The Healer Issue isn't the lack of DPS Tools

[Kalise]

It's the lack of certainty about having effective and engaging gameplay.

Basically, all the responses about the changes to Healer DPS skills and the pruning down to a bare minimum of a single DoT and nuke skill is due to the concern from the fact that currently, Healer gameplay is 80-90% just DPSing, thanks to ridiculously overpowered oGCD heals and predictable damage bursts.

In this scenario simplifying DPS rotations means simplifying how a Healer spends 80-90% of their time.

If it happens that damage is increased so that Healers spend more time Healing and less time DPSing, that would help alleviate the issue - However, this comes with caveats, such as if damage is so high that you're forced to spam Cure II/Benefic II/Adloquium on the Tank to keep them up that won't feel engaging as that's just mashing the same heal button ad nauseum (To say nothing about how it would feel for a Tank to be so heavily reliant upon heals) as well as the fact that we've no indication that incoming damage will be increased (If anything, the new Tank trait means that damage is being decreased as far as we know...)

This of course, doesn't mean that Healers necessarily need to be balanced around "Dealing Damage" vs "Healing" or that Healing necessarily needs to devolve into spamming your "Big GCD Heal" over and over.

There are alternative ways to increase interactivity with Healers via alternate means.

Such as creating more interesting Healing skills.
For example, instead of just pressing Regen and applying your HoT, what if you had to use a combination of skills to apply your HoT. What if "Freecure"/"Enhanced Benefic" style traits were made into actual guaranteed gameplay mechanics that promote using your smaller heal to access a larger heal (Or one with additional effects). Etc.

You could also allow Healers to do more buffs and debuffs.
This need not necessarily focus entirely around rDPS buffs. For example, being able to buff a Tank with 10% damage reduction is essentially the same as applying a HoT to them is it not? Maybe you could bring back skills like Apocatastasis *Cough*Shell*Cough* and Palisade *Cough*Protect*Cough* for Healers to use. Maybe Healers could be the ones to get things like Addle, Feint and Dismantle. To protect their allies by reducing enemy damage output.
Also, while it may currently be Dancer's "Thing" to be about buffing allies, why can't Healers still also have interactive rDPS buffs? Like what if Chain Stratagem was needed to be maintained by Scholar via GCD's inbetween their healing? What if Astrologian's Cards where interacted with via GCD's between their heals? What if you actually gave WHM something other than just increased potency numbers?

These are merely examples. But the core problem is that Healers want engaging gameplay.

As the game is currently designed, we have no reason at all to expect that ShB will evolve the current combat systems in such a way where this Healer design with neutered DPS rotations would be anything other than a direct downgrade in healer interactivity.

Which is a problem, given how little interactivity there already is with their current DPS rotations due to the current combat systems, where predictable damage and ridiculous oGCD's effectively restrict the amount of actual input needed for effective healing output.

TL;DR:
While many players are complaining about the neutering of DPS rotations, the actual problem is caused by a concern about a lack of engaging Healer gameplay. Healers need to have a more interactive role in the game other than waiting around playing "Simon Says" by responding to scripted damage via the push of an oGCD button.

[Kanitezz]

PLAYING SIMON SAYS! Im so done. Thats such a great metaphor.

[Josco]

You could also allow Healers to do more buffs and debuffs.
This need not necessarily focus entirely around rDPS buffs. For example, being able to buff a Tank with 10% damage reduction is essentially the same as applying a HoT to them is it not? Maybe you could bring back skills like Apocatastasis *Cough*Shell*Cough* and Palisade *Cough*Protect*Cough* for Healers to use. Maybe Healers could be the ones to get things like Addle, Feint and Dismantle. To protect their allies by reducing enemy damage output.
Also, while it may currently be Dancer's "Thing" to be about buffing allies, why can't Healers still also have interactive rDPS buffs? Like what if Chain Stratagem was needed to be maintained by Scholar via GCD's inbetween their healing? What if Astrologian's Cards where interacted with via GCD's between their heals? What if you actually gave WHM something other than just increased potency numbers?

Lol, what is this craziness...a support class using support abilities? Support abilities are for DPS classes.

/s

[loreleidiangelo]

I largely agree with this, except the part that if content hit harder healers would just crutch on "the same healing button" over and over. I think healing buttons in this game are okay, somewhat diversified, it's just that a huge bulk of them are basically used to...maintenance the tank while you spam damage. Asylum being a cooldown you have to rotate regularly because otherwise you OOM healing, that sort of thing, instead of something you drop because "lol stacking regens = more DPS". Synastry would actually get used sometime this century if we actually had to GCD heal lol. Fey Union would be a great healing supplement in a vacuum except again, it's something you put on the tank so you can ignore the tank and DPS. I think healers actual healing toolkits are fine enough if they were forced to be used more, it's just that the gameplay has you using them not to SUPPLEMENT your regular healing, but to replace it entirely because it's sufficient enough. Just a minor difference of opinion here.

This particular semantic aside, I wouldn't be opposed to seeing more general healer gameplay variety outside of "push button, receive heal". Nearly every healer in WoW has some sort of "gimmick" or concept they have to play around to effectively maximize HPS output (beacons on pally, Holy Word CDR on priest, Tidal Waves on shaman, Gust of Mists procs and Vivify cleave from Renewing Mist on monk, the entire Atonement mechanic on disc priest is probably one of the more interesting and complex healer designs I've seen and kudos to the dev team for that). Aetherflow stacks are a good example of this in XIV, but AST has nothing like this (Sect-weaving if they wanted to keep the janky Sect concept in Shadowbringers would have been a neat concept, or changing Noct from a barrier stance to a more card-enhancing stance could have also worked) and WHM lilies were implemented poorly and had a bizarre function (CDR) that just doesn't really work with the scripted fights in this game (seriously why didn't lilies just boost the potency of your lily-costing move? jeez SE).

[Kalise]

I largely agree with this, except the part that if content hit harder healers would just crutch on "the same healing button" over and over. I think healing buttons in this game are okay, somewhat diversified, it's just that a huge bulk of them are basically used to...maintenance the tank while you spam damage. Asylum being a cooldown you have to rotate regularly because otherwise you OOM healing, that sort of thing, instead of something you drop because "lol stacking regens = more DPS". Synastry would actually get used sometime this century if we actually had to GCD heal lol. Fey Union would be a great healing supplement in a vacuum except again, it's something you put on the tank so you can ignore the tank and DPS. I think healers actual healing toolkits are fine enough if they were forced to be used more, it's just that the gameplay has you using them not to SUPPLEMENT your regular healing, but to replace it entirely because it's sufficient enough. Just a minor difference of opinion here.

The general idea is that, if Healing was necessary to be spammed anywhere near as much as DPS gets spammed then it would just come down to spamming healing GCD. But given that the only Healing GCD's are: Smol heal (Cure, Benefic, Physick), Big heal (Cure II, Benefic II, Adloquium), HoT (Regen, Aspected Benefic) and AoE Heal(s) (Medica, Medica II, Helios, Aspected Helios, Succor) then making GCD healing a major point would usually devolve into spamming the most efficient heal skill available. This being something like Cure/Benefic/Physick is MP efficiency is required and incoming damage isn't too great or Cure II/Benefic II/Adloquium if MP efficiency is not necessary and/or if incoming damage is very high.

There just doesn't exist alternate GCD healing buttons to spam. The majority of Healers actual healing buttons are oGCD's, which is part of the reason why this notion of spamming DPS 90% of the time is a thing, because like 90% of your healing skills are oGCD anyway. If a shift was made towards GCD healing, it would quickly become just spamming 1 skill a majority of the time, because that's all that exists, 2 spammable ST heals, 1 HoT you use once every X seconds to refresh and then a bunch of AoE heals that you only use during AoE damage (2 of them being HoTs you only use to maintain the HoT and 1 being a wierd shield skill that can only become a normal heal once per 20s with use of a CD)

[Brandedblade]

So basically just replace one spam spell with another? Ok.

[Melorie]

This. It's not about doing damage, it's about making healing something fun. Healing classes in general needs more gimmicks and be more engaging.

[Kalise]

So basically just replace one spam spell with another? Ok.

Uhh... No?

Replace "Spam spell" with some more dynamic gameplay. Where there is more than 1 optimal button to press for "Filler" between healing skills (Without making healing skills just the "Spam skill")

[Melorie]

Dancer rotation looks, imo, very dynamic. A shame that a DPS got a dynamic rotation full with buffs while we got... well.

[Stol]

I agree that WoW had much more complex healing, coupled with faster gameplay, and don't disagree with any of your points. In fact, I found healing too stressful to attempt seriously in that game. I was much better at being a bear tank, but my main time playing was the end of BC - mid Cata.

There are many reasons that I don't think FFXIV will ever quite reach the pace and intricacy of WoW's mechanics. One being that while the game is played by many on PC, there remains a huge number of console players. Because of the limitations of controllers, as well as less capable hardware, things will always be just a little slower mechanically, and a bit simplified with inputs.

Also, there is a cultural difference between the core audiences that I've noticed over the years. WoW has been around so long that it has a lot of really hard-core raiders and people who are very trained at their classes. FFXIV is quite a bit more tame at the higher level of gameplay, at least as far as what I've seen. I haven't done any raids this expansion, so I can't speak to the top level of play.

Personally, I enjoy healing in FFXIV more than the more difficult rotations of WoW, but I'm also pretty casual these days. I used to play on PC, but have switched over to mouse and keyboard on PS4 Pro, which plays identically. I'm all for anything that makes a job more fun, but I don't think the devs will ever make healing too complex. It's possible that healing is intentionally made to be easier to grasp in order to bring in more healers, though at the cost of interesting interactivity for the more skilled players.