Quote Originally Posted by T-Owl View Post
I feel like its even more problematic due to the fact that the Devs don't seem to have anyone dedicated to the healer role or even somebody understanding how the actual playerbase interacts with it, combined with a dismissive attitude of viewing actual healing as more of a burden, so they need to keep it as easy and non-threatening as possible so that everyone can succeed at it, which ironically just ended up with such low healing requirements and an abundance of powerful ogcd healing tools that dpsing as a Healer becomes even more expected, while the devs at the same time actively removed dps abilities so healers don't feel pressured to dps, which they already are by the very encounter design. I mean, I'm more in favor of healer dpsing because I think its the only way of making healers an engaged and busy job that isn't just passively standing around, just due to the fact that optimization and moving closer to the skill ceiling will automatically reduce healing uptime due to the reactive nature of that role, but most people agree that healers should have more healing to do and that their healing toolkits should be more engaging.
I think this is the biggest problem. They don't understand how the playerbase interacts with healers because they don't listen and stick to their own healer fantasy while designing the game itself for something entirely different and then do a surprised pikachu face when the players don't play how they wanted them to play.
Even if they don't have a dedicated healer designer (which they desperately need), it wouldn't be as bad if they would just listen and accept the feedback of knowledgable healer mains instead of brushing it off and twisting their words. But they don't and so everything they did achieved the exact opposite of what they set out to do.

Increase healer population by making it accessible - and they dumbed it down so much that they drove off more healers than they got. Queue times for healers have never been this consistently low as they are since early ShB.

Reduce pressure on new healers to multitask by reducing dps kit complexity - and they dumbed down healing requirements and dps kit complexity so much that now everyone expects healers to dps and with good reason because it's literally one button.

There was far less pressure to dps on healer when we still had multiple dots and Cleric Stance because people knew and understood that it's not as risk-free as it is now.