A summary of healer issues

[Post]

1: I want SE to do the obvious, and merge Grade 1-5 into a new 'Grade 1', and then subtract 4 from each current grade of materia...
...'High Materia' ...

2/3: I wish they'd just merge Scouting into Aiming, and Maiming into Striking..

Honestly, this game's never been about interesting gear decisions, but that's often been to its benefit. It's almost always been 'pick the thing with the most weapon damage/primary stat', and then 'the thing with the most crit.' They even got rid of Accuracy because it was too intrusive for their otherwise streamlined system. The main reason materia exists at all is because it was a holdover from 1.0, and since crafters and gatherers could make use of it they eventually decided to expand it to all gear (while also making sure they were easy to obtain) back in 3.2.

Materia gave some flexibility while Accuracy existed, but its biggest impacts now are to spread gil around, grant Direct Hit to healers and tanks who arbitrarily aren't allowed it, and trick poor new players that might think Tenacity and Piety matter (this is kind of the worst thing about any complex gearing system in an MMO: you can be 'wrong'). It probably won't be heavily iterated upon because it's streamlined to take a backseat to the actual focus of the battle system: great encounters, fun-to-play jobs (as sarcastic as that sounds in this thread).

The more gear and gear management they add to the game, the more laborious it is to enjoy swapping and trying new jobs, which is a major strength of FFXIV. Accuracy requirements were a barrier, and different desirable melds jobs within a group (WAR being the only tank hating Direct Hit for a long time; BLM's flirting with SpS while SMN and RDM despise it) can still be annoying. At least nowadays the main thing separating jobs is their weapon and credit where it's due, if there were a unique meld system for the weapon that'd be the perfect place to put it!

Ultimately, I always want them to make it easier to swap jobs. Anything they can do to support this is good imo, from merging more gearsets together, or streamlining materia further. I think more uniform rez availability to non-healers helps this as well, at least for someone that's swapping based on their group's composition.