A summary of healer issues

[AnotherPerson]

Ahem, not to put too fine a point on it but...have you looked at your profile lately on Lodestone? It seems unsearchable on the forbidden site, but I don't see Savage clear mounts or Extreme mounts under that Mount tab. Easy to cast stones when you make it where others can't verify how you stack up to your own standard... <_<

You... uh.. you might not realize this, but while he's a troll on the forums and have multiple alts, he actually is one of the more accomplished high-end raiders who also happens to parse like a monster (better than most players too). It isn't all the time he drops pretense when trolling, but when he does have a serious conversation, you realize he is also aware to the issues that plague FFXIV gameplay.

I visited the healer forums once. It was an echo chamber of salt. And when I dared speak my own opinion about how I liked healer as it is now, they got extremely vitriolic. So why would I pay attention to anything other than general discussion, which has arguably less vitriol.

Unsurprisingly, really. Can you imagine if Samurais lost more than Kaiten, their entire rotation just became 3 buttons instead of 7 for single target as well as removing Kaiten? And while most people are still upset at the changes, then someone goes into the DPS forum like "Yeah, I Love the current Samurai!" It has only been... what? Less than 1 expansion since Samurais lost only Kaiten and the forums were in chaos for a while. And yet this isn't even for the entire DPS role, it was just 1 job where plenty of Samurai threads popped up. Healers had their issues start from Stormblood (2 expansions ago) with a large portion of their toolkit just deleted from existence, so it's no surprise the vitriol only accumulated after lots of healers tried the gameplay out, did not like it, and had their feedback ignored to change it.

Don't get me wrong, I can see the potential beauty of 1 button DPS in ShB. It gives a lot of room to pay attention to boss mechanics and to keep track of HP bars for healers who aren't great at multi-tasking. However, any potential that playstyle had shattered for me in Endwalker's implementation. When HP bars don't move significantly or frequently enough for a long period of time, I absolutely abhor the 1 button DPS gameplay because I don't feel engaged or feel like a healer. It's not feasible to also just increase damage for healers to heal because there are healers who won't be able to keep up, yet they aren't willing to give healers that ability other than mashing the same DPS button for the entire fight when healers can handle pretty much all healing with just using their instant abilities. It's just a lose-lose for healer gameplay at every turn lately.
So here we are, some players are still struggling to heal effectively in casual content by relying mainly on their weakest/outdated skills instead of using the shiny new ones, causing players demanding healers to be easier, but you also have a WAR that can just heal themselves and the party while the healer remains dead on the floor ... It's almost inconceivable at what the state of healers have been reduced to with how little their main role contributes when players are wholly competent, and how little they can do anything else when it happens.
Keep healers accessible on the healing side since that's their main role sure, but don't take away their toolkit and leave nothing else in return once they get accustomed to healing and realize there's nothing else for them to do when the party also have ways to keep themselves alive.