I want to say. I haven't been with the game all that long, about a year and a half I think. I came from World of Warcraft a few months before Blizzard started to reap what they had sown there, fleeing a toxic community, bad writing, over homogenization of roles/classes and an overall dumb down of the game. When I started there, you could role up a character and through ability trees, really design something around how you liked to play, your character felt unique, the classes had identities. The game was great. Then...Blizzard started trying to make it fit more people, started homogenizing the classes, started dumbing things down until we lost our trees altogether, until you just built your character according to whatever the Meta theorycrafted by either PVP or PVE top players had figured out and posted to Icy-Veins. A Mage was a Warlock with different animation and colors. A Druid healed like a Shaman/Paladin/Priest, they really aren't too different anymore.

I am watching, listening and reading here...and I am seeing alarmingly, many of the same complaints coming from long time players of FFXIV that I watched in the forums of World of Warcraft back toward the end of Wrath of the Lich King...when Blizzard started really homogenizing things and dumbing their game down. I just want to drop that observation here now...that Square Enix needs to start listening, because this is just about Deja Vu for me and I don't like seeing it here for the game I've come to love and call home.

Job Identity MATTERS. Do not make one healer play like another, don't make any job play like another. Players start loosing interest and you'll end up like World of Warcraft, hemoraging players who are trying to find something that provides that special immersion and rich game experience that only comes, when a Sheild Healer doesn't run like a Pure Healer. I run Sheilds here. SCH and SGE and I leveled up a WHM so I could understand the play and feel and know how to best work alongside that type as a Sheild. Right now? There is a difference, it's there, it's lovely and I beg on my knees for it to stay that way. From my point of view? FFXIV offers that special feel to it's jobs. Please...do not sacrifice Healer identity to make them into DPS, buff the DPS jobs instead. Let Healers be healers. In Downtime, as a heal? I'd love something in my toolkit that allowed me to implement support throughout the raid/party. Something that let me buff a tank mitigation when a tank buster started rolling, something that let me pass around a DPS buff between ranged and melee depending on the situation. The ability to grant speed to the raid to run from an aoe effect and dodge it. There's more than just DPS that can fill down time! FFXIV is so much better written and plays so well compared to the game I left. I beg of the Devs, don't dumb your game down, don't homogenize your jobs...don't walk the same path Blizzard did.