Getting to Know You (Healer Gaming Styles)

[Erakir]

1) How long have you been playing?
FFXIV since 2.3 or 2.4. Can't remember which. A few months before Final Coil released.
Healing since EQ in 2000.

2) Do you use controller or mouse/keyboard?
M/K, though I'm very glad this game is designed so well to accommodate both as much as possible.

3) Do you find healing too boring, too hectic, or just right?
I find healing too simple. This stems from a variety of factors, but includes
-An overabundance of strong healing cooldowns
-Static fight design
-Generally, a continuous removal of healer weaknesses across the board (MP Management, etc).
-Healing tools that do not interact with one another in any significant way
-Filler game (mostly via DPS) that's become even less interesting as time has gone on.

This has led to gameplay where our new tools do not augment our toolkit - they straight up replace older abilities outside of emergencies. Seems every expansion we just axe another from the list, putting another ability in the "bad spell" category due to getting something new. This expansion, due to lily rework, it was regen for WHM - our bread and butter in ARR.

On top of the static nature of our encounters, the more things go right, the more the meta has become never clip, never stop nuking. I don't play healer because I enjoy trying to robot a fight as down to the excel spreadsheet as I can. I'd play DPS in games if that was my goal. I play healers because I enjoy having numerous tools to try to best apply to numerous situations, not so I can play rotate-the-CD. Unsurprisingly I enjoyed EQ Enchanter & Bard a lot.

There is room for healer engagement to increase without making healing normal mode content difficult for lesser skilled healers. The skill floor is VERY low right now, and you can tinker with everyone's kits while not raising that floor. You reward the healers who do optimize their kit for the situation, not wipe normal mode groups due to a healer using their base kit. It doesn't even need to be that much. We'd jump through twice as many actions per minute if it increased our damage by 10% while leaving our healing potential similar.

4) Based off question 3, which content are you referring to.
All that I've done, although I haven't personally done ultimate, and I also do not think someone should have to do ultimate to find enjoyable gameplay for an archetype.

In all content I am only engaged when things start going wrong - Up to a point due to savage's eventual design of making wrong things lead to more and more guaranteed wipes.

Due to the wide variety of skill in duty finder this means I'm most often engaged in random trial/raid roulettes - but again, first people have to start making mistakes. A lot of them.

5) How many healers have you maxed and which is your preferred to play? Which is your least preferred?
Leveled all, WHM is my favorite. I have personal investment in the job since FFT so that's a large part of it, and it still feels like due to lily nuance in less-ideal groups I have planning to do. I don't get to use my lilies for ideal weaving/movement spots most of the time.

AST is my least favorite. I don't feel like I have any significant constraints to play around, and solving those puzzles is what I find enjoyable. Cards make me press buttons and at the top end optimizing those in line with personal DPS buffs would be much more engaging, but the more general card-usage isn't that special. I enjoyed it more when it had the chance to run into MP issues. Not having Cure 3 in duty finder content does come into play now and then though.

SCH is in the middle. It's very flexible in theory. It's the practical application that makes it feel like a touched-up classic car. It works - it performs pretty well - but you're constantly flipping levers and switches in the driver's seat. They're not hard, there's just a lot of them and you gotta remember where they are - and we already know how that feels with weaving on SCH right now. I can go 85 on the highway, but I can do the same on AST with cruise control in comparison.