Disheartened healer annoyed with Shadowbringers' difficulty

[Zoberraz]

Um, hi everyone! I'm very apprehensively posting this. I kind of expect to get verbally mauled for it.

I've been with this game since 2.1 and my main class was White Mage. I always was a terrible tank, always felt being a DPS was lacking in agency vs. group success... so, I felt like I was the most in control as a healer. White Mage, in particular. It made me feel useful, pivotal, so I enjoyed the job.

Stormblood saw me branch out with Red Mage, who'se party utility appealed to me. I leveled Dark Knight due to its story, but still considered myself a rather hapless tank beyond normal dungeon content. With Shadowbringers, I decided to stick to tank and mostly use the Trust system, since it exposed me the least to peer pressure. Any screw-ups would be only on me, and hopefully I'd improve on my own. Dancer was the other class I leveled to 80; as many, I enjoyed how it felt as I played it.

And now, I'm back to my White Mage. So far, I have her leveled to 74. I expected to it being like putting on an old comfortable shoe. It hasn't been. Frankly, it's kind of been awful for me so far. I found ways to enjoy Dark Knight and Dancer; but by contrast being a healer is an unmitigated disaster.

Now, I'm sure others will turn this into a narrative of "You think WHM is bad? You haven't seen SCH/AST!". I'll admit I'm happy about the WHM's kit, and I feel for you... but that's not what I'm talking about. I mean, sure, I want things for the WHM, like for Holy to be at targeted ranged AoE to fill in the void of Aero 3 and be less risky to use; and holy spam is pretty intense on the eyes (especially considering the lower MP cost seems to encourage it)... but in general, I'm happy with WHM. But that's beyond the point I want to make.

Healing since Shadowbringer is just so difficult! I won't claim to be the best healer ever, but I generally handled anything non-Savage/Extreme dependably. There are instances where I've felt powerful as a healer; like, keeping other parties of an alliance alive alongside my own in 24-man raids.

But now, it just feels so grueling! There's this sense of difficulty that makes encountering a single group of enemies rather painstaking; Divine Benison and regen on the tank, drop assylum and then I try to Aero the four enemies. After 2 Aero cast, my tank is at half-health and I go "whoa" and try to double-time my heals on him. That's... 6 seconds and suddenly we're in trouble. Then I heal him - and I do have the tools to heal him - but the urgency of it is startling.

And unforgiving. What if I felt we were doing fine, I cast a third aero, and suddenly he's only at 1/4 health thanks to a critical hit? What if I meant to cure him, mistargeted and the Cure ends up on me? (healing in a panic just on me happens; and realizing it is often too late.) What if I'm busy doing Esuna on a Poison, and he suddenly gets a critical hit? Not that I was that much of a screw-up, but there's a clear sense of 'unforgiving' being present now.