What are things you ENJOY about Healers right now?

[Renathras]

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Icon color is irrelevant. This is like your Ex1/2 thing being based on story rather than mechanics. I'm looking at mechanics, specifically the mechanics of their kits, what their healing/damage outputs are, which commands the focus of the kit, and how they do or don't interact to allow healing of party members.

AST is a Healer in PvP. (Also, I use Macrocosmos for healing all the time - it's always neat seeing party member health bars drop after I hit it, then popping the heal to bring them back up just as the enemy thinks they have the killshot lined up! That's clutch and healing right there).

WHM is an offensive Support/DPS.

SCH is a defensive Support/DPS.

SGE is a DPS.

RDM is a Support that can toggle Healer or DPS based on stance.

I make clutch plays in PvP all the time. Maybe it's just because I'm actively watching health bars and trying to heal rather than trying to greed a kill. /shrug

And I liked old PvP healing, since you asked. WHM was a Healer there. It had Cure 1 as a weak heal that could be used infinitely, Cure 2 cost 1000 MP (or 2k, I forget), meaning it could be used several times in succession, but not infinitely, and it had an AOE heal on a CD in the form of Afflatus Rapture. It really FELT like a Healer then because you could sustainably HEAL your party. The removal of the spamable cure spells is, in fact, the single biggest thing I hated about the change to the new PvP system. The first Frontline I did after the change was SGE, and I was shocked that I DIDN'T HAVE ANY HEAL. Fortunately, it's just SGE that suffers from that, but it was shocking seeing a Healer Job actually being a DPS Job - a sentiment people in the PvP community shared at the time.

That and how ridiculously OP non-Healer healing is. It's as bad or worse than PvE in a lot of respects due to that, and why Crowd Control (and no diminishing returns, Purify often not working, Guard almost never working) and lining up all party LBs to delete entire teams is such a big deal in Frontlines right now, because everyone who ISN'T a Healer can go from 0% to 100% without being killed unless you either lock them in Crowd Control (seen this happen for as long as 30 seconds on a person since there are no diminishing returns and Purify often doesn't work) or instantly delete them with a coordinated alpha strike causing them to go from 100% to 0% without being able to act.

DRKs often top the "healing" charts, doing close to 2 million healing. While they're far and away the most ridiculous, they aren't the only ones. WARs, DRGs, NINs, SMNs, etc also do a lot of healing. It's like PvE just worse.

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What makes a Healer is that they are and focus on HEALING. This should be a tautology as it's in the name. This is distinct from a Support which is focused across domains of damage dealing, buffing, debuffing, healing, and other utility (like run speed) and act in a Supporting role, which can include healing people but also swinging over to DPS down an enemy or buffing/debuffing/utility to ensure their team can do so. If that's the kind of gameplay you like, then Support roles/Jobs/classes are right up your alley.

...that doesn't make them Healers, though.

If the focus is on dealing damage, then it's not a Healer. It might not be outright a Damage Dealer/DPS if the focus is on support buffing, debuffing, crowd control, etc...but it isn't a Healer at that point, it's a Support.

The fact that RDM is more of a Healer than at least half (and as much as 3/4ths) of the "Healers" is just ridiculous, honestly.