A summary of healer issues

[Sebazy]

Which is true, because they are never going to significantly change White Mage

And IMHO this is fine as long as it's still viable. SE really should embrace the job system's flexibility and push for diversity within the roles. Switching healers for different turns and content helped keep things fresh and I wonder if that's a big part of why so many look back fondly on HW when it was particularly common around 3.2 to 3.3.

In WoW, if my Shaman was obsolete for some piece of content I was probably going to be sitting out for it, in FFXIV, I just click a button and switch to the job that is more suited. Gearing just isn't an issue in the grand scheme of things. FFXI did well with this concept but FFXIV seems terrified of it.

[Semirhage]

And IMHO this is fine as long as it's still viable. SE really should embrace the job system's flexibility and push for diversity within the roles. Switching healers for different turns and content helped keep things fresh and I wonder if that's a big part of why so many look back fondly on HW when it was particularly common around 3.2 to 3.3.

In WoW, if my Shaman was obsolete for some piece of content I was probably going to be sitting out for it, in FFXIV, I just click a button and switch to the job that is more suited. Gearing just isn't an issue in the grand scheme of things. FFXI did well with this concept but FFXIV seems terrified of it.

Thunderous agreement in theory.

Something just rubs me the wrong way that, from my perspective, healer design "diversity" nearly always means WHM has less-smooth healing, zero utility, lower rDPS, clunkier weaving...when I come to the healer bazaar, I'd like to see what I see in the DPS caster section: several items each suited to their own special purposes for different reasons. In the metaphorical healer section, I've seen two items that look like Kitchenaids with a dozen attachments for doing anything you want, alongside a potato masher that has the dual weakness of doing nothing the other two don't already do (and often better), but it also doesn't bring anything to the table that they don't.

This is going to be the albatross around the healer role's neck forever, mark my words. So long as WHM is cursed to never bring anything unique, healer design is still going to be stumped that for some ~weird~ reason, the community thinks the healer with no unique contribution sucks compared to the others.

[Sebazy]

In the metaphorical healer section, I've seen two items that look like Kitchenaids with a dozen attachments for doing anything you want, alongside a potato masher that has the dual weakness of doing nothing the other two don't already do (and often better), but it also doesn't bring anything to the table that they don't.

This is the best content I've read on the forums for a while++

[Truen]

SE really should embrace the job system's flexibility and push for diversity within the roles.

That will never happen; this dev team is obsessed with homogenization sadly.