Ultimate Representation: Good, Bad, or Indifferent?

[Liam_Harper]

Glare, Assize, Glare, Glare, Dia, Asylum, Glare, Temperance, Glare, Glare, Rapture, Glare, Solace, Glare, Glare, Divine Benison,...

Pretty fun and engaging to most people, it seems, since it's the most played Healer.

You do realize 75% of your GCD casts in that example of "engagement" are Glare, right? Not to mention it's an exaggerated example, because there are very few situations you need Asylum, Assize, Temperance, a Rapture and a Solace within a 30 sec window. Most of the time we're talking 85-90% Glare.

Ogcd's don't matter as much as you claim. If any dps was just mashing 1 button for their GCD, there'd be a riot, oGCD's or not.

[IceBlueNinja]

Because WHM (and nearly SGE's) skill floor and ceiling are effectively identical. You don't have to manage buffs or activate your brain cells in any way to play them at full effectiveness. Of course people use them for progression. Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare. Such a fun and engaging job, people must play it for the riveting choices and clever optimization.

Think last time I touch whm was back in sbh when i had to level all healers for the magic title lol else I refuse to play it. Too boring

[fulminating]

My dude I have full confidence that if they added a dps with a literal one button rotation, it would be both heavily complained about and highly used. People are lazy and want consistency, spending the entire fight wearing out a single key with the occasional feint/addle would remove nearly all skill requirements and player-based variation.

[Renathras]

My dude I have full confidence that if they added a dps with a literal one button rotation, it would be both heavily complained about and highly used. People are lazy and want consistency, spending the entire fight wearing out a single key with the occasional feint/addle would remove nearly all skill requirements and player-based variation.

The thing you have to remember is that the people heavily complaining about it are not necessarily the ones highly using it.

After the last batch of Lucky Bancho numbers, there was a lot of discussion about them in r/ffxivdiscussion. The conclusion the people there came to was "Maybe we who want more complex Jobs are just a minority of the playerbase...?"

While there is an argument world first-ers use simple Jobs when they have more or less equal performance (e.g. SMN vs BLM right now), the bulk of the playerbase are not world first-ers. It stands to reason that many players simply enjoy simple Jobs.

It's also a good thing there are no Jobs in the game that just hit one button and literally nothing else, isn't it? SMN is the simplest in the game, and it even has more variation than that.

[fulminating]

The thing you have to remember is that the people heavily complaining about it are not necessarily the ones highly using it.

After the last batch of Lucky Bancho numbers, there was a lot of discussion about them in r/ffxivdiscussion. The conclusion the people there came to was "Maybe we who want more complex Jobs are just a minority of the playerbase...?"

While there is an argument world first-ers use simple Jobs when they have more or less equal performance (e.g. SMN vs BLM right now), the bulk of the playerbase are not world first-ers. It stands to reason that many players simply enjoy simple Jobs.

It's also a good thing there are no Jobs in the game that just hit one button and literally nothing else, isn't it? SMN is the simplest in the game, and it even has more variation than that.

I don't think that's an entirely rational conclusion to draw - I think people want a low enough skill floor that they're not intimidated away, with a sufficient ceiling that you can see how or where you can improve. I think 5.x samurai, warrior* and summoner encapsulated this pretty well and where all healers stumble, scholar the least.

Not necessarily, but there's definitely been a non-negligible number of people who've swapped from rdm to smn for the comparable (mildly superior) damage and vastly simpler gameplay in higher end content.

Without bringing up the one button summoner macro, yes.

*Onslaught and upheaval being on the beast gauge, inner release interacting with everything rather than being a fell cleave button, ic being undesirable while ir is up etc. I'm not going to claim it was big brain hours, but definitely had more room for optimisations than currently.

[Vinal211]

I don't think that's an entirely rational conclusion to draw - I think people want a low enough skill floor that they're not intimidated away, with a sufficient ceiling that you can see how or where you can improve. I think 5.x samurai, warrior* and summoner encapsulated this pretty well and where all healers stumble, scholar the least.

Not necessarily, but there's definitely been a non-negligible number of people who've swapped from rdm to smn for the comparable (mildly superior) damage and vastly simpler gameplay in higher end content.

i think the main issue also is that we're at a point where a LOT of jobs are low skill floor AND low skill ceiling. that isn't to mean it's necessarily bad, i think New SMN just needs tuning and more added on to it for it to not feel like a three summon pony and to start needing at least one brain cell. (now granted that's also bringing in the issue of job changes at an expansions release and patch cycle being INCREDIBLY janky and lackluster at times)

If you were to ask me, a lot of healer issues could be fixed if they actively took the time to look at where each one stands and give it a definitive skill floor that you can see from the get go, and various skill ceilings that cater to different peoples tastes. WHM can definitely have that "low skill floor semi-low skill ceiling" feel and still feel viable next to something like slightly higher skill floor SCH, or the even higher skill floor AST. SGE could be that middle ground. which leads me to wonder, considering that two of the healers are locked behind high levels and expansion packs, if they'll ever decide to actually go back and make base classes you can grab for post-ARR jobs. not likey though I'm sure, considering Yoshi-P's hatred of needing to use Job Crystals still for lore and gameplay reasons.

[Renathras]

Or maybe, just mayyybe, because being the only healer that can be played from lv1, being...

Unlikely. If people were crying out for a complex Healer and there was one available, then it would be the most played. If that was happening, then there'd be a good argument to shift the other Healers toward that. ACN/SMN/SCH also starts at level 1, and people that WANT a complex Job aren't going to shy away from a mere 30 levels. You also can level any Job on a single character, and again, people that want higher complexity would know of this and do so. Moreover, SGE is the Healer that starts closest to level cap, not WHM, meaning people wanting to pick up a Healer would use it. People that pick up WHM but hate simple Jobs and yearn for something, ANYthing more complex, would pick it up instead. It's EXTREMELY unlikely 30 levels are stopping anyone. Let's be real, most of you have multiple Jobs leveled, if not being omni-90s. Hell, I only have 6 Jobs not at 90 myself, and I don't play many or care much for DPS, which is the majority of the Jobs.

I don't doubt there are some people that play WHM for the reasons you claim, but the thing is...it's not just WHM. If it was, you'd have a stronger argument.

Aside from WHM:

SMN and RDM are played more than BLM; RDM doesn't start at level 1.
WAR is played more than GNB, DRK, and PLD. PLD is the least played Tank, despite it starting at level 1 and being an iconic Job.
DNC is the most played Ranged, and it's the simplest and the one that doesn't start at level 1.
RPR is arguably the most played Melee, and by most accounts, the easiest. The second easiest, and second most played, is SAM. Neither starts at level 1.

If it was JUST WHM, you might be right. But it's not just WHM. Across the board, we see that the most simplistic Jobs in all roles are also the most played. This seems to indicate that players desire simpler Jobs more than complex ones. It does, in fact, seem to be the most logical analysis given all of the data we have.

Healers may not be "the most complained about", we have no metrics to be sure of that. The forums are anecdotal, with a lot of selection bias. But regardless, the data seems to support, like it or don't like it, that the playerbase AS A WHOLE likes simpler Jobs.

Now, this is not an argument for all Jobs being simple. But it is an argument that there should be some simple Jobs in the game.

I don't think that's an entirely rational conclusion to draw - I think people want a low enough skill floor that they're not intimidated away, with a sufficient ceiling that you can see how or where you can improve.

Is that what people in general want, though, or what you want and you believing that the majority of people are like you?

I don't mean this as a slight, but it's very likely you don't represent the majority, given all the data we have. You may be in the minority. Not a small minority at all, but it's unlikely your views are necessarily representative of the whole.

Not necessarily, but there's definitely been a non-negligible number of people who've swapped from rdm to smn for the comparable (mildly superior) damage and vastly simpler gameplay in higher end content.

RDM/SMN is an interesting case because the tuning right now has SMN higher than RDM. But that ignores that BLM does more damage. In a world where "utility doesn't matter, only more damage", BLM would be the most played. It isn't. Moreover, if we want to draw more broad conclusions, we can look at the rest of the data. RPR wasn't the top DPS but was the most played. What does RPR share with SMN? Not a combat raise. Not doing higher damage than its peers. But it DOES share ease of play. Indeed, RDM used to be the easiest Caster and was the most played, despite SMN and BLM doing more damage in ShB. But now, SMN is easier and is the most played. That indicates, again, ease of play being highly valued by the playerbase.

*Onslaught and upheaval being on the beast gauge, inner release interacting with everything rather than being a fell cleave button, ic being undesirable while ir is up etc. I'm not going to claim it was big brain hours, but definitely had more room for optimisations than currently.

What's interesting to me is how, when they change a Job to make it more simple, people say it'll be the death of the Job, but then the Job becomes the most played (or among the most played) in the role.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...nd_raid_mount/

WAR, WHM, RPR, and SMN are the most played Jobs across all roles. They're also the easiest Jobs in their respective roles. DNC is the most played Ranged...but the three are actually fairly even (as many people have noted, their difficulties are similar and Ranged is arguably the easiest role overall in the game right now of the DPS subroles), but even so, DNC is also...considered the easiest.

So in 5 out of 5 categories, the easiest Job is also the most played Job. And in the categories where there's a pretty close "second easiest" (Healer-SGE, Melee-SAM, Caster-RDM), that second easiest is also the second most played.

Again, this does not mean there should not be complex Jobs but it does mean there should be non-complex ones since, at the VERY least, we can see that a large number of players want them, even if you'd rather not say it's a majority. We can't know for sure which is the majority, but we can know that a lot of people do not want to play, and shy away from, complex Jobs.

If you were to ask me, a lot of healer issues could be fixed if they actively took the time to look at where each one stands and give it a definitive skill floor that you can see from the get go, and various skill ceilings that cater to different peoples tastes. WHM can definitely have that "low skill floor semi-low skill ceiling" feel and still feel viable next to something like slightly higher skill floor SCH, or the even higher skill floor AST. SGE could be that middle ground.

This is honestly the best answer.

Give each Healer a different skill ceiling and let people play the one that has their desired level. Some people like playing Halo on easy, some medium, some heroic, some legendary. If the game only has easy, some people will get bored. If it only has legendary, some people will get frustrated and quit. The answer is to have all four and let players pick the one they want, and have a low barrier to entry for them to try another, so someone could, for example, start on medium and after doing that for a while and wanting more, swap up to heroic, or if they're feeling overwhelmed, step down to easy for a while.

[fulminating]

Isn't this just you making my argument about the 1 button job, the inherent laziness of this playerbase and the necessity of having a substantial gap between skill floor and ceiling?

I have not spoken to anyone of any level who has no issues with the direction endwalker combat has taken, no matter their level of play. From talking with them it seems there is generally a sentiment of skill floor and ceiling being too close together, and a general distaste for everyone being on the 2m raid buff schedule.

Black mage does more damage as long as you don't die. The difference between them is not so insurmountable - and should you look at the alliance raid playrates, first you'll see paladin is the most played tank both pre and post rework and second you'll see that the whiskers on black mage extend further to the left than those of smn - i.e. the worst black mage deals less damage than the worst summoner. You will also observe that the medians of smn and blm are rather comparable, black mage being ahead by ~200dps. And if we're looking at historic data, warrior - the easiest shb tank - was also the least played in nier raids. This does discount dungeons, but since warrior is "solo play with others" there, it's an outlier at best.

[Renathras]

After all that arguing back and forth, you finally say what I was saying (almost). I want 'WHM is Halo, SCH is COD, AST is Battlefield, SGE is Medal of Honor' (is MOH still alive?)

Yeah, but that's not what I'm saying, to the point it completely misses the point and objective.

As I told you in the other thread, unless all difficulties on a Job produce the same DPS, this doesn't work. Each JOB should be one of the difficulties (in terms of its skill ceiling), not within a Job, since there is only ever "doing it right" and "doing it wrong". "Oooh, but you can do it wrong and clear MSQ roulette!" LITERALLY no one cares about whether or not you can clear MSQ roulette...

Isn't this just you making my argument about the 1 button job, the inherent laziness of this playerbase and the necessity of having a substantial gap between skill floor and ceiling?

No. You say laziness, I say preference. Not everyone wants or enjoys the same thing. It also certainly doesn't suggest there is a "necessity" of "a substantial gap between skill floor and ceiling".

It suggests we should have at least 3 (ideally 4) levels of complexity in each Role - from easy to medium to heroic to legendary, as I said before - and that each should be balanced to produce the same basic output, just some of them you work harder to get there, where your reward is that you WANTED to.

I think it was Misshapen Chair who said, of Healers specifically: https://youtu.be/sbWubxOTUWU?t=672

Anyways, I think that's enough ranting on this topic FOR NOW. I will finish by saying this:
-Give SCH players 2 DoTs. Make one of them a hard cast. And give them Tri-disaster, and make Aetherflow reset the cooldown of said Tri-disaster.
-Let WHM stay exactly the same so we can meme on it for being the baby healer.
-Bring back Nocturnal AST.
-Bring back AOE DoTs (shows picture of Bane).
-And make SAGE have some wack a** overcomplicated DPS rotation that baffles people's minds and see if they embrace it or not. Because with how safe that Job was on release, it was stale before I even started playing it.
If someone complains that they need to be rewarded with more DPS for their complicated Job; simply tell them that the reward is being able to have FUN, and not being BORED out of their ******* mind! Shut the **** up about a whole 2% DPS variance!
Now let's get out there and go back to mashing one button with drool rolling down our face.

...which, I think, more or less encapsulates my view perfectly. Honestly, other than the equal damage and leaving WHM alone, I'd think most of you would agree with the majority of his video. I disagree with some of his points that the rest of you might more agree with (e.g. fight design, which as we've discussed, HAS changed), but on the whole, I agree with his conclusion and recommended solution. And have for quite some time now. It's what I call the "4 Healers" paradigm/model. That we have 4 Healers, so we should...make them each unique and let people play the one they want/enjoy the most.

I have not spoken to anyone of any level who has no issues with the direction endwalker combat has taken,

Again, what is with you people and putting words in my mouth? Do you know what a loaded question fallacy is, by chance? Or perhaps this is more a strawman fallacy?

I've never said there is no issue with the direction Endwalker combat has taken. I've repeatedly said, across all of these threads, in ALL THREE of these Role forums that it's not going in a good direction and has problems. But that's not a Healer problem, per se, that's an entire holistic encounter design problem.

Everyone agrees the 2 min system is bad. HOPEFULLY, the Devs will hear that come 7.0.

Not everyone agrees the skill floor/ceiling issue is a problem, but some do. Which leads to the above about each role should have both low and high ones. For example, ShB and EW alike, most people are kidna fine with WAR being what it is...as long as the other three Tanks aren't WAR. WHM is in a similar place with Healers in terms of their damage kits all seemingly based around its (though it's a bit more like SB AST's, but whatever; same thing), with the problem being that they're ALL the same, not that they all need large gulfs between skill floor and ceiling, but that at least SOME of them do.

Oh, 100% (more if possible) agree with this, though:

The lack of an exploration zone is really hurting the expansion.

.

People that want a complex job straight up are not going to touch the ACN line as neither Sch is complex nor its Smn

WEEEEELLL.......

As recently as ShB - which, recall, was about a year and a quarter ago - SMN was arguably the most complex Job in the entire game, and SCH is still the most complex of the Healer Jobs. There's an entire thread next to this one where people are arguing how complex SCH optimization is and how Energy Drain is such an amazing ability and they feel great expressing their skill optimizing around it for the higher skill ceiling. Likewise, there's AST - I see you left out AST - which has probably the most complex healing toolkit and the highest APM with the most decision making per second during burst of PROBABLY any Job in the game, and definitely any Healer.

Point is, there are complex Healers NOW - only middling so, but if we look at "across all MMOs", AST and SCH are in the "middle" level of complexity - and they are the two least played. And that's despite one of them leveling "for free" with another Job that is THE MOST PLAYED. You can argue that they aren't the most complex Jobs in all of videogame history (SCH that is, and AST if you wish), but they have nuance to using them correctly, and would probably be considered a middling complexity in most games. Probably on the lower end of middle, but to use the Halo example, they'd be Medium. Not Heroic or Legendary, but not Easy. SGE straddles the line a bit as well, at least while people are learning it and adjusting to it from another Healer or not having played before.

Which would be cool if there was a single complex healer job,

I agree.

thats why a lot of people who want a complex job go to either melee jobs or blm

Most Melee aren't terribly complicated. BLM isn't COMPLICATED, it just requires fight knowledge to execute - moreso than most other Jobs.

or simply stay with their main cause for some players things like aesthetics or irl situations

Oh, I agree. But my point is if everyone REALLY wanted the most complex gameplay they could get, the majority of Healers would be SCH and AST, not WHM and SGE. Again, I'm not arguing that NO ONE wants complex Jobs. I'm arguing that the majority likely do not, and at the very least, a sizeable minority do not (though, again, they're probably the majority)

Which is why, since release Sage is 2nd most populated healer,

Partly agree.

The other part, of course, is that SGE is an easier SCH.

However you're ignoring that a lot of players already have Whm at 80 before EW so its easier to lv up that one than Sge,

10 levels are ridiculously easy to get in FFXIV, especially if you already have a higher level Job with everything unlocked and the Armory Bonus. You can get from 70 to 80 extremely quickly using Bozja.

how its precieved as the comfy pick

BECAUSE IT'S THE EASIEST (WHM, that is). Yes, thank you for stating my point using different words... <_<

It's a grave mistake to assume that the majority of the Whm's are happy with their gameplay though,

Why do you guys always insist on putting words in my mouth? Where did I say "are happy with their gameplay"? I said "prefer a less complex Job". More precisely: "But regardless, the data seems to support, like it or don't like it, that the playerbase AS A WHOLE likes simpler Jobs."

in fact if I were to talk from experience I have found much more experienced Whm displeased with the job state than happy ones across all media.

Anecdote is not data. The data suggests that the majority of players play WHM. Meaning if they liked the more complex Healers - you an say they aren't MUCH more complex, but literally all three other Healers are more complex - they would be more played. And again, looking across roles, we see this in ALL five roles/subroles that the easiest Jobs are the most played. So it's not even just a Healer thing, it's a "the entire playerbase" thing.

They are benefited from flashyness vs Blm

BLM literally has the most flashy spells in the game. SMN's don't get flashy until level 90 when you get the actual Primals. RDM's don't until around level 70 when you get Flare/Holy. This is absolutely the incorrect answer and a pretty...poor attempt at just not admitting what is the most logical answer.

which all the community tell players to not touch if you're new

BECAUSE IT'S THE MOST COMPLEX! It's like...you're saying the same thing I am, just using any words other than "people play the simpler Jobs in general when given the choices".

B L O O D W H E T T I N G, aside flashyness people want to feel powerful and considering dungeons are the majority of content of the game and War is capable of easily doing them solo due to the immenese effectiveness of their tools... well its not hard to see how that is what drives people in and not its gameplay, which when put into drk has been criticized and among the tank community there is the dread of "making all tanks 4 flavours of war"

You're REALLY trying not to admit reality here. PLD is FAR more flashy than WAR is. You don't get Bloodwhetting until level 82. You don't get Raw Intuition (it's predecessor) until 56. And dungeons are simple content that any Tank can borderline solo (if not outright solo) at level cap in current tier tome gear. People who are thirsty for a complex Job ARE NOT PICKING WAR. Right now, they're picking DRK and GNB. Before 6.3, they were picking PLD, too. And all three are less played Jobs.

Your argument here makes no sense as all the other Tanks are more flashy than WAR, more complex than WAR, can easily solo the same content, all three have more iconic and desired Job fantasies (Holy Knight PLD, Dark Knight DRK, and Squall/Lightning borderline-DPS Tank GNB with a sword that's ALSO a gun!). It is very likely, in fact, the gameplay.

This is because its simply the one that works the best in its niche.

Honestly, this one I'll give you, just because the meta right now. But DNC is also the easiest of the three. Like WHM before - if it was ONLY DNC being most played, you'd have a great argument here. But again, across all roles, we see the easiest, least complex Jobs being played.

Fun fact, that is only in NA and EU

Fun fact: No it's not.

Look at the graph: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...nd_raid_mount/

What does the top one say? "Elemental, Gaia, and Mana". Those are the JP servers. RPR is still the most played of the Melee in the region where it is the least popular. The second most played there, btw, is SAM, the second easiest Melee. The four sets of bars are JP, NA, EU, and OCE. In every one, the most played Jobs are WAR, WHM, RPR, DNC, and SMN. In JP, DRK is played ALMOST (but still less) than WAR (PLD was still behind it, and remember this is pre-6.3 PLD, with GNB last in JP), SCH is SLIGHTLY ahead (but still second place) of SGE, SAM and DRG are CLOSHISH TO (but still behind) RPR, BRD is played ALMOST (but still less) than DNC, RDM is played ALMOST (but still less) than SMN. So even in the region that seems more to like complex Jobs, they still don't break into first place, and the only one that breaks into second place (arguably) is SGE.

"there is a lot more to unpack besides easy job"

I don't disagree it's only one component. But it IS a component, and probably a major one. You refusing to even accept it might be A component is just stubbornness.

The data overall very much shows that there are a lot of players in a game of over 5 million that like simple Jobs instead of complex ones. Maybe that's only 1 million (20%), maybe it's 4 million (80%), but it's not 0. Refusing to admit that it's probably a strong drive for at least a decent sized chunk of players is just irrational. And that's not a slight at you, so many people do it, but there's no rational way to do so. Just looking at Healers from - pick a region - WHM makes up, at minimum, 30% of them. There's no rational way to say that any less than 1/5th the player base aren't interested in complex Jobs.

Calling bullshit on that,

There MIGHT be 1,000 or so people that regularly post on the forums. In the Healer forums, you see the same names a lot of you frequent this place. There might be 200, but that's pushing it.

The game's active playerbase is somewhere in the 2-5 million category. Even if we go with the much smaller estimate of 1 million, 10,000 is only 1% of 1,000,000. So even if we give the forums an extra order of magnitude, the ENTIRE forum likely represents less than 1% of the playerbase. (10,000 vs 2 million would be 0.5%, and vs 5 million would be 0.1%)

AND, not even everyone on the forum holds that position - take myself for instance.

second if healers werent complained the most we would see the same activity in other roles forums as well as in general about other roles, however that does not happen,

Have you BEEN to any of the other role forums lately?

The Tanking forum is particularly up in arms about PLD, and PLD and WAR being "shut out" of Ultimates, and consistently complaining about their Role becoming homogenized, dumbed down, and that they don't do "Tank" things anymore, which they consider agro management, mitigation management, and boss positioning. A lot of them complain frequently about the 2 min meta's effect on Tanking, and that they're just "Blue DPS" or "Melee without positionals".

The Damage Dealer forum is STILL mad about Kaiten, also complaining about NIN Mudras, ALSO complaining about SMN being reworked, ALSO complaining about Meleewalker favoring Melees, ALSO complaining about the Ranged tax (that also seems to apply to any Caster not named Black Mage), ALSO complaining about the 2 min meta and how it's harming their Jobs, ALSO complaining about homogenization, ALSO complaining about Job changes like MNK losing positionals, and...

...I could go on for a while.

The other roles are very agitated as well. So even if we pretend the forums are a representative sample that isn't suffering from selection bias (dubious claims), the other Role forums are not happy with their situation and seem to be as much in arms and complaining about it as Healers.

The main difference is a lot - not all, but a lot - of their complaints are about specific things whereas the Healer complaints are more nebulous. And the one commonality across all three is (a) people complaining about the 2 minute meta, (b) people complaining about homogenization (while often asking for it), and (c) the people that want complex Jobs insisting they're the majority of the playerbase and everyone agrees with them.

the closest we had was the kaiten drama and even with that it was still something minimal compared to the multiple hundred-pages-long threads of complains healers have

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...Kaiten-removal

"minimal"? That's literally multiple hundred-pages-long threads ABOUT A SINGLE ABILITY on A SINGLE JOB. (Well, one 164 page thread, a couple separate double digit ones, and dozens of others, and it's not even an exhaustive list).

Personally, I don't get why THAT is the drama llama of changes, but it wasn't minimal. The SMN complaint threads alone likely add up to as many as the Healer complaint ones.

No, the other Role forums very much have a similar level of complaint activity. Any one of them could vie for the title of "complained the most".

"Other media like youtube and reddit" are also not representative samples that aren't suffering from selection bias, but they ALSO are complaining about Tanks, Damage Dealers, and freakin' Kaiten.

[QUOTEyou can search anywhere and aside the most casual playerbase anyone who has a minimal job understanding can see the glaring issues the healers have. We have multitude of samples that show it so its about to time to remove the blindfold.[/QUOTE]

What IS it with you and putting words in people's mouths? Stop telling people what they're saying and LISTEN to what they're saying:

No one is saying Healers don't have issues. Not everyone is agreeing on what the solution is. And that's not even the topic WE are discussing. That's you trying to change the topic to one you think you have firmer ground on.

The topic WE are discussing is whether the playerbase as a whole desires more complex or more simple Jobs (the answer is, often, more simple, and never are the MOST complex Jobs the most popular ones) and whether we should make all the Jobs more complex because people all want more complex Jobs and don't want simple ones (which is also clearly wrong)

I agree but there is something called oversimplification and currently all healers fall under it, no job in a tab target mmo be it healer or not should see over 80% of their total GCDs being the same button that has no consequence nor interaction with their kit not see that their reward for good gameplay is basically pressing that button even more

I disagree with the base but not the overall concept.

No ROLE should have EVERY CLASS/JOB IN IT work that way.

It's entirely possible to make classes that work that way and are fun. In WoW Cataclysm, one of my favorite classes was the Arcane spec Mage. It was hyper simple. It had a playstyle SOMEWHAT like BLM's in FFXIV. Here's a joke video of its rotation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISsOjfHgtws

Okay, here's the ACTUAL rotation, single target and AOE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-KTagyxdn8

But serious talk: You had basically four abilities and a "burn phase" vs a "conservation phase". Arcane Blast was your base nuke, which gave you a buff/debuff that increased your damage dealt but also mana consumption of the next Arcane Blast. Arcane Barrage would delete all the stacks to let you start from 0. Arcane Missiles was an ability which could proc and was basically "free DPS". Finally, you had a fire and forget Flame Orb (used on CD), then two CDs, Mana Gem and Evocation (think if Lucid Dreaming was a channeled GCD to refill your MP).

The rotation was use Arcane Blast to low mana, Mana Gem, more Arcane Blast until basically out of mana, then Evocation back to 100%. Then the sustain phase was Arcane Blast x2-3 then Arcane Barrage, repeat for 2 minutes (heh...that 2 minute meta is a cancer, isn't it? Spreads from MMO to MMO!), then repeat. Use Arcane Missiles when it procs, use Flame Orb on CD. That was the rotation. Note that this was a DPS class, not a Healer, with 4 DPS buttons.

The AOE rotation was drop a Flamestrike then spam Arcane Blast.

And...honestly, it was kind of fun to play, with a bit more optimization than it sounds, but the point being, FFXIV's Healers don't even necessarily have the simplest rotations of MMO classes INCLUDING DPS CLASSES across MMO history.

The problem is the buttons we have don't interact well at all - nothing procs anything, there's no give-take phase like Cata's Arcane Mage had, and that ALL FOUR of our Healing Jobs have almost the same DPS rotation aside from arguably SCH, and just barely. This is the point you made that I agree with. The Healer rotations are static, but uninteresting, and they're all the sameish, meaning if you DID want something different, you don't have the option.

Such option should exist - a point I made before.

.

Anyway, to take again from that quote above:

"I think that's enough ranting on this topic FOR NOW." From me, at least.

[IDontPetLalas]

All of which has nothing to do with the healer role....