So, what's your opinion on current healer jobs

[PharisHanasaki]

We're almost halfway through this expansion, what are your feelings on the changes and balances made to the healer jobs?

I'm an AST main since 3.2, back then everyone hated on AST for raiding, and I got kicked a few times over it. WHM + SCH was always preferred.

There are a few things that even now I still don't like about the AST changes:

It's not fair that stun was removed. There is significant advantage on WHM for bigger pulls as Holy stuns enemies, which gives you time to heal your tank and minimize damage.
Celestial Opposition used to stun enemies when you used it.

Insta-heals. Before, AST had faster heals that did not depend on stacks, which clearly gave it a distinctive playstyle. Now WHM has pretty much all instaheals which allow you to deal as much damage as you heal. I do like Horoscope, but there are more instances where single target insta-heals are needed than AoE ones. The exception is raiding.

Double Aspected Benefic cost for Nocturnal. I know they tried to balance out the stance with this, but I'd rather go diurnal and pop Aspected benefic all the time, than run out of mana with shields. Neutral sect can be used for cheap shields. I'd rather not go Noct at all.

The cards. I mean, I understand why the change was made, but the mechanic became so dull and boring, that is more like a chore and less about strategy. You have cards, cards, and more cards, and I feel like I'm not doing well if I'm not popping cards everywhere, I sometimes lose my focus.

I do like Neutral sec. In fact, I love it. You can now stack more shields, with either SCH or a Noct AST.

Don't want to make this any longer, I've been playing more WHM than AST these days because of how overpowered WHM is. But I kinda miss my AST I try to use it whenever I can. I know nothing about SCH, haven't played it much, so sorry if this felt more like a WHM/AST topic, but I'm curious about other healers.

[File2ish]

All healers feel homogenized since 5.0 is my general opinion. Not nearly as fun as they used to be.

WHM got better over all imo since they fixed lilies. Losing Aero III and some other stuff hurt though. I still miss Stoneskin too, but we'll never get that back since Divine Benison is SS on OGCD.

SCH feels worse since it's kit kinda got gutted, and fairies are the same now. And having only one DoT feels bad on SCH. Art of War also feels out of place as an AoE. The Catalyze effect split off from Galvanize also feels bad, I kinda get why they did it, but still.

AST was my favorite healer since 3.0 launch, I didn't start HW story until I got AST to 50. Was my main even when it was utter garbage. Loved the lore, loved the aesthetic, loved the abilities. 5.0 made it a shell of what it once was trying to balance it. I get that it needed to be balanced, was too bad early on and too good after the buffs in SB.

But I miss the old card system most of all. Balance was the best card no doubt, but every card had a niche it could fill in and it felt good finding a use for it (and bad if it felt wasted, but that's how it should go in a random deck of cards). Now it just feels like Balance for everyone with a generic get 3 different symbols for MORE BALANCE! I hope 6.0 fixes the cards at least, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

[Vyrerus]

I haven't touched AST since 5.0.

SCH and WHM feel pretty much the same as they always have, except for aesthetic difference in their spells, less DOTs and Fairy management on SCH... I do like Art of War, and I like the split shield mech allowing you reapply galvanize if the first half of the shield breaks. Since we can force crit now every 90 secs or whatever the CD on that is, kinda makes sense that it'd be weaker, but I kind of hate that they adjust the potency of Adlo and Succors shields a lot, either up or down depending on demand and what they're thinking.

WHM is the least changed, SCH the second least changed, but like I barely even want to look at AST. The card change upset me. Everything else I've heard hasn't made me want to pick it up either. I'll get around to it sooner or later to get my Amaro, but whereas I used to be willing to heal Savage on AST, I don't think I'll even want to use it for general dungeoneering unless they change the cards back.

[PharisHanasaki]

All healers feel homogenized since 5.0 is my general opinion. Not nearly as fun as they used to be.

This is what I wanted to say but didn't. They're not fun anymore.
The old AST was fun, I feel like true main AST didn't complain, but everyone else did and they tried to please the masses.
No job was perfect, but that made it fun.

Old cards where fun, now I feel like I'm in vegas trying to get 3 different symbols for max damage.

[elioaiko]

This is what I wanted to say but didn't. They're not fun anymore.
The old AST was fun, I feel like true main AST didn't complain, but everyone else did and they tried to please the masses.
No job was perfect, but that made it fun.

Old cards where fun, now I feel like I'm in vegas trying to get 3 different symbols for max damage.

This. While I understand that AST's cards are easier to balance now, I feel that AST suffers from its because instead of feeling good about having a clutch pull with Sleeve Draw like a poker game, it feels like a slot machines trying to line the perfect seals for max damage and their gimmick feels more catered to that of more damage instead of trying to make what you pulled work.

Every part of AST felt good, it was busy, rewarding and on-the-fly decision making, especially with the buff extensions.

On top of that, AST's MP recovery is very bad, especially in Nocturnal. Idk if making AST suffer from having raid buffs by forcing piety melds is the tradeoff but it's not really fair. It's like saying WHM shouldn't ever have utility because it's heals are so strong. It doesn't really make sense, WHM can have limitless MP but AST shouldn't be constantly starving. It feels so horrible when I have to multi raise or if my AST cohealer has to and can't heal because they're OOM.

As for the other healers, WHM is the only who benefitted the most but I guess there was only one way if it was already at rock bottom. Lillies are much better and needs to be develop more (less clipping please). Aero 3 and elemental spell loss hurt as well.

SCH is in a weird place for me because there were things I miss and things I don't miss. The loss of Bane and the other dots really suck. I thought it was nice that it's kit revolved around DoTs instead of direct damage so it can weave often. The fairy change was dumb though, since the fairy is insanely unresponsive and will eat CDs. The fact this hasn't been addressed is problematic. Overall I think nerfing the fairy was a bad idea because it just becomes a glorified regen. I also though Selena becoming Eos's skin was a lazy move as well.

[Recon1o6]

Healers have been destroyed, homogenised too much and are tedious to the point I and quite a few others have downed healing tools to the point I made a thread summarising the current issues in the healer forums thats been very popular
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-healer-issues

There is also a 54 page thread of healers having quit

as for me personally

AST has lost everything. Its really unfair we lost our stun but thats barely scratching the surface.
Where's our selection of 6 useful buffs and ways to use them? our time dilation and other extenders? Our mp recovery? why is nocturnal sect STILL inferior instead of equal to diurnal?
Gravity is still pitifully weak, Disable and Stella are still missing. Our cards are dead to be replaced by "muh deeps" cards that do nothing without a parser. Its current system is outright harmful to controller users and should also be removed. For that matter why are the minor arcana better than the actual cards? that's the point of minor arcana- they are useless, not better!
Scrap this stupid seal system and give that to Chemist in 6.0 as its a much better fit for a job mechanic (3 ingredients and poof! potion)

WHM is barely a step up from SB in terms of fun, its just the other two have been gutted so badly, its potency and damage are high and its easy to pick up we have an abundance of whms. Its lily system is working at last but the removal of aero 3, unneccesary holy nerfs and removal of its self buffing playstyle and being treated as a tutorial healer needs to end. It needs more complexity and to have wind/earth and water magic again. Yshtola gets Quake, Tornado and Flood, why can't we?

Conjurer is the tutorial healer NOT white mage

Scholar needs her fairy back as an actual pet, not a baby regen. BOTH of them, and fix the issues with it ghosting, glitching etc. It also needs its entire downtime gameplay back, dots, bane, debuffs (including shadowflare from 2.0!)
The capstones need some serious adjustments, so they synergise like other jobs do, it needs something doing to it so double scholars isn't such a nightmare.
It also needs some sort of glamour system to carbuncles

[StrumerJohn]

Everyone is writing so much when it's simple: they all boring copies of each other with, now, very minor specializations.

WHM is the best feeling out of them all, SCH is a emptied out shell of its old self, and AST is clippy and crampy.

[Seraphor]

AST needs some QoL changes to the card system, especially where Sleeve Draw is concerned.
Nocturnal sect also needs some changes. The current MP costs of Aspected spells, plus the backwards Collective Unconscious, are too prohibitive.
SCH needs a more interesting DPS kit.
And it would be nice if they each had some kind of crowd control similar to WHM's Holy stun. e.g. Give Gravity a Slow effect, and Art of War and damage down like Reprisal.
Or just remove stun from Holy if they want to make CC a tank job.

Apart from that, I think they're pretty well balanced and are different enough from each other. When I switch between healers, I don't feel like I'm playing the same jobs.
Same with Tanks, I don't feel they're too similar either. It always takes me a while to adjust when switching between tanks or healers, just like changing between DPS jobs.

[Allegor]

AST


SCH


WHM

[BlitzAceRush]

Guess I'll be the odd one out as I enjoy Healers currently, I mained healing since ARR but dropped it in SB as I wasn't a fan of the changes and took up Tanking.
However, ShB brought me back to the role, now I split my time 50/50 with Tanking and Healing.

WHM: Pretty much feels the same, but I enjoy the lilly changes the flow of using them to heal then getting the blood lilly and beating the boss over the head with it.

SCH: Was my main and rason I dropped healing during SB, I really love it again, seraph is awesome and I thought I'd hate art of war but I've really come to appreciate being able to move about while I aoe and while it dosen't have a dot on it like misasma 2 so I don't to have to run right up to the boss anymore.

AST: Was my least played pretty much solely due to the cards, I hated them. Thanks to the new cards I actually play AST now outside of simply levelling them and ignoring them. I no longer frown at a card because it isn't what I want as even if it is, I can make some use out of it.

All in all I've had lots of fun healing in ShB, I certainly agree the classes could do with a little more distinction, perhaps take a page out of WoW's book where the different healers have more varied means of healing beyond just focuing on Shield and regens, but overall I am satisfied.