Quote Originally Posted by Orbus View Post
Sure they could have buffed it.
They could have done it SB and they could have done it in ShB.
But they didn't and were never going to, the fact that they outright removed it is proof enough of that.
They don't like significant and reliable self healing unless its a healer because they don't want you to cheese your way through your punishment for screwing up, it's the same reason potions have never and will never restore enough hp to matter in raids or trials.

Red mage is a special case though.
It goes against what I said above, but take those things away and it's not a red mage anymore.
Frankly I always disliked that Red Mage had Vercure because so many players don't respect it as a clutch utility but instead take it as license to waste time backseat healing in situations that don't call for it. Similar issue with Paladin's Clemency, but at least that one has enabled them to set off their own Divine Veils and provided sustain in event of healer death or MP starvation.

If you give your average player a spell or ability, chances are that they are going to assume that it's there to be used, and Drain is one of those spells that muddies the waters and gives less experienced players a skewed notion of what their class and role should be doing. Clearly there are players in this thread who fully understand the proper context for skills like that, and I can get their perspective even if I have never shared it (e.g. again, Drain was so horribly bad at both things it purported to do that I had no use for it, period). Vercure isn't going anywhere because players expect Red Mage to have White magic, and thematically this seems to require that they have a heal. At least it's actually a somewhat effective heal, so the problem isn't with the skill but with the players who misuse it.

Finally, the other big reason I dislike spammable healing skills being granted to non-healers is that healers in this game have complained for years that there isn't enough healing to do, which is one of the central points of the never-ending and tiresome healer DPS-or-not-to-DPS debate. If you don't need to heal as a healer job, you should be hitting something; however, players who purely want to heal and don't want to delve significantly into DPS gameplay while on a healer are left twiddling their thumbs and being dead weight when healing requirements are easily satisfied. In this somewhat strict trinity model, when tanks and DPS have viable, spammable heals, you often end up with a lot of confusion and inefficiency as other roles drop their actual jobs and overlap with the healer.

In solo content, a healing chocobo is pretty overpowered, and the solo duties for DPS are designed not to require player sustain. It's not wrong for people who liked Drain for some reason or another to ask for it, but I think it's better gone.