Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Renathras]

Agreed, at the risk of sounding like a stuck record. SE have the absolute perfect job/sacrificial lamb to throw under the experiment bus for this and it boggles my mind that they haven't had the bottle or been willing to put in the effort to at least try it for an expansion.

Take AST, throw it's DPS kit literally in the bin. Let them spend GCDs buffing team mates with some less efficient method of converting that into raw damage as needed for solo/msq content. Drop a 'totem' and throw cards at it to pulse an AoE or something. What matters is having a completely left of field healer that doesn't just slam nukes for the bulk of their GCDs like the rest. If it's really bad, there's 3 more healers for people to fall back on. If it's borderline, tweak it Creator style and see what happens. If it rocks, look at what can be done for another healer like Sadge.

Somewhat agreed. I've been making this argument (or one very similar; not 1 but 3) for months now.

No that should be how it works. Higher skill floor and high skill ceiling would make the game a lot more engaging, because there is a lot of thought needed for it. Take League of Legends. They've been reworking a lot of the "stat stick" champions over time to be a lot more engaging, raising both the skill floor and raising the skill ceiling by removing point and click abilities and replacing them with skill shots.

The only real danger to this is accessibility, implying that doing the overhaul is a bad idea.

Again, "to you". What you might consider skill floor/ceiling others might NOT consider fun or engaging. Personally, I've never liked the more complex classes in League of Legends. Many people don't. The most played Jobs in FFXIV also happened to be the simplest ones in each role. The reason for that isn't because "people are lazy" as the Sylphie-haters will tell you. It's because not everyone wants or enjoys hypercomplex things. Just like not every DPSer in this game plays BLM, not everyone likes that sort of gameplay; many people like current gameplay.

My answer to this, for a while, has been "We have 4 Healer Jobs, we should make them different so they appeal to different types of players."

Misshapen Chair did a video a few months back where his conclusion was basically "Leave WHM alone for people that like healing now, give SGE its SB kit back, give AST Nocturnal stance back and its SB cards back, and make SGE into a galaxy brain DPS rotation thing and see if people embrace it or not; and everyone can play the one they want and not demand to be 'rewarded' with more damage, as 'having fun and not being bored' is your reward, so shut up about a measly 2% DPS difference".

...he was a bit more vulgar, mind you, but I pretty much agree. Here's the video: https://youtu.be/sbWubxOTUWU?t=672
"Healing In FFXIV Is Not Fun"

Right around that timestamp. The whole video's worth a watch, too.

...that's what I've been saying this whole entire time? I thought we had a mutual understanding that this was the point you were arguing against.

No, I'm against a total and complete overhaul of healing and all Healer Jobs. I highly support some (but not all) Healer Jobs to be adjusted to be more distinct and engage players that enjoy different playstyles. It's been my position for over a year now.