Healers and the trinity feel broken

[Jeeqbit]

To my memory, I think Astrologian's shield sect worked with SCH succor. But i might be wrong on that, it's been like half a year.

It didn't, but it doesn't really matter that shields don't stack. It only would matter in challenging content, where you use a Pure Healer and a Barrier Healer unless you didn't setup the party properly. Even if you have a SCH and a SGE, they are better played as pure healers most of the time because using their shields requires you to stop doing damage.

About the trinity feeling diminished-
Two of the four tanks don't even need healing for half of the games content. I've seen an expert roulette on PF yesterday on Primal saying "this is a message to all curebots saying your services are no longer required".

That has always been true though. I have solo'd dungeon bosses on PLD, WAR and sometimes DRK for years, literally even in Heavensward. For years it's been possible to do most dungeons with 4 DPS. Dungeons are just easy. Someone who is not good at these classes probably would still need a healer and I love that if you are good enough at your class you can overcome an unusual composition.

Sage and whm have all these dps skills, but astro and sch have broil bio/malefic gravity.

Scholar has Energy Drain, Dissipation and Chain Strategem and Astro has Earthly Star, its cards and Divination. Some of them are just buffs that increase damage instead of being an attack themselves, but they are all forms of added damage from a balancing perspective.

[Shougun]

The flattening of the curve was less strong as I thought it would be, so certainly still the whole powercreep kills healer's purpose issue- they also added quite a bit of self sustain on tanks... Which as playing a tank feels amazing!.... but I'm sure is more reasons for healers to feel like "what is my purpose?" "you cast glare" "oh my god. . ". At least until you get a tank that doesn't use their defensive cooldowns .

I like the above idea from SenorPatty on just maybe accepting some nature of that issue and changing some of their skills to be more support based then (and depending on the healer maybe a few more DPS spells). One support skill I still think could get around the issue SE had said long ago about support jobs (referring to the discussion of bard) is by having the skills have goal potency that are not too bad to reach. For example Scholar might inflict a debuff affliction that increases the damage the target receives by 10% up to 1,000 potency, their own spells dealing 25% more damage. Rather than a debuff it can also be buffs, like Sage energizes their special partner causing both to deal 25% more damage up to X potency. That way you can avoid different # of player issues like a buffing job would be more powerful in a group of 8 than 4 if you had no such self balancing designs.

Perhaps with epic echo (glad that exists), and trusts expanding, one might also make the power creep of defense and healing slower than damage (making sure to modify healer damage so that it is unaffected by the slight nerf in healing across the board).

Of course I don't think it should be so hard that a casual player is getting the 'dark souls' experience on each fight lol. Another thing that I think might need a counter-intuitive solution. Currently better players who need harder content get better gear that makes all content easier, giving them awful gear would just never work... but what if gear was more horizonal such that in a set the casual easy to get gear might have the same if not more defense than the hardcore hard to get gear.. of course the hardcore gear would have more damage though (balanced in plateau stepping groups, so there is still some powercreep- and epic echo / trusts still functioning to give players ability to do their own thing). Since technically the better players should be rewarded but probably not with more life / defense, rather more damage. Meanwhile the new players probably should have the more forgiving gear that also doesn't really let them skip any mechanics so they get to see and enjoy the whole picture. Materia can help offset some desires too.

Balance is a very difficult subject . . . A lot of one groups "way too easy, are you serious????" could be another person's "this game is unfinish-able". I don't envy the responsibility of making sure balance is fair lol (love making ideas, but if someone was like "do you want responsibility of balancing the jobs?" I'd be like "... can I make something less catastrophically important first? I want to be able to sleep at night for a little while at least" lol).

[Jeeqbit]

You’re supposed to seraph/panhaima and use cds to pre-shield the raidwides. It doesn’t take that long to apply pre shields that you’d be losing much dps ( especially if you have countdowns before the Fight starts)

Obviously I don't mean Seraph and other abilities because they don't suspend damage. Even if you use shields for the moments when you absolutely need them, there are a lot of healers that will use them for damage that does not require it and could just be healed after. That's why even if there are two barrier healers they are probably going to be fine, because you can play them as pure healers very easily.

[AlereRaeder]

I would call them support skills but the card game for AST does at least help fill in some down time with something other than Malefic.

AST cards used to be support skills. Some cards were speed up/damage up, defence up, regeneration up. New AST is purely damage, every card is damage. Calling them "support skills" is just plain wrong.

If my card usage nets me 100 (arbitrary) potency worth of damage by giving it to a dps then you can consider AST cards a 100 potency Ability (oGCD). Similar to how WHM's Assize works if you think about it.

Sage and whm have all these dps skills, but astro and sch have broil bio/malefic gravity.

I understand what you're saying is that the classes lack dps abilities, so i'd like to throw in something to think about.

SCH and AST don't only have those abilities you posted that contribute to damage. See above reply to SieyaM. Scholar has energy drains, Chain Strategem, and most importantly freedom. AST has cards, divination, macrocosmos/earthly star for example. The major reason why a group covets a NIN is because of trick attack as this skill alone contributes to a lot of damage.

While I do agree it doesn't feel as fun to have higher personal dps (ironyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy) than a WHM or SAGE (RIP Aero III). But you are essentially having about the same, more or less, damage playing AST or SCH. The way green dps plays out isn't so simple. The current rankings are SCH > SGE > AST > WHM. Yes, the healer with the least dps abilities is the highest.

[Saraide]

The trinity isnt broken in content that is relevant for job balance. Dungeons are not content that is relevant for job balance. That only really starts with extreme trials.

[Saraide]

But saying this means that trinity is null for most of the game that isn’t extreme /savage

Job balance is not important for content that isnt extreme or savage. Warriors keeping people alive through dungeon bosses despite the healer eating one aoe too many makes for funny stories. Does that mean i'm against improving aoe sustain for the other tanks? No, not really. But it's just not the focus of job balance and I dont think rigorous job balance for dungeon content would make the game that much better. I think it would drastically limit how much better players can carry less experienced players and I dont think that's how dungeons should work.

[WaxSw]

. That only really starts with extreme trials.

Both of the exs were cleared without healers when they were current and a sometime ago a full tank group cleared the first floor of savage, on top of the tank only clear of Ucob and a Sge solo heal of the second boss of savage, those are the examples that I know and I dont actively search for them because probably there are more out there