Quote Originally Posted by Gemina View Post
Some people get the wrong impression on some of the things I say around here. When I say healers are not useless, I am not saying that there are no problems with them, and they are fine. I even acknowledged in another post here that they have the lowest responsibility of the three roles in the game. Especially in NM content.

However, the thing is that I have fewer issues with the healers themselves. I find that it isn't really healer design that is the problem so much as I do that the other two roles step on their toes and cover the responsibilities that really should be exclusive to them. Resurrections, raid wide HoTs, raid wide mitigation, possibly even raid wide offensive boosts; but above all, HEALING. It's not that content doesn't require healing. Healers are currently capable of covering all of these tasks. These skills are not missing from their bag of tricks. But because the other roles can do them too while also covering their own responsibilities it makes healers redundant, and it isn't right.

This is a major reason why when players say give healers more offensive buttons to push, I go against that. If you give healers more offensive power, what happens is leap frogging, and that redundancy transfers over to the DPS role. Because you get healers with nearly the same offensive kits as DPS jobs, but also a crap ton of utility to go with it. I think a lot of players fail to see this. The way to truly fix this is and achieve balance among the three roles is to nerf tanks and DPS jobs of their utility. This can then be used to their advantage to give tanks and DPS jobs more skills and diversity that apply to their respective roles and responsibilities in the group.
As much as we go back and forth bickering about elitism and such, this is a very consistent argument that is only missing one variable.

The player variable.

The skill floor and skill ceiling of gameplay in XIV is miles apart, and that is a core gameplay issue that over the years had just kept widening as the story content of the game never ramps up in difficulty outside of very special cases.

The difference between a good and a bad tank is night and day, a tank that knows how to play the game will never require healing, where as a tank that does not understand their kit will die, even if you sit there and heal them non stop.

The same can be said for Healing and DPS alike, the issue with the game is the skill variance.
If the game did more to raise the floor up a bit closer to the ceiling, and players were forced to use their job's entire kit during the story, there wouldn't be as big of a gap.