The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[ty_taurus]

Can you cite evidence proving or strongly supporting this? I think it IS true many players are unbothered by the current state of healers. I'm not sure how many would respond positively to more offensive spells. Especially if they had no opt out other than "you now can't clear content or have to be carried".

During the 6.1 trailer, Crystalline Conflict was revealed, and there was a clip of WHM using Afflatus Purgation, a giant laser attack. My FC includes quite a few healers, including many who are perfectly content with WHM right now. ALL of them drooling over that and wishing they could have it in PVE. Anecdotal? Maybe, but I'm also just going off the logic of gamers in general. Most gamers are not hardcore numbers gamers. Most games are casual gamers, and you need to really make a game unplayable for casual gamers from within that market to be upset. Just look at Pokemon for example. The newest games are held together by silly string and are some of the ugliest games on the Switch, but most people don't care, because it's not broken enough to disrupt the experience. Inversely, so long as a game isn't intentionally challenging or frustrating to play, casual players are pretty happy with improvements as well. Look at Super Smash Bros for example. Did Nintendo ever need to release a single patch ever? No. Did any casual players complain about a character getting stronger? I've never seen it. The only ones that commented were the hardcore players.

This is just how gamers are, and it's something you come to understand the more you expose yourself to gaming audiences.

I neither want a free ride nor stealth into savage doing a fraction of the work of other roles.

I've now proven you wrong TWICE

First and foremost, how have you "proven" anything if my statement wasn't considered "proof" and required evidence to support it? Isn't that hypocritical?

Regardless, if you don't care about getting a free ride then just don't use whatever new offensive spells get added. No one is going to force you to use your healer rotation if all you want to do is spam your filler spell. If you don't care about stealthing your way into savage and are content proving your skill, then what's the issue? People who seek savage level difficulty are looking for challenges and ways to prove their skill. You should be elated at the idea of having a higher skill ceiling that allows you to further support your party by playing better. If you aren't looking for challenges, then you aren't playing savage, then that's all the more reason to just spam 1 button if you want to. Behind the extremely generous enrages of EX, there's no other enrage mechanics in content below savage, so there's no pressure for you to optimize your gameplay.

If you're not looking for a free ride, nor are trying to stealth your way into savage, then you have no reason to be bothered by optimized gameplay expecting more from you than thoughtless button mashing, because you'd either rise to the challenge, or continue playing the way that satisfies you. It could only upset you if you're appalled by the idea that the lack of gameplay that's currently expected for top performing healers is now the skill floor and no longer the skill ceiling, which means you would be upset with either not performing as well playing the way you want to play, or that you'd be forced to try harder to perform at the current level you're performing at, which equates to wanting a free ride or wanting to stealth your way into savage.

But as you said, this isn't you, so logically, you'd be content either continuing to play with 1 button DPS or simply rising to the higher expectations of the skill ceiling. The talk of free riders is not referencing you in this case. If you're in the camp of not wanting offensive healer gameplay, then it begs the question of why you're playing FFXIV where you're objectively expected to be attacking with 80%-100% of your GCD casts in all forms of content instead of a game where you can just focus on the healing like WoW. Regardless of whether you have 1 button, 20 buttons, or 100 buttons to DPS with, the frequency that you spend attacking is the same because we don't take damage every few seconds in this game.

What if - just pretend for a minute - they actually ENJOY FFXIV's story, aesthetic, and gameplay and CAN play it the way they like and enjoy it, despite you insisting to them that they cannot? What if quitting FFXIV would be them punishing themselves? What if playing WoW would be them punishing themselves? What if you're wrong?

Healer gameplay is a lack of gameplay. You are objectively not engaging with the systems of FFXIV for the majority of your gameplay. Players who aren't seeking to optimize can be far more content with the game because they can overheal like crazy, not use their OGCD heals and focus on their GCD heals instead, and break up that offensive monotony through suboptimal gameplay choices, which ultimately don't matter in the content they play in because there are no enrage timers. So if you're not looking to optimize, then go ahead and just use the tools you want to use. No one is going to care. I certainly won't, but at least the apex of each job's gameplay can offer something to the players that want engagement. If you're seeking optimal play and enjoy what we have its because there is no gameplay and thus there are no expectations other than just use your cooldowns, which is half the work every other job in this game has to put into raiding if not less.

You can't "like" a lack of gameplay. You can be unbothered by it if you are a reward-focused player who just likes getting your dailies complete, or seeing what you get from treasure maps, but if you're that type of player, then you won't care what's added to the healers as long as it doesn't make them mechanically difficult to play, like ASTs constant single target focused buffs. Having to constantly swap targets in a game that doesn't support that very well is why most players don't like AST. Everyone LOVES the aesthetic but can't bring themselves to play the job because it's not fun to constantly be swapping between party members for cards. Giving AST a subtle rotation is not mechanically difficult. You can ONLY be upset if you're focused on performance and the expectation, because if you're not focused on either of those aspects, then you'd have no issues, or your issues are things that aren't resolved with the current healer design either.

[Renathras]

During the 6.1 trailer...

Okay, I'm only going to reply with this and not reply to you any more:

I can't have a discussion with someone who is arguing in bad faith.

Imagine if every time you asked for a more interesting damage rotation on healers, someone retorted with "You just want to play a DPS but have better ques! Go play a DPS!". You might respond the first or second or even third time with a gentle explanation that you DO want to play a healer, but why you're asking for what you are. Why people other than "just want to play a DPS but have better ques" would want more damage buttons. Point out that the game's history allows for this. Point out that MMOs allow for this. Point out that many players probably want this...only for that person to say "You just want to play a DPS but have better ques! Go play a DPS!" again with different words.

That's what you've done.

Repeatedly I've told you other reasons why people might want healers - or at least _A_ healer - to remain as they are. Yet you can't help but deride and insult. And worse, you put words in my mouth, insisting you know my motivations and mind better than I do, even when I'm outright telling you my motivations and mind, and you basically say "Nuh uh, I know you and what you are thinking better than you know you and what you are thinking."

That's bad faith, and I'm done indulging in it.

If you seek a good faith argument, come back. Until then, if you seek to be willfully obtuse and act in bad faith, that's on you.

[ForsakenRoe]

Oh, shoot, we had totally different definitions of the word then. Does what I described sound more attractive, at least?

Triage healing works in other places because the game engine can actually keep up with the quick-reaction demand that 'triage' is at it's core. If you see the tank get clapped by a TB down to 20%, and a melee DPS happened to get clonked by it, and both are bleeding out to the attached DOT, FFXIV wouldn't allow for the quick decision making of 'I'll let the DPS suffer for the one GCD of cast time I'll use to keep the tank up, then Tetra them' or 'I'll Tetra the DPS now, and then cast time Cure2 the tank, and hope the tank has enough sustain/mit left to keep themselves up till my cast finishes', because every action in this game's crusty engine doesn't actually register on time, 'Bene lag' is the prime example. It'd be cool to have actual 'triage' situations, but the reason it works better in, say, WOW, is that AOE healing is not plentiful. It's either kinda weak but spammable, or has some internal CD like WildGrowth, Circle of Healing, Dream Breath, Spiritbloom, PowerWord:Radiance, etc. In order to have a similar environment here, Medica and it's equivalents would need to have a 10s CD at minimum.

Maybe they could do it with a hacky workaround though, some kind of debuff that means 'only single target healing affects this player for X seconds', then have it applied to, idk, 2 DPS while they get clapped by adds. At the same time, have both of the tanks be getting slapped around by hard autos from the boss. Now each healer has to handle one tank and one DPS, with single target healing. How long can they leave the tank alone to selfsustain? Is their 120s like Vengeance up soon to help mitigate? Is the DPS actually going to bother using Bloodbath? etc. All of this is kinda pie in the sky thinking though, as a key part of triage is that you can't save everyone, every time. Sometimes you have to choose to let the DPS die, to keep the tank, and therefore the pull, going for a little longer. And I feel like 'the healer purposely let X die', regardless of reason, is just gonna generate animosity, especially in a game that's used to healers being HPS demigods who can, in some cases, keep party alive without even intending to, because of incidental healing like Assize or EarthlyStar going off

As for HPS pump requirement phases, personally I think the 'more HPS requirement' of this tier was fun in a way. Keyword, WAS. For starters, it was mainly 'you need more mit on raidwides' which was a little bit /shrug, especially if you're the Pure Healer, not much changes. I've said in the past, imagine if P7S had the front/back fist slams do proximity damage, but the bleed is removed from Spark of Life. Less damage on Sparks, but way more frequent raidwides. Enough that the OGCD kit might not actually cover every single one. Also thanks to the passage of time, I'm BIS, everyone's BIS, we're back to outgearing the fights. The tale as old as time. And no matter how many times the tale is told, the ending is always the same. Can we take a leaf from the Minstrel's book, and try a DSR-esque timeline change, to a future where we didn't lose our damage skills in the jump to SHB. A future where WHM has Glare 4, Dia 3, Dia 2, Banish, Misery and the fixed lilies, Assize, maybe a way to proc an empowered Holy that does 300% damage, so it's a gain to Holy in single target, etc. Or SCH has like 7 DOTs like that one time in ARR. Or SGE is the Disc Priest equivalent a fair number of people had hoped it'd be.

A future, where the job design team sat down and never had to say 'hang on, we give tanks new DPS skills every expansion, we should do that for healers too', because it was understood to be a given, a 'blatantly obvious', that the two non-DPS roles should have equal amounts of DPS skills added with each expansion. That it was an inherently understood tenet of design, that if tanks get Primal Rend, or Inner Chaos, or Confiteor, or Blade of Blade, or Double Down, or Shadowbringer, despite being 'not a DPS', then it only makes sense that WHM would get Purgation, or SCH would get Meltdown, or AST would get Comet, or SGE would get... whatever they'd get (idk greek medical terms). A future, that, if it were possible to experience, as we do the alternate events of DSR, I think a great majority of players, from all skill levels, would say 'actually this slaps can we have this instead'.

Maybe they should do a PTR with some changes to try out, for people to give feedback on. Changes are hard to give feedback on without having it in your hands to mess around with, certain things like 'is this fluid' or 'is this clunky' can't really be interpreted from patch notes. So if they had a PTR of sorts, with a change like, idk, Taurus's AST changes, for people to try, and give feedback on, I wonder how many people who originally insisted 'I don't want healers to change at all from current' would think 'actually this isn't half bad, I quite like the gameplay for this class being super buff-heavy, I really feel like I'm empowering my team!'

If you seek a good faith argument, come back. Until then, if you seek to be willfully obtuse and act in bad faith, that's on you.

Bye, hf with the 24man and stuff

[Renathras]

Bye, hf with the 24man and stuff

O...kay?

That was to Ty not you (my reply to you was far more cordial as while I do think you're blindered to arguments, I don't think you're arguing in bad faith), though. So not quite sure why you replied to that quote and not my actual response to you, but whatever I suppose...

Oh, triage healing works in FFXIV - has in the past - it just requires healer kits to not be bloated with powerful oGCDs and for encounter designs to have different damage profiles than they've come to have. More like ARR and HW, less like SB/ShB/EW.

And there will never be a case of healers having as many DPS abilities as tanks. Tank's MAIN role (maintaing threat) requires they to do at least token damage outside of having abilities like Flash, which no longer exists. Moreover, Tanks don't have to juggle party needs on top of their damage. If a party member screws up a mechanic, it either wipes the group or its the healer's job to fix it, not the Tank's, generally. Their utility also works differently. They're all oGCDs - which you could argue healers' could be as well - but they also aren't designed to be spamable as a backup. If a party member repeatedly screws up mechanics, tanks don't chain cast Heart of Corundum or Nascent on them. They don't work as GCDs in that way, other than PLD Clemency, which you get yelled at if you use.

Healers, on the other hand, are STILL designed with that paradigm, even if it's not used in practice in scripted encounters where everyone executes mechanics perfectly. You'd have to give healers some oGCDs like Tetra that have no CD and can be used over and over again without a hard lockout in place for you to even begin to talk about healers in the same design space as tanks, and as yet, I've seen none of you present such a system.

A WHM can chain cast Cure 2 on a screwing up party member quite a few times - just tested this on a striking dummy and the number is 11 with a tick making it 12 (more Piety would make it absolutely 12, but let's go with that) Cure 2s with no use of Lucid, Thin Air, or pausing to use the Lily that was generated in that time.

So we'd need to have Tetra with 12 charges before we could safely remove Cure 2 and give healers a tank-level damage rotation.

12. Charges.

And that recharge quickly (within a minute), so you'd be generating charges of Tetra every ~6 seconds or so.

...though that does sound oddly amusing now that I write it out. Heh, that might be an interesting thing to do. Give WHM basically Solace and Rapture as oGCDs that stack to 10 and recharge ever 6 seconds. It would make healing ridiculously trivial, but if we did that (and, of course, had party mitigation like Temperance and maybe a lesser mitigation on a 60 sec CD), then we could start thinking about having a rotation on par with WAR or MCH. That might be fair.

...I'd wager none of you are proposing THAT.

EDIT:

So your position is that the forums comprise too small a user base... so let's instead look to...

Large collections of the playerbase that are a more representative sample of the player base than here? That sounds pretty smart, actually.

What you don't realize is every "neutral" is someone not agreeing with you. The bulk of your initial searches were that. Reinforcing the position that the bulk do not agree with your position. As the saying goes "Those who enjoy the game aren't on internet forums complaining about it". Neutral means "Enjoy it/like it/have no major complaints with it." It DOESN'T mean they might not like something else even better - let's get that clear - but it DOES mean they disagree with you of it being people "starving" and the like.

Also, note I said the COMMENTS, not the CREATORS. Chair also said the same thing I have - to change three healers and leave one braindead. I think that may have been his exact wording, with "probably White Mage". So again, this seems like the logical and best solution.

Specifically here at this timestamp in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbWubxOTUWU&t=376s

...I'm guessing that's the video you're talking about. And I'd also note I basically agree with him overall. A bit less dripping sarcasm and I don't find 1-2-3 NEARLY as exciting as he does, but overall I agree with him. And to this day, I don't see why nAST needed to be removed. Because...there's no reason it needed to be removed. It's not like having ShB d/nAST would break the current game in any way at all. And I say this as a person that really dislikes AST!

Also what he says at 11:48:

"If someone complains that they need to be rewarded with more DPS for their complicated Job, simply tell them that their reward is being able to HAVE FUN and not being BORED out of their ------- minds! Shut the ---- up about a whole 2% dps variance!"

Also rules to live by. Basically, I'm fine with everything he said in that video and agree with the overall position entirely. I'd say it's my own, but it's a bit different - with the return of nAST, that would be FOUR healers with you guys' preferred playstyle to 1 without.

[Shurrikhan]

Oh, triage healing works in FFXIV - has in the past - it just requires healer kits to not be bloated with powerful oGCDs and for encounter designs to have different damage profiles than they've come to have. More like ARR and HW, less like SB/ShB/EW.

And there will never be a case of healers having as many DPS abilities as tanks.

She didn't ask for them to have the same total count of DPS abilities. She asked for them to have the same addition to one's offensive abilities per expansion (which the prior paragraph had just exemplified as not needing to each be on a discrete button, so long as they're still interactive [not just a potency bump trait])-- i.e., if DRK's getting Shadowbringer, maybe WHM should get Afflatus Purgation, or some way for Misery to briefly buff Glare/Holy.

Now, I'm not necessarily sold on their needing to be one-to-one or the like, but for a guy calling foul so often, I would think you'd be more attentive to the difference between a single adder and its sum.

Large collections of the playerbase that are a more representative sample of the player base than here? That sounds pretty smart, actually.

Our couple dozen or less consistent XIV streamers/content creators alone are not a larger sample than the whole of these forums.

[ty_taurus]

Okay, I'm only going to reply with this and not reply to you any more:

I can't have a discussion with someone who is arguing in bad faith.

It's really not in bad faith. Not everyone that disagrees with you is inherently arguing in bad faith. I legitimately cannot comprehend liking the healers as they are for anything other than not having to engage with the system of this game for over half of a fight. It's no exaggeration surreal to think about, like the lyrics in I am the Walrus.

If you're not a raider, then why does it matter when you can just keep playing the way you want to play since it doesn't matter. Many melee players don't use feint, bloodbath, or second wind. Many physical ranged and tanks don't use interject. No one will care if you don't use DPS buttons B, C, and D and just spam A. If you are a raider, than the idea of lifting the skill ceiling should be appealing to you because it allows you to go above what is expected of your role to make the fight easier for the rest of your team. Having a low skill ceiling often means you cannot tighten the gap in your team's performance by skill and can only contribute as much as the floor will allow, which makes fights actually harder, not easier.

The only logical reason that my brain can comprehend to objecting to this is someone who wants to raid, but doesn't want to try harder and likes that their job gets to clear content with half the effort of everyone else. This is not hyperbole. I'm not trying to be insulting. I'm trying to communicate what I understand as logic in this world. This game is inherently structured to ask healing mechanics from you for one short period once per 30-60+ seconds, even in savage where heal requirements are slightly more frequent, healers still will cast Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis more than every other action on their hotbar combined. There is no universe in which this is good design. It cannot make sense any more than using your banana phone to order moose juice from a flying sealion named Ginger.

So for that reason I cannot in good conscience believe you because your statement doesn't work logically. As I said before, I can entirely sympathize with not liking the offensive healer design of FFXIV and how much time is dedicated to offensive, but without reworking literally every fight, we can't change that. This is how this game is structured, and it can only stray so far from that formula without breaking. I would love to reduce OGCD heals, put more emphasis on GCD heals, but that will only make a negligible dent in DPS uptime for healers. I think we can totally have a healer who's DPS contributions are disguised as support and create the experience of having a buff-oriented rotation, but that still means having a rotation where you have an order of operations casting on your teammates rather than enemies. And that's doable if handled correctly. But job design that is defined by inactivity is antithetical to FFXIV's combat system in its entirety and has no place in this game and ruins the healer role as it actively fights against the way every encounter is designed.

[Renathras]

It's really not in bad faith. Not everyone that disagrees with you is inherently arguing in bad faith.

You're arguing in bad faith while replying saying you're not arguing in bad faith!

WHERE, friend, did I say "everyone that disagrees with me is arguing in bad faith"?

I outright said Roe is NOT arguing in bad faith, and I've not said that Shurrikhan is. You alone I've said that to.

You're arguing in bad faith while trying to rebut the accusation you're arguing in bad faith. XD

.

I will say this to you, though, pretending for a moment you're trying to argue in good faith here:

I legitimately cannot comprehend...

And that is your problem.

You can't comprehend why people who disagree with you are disagreeing with you. Even when they're outright telling you why. So you're making up a reason that is easy for you to defeat - bad faith/a strawman - instead of just...listening.

I get you don't get it. That's the problem. Get it? I've been trying to help you get it, but instead of listening so you might get it, you insist that your wrong position - which is from you not getting it - is the right position. Get it?

...why do I sound like Kakashi...

[ty_taurus]

You're arguing in bad faith while replying saying you're not arguing in bad faith!

WHERE, friend, did I say "everyone that disagrees with me is arguing in bad faith"?

I outright said Roe is NOT arguing in bad faith, and I've not said that Shurrikhan is. You alone I've said that to.

You're arguing in bad faith while trying to rebut the accusation you're arguing in bad faith. XD

.

I will say this to you, though, pretending for a moment you're trying to argue in good faith here:



And that is your problem.

You can't comprehend why people who disagree with you are disagreeing with you. Even when they're outright telling you why. So you're making up a reason that is easy for you to defeat - bad faith/a strawman - instead of just...listening.

I get you don't get it. That's the problem. Get it? I've been trying to help you get it, but instead of listening so you might get it, you insist that your wrong position - which is from you not getting it - is the right position. Get it?

...why do I sound like Kakashi...

It's not in bad faith! I'm trying to communicate genuine feelings to you and you are dismissing them as an attack on your character when this is not the case. Maybe your logic just isn't as sound as you think it is.

The problem is, we don't agree on what "sorry state" is. Many players think the current healing is in a fantastic state.

Can you cite evidence proving or strongly supporting this?

I get you don't get it. That's the problem. Get it? I've been trying to help you get it, but instead of listening so you might get it, you insist that your wrong position - which is from you not getting it - is the right position. Get it?

Would it kill you to at least have an ounce of humility rather than responding to everything with "I get that you don't understand why your WRONG opinion can't compare to the radiance that is my RIGHT opinion." THAT is what actual bad faith argument looks like.

[Renathras]

It's not in bad faith! I'm trying to communicate genuine feelings to you and you are dismissing them as an attack on your character when this is not the case. Maybe your logic just isn't as sound as you think it is.

See?

Well, no, I suppose you don't.

What makes it bad faith is you clearly don't understand a position, and even realize you don't. But instead of TRYING, you insist that the position doesn't exist and is a worse position pretending to be a different position than it is. That is, that NO ONE actually LIKES the current model, they're just lazy slackers/etc that are saying they like it because they don't want to be outted as lazy slackers/etc.

Even when someone tells you that isn't it, you insist that it is.

Now you're insisting that "logic" makes it so because you can't understand it, and to you, that seems to mean that it's not logical. Enjoyment is a subjective thing. There's no logic to why some people like vanilla and others like chocolate. It's not an objective thing if a person enjoys something. If they do, you should ask them why. And when they tell you, you should believe them, not insist that they can't possibly be telling the truth.

Can you cite evidence proving or strongly supporting this?

THIS is also bad faith and snippy. You want me to provide evidence for an opinion? That we don't agree what "sorry state" is?

Or do you want me to provide evidence many players think the current healing is in a fantastic state? (In which case maybe you should only quote that part)

I'd point out, as I already did, that in other venues, you have a lot of discussions about healers and people saying they enjoy healers as they currently exist. Not I used the word "many" (as in, hundreds or thousands) not "most". There's no real way to tell which is the majority position. But if even 20% of people felt this way, that should be sufficient in a game with 4 (5 if we reinstate nAST) healers for 1 to suit them.

Would it kill you to at least have an ounce of humility rather than responding to everything

I don't respond to "everything" with that. In fact, that's the first time I've given that specific response.

And no, that isn't what a bad faith argument looks like - what you've been doing is what a bad faith argument looks like. You're trying to turn the insult around on me now because you were called out.

ALL of my first responses to you WERE with humility. I tried a half dozen times in this threat to explain to you what you're not getting - what you now admit that you don't understand - so that you could get it and could understand it. Each of those times, it was not with some "radiance" of "RIGHT" opinion. Look back through my replies to you in this thread. Look hard at them. I have many times said that some people think this, some think that. That not everyone agrees. That there are differing positions in each camp. I think in my first post in this string of posts I gave something like 6+ different reasons and positions people have on healing in the game right now and what they'd like. It was my original point: That there are a lot of different positions on the matter and not everyone agrees.

I didn't say that no one thinks as you do. I said there are other ways that people think than the way you're insisting they must. It's you insisting they must over and over again in the face of that that has be talking down to you now, because all you had to do, at ANY point in this discussion, is say "Well, yeah, I guess there are other opinions out there."

That's literally it. To simply acknowledge that positions exist other than "want more DPS buttons" or "want to be lazy".

It's you refusing to do that over and over and over again, and doing so in a really bad faith way, that had me post before saying I wasn't planning to respond to you anymore. And I may not here. I thought maybe you were amenable to listening now, but clearly I was mistaken...

.

EDIT: I'm not trying to be discourteous, so I'm just going to stop replying to your posts because there seems to be no other way to get through to you that is still courteous. So...yeah, that's that, I suppose.

[ty_taurus]

THIS is also bad faith and snippy. You want me to provide evidence for an opinion? That we don't agree what "sorry state" is?

Or do you want me to provide evidence many players think the current healing is in a fantastic state? (In which case maybe you should only quote that part)

I just want to point out something very interesting with this response. Earlier, I stated that most players are unbothered by the current healers and would either remain unbothered or respond positively to added damage buttons, and your response was, verbatim "Can you cite evidence proving or strongly supporting this?" I literally copied and pasted it from your earlier response to pose the same question when you said "many players think healers are in a fantastic state."

Both my statement about players being unbothered and yours about players finding healing fantastic are both equally definitive statements, so you essentially just called yourself out for giving a "bad faith and snippy" response. Which is ironic because neither my, nor your responses to those specific statements are bad faith or snippy. It's entirely reasonable and valid to ask for evidence for definitive statements like that. Which is why I followed up with examples of direct response to healers responding positively to the concept of added DPS buttons with the 6.1 trailer example where the healers I've spoken with in my FC who are currently unbothered by WHM specifically and play it regularly were expressing desire to see the PVP WHM limit break integrated into their PVE kits as well as more broadly how wide audiences of gamers respond to game quality or balance/design adjustments through the examples of Pokemon and Super Smash Bros.

Let me try another way of trying to make sense of current healer design...

Healer Structure:

As it stands, all 4 healers share the same structure in gameplay. We agree that this is a flawed idea, because the point of having different jobs is the ability to offer different playstyles for different people. Regardless, this gameplay is defined as:

- Responding to fight mechanics, which every player does (though tanks specifically have additional mechanics to manage that DPS don't and healers don't really. In some harder fights you might respond to certain tankbusters with a cooldown, but you don't deal with the positioning elements or aggro, and in easy fights tanks just do it all themselves without your help)

- Responding to instances of damage every 30-60 seconds or so per fight on average through the use of primarily healing/mitigation cooldowns woven between offensive spells (or if you're WHM, occasionally substituting those DPS spells with a lily heal). These moments will typically last around 1-2 GCDs worth of gameplay time. In Savage, some fights extend this for specific mechanics, but only by another GCD or two.

- If you are a level 90 SCH, you can also respond with Expedient to increase your party's margin for error during tight positional mechanics.
- If you are AST, you manage your card system, which is on paper a more in depth system of constant engagement; however, the general consensus on the card system is that it's mechanically unfun to play and ultimately unrewarding in its current iteration. We can support this claim with the job's abysmal play rate, regularly cited as such by those who have given feedback here and on other media sources.

- Between instances of healing requirements, you spend the remainder of that 30-60 second window attacking with a bare minimum DPS toolkit. The bulk of this gameplay is casting your filler spell. Previous, I made the statement "you use this more than all other actions combined." Well I did some number crunching on P8S part 2, a fight with a very dense amount of healing requirements comparatively to most other content in this game, even other savage fights. I searched out 20 healers in teams that parsed green, 20 that parsed blue, and 20 that parsed purple (and I really dug deep to not just pull in top performing numbers) and these are the average percentages of Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis compared to all other actions. This is not percentage of DPS actions used, only the filler spell.
Green Average: 38.39%
Blue Average: 42.77%
Purple Average: 43.38%
I didn't do grey, orange, and pink groups to focus on values that could be considered closer to average on the low and high ends. But as you can see, I was incorrect on stating you use filler spells more than all others in all forms of content. But I would argue that considering I used P8S part 2 to find these values, those numbers will only go up with nearly all other forms of content, and even these numbers are well over 1/3rd of your action usage not including other DPS actions. Some other notes is that, interestingly, the green parse group ASTs were generally the lowest percentages of Malefic usage in contrast to other healers, which makes sense given how much card actions they use, but they were often higher than SCH and SGE in the blue and purple groups, which I think translates to higher skill level ASTs being more comfortable relying on their co-healer's OGCD regens, but that's just a theory. WHM was unanimously the healer that used their filler the most, probably because they have the smallest action total.

Conclusion to Findings:

An important detail to note is that this is almost certainly not reflective of prog given how late into this raid tier we are. That said, something worth mentioning about prog is that DPS doesn't initially matter until your team has reached enrage, and by the time your party reaches enrages and starts needing to push numbers, the majority of the mechanics should feel much smoother, so cautious healing has likely been mitigated by the time you have to start worrying about DPS contribution; however, these numbers may still be smaller early in a raid tier with lower gear and possibly needing an extra heal here and there due to having lower Mind and Determination, but I would guestimate that the number wouldn't be drastically smaller since you'd really only need 1 additional heal at times, and not all the time either.

In other words, at its apex, healers will depend on their filler spell for roughly 40% of their gameplay, and because there's no attributes like combos or additional effects associated with the filler spells, we can describe this 40% of gameplay as largely inactive, or able to be performed with an "auto-pilot" esque approach. This is not to say that you play entirely on auto-pilot, but at times where other jobs must multitask responding to mechanics and maintaining their damage output, healers are except from 40% of this. Again, this is roughly, and based on one of the most healing-intense fights we have well after its initial release. Most content in the game will rise this number quite a bit.

I want to try and translate this value to other games as best I can (which, to be mindful, will not be 1:1 comparisons) and see if you feel that these are genuine improvements to the gameplay experiences of those examples. You may disagree that some of these examples are effectively comparable to FFXIV, which is why I want to give a few different takes to see if we can find one that feels like an adequate comparison.

The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time:

Zelda games can loosely be described as puzzle platformers with a light combat aspect. A major part of Zelda gameplay is collecting new items that allow you to solve puzzles, such as the slingshot, the heavy boots, and bombs. One such tool is the bow and arrow. Let's compile some of the focus you'd spend on choosing inventory items by removing the bow and arrow and its power ups. Instead, you'll gain passive power ups to your sword that cause it to fire a shockwave that homes in on targets that you'd currently use your bow and arrow on. This also replaces the slingshot and boomerang. Instead of augmenting different arrows with fire, ice, or light, all of these effects apply at once and will automatically trigger applicable reactions, such as lighting a torch or freezing water. We can also merge your heavy boots and light boots to just be passive effects to your shoes that allow you to automatically resolve mechanics that require you to change your footwear. So instead of equipping the heavy boots to walk against heavy wind, for example, Link will automatically do this when approaching heavy wind instead. In this example, we've compiled your inventory to resolve more mechanics automatically. It's hard to say if this is effectively translates to 40%, but do you feel that these would make Ocarina of Time a better game?

Persona 5 Royal:

Currently, you can effectively break down Persona 5's turn based combat into choices between offensive actions, healing actions, and support actions (attack/defense/agility buffs and debuffs largely). Rather than have independent actions like Masakukaja, which increases the party's agility, all of Morgana's (the primary healer) healing spells now always boost the target's agility passively. Ryuji who is a bruiser type of character can currently boost the party's attack with Matarukaja, instead all his attacks just also decrease the enemy's defense instead. Effectively, support becomes automatic rather than chosen specifically, and all actions are just about attacking or healing. Every persona can currently carry 8 actions, but we can lower that to 5 actions, and Joker who can hold multiple personas can hold a maximum of 7 instead of 12. Does this improve the general experience of the game?

Tekken:

Tekken is a fighting game where combos can effectively be broken down into a combination of the following actions: Move, Run, Left Punch, Right Punch, Left Kick, and Right Kick. In this example, we will merge both punches and both kicks, simplifying the game's combat into Move, Run, Punch, and Kick. We can also shave down the total move list for each character to reflect this. Additionally, attacks can hit high, mid, or low, where low attacks can be jumped over, but can hit opponents who are guarding while standing up. We'll remove low attacks entirely, taking away the need to focus on whether you need to stand or crouch. Grabs can still break through guard, and every character has at least 2, so there's no issue of guard stalling. It's a fairly simple and easy change to compare to. Does this make Tekken a more fun fighting game?

Fire Emblem:

Fire Emblem is a tactical RPG with a lot of components that go into each encounter: unit count, vision, terrain, weapon triangle, mounted united, doubling enemies... It's a pretty extensive list. In this example, let's remove terrain effects for combat, making it so the player doesn't have to worry about positioning as much. Forests, forts, roads, etc. are all simply cosmetic. Mounted units are more often superior to grounded units due to having higher movement, but specific weapons are designed to counter these units and hit them for extremely high damage. We'll remove the advantages of mounted units as well as weapon advantages against certain types of units so players don't need to focus on what types of units the enemy has other than range and the weapon triangle. These two changes alone would make a major impact on lessening the burden of knowledge on the player, as unit choice and map layout are no longer concerns outside of weapons. There's still the aspects of combat, leveling, stats, and weapons though. Would this improve Fire Emblem's gameplay.

I want to reiterate that we've used a fight with a considerably higher demand for healing than the majority of FFXIV to find this value of 40%. If we wanted to make a more fair comparison to these games for the general experience of FFXIV's content, such as dungeons, fates, the MSQ, alliance raids, etc. This number would shift upward quite noticeably, meaning we'd need to further truncate gameplay aspects of these examples to more accurately compare them to our example of healer gameplay. Let's also be mindful that these are only indirect comparisons and they are not meant to equate the same experience as playing a healer in this game. The point is to try and identify a through-line that can unravel this mysteriously hidden shining quality to that 40% break period.