Famitsu Interview: Tuning encounters for healing

[EaMett]

That's not the impression I get from the game's optimizers. The impression I get is damage first, heals second, and GCDs used on heals is bad, bad, oh so very bad. I mean going by this logic, content can be cleared as is, so why change anything?

Optimizing in FF14 is about how little healing you can do. That's all. At its core, it's completely unrelated to DPS. DPS is only the fallback task because SE gives us infinite mana and doesn't provide anything else to do while we sit around and twiddle our thumbs.

The core of the problem is that the cognitive flow for healers drops off significantly the better you get. This is a design flaw, not a design choice. Cognitive flows should be linear for all levels of gameplay in a well-designed system.
Furthermore. Most people have been asking for more DPS options because SE won't change their encounter design (damage output). It's just never going to happen. Why? Specifically, because they want to be as inclusive as possible. Like others have said in this very thread. It's amazing how many people can't even cover the basics. Switching healing up to a point where it's, say, 30% of our casts (which is crazy low already) is never going to happen because that's exactly what ultimate content is and that's way too hard for your average player.

So people come here with the easy solution of asking for more complex dps rotations. Beginners can ignore it or use them haphazardly and veterans can get a more complex execution for their class. I'm sure anyone here would gladly accept some other form of downtime activity, but we aren't keeping our hopes up.