#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Lyth]

...

The problem with support design is that most skill checks are pass/fail. Once you are capable of passing that check, there isn't really anything else that you can offer as a player outside of optimizing your DPS. That may seem challenging to you as an individual, but when you look at the subset of healers participating in a given content level (i.e. Savage PF or Dungeon Roulette DF or whatever you're specifically interested in), you'll find that everyone who shows up can do the check to the same level of competency, leaving little in way of differentiating skill.

This is coupled with the fact that there are numerous redundancies in place to ensure that you meet those support checks collectively as a group. Even if your healer dies, your tank can just take over and shield/heal the group while keeping themselves up. Even if your tank dies, there's a second tank waiting to replace the first one. Classically, the design would be if your healer dies, your tank goes down nearly instantly after, and then the boss oneshots everyone else with a chain of autos.

Modern design breaks this interdependence, such that everyone is playing a single player game. The end result is that supports are less valuable, and DPS are much more valuable. Healers are hit the hardest by this because they're the most support-orientated role in terms of action counts (to the point that they have very few actions in their damage rotation), but a lot of that support functionality is cross-covered on other roles to the point that none of it is truly 'essential'.

Broadly speaking, there are a few commonly suggested directions. The first is that we give healers more engaging damage rotations, so that once you pass the base healing check for a fight you have room to optimize. A second is that you change the job balance and fight design such that those pass/fail skill checks become more healer dependent and less open to cross-compensation from other roles (i.e. increase outgoing damage, decrease self-sustain and access to raise on other roles). A third is that you develop the support functionality of healers in other ways that lends itself to optimization, such as movement tools and speed boosts. There are a lot of different opinions on this, which makes it difficult to get a consensus.

I'll also say that what you're seeing in this thread is actually just the natural consequence of the game's current design direction. If there's no skill-based value in playing a healer, then people move over to roles where their skills will be better appreciated. Those who can make the switch to DPS will switch. What you're calling a strike here is really just people openly acknowledging that they don't have to be locked into playing a role that isn't valued. Supports are probably more likely to consider themselves to be 'career tanks' and 'career healers'. But once you make that switch, you're much less likely to come back. And a trinity design game cannot afford to lose those players.