For those who main/semi-main a DPS (e.g. DNC, RDM) but like Healers...

[Semirhage]

But ultimately, why I play Dancer and not Sage, despite liking Sage’s style and aesthetic much more, is because as a Dancer, I feel like I’m playing the game. The entire point of MMO cooldown-based combat is picking the right tool for every moment—making choices between all your actions. Playing as a Sage, or any healer, I am robbed of that experience. Constantly, you are shoved into dead windows where nothing is happening, where I could go grab a glass of water while doing controller inputs, come back, and see nothing has changed, because the majority of the “choices” I make are all the same button: Dosis.

100%. The other week, I attended a board game night. One of those deckbuilders where you spend (resource) on new cards, etc. I got quite unlucky the first few turns. The cheap stuff was bought out. I got stuck in a cycle where I didn't have enough (resource) to do anything about buying more resource generation. Each turn was essentially, do I buy a garbage card if I can afford one, or do I move a token to a spot where it'll get immediately destroyed by an opponent, or do I pass my turn.

Those aren't choices. You could get a reasonably simple AI to sit in for me. I ended up in conversation with other people in the kitchen. Ten turns deep and I wasn't bothering to go back to the table, I was just yelling "do what I do every turn. Or surprise me, I don't care". I can deal with losing. I check out when I'm not actually playing the game.

Healing feels a lot like that. With occasional interruptions for triage that last maybe a GCD or two. There's so much that's automatic (Assize, Embrace, Kardia). Your decision makes so little impact (your tools are practically identical, just flat HP restores on a cooldown or flat HP restores with an MP cost). I could write a pair of Jambi The Genie scripts for single-target and AOE heal that selects one at random, and I probably wouldn't do half bad. I could yell vague minimal-input commands from the kitchen and be "playing" the game as effectively as I do from the board.

As a DPS I'm actually doing something. Granted, it's not the game of strategic spell fencing you get in a well-designed single-player RPG, but mechanics can help make up for that. Which resource am I building now? Do I need to save an Accelerate for moving, or flipping my GCD, or can I burn it for a little extra non-Jolt action? I have a melee combo, when is the best time to use it for moving? It's not like a lily where I can just belch it out even when it's useless; a melee combo is always useful. Don't even get me started on Black Mage. Do I overwrite Thunder here to smuggle a proc through this untargetable phase? Is blowing Firestarter better now because I have Manafont up and it'll fall off before the end of my ice phase? I'm ankle-deep in the decision tree that is BLM, and I'm unsure if I even vibe with the juggling act playstyle, but I can see the insane corner-cutting masters of it do to cleverly sneak more damage. You're always interacting with the encounter. Your micro-choices have an impact that ripples forward for 10, even 20 seconds in the future. You don't have a kit set up as if spamming boring, uninteractive, abilities back-to-back is peak gameplay. Monk's kit isn't set up to encourage you to spam Bootshine as if it were what you're "supposed" to do. The healer kits are all about boring spamming. Spam Glare. Spam Broil. Spam Cure, there's a passive that rewards you for it! Spam Lilies, there's a flower blast in it for you! Use Plenary, the buff works in a way that makes you wonder why the kit wants you to think spamming Medica is great!

Like Ty said. I'm not playing a game as a healer. I'm a Breaking The Limits solo duty regen buff that needs to wake up once a minute to reapply myself and one of those Ghimlyt Dark autoattacking NPCs. Hell with that. Allow me to interact with the combat system.

[IceBlueNinja]

Rdm for me but thinking to get into blm, the thing that I hate about rdm and its been this way too long atm its that its always losing to blm/smn in terms of dps damage and could really use some love. I like the whole ver this thing giving it a mix of blm/whm like traditional ffs but yeah it be nice that they hit harder , but their kit is verstaile only dps with a good high heal ability