The Healers should be reworked? New player perspective.

[AmiableApkallu]

Indeed, despite you guys saying otherwise, WHM is the only Healer Job in FFXIV that has a long history in the franchise, and this incarnation of it is fairly similar to most of its representations across the series in at least some form.

Being a job with a long, long history in the franchise, I wish that "people" would speak of FFXIV's White Mage with the same reverence that they do for FFXIV's Black Mage, a class/job/blue-robe-pointy-yellow-hat with a history that's just as long.

They don't.

Why? I don't know. But I dare say, part of the reason is that FFXIV's White Mage doesn't fit FFXIV combat/encounter model, no matter how similar it might be to other White Mages in the franchise.

And at some level, that shouldn't be surprising. A lot of the games in the franchise are single player games. As the single player, you control multiple characters. If one of the characters under your control has barely any skills for dealing damage and spends 100% of their time focussed on "healing", then it's still the case that far less than 100% of your player time is focused on "healing." Variety of gameplay comes from the fact that you have multiple characters under your control, and from the fact that you can sometimes even choose those characters.

FFXIV doesn't offer that variety. You control one character. For better or for worse, encounter design, whether "casual" or "hard-core" or in-between, now follows a recognizable formula. Moreover, I'd say that it takes an epically incompetent party before "100% focused on healing" is required. A job with an over-abundance of healing buttons and minimal DPS buttons simply doesn't fit in. Something needs to change.

I personally don't have super-strong opinions on which, encounter design or job design. I'd vote for "both changing to meeting in the middle", but if that's not an option, then I'd vote for "give FFXIV WHM (and the other healers to be honest), something more than the barest bones of DPS kits."