Some things I do not like.

[SailorCeti]

So I agree a little with SailorCeti that SMN, ironically, has a lot of unnecessary buttons for how it currently plays, though I wish rather than just having such a departmentalized approach to single target and AoE, that you had a 1-2 combo with your AoE buttons like with how Shadowbringers Phoenix phase worked--how you'd alternate between Fountain of Fire and Brand of Purgatory, and just do that with your Ruin III and Tri-Disaster, as well as your Gemshine and Precious Brilliance. Though I don't see why both Energy Drain and Energy Siphon need to exist, nor Fester and Painflare. So even though SMN is still a very bare-bones job and definitely needs to expand on its current gameplay, even it has unnecessary buttons despite that.

This is what I'm talking about, though I do understand why ST and AOE is seperate (AOE does less damage, but to more mobs). So, with SMN, we have Ruin and Gemshine for single-target with Tri-Disaster and Precious Brilliance for AOE. However, Gemshine and Precious Brilliance aren't even clickable unless you have a summon up. When they are up, I'm using them instead of Ruin and Tri-disaster. It's a waste of space. Instead of having Gemshine and Precious Brilliance become active and change depending on summon, just have Ruin and Tri-disaster handle it instead. Free up a couple of spaces.

Yes, you can do it in a macro, but that's not optimal either because the icon is static. You aren't sure what's being cast. For example:

/ac "Gemshine"
/ac "Ruin"

This casts gemshine (including whatever it becomes due to current summon), if available. If not, casts Ruin. BUT! It doesn't update the micon. Using:

/micon"Gemshime"
/ac "Gemshine"
/micon"Ruin"
/ac "Ruin"

This still works, but the micon remains Gemshine.

Anyway, the point is, unless you have a summon out, GS and PB don't do anything. Wasted space. It seems like a much better idea to morph Ruin and TD instead. This is what I mean by "button bloat."

Then, we have Ruin IV, which is suddenly an AOE and procced. Um, why? Let Ruin III upgrade directly to IV, along with the above. Another button gone with no loss of utility.

If macros were a little more robust, and were queueable, things might be different. Now, as I said, I'm fine with SMN as is, thought it could be even better. The point is that I see even more of this in other jobs. It's all a bit overwhelming for me. I'd love to play other jobs, but as it is, I'm pigeon-holed into SMN. My bars are simple:

3) bahamut, garuda, titan, ifrit (in phase order) [Mouse]
2) Gemshine, Precious Brilliance, Fester, Painflare (single, aoe, single, aoe) [F1-F4]
1) Ruin, Tri-disaster, Energy Drain, Energy Siphon (single, aoe, single, aoe) [1-4]

The rest are mostly buffs and role actions and fill the last four buttons on each row, grouped accordingly.

[Absimiliard]

You might be able to save yourself some trouble by picking up a gaming mouse. You can assign the keys on a gaming mouse as substitutes for shift and control, and depending on model, it may be within the range of motion your fingers can tolerate. Even a cheap one with two or three extra buttons can make a world of difference. I don't foresee the devs adjusting the number of abilities in the near future, but this one small change might go a long way toward making jobs other than summoner approachable for you. It would probably make summoner a tad bit easier as well.

And don't worry too much about flowcharts and all that garbage. That's really only useful if you're going hardcore. For the average player, avoiding dropping your combos and using your cooldowns/off gcd abilities as they come available will do just fine.

[ty_taurus]

FFXIV Healers are plenty fun to play when there's healing to do. The only issue with FFXIV is that the need for healing is not consistent, fluxes with the party quality. It doesn't mean Healer isn't fun to play in FFXIV. Unfair (and a bit rude) to equate playing it to punishment. :/

Healing has a honeymoon phase where learning it can feel fun because you don't necessarily understand the nuances of it and will, but as you improve, this tapers off as you feel more in control of incoming damage and your excessive library of healing tools. Having said that, good job design in a game like this means your job should always feel fun to play, not fun only some of the time. Playing through the MSQ as a healer is immensely boring as there's nothing at all to heal. Playing through casual content is largely boring because there's very little to heal. Playing Extreme, Savage, and beyond can be fun to learn, but lose their charm once you become comfortable with the fight mechanics. Suffering through the job's otherwise inherently bad design is not worth the highs when you could play a DPS or Tank who's gameplay is vastly more consistent and provides something to play with regardless of whether or not the party needs healing.

Based on SailorCeti's posts, I imagine they're someone who may want to find one main job and stick with that job, and I don't think healing is the right role for that style of play, and this is coming from someone who adores healing and exclusively played healers from ARR through SB. It's not rude to describe it as suffering. I'm not attacking you or other healer players by saying that.

[SailorCeti]

You might be able to save yourself some trouble by picking up a gaming mouse. You can assign the the keys on a gaming mouse as substitutes for shift and control, and depending on model, it may be within the range of motion your fingers can tolerate. Even a cheap one with two or three extra buttons can make a world of difference.

And don't worry too much about flowcharts and all that garbage. That's really only useful if you're going hardcore. For the average player, avoiding dropping your combos and using your cooldowns/off gcd abilities as they come available will do just fine.

No. I use the mouse. However, when solo without a tank, I do sometimes hold E while running around a mob and still use my other fingers to cast while running, assuming I'm on a smn phase that has instant casts. Basically strafing.

I have a razor death-adder, which has a two buttons on the side. But, I'm retired and can't easily go out and get something more expensive right now. But yes, that's been suggested.

[Absimiliard]

No. I use the mouse. However, when solo without a tank, I do sometimes hold E while running around a mob and still use my other fingers to case while running, assuming on on smn phase that has instant casts. Basically strafing.

I have a razor death-adder, which has a two buttons on the side. But, I'm retired and can't easily go out and get something more expensive right now. But yes, that's been suggested.

The good news is that cheaper off-brand models tend to be almost as if not every bit as good as their more expensive name brand counterparts when it comes to gaming peripherals like a mouse.

[SailorCeti]

I think one thing some responders are overlooking is the mental affects a stroke can have. I'm not only physically limited, but my reaction time way down and once things reach a certain level of complexity or number of things I need to remember/be aware of, my brain goes "NOPE!" That's the biggest issue.

[ty_taurus]

This is what I'm talking about, though I do understand why ST and AOE is seperate (AOE does less damage, but to more mobs). So, with SMN, we have Ruin and Gemshine for single-target with Tri-Disaster and Precious Brilliance for AOE. However, Gemshine and Precious Brilliance aren't even clickable unless you have a summon up. When they are up, I'm using them instead of Ruin and Tri-disaster. It's a waste of space. Instead of having Gemshine and Precious Brilliance become active and change depending on summon, just have Ruin and Tri-disaster handle it instead. Free up a couple of spaces.

Yes, you can do it in a macro, but that's not optimal either because the icon is static. You aren't sure what's being cast. For example:

/ac "Gemshine"
/ac "Ruin"

This casts gemshine (including whatever it becomes due to current summon), if available. If not, casts Ruin. BUT! It doesn't update the micon. Using:

/micon"Gemshime"
/ac "Gemshine"
/micon"Ruin"
/ac "Ruin"

This still works, but the micon remains Gemshine.

Anyway, the point is, unless you have a summon out, GS and PB don't do anything. Wasted space. It seems like a much better idea to morph Ruin and TD instead. This is what I mean by "button bloat."

Then, we have Ruin IV, which is suddenly an AOE and procced. Um, why? Let Ruin III upgrade directly to IV, along with the above. Another button gone with no loss of utility.

If macros were a little more robust, and were queueable, things might be different. Now, as I said, I'm fine with SMN as is, thought it could be even better. The point is that I see even more of this in other jobs. It's all a bit overwhelming for me. I'd love to play other jobs, but as it is, I'm pigeon-holed into SMN. My bars are simple:

3) bahamut, garuda, titan, ifrit (in phase order) [Mouse]
2) Gemshine, Precious Brilliance, Fester, Painflare (single, aoe, single, aoe) [F1-F4]
1) Ruin, Tri-disaster, Energy Drain, Energy Siphon (single, aoe, single, aoe) [1-4]

The rest are mostly buffs and role actions and fill the last four buttons on each row, grouped accordingly.

Ruin IV does need to stay as its own button as you don't want to use it when Astral Impulse or Fountain of Fire are available during your Bahamut and Phoenix summons. You can hold onto that proc until after your summon goes away, so it does need to be independent. Otherwise you could probably have Ruin III and Tri-Disaster upgrade with your summons since that's what Bahamut and Phoenix do anyway.

I'm not sure how good this would work with this example... but here's a solution you could do better with macros for SMN:

On my SMN Hotbar, I have Ruin III set to hotbar 1, position 5 and Tri-Disaster set to hotbar 1, position 8. Using my hotbar positions as reference, you could do a macro like...

/micon "Summon Garuda"
/ac "Summon Garuda" <t>
/chotbar action "Gemshine" 1 5
/chotbar action "Precious Brilliance" 1 8
/wait 9
/chotbar action "Ruin III" 1 5
/chotbar action "Tri-Disaster" 1 8

This would replace Ruin III and Tri-Disaster with Gemshine and Precious Brilliance respectively for 9 seconds and return them back to Ruin III and Tri-Disaster. You could do this with all 3 summons while giving you enough time to use all your charges, but I would probably recommend making a separate macro that just reads:

/chotbar action "Ruin III" 1 5
/chotbar action"Tri-Disaster" 1 8

To forcibly get your buttons back if they don't change back when you need them too. Perhaps you may even just want to always do that manually so if you have to go do mechanics or something and can't use your charges, you don't lose those until you're ready to go back to Ruin III and Tri-Disaster. I don't know how well that would ultimately work for you, but maybe try it out and see how it feels. Just replace the "1 5" and "1 8" with wherever you have those buttons on your hotbar.

[SailorCeti]

Ruin IV does need to stay as its own button as you don't want to use it when Astral Impulse or Fountain of Fire are available during your Bahamut and Phoenix summons.

Okay. Why not?

[Absimiliard]

I think one thing some responders are overlooking is the mental affects a stroke can have. I'm not only physically limited, but my reaction time way down and once things reach a certain level of complexity or number of things I need to remember/be aware of, my brain goes "NOPE!" That's the biggest issue.

DRG might be something worth trying. I say this because DRG, while appearing quite daunting at first due to the number of buttons it has, is in actuality very simple. It's very static. Once you've' got the basic rotation down the job will pretty much play itself. You barely even have to look at the gauge. You'd lose a bit of damage, but you could easily get away with macroing some of the ogcds to cut down on the number of things you need to press/monitor. Even then, the damage loss wouldn't be enough to ruin things. The only downside is how much this game seems to hate melee jobs. If there's a mechanic to be done, it's probably aimed at you. >_>

I'd have suggested RDM, but another poster already fielded that.

[SailorCeti]

DRG might be something worth trying. I say this because DRG, while appearing quite daunting at first due to the number of buttons it has, is in actuality very simple. It's very static. Once you've' got the basic rotation down the job will pretty much play itself. You barely even have to look at the gauge.

I might give it another try. I have a LNC/DRG on a different server. As far as guages go, that's just another thing to clutter my mind. I have them all in "small" mode and I never look at them.