How would you feel if shields had no upfront healing?

[Semirhage]

Why is the comparison unfair? The point is that the contribution that a job's DPS rotation makes to a player's level of engagement is minor in comparison with that made by difficulty of content. I'm only speaking from personal experience here. Perhaps others have had different experiences. But if someone told me that they found playing DNC in a dungeon even remotely as engaging as playing WHM in an ultimate, I would be very surprised.

If they changed Red Mage's mana building phase to Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt in Endwalker, I would likely drop it like a bad habit. Even if the potency were equivalent, or I were taking it into TEA.

it's not the variety of buttons that matter, it's whether or not you're making choices about them.

I agree! At the same time, perhaps it's my lack of imagination, I struggle to think of the amount of choice available in a rotation that involves, 30 second DOT refresh aside, a single button that you press over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Healers don't need more buttons just for the sake of having more buttons to press. They need more buttons because there's nowhere to go from pressing one. Button.

[AngeliouxRein]

It’s kind of hilarious healer mains always have to argue with people who don’t even main a healer about making the job more engaging. I myself hope that SCH can get DOT back and WHM get water and aero skills added. The only reason why healers are in this mess is because WHM was the weakest of three healers and all SE needed to do was revamp WHM and continue AST and SCH down the paths they were headed. Even on Twitter I have to keep arguing with people who justify healers being this way by saying it’s ‘optional’ for healers to be fun. The colorful words I have to stop myself from saying to these people is getting harder to do lol.

[EaMett]

Shields are almost never required. If they did a change where no direct heals were attached it basically wouldn't change anything.

[RyuDragnier]

Shields are almost never required. If they did a change where no direct heals were attached it basically wouldn't change anything.

It would require them to pump up the damage everybody takes to where they need to be topped off or shielded to survive. But because they're afraid of upsetting the casual players (who they made a lot of the changes in ShB for), that's very unlikely. Which is a shame because I miss the heartpounding action that was HW healing. Remember the dangerous heavy pulls in Neverreap that required the full party to be good in order to avoid wipes? I miss those days so much, everything hit like a truck, tanks had to constantly rotate CDs, and DPSing as a healer was something you couldn't do that often and was basically your reward for good healing.