Healing Direction - is the current design balanced?

[Seif]

I'd like to see more polarity in the mages so that we'd have one clear healer class with more spells. Also more healing spells in general. Cure cura curaga curagaja and so on. Also it sounds like mp consumption isn't at all balanced. There should always be a reason to use lower level spells to manage time and mp when there's a lot of people in the pt with semi full hp bars. If the most efficient way to play healer is to spam the strongest spell then the balancing is clearly not done.

[Arcell]

I'd like to see more polarity in the mages so that we'd have one clear healer class with more spells. Also more healing spells in general. Cure cura curaga curagaja and so on. Also it sounds like mp consumption isn't at all balanced. There should always be a reason to use lower level spells to manage time and mp when there's a lot of people in the pt with semi full hp bars. If the most efficient way to play healer is to spam the strongest spell then the balancing is clearly not done.

I don't know how we can get any further defined with the mages aside from making all of their actions class exclusive. Conjurer is quite clearly the defined healer. It has some damage potential but only enough to really allow soloing where necessary. In a party Conjurers will be healing. Thaumaturge has been quite clearly put in the Damage/nuking role. They're about as defined as they're going to get.

As Noctis mentioned above we don't need a variety of healing spells just for the sake of having them. White Mage will bring more options but in the meantime we've got Cure, Cura, Curaga AND Sacred Prism which can turn Cure or Cura into an AoE for the sake of maybe a less powerful Curaga. Options exist but an overabundance of them isn't necessary, especially pre-30. Then add onto that the White Mage job which will be bringing a few more diverse means of curing.