Quote Originally Posted by Fukuro View Post
Why is this a faulty comparison? Yea they are completly different types of dps, it's exactly that- healer roles are in need for variation - even when u compare the caster dps roles, redmage and black mage feel and play much more different. there are tons of other mmo's doing it already. Maybe rework healers into def/off healers for example? just make them a tiny bit more interesting. the healer roles just feel like a copy past of each other.
DPS need far less mandatory things to be effective at their role. They just need things that do damage or things that briefly make what damage they're doing better. With that, you can get far more variation visually between each DPS role, while having more limited variation across all DPS roles. Ultimately, the end result is at least one damage type in each role: the handgun (red mage, dragoon, dancer in ShB), the machine gun (summoner, monk/ninja, bard), and the shotgun (black mage, samurai, machinist). So trying to compare Black Mage to Bard isn't so much apples-to-apples so much as apples-to-duran in that they're both fruit, but that's all they have in common.

Meanwhile, healers have a lot more things they need to be mandatory like....

a basic single-target heal (Cure, Physic, Benefic)
a basic aoe heal (Medica, Succor, Helios)
a strong single-target heal (Cure 2, Adloquium, Benefic 2)
a strong aoe heal (Medica 2, Indomitability, Aspected Helios)
an offhand heal (Regen, Embrace, Aspected Benefic)
an instant heal (Tetragrammaton, Lustrate, Essential Dignity)
a cheap aoe effect (Asylum, Sacred Soil, Earthly Star)
a basic damage spell (Stone, Ruin/Broil, Malefic)
a secondary damage spell (Aero, Bio/Miasma, Combust)
a basic damage aoe (Holy, Miasma 2, Gravity)
a raise (Raise, Resurrection, Ascend)
an excluse MP generator (Assize, Aetherflow, Ewer card)
a general cooldown (Presence of Mind, Spur, Lightspeed)

a general healing theme (HoTs, shields, alternation) and a supplementary feature (raw healing, extra damage, card system)

Yes, healers are very similar, but they need all those types of spells and abilities in order to function at higher levels. However, you can still get different playstyles, and good healer mains will never play all healers the exact same way despite how much of the healer toolkit is mandatory.