Quote Originally Posted by Renathras View Post
Not a caricature or ad hominem: What do you think I want? Can you honestly say what it is that I want to see? No "I guess" or silly quips, no straw manning. What is it you think I want to see done to healers? AND to encounter design/overall game design regarding healing - since that's a big part of what I personally think needs to happen?
I can only speak for myself. That being said... What you've described of what I want and what I think about other players above, is absolutely, 100% a caricature of my perspective. Things like "no amount of damage could satisfy me," that I have a distain for players who want to heal, or that I cannot believe that there are people who enjoy healing (It's almost like I've suggested there be a healer specifically designed for players who do not like DPSing on healers countless times at this point.)

The reason it becomes infuriating is that I have explained my perspective multiple times over the years, and still I am grouped into a caricature of the big bad DPS wanabee healers that you are effectively describing. That is why things break down, because after the cordial discussions and calm back and forths, it always ends up coming back to this cartoon villain description sooner or later. And surprise pikachu face, people stomp their foot down.

What you are correct about is that I don't want to be a healbot. That's the entire reason why I fell in love with FFXIV healing in ARR, because I wasn't just a healing turret. That balance of going back and forth between healing and attacking is what FFXIV did right in the beginning. If FFXIV's healers were healing turrets from the start, which they never were, I wouldn't be here today. I wouldn't have kept up with the game probably past 2.0 even. I wouldn't have returned to future patches. I would've just finished the story, played a little of the post game, and I wouldn't have been incentivized to come back, but loving the feeling of playing Scholar brought me back and is ultimately why I'm here now.

As for what I believe you want... You want White Mage as it is now. You'd tolerate a tiny bit of wiggle room overall, like returning Aero III, or giving Holy a single target conditional effect, but there's very little flexibility in what you find acceptable for White Mage. You've talked before about getting nothing from using DPS abilities enjoyment wise, but are also against a healer that buffs instead of attacks, at least for your own personal take. You want to heal more, but also have described content like Barb EX as overtuned on damage, so truthfully I can't make sense of what actual levels of incoming damage you'd like to see because I have no idea what would encourage more healing but also not be overtuned. You would like to see healing emphasis taken away from OGCD healing and redirected to GCD healing, which is something commonly agreed upon in this space, but you also want every GCD heal to be DPS neutral, or at least, conditionally with lilies on White Mage, so DPS neutral with a 20 second cooldown effectively. DPS performance does seemingly matter significantly to you. It's not enough that in anyone's suggestion, simply Glare spamming gets you very close to maximal performance. Or when I suggested including an auto-battle system, your response was something to the effect of "If using Auto-battle is just as optimal or more optimal than playing manually, then sure." You've argued with people over a 1%-3% difference in total potential DPS output.

So from all that, you basically want current White Mage with minimal changes over the rest of FFXIV's lifespan, that's as competitive or the most competitive healer in terms of DPS performance, but you also want that DPS performance to be able to come from healing spells that are more GCD focused and considerably weaker in an environment that has far more frequent outgoing, constant damage, so that you can have optimal DPS through healing, but also that outgoing damage shouldn't be stronger than Barb EX in Extreme and below, somehow.