Role actions are lazy, a form of job homogenization, and a cause of hotbar bloat.

[KihyiFelhede]

Don't really see where the hotbar bloat idea is coming from. You can just drop the action if you don't use it. I never have Lucid Dreaming on my BLM hotbars, for instance. Sleep/Repose is also one I don't put on my caster hotbars unless there's a mechanic like in Baldesion Arsenal where it actually has an effect. If there was a job specific Esuna for each healer it would still take up the same amount of hotbar space, no? Look at tank stance. They all have an enmity increasing action that takes up one hotbar slot, the only real difference is flavor.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Shirk is such a bloat ability that casual player won't even use it because there is no reason to use it other than to grief other party members. Now if Shirk had MORE effects based on tanks and non-tanks, THEN it wouldn't be AS MUCH of a bloat ability... but as it stands, Shirk is useless in non-high-end raid content...

As for role stuns and interrupts, they are invalidated BECAUSE White Mage EXISTS with it's AoE stun, making the OTHER healers obsolete by default in dungeon content, which is MOST of Final Fantasy XIV's MSQ content, and White Mage's since their inception have conditioned ALL players to not use defensive cooldowns because the White Mage stunned everything so it doesn't matter...

As for why Arm's Length and the role based damage reduction abilities aren't 100% obsolete is because MOST if not ALL BOSSES are immune to stun and there is the off chance that the boss has a knockback mechanic...

Esuna is obsolete because there is nothing TO cleanse, and the only way to fix that is by making damage down stacks, healing down stacks, vulnerability up stacks, and doom stacks cleanse-able, make an AoE Esuna, and have both Esuna spells also have a cure potency...

True North is also bloat mostly because you never have enough charges, and the recast timer is too long with the duration being too short, and not enough positionals for it to even matter...

[Shurrikhan]

As for role stuns and interrupts, they are invalidated BECAUSE White Mage EXISTS with it's AoE stun, making the OTHER healers obsolete by default in dungeon content, which is MOST of Final Fantasy XIV's MSQ content, and White Mage's since their inception have conditioned ALL players to not use defensive cooldowns because the White Mage stunned everything so it doesn't matter...

Yeah, no. Holy allows tanks to delay their mitigation-consumption by up to 8 seconds, which matters only if the DPS is poor enough to allow packs to survive past their and their healer's running out of oGCDs, which is rare. Even then, the others have compensatory sustain tools. Honestly, until everyone got their 2-minute big AoE burst skill, banking Blood Lilies during downtime between pulls was the bigger reason to bring WHM, but now even that is of much less advantage.

Esuna is obsolete because there is nothing TO cleanse, and the only way to fix that is by making damage down stacks, healing down stacks, vulnerability up stacks, and doom stacks cleanse-able, make an AoE Esuna, and have both Esuna spells also have a cure potency...

You don't need AoE Esuna nor both the ST and AoE Esuna to have cure potency for Esuna to be worthwhile. You just need threats/debuffs worth spending a non-offensive GCD on.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Yeah, no. Holy allows tanks to delay their mitigation-consumption by up to 8 seconds, which matters only if the DPS is poor enough to allow packs to survive past their and their healer's running out of oGCDs, which is rare. Even then, the others have compensatory sustain tools. Honestly, until everyone got their 2-minute big AoE burst skill, banking Blood Lilies during downtime between pulls was the bigger reason to bring WHM, but now even that is of much less advantage.

So why is White Mage the ONLY Job AND the ONLY HEALER that gets an AoE stun while everyone else either has a single target stun or no stun at all...? Doesn't that upset game balance...? OH, RIGHT! I FORGOT! Dungeon content doesn't matter because of how casual and easy it is... Take away White Mage's stun effect from Holy and suddenly White Mages will complain about actually healing for 8 additional seconds per pull in casual dungeon content, when Tanks and Melee DPS stun SHOULD be 3 charges of AoE stuns, which would be about the same as White Mages spamming Holy for the stun effect in AoE pulls... Probably... but this assumes people actually want that...

You don't need AoE Esuna nor both the ST and AoE Esuna to have cure potency for Esuna to be worthwhile. You just need threats/debuffs worth spending a non-offensive GCD on.

The cure potency is a bonus for cleansing the debuffs and paying attention to party members... additionally I already provided additional solutions to MAKE Esuna worthwhile to use outside of the cure potency, but I forgot that not everybody plays casually enough to take breaks from the game for long periods of time, and /or not everyone is bad at reading mechanics, and/or some people want to ignore provided solutions so they can needlessly keep the conversation going for 10+ pages... as for having to separate versions of Esuna, it should be self explanatory for a single target and party-wide version, but I will explain anyway; the single target Esuna is for the one person that needs it, with the party-wide AoE is for multiple people that needs it, the cure potency is an extra safety net... though we could have it so that Esuna spells can only cleanse 1 of each stack of debuff to put in a little more effort to fully cleanse the debuff... we could also make it so that Esuna cleanses MULTIPLE debuffs... which, again, assumes people actually want that...

[Chajii]

Separate SCH's Leeches and AST's Exalted Detriment back out from WHM's Esuna, flavour differences are still better even if they have to function in the same way.

[Valence]

WHM has always had Holy, but the sad thing is that SCH used to have an AoE Slow as well (actual slow, not heavy), which was baked being Shadowflare. The devs can bring different effects to healer AoEs when they want, emphasis on the "when they want"...

[ForsakenRoe]

WHM has always had Holy, but the sad thing is that SCH used to have an AoE Slow as well (actual slow, not heavy), which was baked being Shadowflare. The devs can bring different effects to healer AoEs when they want, emphasis on the "when they want"...

They also had a Heavy via Miasma that you could Bane to the whole pack of mobs

AST also had a Stun on Celestial Opposition (which also extended allied Buffs). I guess the lore from the Job quest you learned it from was meant to be that you're 'stopping time'

[Shurrikhan]

So why is White Mage the ONLY Job AND the ONLY HEALER that gets an AoE stun while everyone else either has a single target stun or no stun at all...? Doesn't that upset game balance...? OH, RIGHT! I FORGOT! Dungeon content doesn't matter because of how casual and easy it is... Take away White Mage's stun effect from Holy and suddenly White Mages will complain about actually healing for 8 additional seconds per pull in casual dungeon content, when Tanks and Melee DPS stun SHOULD be 3 charges of AoE stuns, which would be about the same as White Mages spamming Holy for the stun effect in AoE pulls... Probably... but this assumes people actually want that...




The cure potency is a bonus for cleansing the debuffs and paying attention to party members... additionally I already provided additional solutions to MAKE Esuna worthwhile to use outside of the cure potency, but I forgot that not everybody plays casually enough to take breaks from the game for long periods of time, and /or not everyone is bad at reading mechanics, and/or some people want to ignore provided solutions so they can needlessly keep the conversation going for 10+ pages... as for having to separate versions of Esuna, it should be self explanatory for a single target and party-wide version, but I will explain anyway; the single target Esuna is for the one person that needs it, with the party-wide AoE is for multiple people that needs it, the cure potency is an extra safety net... though we could have it so that Esuna spells can only cleanse 1 of each stack of debuff to put in a little more effort to fully cleanse the debuff... we could also make it so that Esuna cleanses MULTIPLE debuffs... which, again, assumes people actually want that...

Why is AST the only healer with a heal based on a % of damage taken? Why is SCH the only healer who can force a crit?

Because that adds flavor and, in the long run, rarely if ever provides unique capacity. And those two examples offer far, far more than Holy ever has.

Holy is damage and variable sustain (healing done or made unnecessary) together. That's it. And it's just one part of a kit that only need be balanced as a whole against other kits as a whole.

Stop making mountains out sandpaper; it only homogenizes the game even further.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Why is AST the only healer with a heal based on a % of damage taken? Why is SCH the only healer who can force a crit?

Because that adds flavor and, in the long run, rarely if ever provides unique capacity. And those two examples offer far, far more than Holy ever has.

Start taking bets on WHEN the devs make ALL healers have a heal based on a % of damage taken make ALL healers force a crit heal and have ALL healers AoE attack spell inflict stun... or at the very least give White Mage a heal based on a % of damage taken and Sage forcing a crit heal all while Astrologian's AoE attack spell forces inflicts stun because healers being unique isn't balanced...

Because we all know the devs will do it if it means healers are balanced because someone higher up on the corporate food chain tells them to do it... and heed my words.. the higher ups in the corporate food chain WILL tell the devs to do it if it means more money is made in the short term...

[Uzephi]

So why is White Mage the ONLY Job AND the ONLY HEALER that gets an AoE stun while everyone else either has a single target stun or no stun at all...? Doesn't that upset game balance...? OH, RIGHT! I FORGOT! Dungeon content doesn't matter because of how casual and easy it is... Take away White Mage's stun effect from Holy and suddenly White Mages will complain about actually healing for 8 additional seconds per pull in casual dungeon content, when Tanks and Melee DPS stun SHOULD be 3 charges of AoE stuns, which would be about the same as White Mages spamming Holy for the stun effect in AoE pulls... Probably... but this assumes people actually want that...




The cure potency is a bonus for cleansing the debuffs and paying attention to party members... additionally I already provided additional solutions to MAKE Esuna worthwhile to use outside of the cure potency, but I forgot that not everybody plays casually enough to take breaks from the game for long periods of time, and /or not everyone is bad at reading mechanics, and/or some people want to ignore provided solutions so they can needlessly keep the conversation going for 10+ pages... as for having to separate versions of Esuna, it should be self explanatory for a single target and party-wide version, but I will explain anyway; the single target Esuna is for the one person that needs it, with the party-wide AoE is for multiple people that needs it, the cure potency is an extra safety net... though we could have it so that Esuna spells can only cleanse 1 of each stack of debuff to put in a little more effort to fully cleanse the debuff... we could also make it so that Esuna cleanses MULTIPLE debuffs... which, again, assumes people actually want that...

AoE cleanse was a thing a long time ago: Fey Caress. If SE wanted to keep an AoE cleanse, other healers would have received an equivalent instead of it being completely removed in shb.