A summary of healer issues

[AmiableApkallu]

This is a very disingenuous take. You're siphoning every ounce of nuance out of the discussion and just writing it off as 'buttons.' Why have more buttons when you can have less? Why not just reduce every job down to 2 buttons: DPS get 1 Nuke and 1 DoT. Healers get 1 Nuke and 1 Heal, and Tanks get 1 Nuke and 1 Mitigation. That's just 2 buttons in what currently is in the ballpark of 30. Less buttons is better, right?

Obviously, that's an extreme and hyperbolic example, but you see how sophistic the argument becomes. You need to actually take into consideration what the buttons do rather than just writing them off as more buttons. And it's not just what to they do mechanically, but also what type of experience do they create for the player. The most important aspect of job design--one that is regularly forgotten--is what makes the experience fun and enjoyable, not just effective at clearing challenges the game throws at you. Phlegma may just be "more damage" for example, but the fact that it asks for melee range, and that it provides a flashy explosion dealing more damage makes it a more satisfying pop of serotonin. You may not feel that but most people would.

Too much time currently is spent spamming 1 button on all healers. A couple people may enjoy that, and most might not care much either way, but a significant chunk find it's detrimental to the experience and ruins healer gameplay because the downtime between healing makes the jobs feel like a chore and not a healthy experience.

Or put another way, the debate is about form, not function.

How the jobs function is determined by the game's combat design. Adding more DPS buttons will not decrease the amount of healing a healer has to do. Adding more heal buttons will not increase the amount of healing a healer has to do.

More buttons should equate to more decision, and anything that can be reduced should be reduced.

That doesn't really mean anything, though. If the question is, "What do I do now?", I can reduce the choices to:

- DPS: (1) Do damage.
- Tank: (1) Do damage. (2) Mitigate damage.
- Healer: (1) Do damage. (2) Mitigate damage. (3) Restore HP.

So, by itself, "anything that can be reduced should be reduced" is not a useful design principle.

The fun comes from the form the jobs take. Different forms is why we have BLM vs. SAM vs. …, or PLD vs. DRK vs. …, or WHM vs. SCH vs. …, even though, at the end of the day, they all have to get the same job done within their respective roles.