Hey everyone, my name is Ebion Glimmergaunt and I started playing FFXIV at the end of Shadowbringers. My first full expansion has been Endwalker. My current main is Sage and this expansion I completed every Savage tier as well as all dungeon and extreme battle content. Formerly, I was a veteran mythic World of Warcraft healer. I've been raiding in MMOs since I started playing them, healing almost always - It wasn't until Battle for Azeroth that I finally got my first Cutting Edge achievement for clearing a mythic end-boss before the next content patch. Just to be clear on where my perspective is - I do not believe simplified damage is an issue for healers at all.

Let me be clear, I'm not saying that healers shouldn't be doing damage, much the contrary, I think every player in the group should be contributing as much damage, healing, and utility as their characters allow at all times; rather I believe that healers are already primed to have a lot to do in every situation. The problem is, in easier battle content, such as normal, non criterion dungeons and in some cases extremes, there's simply not enough of a healers main role capacity, that being HEALING, to actually be done. There's simply no rot damage, no environmental hazards, nothing of note to make a healer actually heal outside of teammate stupidity or regular boss mechanic intervals.

Having powerful oGCDs isn't an issue either - these tools are balanced around more difficult content. Ironically, if you're a good enough player to utilize all of your tools and you're not participating in more difficult content, you're really just hurting yourself. Incidentally, I don't actually believe any of you who are advocating for the removal of tools and adding more random damage buttons actually believe it would make the game better, I really just believe you think it would make YOUR game better. The problem is, if dungeons and extremes and other easier forms of content were as difficult as you want them to be for your own amusement, the game would die because most of you and your friends would start crying that it's too hard and quit. It happened in WoW when they cranked heroic dungeons to 11 in Cataclysm - casual content HAS to be easy, or the casual playerbase leaves.

TL;DR - The healer strike temper tantrum is ridiculous. Healers are fine, if you don't feel challenged, try more difficult content. If you still think it's "too easy" then go find a better game. There's a cool indie title called Mini Healer you might like.