Has anyone quit healing?

[ForsakenRoe]

Hello, I have returned after quitting the game after 6.2, friend of mine paid my sub for a month since he hasn't finished shb story let alone ew and wanted a friend

Thank you for your attempt to get Yoshi-P to explain what they're planning to do for healer role. At least you got him to give us a new meme (go play ultimate). Hope you can wrangle an answer out of him next time!

[fulminating]

I mean yoship came out the other month and begged people to try healing because it was such an issue. I would like to believe that cbu3 has better data than lucky banjo.

[Jybril]

FIX AST. FIX AST. FIX AST.FIX AST. FIX AST. FIX AST.FIX AST. FIX AST. FIX AST.FIX AST. FIX AST. FIX AST.FIX AST. FIX AST. FIX AST.FIX AST. FIX AST. FIX AST.FIX AST. FIX AST. FIX AST.FIX AST. FIX AST. FIX AST.FIX AST. FIX AST. FIX AST.


@Title - Yes.

[IDontPetLalas]

As someone who used to main AST, my "fix" AST would include giving back nocturnal sect ( the odds of this are probably 0.0001%) and a modest inclusion of some burst DPS option so that I would have some sense of character progression from 1 to 90 other than some pathetic change to dot potency, given that there are so many heals. I don't think any AST complains about the heal and mitigation options in most content.

I could go on with minor arcana (currently - blech) , and I'm sure that other people would like changes to cards, however at this point I'm more of the opinion that the design rework is already in place and I just hope it hasn't been "summonerized".

[Recon1o6]

As someone who used to main AST, my "fix" AST would include giving back neutral sect ( the odds of this are probably 0.0001%) and a modest inclusion of some burst DPS option so that I would have some sense of character progression from 1 to 90 other than some pathetic change to dot potency, given that there are so many heals. I don't think any AST complains about the heal and mitigation options in most content.

I could go on with minor arcana (currently - blech) , and I'm sure that other people would like changes to cards, however at this point I'm more of the opinion that the design rework is already in place and I just hope it hasn't been "summonerized".

I think you mean Nocturnal sect. Neutral is still around.

But yes, this is almost exactly what I would like too

-Cards returned
-Noct sect and time dilation returned. If possible Celestial opposition reverted too
-Small dps rotation or burst of some kind

To make room, delete/merge some of the ridiculous heal options

[IDontPetLalas]

I think you mean Nocturnal sect. Neutral is still around.

But yes, this is almost exactly what I would like too

-Cards returned
-Noct sect and time dilation returned. If possible Celestial opposition reverted too
-Small dps rotation or burst of some kind

To make room, delete/merge some of the ridiculous heal options

Yes thanks that was a typo - it's been too long!

[ASkellington]

As someone who used to main AST, my "fix" AST would include giving back neutral sect ( the odds of this are probably 0.0001%) and a modest inclusion of some burst DPS option so that I would have some sense of character progression from 1 to 90 other than some pathetic change to dot potency, given that there are so many heals. I don't think any AST complains about the heal and mitigation options in most content.

I could go on with minor arcana (currently - blech) , and I'm sure that other people would like changes to cards, however at this point I'm more of the opinion that the design rework is already in place and I just hope it hasn't been "summonerized".

Eh I complain about there being too many but that's a problem that isn't unique to AST.

Agree that Nocturnal Sect should come back and have us stance dance (remove Neutral). If we want access to shields we switch. In combat. Like we always should have imo. Celestial Opposition, Celestial Intersection and Collective Unconciousness already change underneath Noct and I would only make it so that only CU under Diurnal has the Regen while Noct has the Mitigation on it. If they also want Macrocosmos and Exaltation to also change underneath Noct I won't say no.

If they wanted they could tie the new card system with it so that when you draw for a lack of the better term one of the 3 seals you get which ever is on its respective sect. (We'll say Noct has Bole/Spire/Ewer while Dirunal has Balance/Spear/Arrow for example).

Please remove Astrodyne in its entirety. We have enough buttons to press. Also remove Undraw if there is going to be nothing tied to it (no MP regain for example like Draw has). And Synastry... for the love god PLEASE let it work on our single target healing abilities (Exalt, CI, ED) AND also apply the regen affect (and/or shield with Noct/Neutral) from A. Benefic ffs.

[Renathras]

Edit: the current situation is, yoshida knows that a lot of Ast's left because of the cards and healer dps removal (see shb launch interviews)
He genuinely didn't think healing is so easy (Eden interview and EW q&as)
On some level he knows there's widespread dissatisfaction in the role (lowest player count and falling. Feedback he's received states players like the increased healings contradicting his thinking that its too hard)

If one was to be charitable, then he's just not connecting the dots.

I honestly think this is the most accurate take with ONE caveat:

The Healer community is not one monolithic block. Yoshi P recognizes that. Some people like the status quo as it is, some people want to do more healing (required/complexity), some people want to do more damage (required/complexity), and some people want to do more damage and more healing (both). I think Yoshi P recognizes that and isn't sure how to appeal to everyone at the same time.

I've multiple times in this subforum proposed making an approach that appeals to everyone - have one Healer keep the 1 button spam and straightforward healing kit, have one have a more advanced healing and buffing kit, have one have a more advanced damage kit, and have one have a more advanced both. In this way, everyone could/would be satisfied by playing the Healer that plays the way they desire to engage with the content. This is constantly shot down as "You want carries" and similar nonsense, but there's a reason I present it, and it's because of how diverse the Healer community ITSELF is. We don't have 100% or even 99% of Healer players that want more healing, but nor do we have 100% that want more complex rotations, and we have a large amount that are at least satisfied with the status quo. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a convenient way to satisfy all of them at the same time...

But I don't think Yoshi P has figured out what different Healers like, and he gets questions from different segments of the Healer base - some that want more complex damage and some that would quit the role were that the case - and he's confused because, as a non-Healer, he doesn't have personal experience to draw on there, and he doesn't know the Healer divisions well enough to understand that all of these exist at the same time, or how best to appeal to the various Healer factions without alienating the others.

As you say: Many Healers like the increased healing requirements, but you have people wanting more complex damage rotations insisting everyone hates them (since if the more intense healing catches on, that shoots down their chances of getting their desired damage complexity changes and would invalidate their argument that no one wants it and that the game can't work with it as the typical encounter design model).

The answer is: We all exist and we're all Healers, so any potential solution needs to appeal to all four of the factions.

...and we happen to have four Healer Jobs. It's like the stars aligned but no one's figured it out yet. It's like that scene in The Matrix 2. "Three ships. Three objectives." It's convenient to the point of practically fate...

As someone who used to main AST, my "fix" AST would include giving back nocturnal sect

Honestly, as someone who's only dabbled in AST, I fully support this. It was stupid to take away nAST just to add SGE. There's no reason we couldn't have both. "But we would have 2 Pure vs 3 Barrier healers?!?!" "...and this is a problem.......why?"

I don't think any AST complains about the heal and mitigation options in most content.

AST's current kit is honestly amazing, with it being half a Barrier Healer while having nearly as powerful Pure heals as WHM with better MP economy. The Benefic and Helios spell lies are just as powerful as the Cure, Medica, and Regen ones, but cost less MP. On the Healer with better MP generation. That also has buffing utility, a mitigation up 2x as often, and a partywide 2 min Barrier CD (as well as a single-target barrier every 30 sec). It's honestly stupid good in terms of its healing kit.

Am I the only one who thinks PvP healer design is light years ahead of PvE? You have like 4 abilities yet they’re more interesting and diverse than most of what we have in PvE. And most important there’s a great balance of offense and support without making the jobs feel too far removed from the ‘healer’ role.

Yes and no. It depends on the Healer. And it's a three part issue.

1) All your abilities in PvP have low CDs. Even the LBs often have low CDs, 60-120 sec or so. This means you get to press more interesting buttons far more often than PvP encounter designs allow for. Seraph Strike is an AOE 10% damage reduction Protect for 10 seconds on a 20 CD, allowing 50% uptime on a damage reduction, which WHM would never be allowed to have in PvE since encounters would have to be balanced around you using it on CD, and at that point it becomes like old Protect/Proshell where it's not a bonus you bring to the party but an expected mitigation encounters are based around and where players that don't keep 100% uptime on it are bad and cause wipes.

2) Most PvP abilities are "bundled", for example, Afflatus Purgation is basically laser Misery + Temperance + Medica 2 as it grants both Temperance (sorta...it's more a personal increase, so kind of like Presence of Mind, honestly) and an AOE Regen. Seraph Strike grants Freecure(3)/Afflatus Rapture and Protect (or the defensive part of modern Temperance), with the former on a 60 sec CD and the latter on a 20 sec one. AST's doublecast-with-benefits works honestly like a reverse-Eukrasia of sorts, modifying the PRIOR ability you just used. Adlo is Adlo + Chain Strat (more or less) on a target, and Deployment Tactics is Deployment Tactics + Bane. So you get a lot more mileage out of those few buttons.

3) They actually did what I keep recommending for PvE: They made each Healer a different archetype. SGE in PvP isn't a healer. SGE in PvP is a DPS. Not in the "Green DPS" sense; it's just a straight up DPS that happens to splash heal onto a single party member and poop out a Panhaima every 30 seconds. On the other end of the spectrum, AST is ALMOST a pure buffer/healer, having only 3 attacks, with 1 tied to a party heal; and it's rather buff-happy with the cards being AOE, Essential Dignity having a built in HoT (Barrier of dualcast), Gravity as a support spell to set up enemies for your team to pounce on and kill for you, and Celestial River to bend fate and the tide of battles in your party's favor. WHM is its normal direct self (except for Seraph Strike, which makes no sense), with an oddly high amount of crowd control for a Healer (which would be useless in PvE boss fights, of course; Miracle of Nature isn't something you'd use on a raid boss, no matter how hilarious it would be, and WHM already has a Stun with Holy...and it doesn't work on bosses). And SCH is a real hybrid support/damage healer with a lot of buffs combined with potent healing and the most direct on-demand healing LB.

Point being: It's broken the 4 healers into a "debuffer/healer", "buffer/healer", "damage/debuffer/buffer/healer", and "damage...that does a little healing DPSer".

.

I do agree with you that ability interactions are what make things interesting. Like DoTs for the sake of "having something to do" are stupid, but DoTs that actually interact with your kit, proc things, can be stacked where you want to keep the stack from falling off, can be burst for additional damage, etc etc; that's interesting.

To be fair to Yoshi P: A lot of people ARE just asking for "more dps spells". Not everyone, but enough to tilt the conversation.

I don't think everyone would care for PvE Healers to be like PvP Healers, and the encounter design doesn't really work with it - Gravity (single and double cast), Miracle of Nature, Afflatus Purgation, and Mesotes immediately come to mind as not compatible with modern encounter design - but porting a little of that to SOME healers might not go terribly.

Very much this. Each healer has its own unique identity, which not only presents options that can appeal to various play styles, but also is fun for those people who are omni-healers and want to mix things up a bit.

Agreed. Ironically, this is the idea I've been pitching since forever that gets attacked, vs the PvP Healer kits, which actually...just do that...which are widely praised. XD If the PvE Healer kits were massaged a bit into being a bit more like the PvP Healer kits, it would basically be to reflect the position I've argued for for quite a while.

[ForsakenRoe]

Gating healing behind dealing damage = bad bad BAD idea.

SGE kind of has this problem with Kardia. "Oh look, lots of damage is going out so you can't cast your DPS spell. Look at these pretty shiney heals. Would be a shame if you...couldn't use them...", only worse, since Kardia is relatively minor (if the alternative is a Eukrasian Diagnosis). But yeah: No. That's horrible design UNLESS you have Patchwerk style encounters that allow the Healers to sit and turret. That kind of thing would work better in a game like WoW or RIFT or something where Healers have time to stand around. Not so much in FFXIV where our dances are complex and...very active.

Translation: People will quit healing in droves when their Tank dies because they didn't have their "being efficient with damage" healing spell available at a critical moment and caused wipe after wipe after wipe and people start kicking and harassing and then bans drop and then PFs have no Healers anymore.

'I can't tell if it's you aren't reading my posts as you reply to them, or if you're reading them, but instead of reading the words I've written, inserting your wild fantasies of the strawman you wish I was saying. It's like DBZ Abridged Goku's perspective showing us how he hears Vegita talk: "Blahblahblahlbahblah, Pride, blahblah PRINCE of all, blahlbahlbah Super Saijin, blah blah blah" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HQUHZ5KyGY ). Like you're seeing my words, but then you insert all these thoughts and emotions packed into them that aren't present in the original nor in any of my overall statements to even give room to think that they would be implied.'

I said that if you don't do damage, the healing can be covered by instead using Medica. Your tank is not going to die because 'you refused to use damage'.

A new HUD element, the 'Nature Gauge' (name is WIP), a simple 0-100 gauge that fills by doing certain actions. Stone/Glare gives 1 point. Aero/Dia gives 1 point on cast, and 1 per tick (5 total over full duration). Water would give 5 due to being used less often than Stone. edit: Forgot dungeons exist, perhaps something for Holy like 'Each enemy hit by Holy grants 2 gauge' so bigger pulls = more gauge per Holy bomb thrown, the 2 instead of 1 would be to compensate for the fact we're probably not multi-DOTting in a pull of 8+ mobs

Upon reaching 50 gauge, you can use a new skill: Blessing of the Elementals (also WIP). This would be a new GCD AOE heal that heals for 500p, restoring 500MP to the WHM, and granting them 3 buffs. These buffs can stack, so if you need to use the skill twice back to back for some insane burst AOE healing, you won't be kicking yourself for losing stacks. These three buffs would be named after the three elements the WHM controls, maybe 'Rage of the River, Ire of the Earth and Wrath of the Winds' or something like that. The three buffs would essentially be consolation prizes so that casting the GCD heal isnt a DPS loss. The 'water one' would turn the next Water/Banish into Flood (yes Banish would go back to being an elemental spell for a second, because our natural roots shouldn't be completely forgotten in favor of pretty lights), 'earth buff' would turn the next Stone/Glare into Quake, and 'wind buff' would turn the next Aero/Dia into Tornado.

The previously suggested 'new skill' I pitched for WHM, that would be accessed by doing damage, was listed as 500p AOE healing. Medica is 400. Plenary adds 200. Heck, Cure3 is now 600p and had it's range buffed. If your party dies because of a lack of healing in that scenario, you should probably look at how you heal and change things around. Doubly so if it's 'now the tank is dead', as you specifically allude to. You have Solace and Cure2, and BOTH are better HPS to use than this tool. And it's kinda hard for tanks to die now, what with all the selfhealing tools they have.

And you really gotta go play/watch current WOW. Stop thinking it's the exact same as how it was back when you played in 'the glory days of Mists'. Disc priest has to stand still to cast it's setup phase, with a bajillion things going on around them. It's still able to function. Paladin's forced to be in melee range (potentially having to peel off cos of 'circle aoe around boss', downtime) to build Holy Power. It's still able to function. Like, here's a boss from the current raid tier, and a POV from the perspective of a Holy Paladin. Yeh, they're melee so the movement doesn't affect them as much, but the point is, look how much you have to move the boss around the arena to make sure the adds are not nearby, and to break the eggs. Meanwhile, In FFXIV we have fights where the boss does literal nothing for up to 40s at a time. P6S is almost criminal for how little you need to move.

You're basing your arguments on things that are not true, and have not been true for literally years. It's no wonder others got so annoyed trying to get through to you.

You're asking to be flooded with more work for no more reward, but that work will still be required. If the Enrages are as they are today, it means everyone else DOES have to do it. That's the problem. Unless the gap is so small as to make it irrelevant. If you only did 5 more DPS than a Broilspammer, sure, we could have that. But you - or others on your side - would endlessly complain about how all your extra work - work you literally asked for - doesn't give you a reward of more damage.

It's like the Misshapen Chair video where he says to change three Healers, leave on the braindead baby healer ("Probably White Mage..."), and that the people with the more complex rotations will just need to shut up and accept they don't do more damage; their "reward" is "not being F---ing BORED".
[/QUOTE]

Then you'll know Mr Chair also asked 'who the f*** asked for this change' when the Kaiten removal occured. Kaiten is busywork, just an extra button that you press before every Iaijutsu. The guaranteed crit change for Midare means that you still do the same damage, but you don't need to Kaiten anymore. Why do people ask for it back so fervently? Because without it, the Kenki Gauge is nothing more than 'can I Shinten yet'. There was gameplay involved with making sure you saved 20 gauge for Kaiten. Did it take any brainpower? No, I'd say it took single digit braincell activity to remember to save 20, but that's still more than what we now have. The same applies to healers. The devs could have made it so SCH had 1 dot instead of 3 in a patch in SB, and rebalanced potencies so we did the same damage. But people would (rightly) complain, because the damage is not the issue. It's how we deal that damage. Imagine if Bunshin was removed from NIN, or Gluttony from RPR, because people complained that it's too hard to remember to save gauge to use them when they come up. The Ninki meter is now the 'Bhava meter' and the... Red Juice meter for RPR is 'Bloodstalk meter'. Just hit it on CD. It'd be so reductive. Maybe you'd argue that'd be better though, idk

It wasn't an issue at launch, though, people were just doing it wrong. I healed P5S in...I think it was week 3 or 4 and I had maybe 2 weeks of tome gear (was out a week or so). I just actually used Regen and Medica 2 and relied on my DPS players - what with being alive and all - making up the difference so we beat the enrage. Oh, I cast a lot of Glares/Dosises as well, mind you. But I didn't play as if I was allergic to GCD heals. It was honestly not difficult to heal on WHM once people figured out the mechanics, and I was even capable of saving people that goofed here or there (the odd DPS that ran through the edge of the green puddle, for example), it just cost GCD heals to do so.

Congrats. I don't doubt that's what you experienced, and what people around you said about how 'hard it is to heal'. But my experience of the tier was different. See, I PF things, so I play with a lot of different people, with different viewpoints, different playstyles. One WHM uses Lilybell for the first raidwide in P8S, the next uses it at the fire/ice of Natural Alignment. Always gotta adapt to things, gotta keep track of not just my own kit, but my cohealer's. Bit more of a challenge than being in VC with a static coheal and asking 'yo when's lilybell up', but why do Savage week 1 if not for the challenge? Anyway, time for backstory. I cleared 5/6/7 week 1, P8S phase 1 before the nerf, and cleared Phase 2 on week 3 (the same week the nerf went live). This was, I think, less because of 'Phase 2 was too hard for poor Samantha' and more 'We can't get to Phase 2 to practice it, because Phase 1 enrage is rolling PF like puff pastry'. This was back when having a RPR, DNC, WAR or PLD was 'lmao disband' tier griefing. I had only the first week of tomes (and was saving them for legs/weapon if I won tomestone, so no tome gear bought) going into P5S, and by P7S, I believe I had one accessory from raid, and some Gloves that were not part of the BIS (they got Piety on them, big sad). At no point during any of my prog, did I hear anyone saying 'damn this is too hard to heal'. Nor was there really any 'oops I didn't heal enough because I was doing damage like last tier'. It was mostly 'oh that hurts kinda more than I expected, OK I'll try to save <mitigation> for that, can we get a <DPS mitigation> there too?' Your view of how things 'are' and 'were' seems to be entirely formed from your own personal experiences. But there's plenty of people who didn't experience what you did, hence why they try to explain that you're not seeing the bigger picture. I had a great time progging this tier. I'd like it if healing stayed this rough. But the resulting damage to PF speaks for itself, so it's likely going to go to somewhere about halfway between Asphodelos and Abyssos for the next tier.

P5S asks for Ilv600, the crafted gear is 610. By having full crafted, we're already outgearing the fight. They ought to consider bumping the crafted gear and normal mode gear down by 10 ilvls, so that the previous tier's savage gear is equal to next tier's crafted. That'd allow for BIS to actually be useful for something beyond reclears/parsing/speedclears, and for the ILV to stop jumping up so bloody far every expansion. We go up by like 20-30 ILVLs during the levelling process, and then a whopping 90 ILVLs because of the 3 raid tiers. Yeh, crafters would be slightly screwed by a change like this (crafted gear is now not as useful) but I think it'd still have a place. If it's equal to the previous tier's Savage loot, it'd be an extra option for stat optimization. EG, if you're a tank and your choice of Boots was Det/Tenacity or Det/Skillspeed (both kinda suck), a crafted set that has Crit/Det boots would still be useful. Also, the fact it can be pentamelded makes it have slightly more potential than the Savage gear. 36 Substat per slot might not sound like a lot, but it can be all the difference at times.

Point being: It's broken the 4 healers into a "debuffer/healer", "buffer/healer", "damage/debuffer/buffer/healer", and "damage...that does a little healing DPSer".

Weird, I see them as 'Damage, and the heal is borderline impractical to use due to tickrate', 'Damage, but as a slow-acting toxin that saps away the enemies resources', 'Damage, with buffs that allow party to deal even more damage (or keep them alive, which means they're doing more damage)' and 'Damage, with incidental healing because of that damage'. AST's the most hilarious example, because Doublecast Gravity into Macrocosmos will halve the HP bar of an entire team. Ironically, the least 'damage' themed of the healers is SCH, and that's not because they don't 'do damage' per se, it's because it's over time, so SCH's kill potential is a lot lower. Hard to burst someone down when your hardest burst hit is the 5k from Broil. But the damage over time of Biolysis is very oppressive.

Try reacting to a MNK enemy diving in and Meteodriving someone on your team. By the time you get a Cure2 cast off, that player's already considered dead by the server. Actually, that's probably not a great example. Because it'd be you, the WHM, that's getting MNK'd. Healing in PVP just doesn't work right, because the server ticks are too damn slow, the potencies of attacks are way too high compared to the heals, and WHM has a bloody cast time for whatever reason when the others don't. Cool, I can stand still in a fast paced gamemode and cast a 1.5s spell to heal someone for 12k. Oh cool, they just got hit by Double Down and it hit them for 12k. That GCD is almost always better spent on damage. If the enemy's dead, they don't do damage to your team anymore. 100% mitigation, they can't contest the crystal, very efficient

[Renathras]

Weird, I see them as...

That's because we see things differently. And you may also be thinking CC while I play Frontlines exclusively.

WHM: Another "set up to knock down" Job, WHM also doesn't have the capability of taking an enemy from 100% to 0% on their own. They have beautiful synergy with their other party members though. Stun an enemy team in a line for your party to either withdraw or kill, an AOE damage to throw to chop down some health so your team can finish them off (or, rarely, getting in a freebie kill from a wounded enemy), a partywide Protect, a partywide Heal, a partywide Regn attached to the stun, a Esuna + Barrier, and a 2 second turn your enemy into a flee. A harmless, little flee...so your allies can kill them without them self-healing to 100% again, which is what would happen if you just used your own attacks on them. WHM can take out targets of opportunity, but seems to work best setting up opportunities for their team to capitalize on.

SCH: Buff team damage, debuff enemy damage, debuff enemy healing, mild healing, damage buffing, speed buff your allies while giving them damage mitigation, and shielding LB with an AOE Esuna (or Wanderer's Paean, I guess, which has an AOE Excogitation attached). SCH is actually the least offensive of all the PvP Healers in a somewhat odd twist. Mummification's power is its debuff, not its 6k damage that requires melee range to even use; Biolysis' damage is, what, 15k or 18k over time? It can be boosted 50%, but the real prize here is the 8% damage dealt Addle you inflict on the enemy team, and it's got a MASSIVE radius when Deployed.

AST: I often keep party members alive with AST's HoT and Barrier. Aspected Benefic is an Essential Dignity with a Regen, and Double Casting it adds a second (slightly smaller) heal with a Barrier. If used when an ally is super low health, you can fill most of their health bar while shielding them from the next attack and having the HoT tick to keep them going. You can provide some pretty ridiculous healing on AST if you're back from the front line and not getting focused, and because its heals are instant cast (unlike Cure 2), you can actually get in clutch heals much more often than you can on WHM. Conversely, it's REALLY hard in Frontlines to catch an entire enemy team in Gravity, especially if you're planning to be close enough to use Macrocosmos. That tends to result in you getting yanked into the middle of the enemy blob by one of their Tanks and then deleted by their party. AST is absolutely a buffer/healer, and Gravity's strongest use is setting up targets for your party to kill - "damsel in distress", I think, is your favorite way of putting it. As you note, it takes off HALF a health bar, meaning you then are stuck spamming Malefics until your party kills the enemies for you while you try to buff and heal/shield them. All those things you said you don't like. And their LB is the most buff/synergy minded one of all the healers: A massive 30% damage taken reduction and damage dealt increase, both of which last for 15 seconds, becoming 10% weaker after each 5 seconds. That's a lot of mitigation as well as boost to your party's outgoing damage.

SGE: No argument there. SGE is the one case of "This is a DPS. You can call it a Green DPS, but it's a DPS." It has no direct heals (the closest thing is Pneuma), and its LB is more of an attack and area denial spell than anything. In theory, it can be used in a "defensive" sense, but in practice, this just means the enemy is going to run into it and be taking chip damage while they try to fight anyway (making it a damage ability) or go around it and try to get more favorable position/pull you out of it/push you out of it (had a MNK do that the other day...perhaps not realizing or not banking on me using the free move to just relocate it to our new position.) SGE is the one of the PvP Healers I can't stand playing.

or keep them alive, which means they're doing more damage

Ah, I see you've found a new way of saying "mitigation" that you can pretend means "damage". That's...literally what the word "mitigation" means, and it's generally considered a form of defensive utility/buffing, not offensive. By nature, something that reduces damage...is defensive. I genuinely don't understand why...well, never mind. Anyway, the word you're looking for is "mitigation".

Congrats. I don't doubt that's what you experienced, and what people around you said about how 'hard it is to heal'. ... Your view of how things 'are' and 'were' seems to be entirely formed from your own personal experiences.

....

That's...literally what you're doing. You're describing how your view was formed...via your own personal experiences. Ahem.

ANY-way: As I pointed out, it was different in different DCs. My first clear, I think the only thing I had was the same thing I always buy first, the Tome ring (since you need two rings no matter what). Otherwise I was in min ilevel gear clearing it. And all I run is PF since I have no Static, as noted. I'll randomly get dragged into things by the FC from time to time, but that's generally once it's been out a while and I've already cleared it myself.

I'd like it if healing stayed this rough.

Great, we agree, then. Though half-way would be fine as well. I'm honestly fine with whichever. Adapting to greater healing needs is fun and not really impossible or anything. Healers in FFXIV have ample tools for dealing with high or consistent damage - their toolkits are arguably built (GCD heals, anyway) around doing so - it's just a matter of making that mental transition and using them. Half-way between P1-4 and P5-8 would probably be fine.

But people would (rightly) complain, because the damage is not the issue. It's how we deal that damage.

I'd be far more inclined to believe this if:

A) Said people were fine with changing 1-3 of the Healers and leaving 3-1 of them alone, since they'd get that "how (they) deal that damage" fix on the one(s) changed, and,
B) If said people didn't also argue that if 3-1 are left alone, their complex one needed to do more damage to "reward" them for it.

Again: You're treating Healers as a monolithic block. We aren't.

I said that if you don't do damage, the healing can be covered by instead using Medica.

Yes, yes, and my point was, locking healing behind dealing damage is a bad idea in general. And one most people (not everyone, but most everyone) agrees is a bad idea. It's why people far more often pitch "damage neutral" or "heal by doing damage" ideas over "damage to unlock healing efficiency" ideas.

Though as I've noted before; all that notwithstanding, SGE already functions this way. It has GCD heals to (in theory) fall back on, but its ideal playstyle is dealing damage which unlocks/provides Healing, it just does so without a separate button press. I suppose you could do something like casting damage spells reduces the CD on Plegma or something (not sure what else they have right now that would really work for "unlocked healing spell that you don't need otherwise"), though that's how SB WHM Lilies worked and it sucked, but maybe something more akin to MCH with Gauss Round/Ricochet, just a healing spell. Or alternatively, make Toxicon an AOE heal. Or make every Kardia proc reduce the CD on Pneuma by 5 sec. I dunno, I'm sure there's some way to do it. Either as an ability anyone can use with a CD but doing your rotation makes it come up faster, or I guess some separate ability. Pneuma would work well because it is damage neutral, meaning when you use it, it's like you're still casting a Dosis (an...AOE Dosis...), but one which gives a party-wide, AOE Kardia (a...rather large...Kardia...)

(The funniest part of Pneuma is it ALSO procs Kardia. I have no idea why, but that amuses me for some reason.)