the word you're looking for is "mitigation".

Congrats. I don't doubt that's what you experienced, and what people around you said about how 'hard it is to heal'. ... Your view of how things 'are' and 'were' seems to be entirely formed from your own personal experiences.

....

That's...literally what you're doing. You're describing how your view was formed...via your own personal experiences. Ahem.

ANY-way: As I pointed out, it was different in different DCs. My first clear, I think the only thing I had was the same thing I always buy first, the Tome ring (since you need two rings no matter what). Otherwise I was in min ilevel gear clearing it. And all I run is PF since I have no Static, as noted. I'll randomly get dragged into things by the FC from time to time, but that's generally once it's been out a while and I've already cleared it myself.

I'd like it if healing stayed this rough.

Great, we agree, then. Though half-way would be fine as well. I'm honestly fine with whichever. Adapting to greater healing needs is fun and not really impossible or anything. Healers in FFXIV have ample tools for dealing with high or consistent damage - their toolkits are arguably built (GCD heals, anyway) around doing so - it's just a matter of making that mental transition and using them. Half-way between P1-4 and P5-8 would probably be fine.

But people would (rightly) complain, because the damage is not the issue. It's how we deal that damage.

I'd be far more inclined to believe this if:

A) Said people were fine with changing 1-3 of the Healers and leaving 3-1 of them alone, since they'd get that "how (they) deal that damage" fix on the one(s) changed, and,
B) If said people didn't also argue that if 3-1 are left alone, their complex one needed to do more damage to "reward" them for it.

Again: You're treating Healers as a monolithic block. We aren't.

I said that if you don't do damage, the healing can be covered by instead using Medica.

Yes, yes, and my point was, locking healing behind dealing damage is a bad idea in general. And one most people (not everyone, but most everyone) agrees is a bad idea. It's why people far more often pitch "damage neutral" or "heal by doing damage" ideas over "damage to unlock healing efficiency" ideas.

Though as I've noted before; all that notwithstanding, SGE already functions this way. It has GCD heals to (in theory) fall back on, but its ideal playstyle is dealing damage which unlocks/provides Healing, it just does so without a separate button press. I suppose you could do something like casting damage spells reduces the CD on Plegma or something (not sure what else they have right now that would really work for "unlocked healing spell that you don't need otherwise"), though that's how SB WHM Lilies worked and it sucked, but maybe something more akin to MCH with Gauss Round/Ricochet, just a healing spell. Or alternatively, make Toxicon an AOE heal. Or make every Kardia proc reduce the CD on Pneuma by 5 sec. I dunno, I'm sure there's some way to do it. Either as an ability anyone can use with a CD but doing your rotation makes it come up faster, or I guess some separate ability. Pneuma would work well because it is damage neutral, meaning when you use it, it's like you're still casting a Dosis (an...AOE Dosis...), but one which gives a party-wide, AOE Kardia (a...rather large...Kardia...)

(The funniest part of Pneuma is it ALSO procs Kardia. I have no idea why, but that amuses me for some reason.)