It is not possible to play without doing dps as healer? every day i find someone...

[Semirhage]

I see the thread is back to Standard Sylphie Argument Number 6: "But 900 year old handless arthritic Maasai grannies might play on 5kbps connections! No complexity allowed on healers. Respect the Medica 2 spam as a perfectly valid and skilled gameplay choice!"

Missing the point again. 'Healing and buffing allies' class fantasy and 'doing damage to enemy' class fantasy are not interchangeable. I can't just flip a switch on my brain and start to find one enjoyable when I didn't before, superficial similarities of focus notwithstanding.

Though, I concur that buffing and encounter control are more interesting. Certainly more interesting than 'Push Enemy Healthbar Leftward Spell Number Eight (of Twelve)'. CBU3 doesn't seem to agree with us, though; they seem to be absolutely terrified of players being able to interface with their encounters beyond 'make bar go up or down'.

DPS (in FF14) is at least more involved than that. Not all of them, granted, but keeping track of procs. Knowing when to hold back and when to use a stored combo. Knowing where best to use a support ability. I've had WAY more fun rescuing failed runs with chained Verraises than I had trying WHM in Shadowbringers and feeling like I had little to no impact on any encounter beyond GlareHoly spamming. I called them Push Healthbar Rightward spells because that's literally all they are: largely interchangeable, hardly reward or punish you for making a "wrong" choice, and the decision tree is largely down to "is the party healthy enough for the next hit? No? Pick another one and cast it. Or the same one, who cares." DPS (at least the better designed ones) have a touch of decision making that actually noticeably impacts your performance (admittedly this has also been decreasing over time, though not as bad as healers yet). If I flub my casts, or Jolt spam, or freestyle an unenchanted melee combo, my performance takes a huge hit. If I cast Medica 2 instead of Cure 3, who cares? The next raidwide is scheduled to come out in financial quarter 3 next year, and both did the same thing for the same opportunity cost.

The thing is, this isn't new, and I don't mean that just in the context of FF14. The vast majority of RPGs I've played have utterly uninteresting healing "mechanics" slapped onto otherwise entertaining multitasker classes. Ironically 14 fits the oldschool Final Fantasy model of healing quite well! You have a set of boring noninteractive healing spells distinguished only by their potency, MP cost, and whether they hit the whole party or just one person. I'd much rather spend most of my time wondering whether Protect or Sleep or Poison would be a better choice next turn than thumb through the catalog of healing spells that are only pretending to have different effects. That catalog should be on my table within viewing distance, but the more time I'm called to look at it the more time I have to think about how interchangeable the spells are.

I guess what I'm saying is, I've seen FAR more success stories with making choice-intensive and fun kits with damage, support, CC, and debuffs. I've seen a LOT of attempts at "interesting" healing that land like a whoopee cushion. Ooo, an AoE HoT, nobody will see that one coming. A button that increases your healing spells by 15% for 10 seconds? Stop afore I'm overwhelmed by the interactivity.