Quote Originally Posted by Allegor View Post
I ommited it because I didn't think it relevant at the time. It was because of the Legion artifacts, I'm assuming, when they balanced it so you wouldn't "need" to switch to dps to actually do stuff anymore. I remember loving leveling as holy then, whereas in previous expansions I'd feel forced to play as shadow.

The closest thing XIV has is SCH and SMN - why would you ever want to be a SCH outside a dungeon if you level it for free by leveling SMN, right? except....there are lots of people who don't like SMN, or even have it unlocked, and would rather play SCH at all times. Are their preferences not as valid? and that's not even mentioning that WHM, AST and SGE don't have a dps counterpart to fall onto for 'free leveling.'

That said, I do agree XIV healers dps kit is embarrassing next to WoW's. I think the most simple healer is resto shaman, and even they have a "Fire III" proc to break monotony (not to mention talents to lean deeper into an offensive playstyle) but since both games have fundamentally different encounter designs, it's not like they even have much downtime to say their gameplay is monotonous in the first place
/shrug
"I'd feel forced to play as shadow." But not because WoW's healer toolkit is inferior to FFXIV's. It's because you had easy access to an alternate spec while leveling healing. FFXIV just takes away the alternatives so people level with 1 nuke and 1 DoT.