Quote Originally Posted by Knetik View Post
I agree, I don't necessarily want to sit back and spam heals like back in the 90s by any means, but healing seems like such a backseat to dps as a healer - just feels off to me. But ive def always thought that if SE increased even just boss auto attack damage it would make a large difference in this area.
From what I gather based on my experience from healing across many games, but most notably with XIV, XI, and WoW, the main thing that makes healers different here is the removal of any actual MP management as the game went on. That, in combination with many other things, is why healers are in the monotonous spot they are now. Back in ARR, Mage's Ballad from BRDs were often viewed as mandatory in many cases, but it was already evident that healers were pretty self sufficient in the MP department if they needed to be.

I do think that Sage is an early glimpse into the direction that healers will eventually change into (more buttons to press to complicate DPS rotation and healing options). Make no mistake that if healing became more complicated in the healer area, most healers would despise the change. A lot of the other games make AoE healing extremely high on the MP cost, to the point that you could wipe your group simply because you did one too many AoE heals. So those were often treated as occasional or rare happenings, while single target healing was the more efficient way to go most of the time, even for AoE damage. The same goes for having more frequent heavily impacting status ailments to remove (e.g. a potent group wide Paralyze).

The thing all healers need to come to terms with is what are they actually enjoying doing as a healer. Do you want to spend more time doing healer things or do you want more time to DPS? You can't have both and logically one will take away time from the other. Then the next question is whether or not you would stop healing if the choice you want wasn't picked and you now have to do more of that other thing.

Also keep in mind that healers and tanks are very simple for a reason. They're critical roles and the devs don't want to complicate that, which would result in less people playing them if they did.