Should SE implement a way to poll the playerbase?

[HyoMinPark]

I have a 90 white mage and a 90 sage - I can get through Trust dungeons without using a single GCD on healing as a sage, and have done easy-mode raids a bunch of times as a white mage, so I'm not completely inexperienced, but I'm also far from knowing the intricacies of either job.

From what I've seen so far my main complaint with healers is that you spend most of the time dpsing instead of healing combined with the fact that the dps options are beyond mundane - as a veteran healer, is a more engaging dps kit the general desire, or is the desire to actually have to spend more time healing? Or both?

It is true that you spend most of your time casting damage abilities compared to healing abilities. Even in the highest content (Ultimate raids), a healer that is playing it safe will spend over 50% of their casts on damage versus healing. An optimized healer spends even less casts on healing. As it stands, I can do Savage fights without casting a single GCD heal on SGE. P1S I can basically solo heal and let my cohealer play with their cards (they’re an AST) the entire time if they so wish. My group really doesn’t need two healers for P1S. The boss simply doesn’t do enough outgoing damage to warrant it. And this is the case for a lot of content. Healers feel unnecessary in good parties—at least with regards to being a healer.

Veteran healers have tried asking for both: more healing and more engaging damage rotations. The developers have gone on record saying that they have no plans to increase the amount of damage that needs to be healed, so the first option is out. Now, we advocate for something more interesting to do versus pressing the same ability 100+ times during a fight. If we are to spend so much time dealing damage, why not give us something interesting to do instead of pressing one button all the time? The suggestions for additional DPS skills vary from something as simple as a second DoT to manage to a 1-2-3 “combo” for healers.

I think the most concerning part about this thread is the insistence that feedback be gatekept, and then those same people not realizing that they themselves would be included in that gatekeeping.

The only reason I see for this is the concern that your voices are not among the majority, even among those closer to your own capabilities.

Give your feedback. If it's good feedback, it will be listened to, but not necessarily acted upon. There's no reason to try and qualify an individual or put all your eggs in one basket with whatever streamer you wanna stan for. They are not likely to make the game better for you.

I disagree with this. You can’t just accept feedback blindly from players when it comes to how jobs function and play. You need to consider the player’s own experience and expertise in regards to it. For example: why should you take feedback on healers from someone who doesn’t play healers? What gives them the qualifications to speak on the healing role when they don’t even play it? How do you know that they know anything about it: how healers play; how healers function in FFXIV; how their toolkit works/flows together? How can you classify their feedback as “good” when they don’t play the role or have the experience with it?

This isn’t “gatekeeping” so much as it is listening to players who know what they are talking about versus those who don’t really have a horse in the race. I wouldn’t want the developers to listen to me with regards to tank feedback because I don’t play tanks and I cannot offer good advice on how they should be played, how their kits should function, etc.. I only know the bare basics of tanks, which I don’t consider enough to speak on their design or on changes to them.