Yeah…

That feeling when a game you love gets destroyed due to unfortunate decision making is rough. But I want to focus in on the fact that you mentioned the game you use to play sounds like it was designed from the start for healers to function that way. As in, the developers knew from the start healers would have to focus on healing. The same as the games I played where the developers knew damn well healers would be required to DPS. Hence the games we played designed their healers accordingly.

If this game was designed for healers to only heal and it actually worked out that way, I would not be here asking for more DPS skills. Probably asking for more ways to buff a party or something but I otherwise wouldn’t be bothered by all the heal spells we have now. But that’s not how this game was designed and on top of that the game itself encourages you to DPS in between. WHM for example has a whole history of apparently fighting against BLM during the Magi war. The way that was being described in game would have you think WHM back then had a ton of offensive skills to fight off a raging BLM. Otherwise, how else would you survive a battle against a BLM? Heal yourself until you were tired meanwhile BLM has an infinite pool of MP? Someone was taking those BLM out as a WHM and there’s no way spamming holy was enough. SCH has a story line that was also all about military combat and what not.

If it’s not the lore that tells you, then it was the hall of novice. And if you started this game from at least back in HW, the jobs themselves didn’t have anywhere near as much heal spells as we have now. Something at all times , whether you ignored it or not, was telling you to do more than heal. I stayed silent this whole expansion about the amount of heal spells we have simply because I assumed, especially when Nier got added, healers would have a reason to use all those spells. But not even raiders fount a use for their whole kit. As if the developers just straight up forgot their own game wasn’t designed this way to begin with.

I wouldn’t mind playing a healer that only heals as long as the game gives me a solid reason to use at least half my kit at all times. Hell, I wouldn’t even be here commenting if that was the case. But SE is way too focused on keeping this game accessible to only one crowd and not taking advantage of the thought of creating different play styles across all the jobs. At least this way, there wouldn’t be as much healer rage if it was done that way. And it would cater to a larger demographic of different gamers. But that seems highly unlikely unless Endwalker changes the difficulty that allows healers to put their entire kit to use.

Until then, even the healer mains who want to “just heal” are going to see the problem and eventually get bored as their skills increase. Something gotta give. Either we get more utility or they start adding in encounters that actually require healers to heal. One or the other needs to happen.