Dawntrail's dungeon design has been questionable.

[ddwarbird]

Honestly a lot of the complaints against WHM more come from the perspective of the fact that it actively makes the other healers job harder because WHM is so antithetical to 14’s healer design that WHM makes the shield healers job harder

I have no problem with WHM in a vacuum in terms of it existing for other players (I still don’t like it at all and think it has a history of negatively affecting the other healers) but it really can negatively affect the other healer

(Sorry I know this isn’t really on topic)

No, that's a fair comment. White Mage does feel antithetical to FFXIV's design, we have a lot of "Emergency Heal" but don't really offer much else whereas Astrologian has damage buffs and Scholar has barriers etc. Personally, I think White Mage should have higher damage potential then other healers, so can do more personal DPS then other healers because we have "Holy", an extremely powerful spell in Classic Final Fantasy. I'd like to see White Mage be given more damage options or buffs to party members (Something like Aerith's "Planet Protector" from FF7) because its clear at this stage that Square Enix are not interested in redesigning content to make healers relevant again.

It's funny because even in the FF7 Remake, Aerith is much less of a healer then she was in the original, she's more of a support/dpser now in the remake so this design philosophy is not unique to just FFXIV. Square Enix seem to have a problem with healers in general (probably because they take away from flashy damage numbers).

(Blood Lilly is a nice gimmick but it does not come round fast enough to be a viable damage option and Astrologian kinda stole that uniqueness with Oracle)

[TheInsomniac13]

In my humble opinion Healer Jobs in general are to bloated in the healing Department. I as White Mage main have healing skills I nearly never use simply because there is rearly ever a need for them. The Simplest fix I would suggest in that department would be to bring back Cleric stance I heard old game design has.
To take a dip in healing potency in exchange of getting a short time Damage Buff. I would even add to it that by activating Cleric stance some of your Healing action could be Modified to be offensiv actions, for example Imagine Asylum instead of giving healing ticks to other players acting like an oversized version of Dark Knights Salted earth damaging all enemies coming in contact with it.
By tying this damage buff and attacks to a switch button would also give freedom to new players who do not feel secure letting go of there potent healing kit, while experienced Healers get some options to support the team in the damage department.

Because first lesson of a Healer, your job is it to keep the party alive... best way to archive that is by taking out everything that could do harm in the first place.

[CidHeiral]

i think the problem with dungeons is that they aren't really dungeons, they are a linear path with the formula <trash> <boss><trash><boss>

Agreed. I think the fight designs have been generally good this expansion but the dungeon itself always being hallway/arena/hallway/repeat still makes the overall experience a bit dull. It would be nice if they could shake things up with the layouts. I remember WoW had one dungeon where you were in a room of prison cells and the bosses would be prisoners busting out of their cell. Stuff like that helps add variety and flavor.

The current state of job design doesn't help matters either. With interesting jobs even fighting trash can still feel engaging, but right now the jobs barely require you to be awake to perform their rotation.

[Taranok]

Agreed. I think the fight designs have been generally good this expansion but the dungeon itself always being hallway/arena/hallway/repeat still makes the overall experience a bit dull. It would be nice if they could shake things up with the layouts. I remember WoW had one dungeon where you were in a room of prison cells and the bosses would be prisoners busting out of their cell. Stuff like that helps add variety and flavor.

The current state of job design doesn't help matters either. With interesting jobs even fighting trash can still feel engaging, but right now the jobs barely require you to be awake to perform their rotation.

I disagree. The fight design is driving the game off a cliff. It's easy to understand this if you look at how class design has been happening. A fight comes out, classes have trouble doing the fight, classes change to fit the fight. New fight comes out, classes have trouble with the fight, classes change to fit the fight.

It's actually such a huge meme that you can exactly predict what will happen in future fights based on what buffs classes get. For example, esuna being instant is a direct response to chaotic's 4 second doom. Classes got massive aoes right before arenas became massive. When classes aren't buffed, like BLM not having enough movement in all of endwalker, fight design kept getting more movement and eventually BLM fell in line because no one was playing it or the fights got so stupid the devs were forced to deal with it.

There's a lot of problems, but the big one is the devs have this idea in their head that every job must do every mechanic equally. So every fight is just full of identical mechanics. "The boss is doing a donut, time to run in. Oh look, the donut is now a donut hole, time to run out. Oh look, we gave everyone a ton of movement. Time to make it more than a single wiggle can solve, more movement for all!"

This is also being combined with making fights progressively faster and faster to the point where the game's netcode can't keep up, so sucks if you're on even normal ping from east to west coast! But healing gameplay is just getting more frustrating while still being boring, and tanking gameplay is a binary pass-fail still, just with more oGCDs you need to press.

Frankly, the fight design shows the devs don't understand what the problem with the game's gameplay actually is.

[Valence]

I disagree. The fight design is driving the game off a cliff. It's easy to understand this if you look at how class design has been happening. A fight comes out, classes have trouble doing the fight, classes change to fit the fight. New fight comes out, classes have trouble with the fight, classes change to fit the fight.

It's actually such a huge meme that you can exactly predict what will happen in future fights based on what buffs classes get. For example, esuna being instant is a direct response to chaotic's 4 second doom. Classes got massive aoes right before arenas became massive. When classes aren't buffed, like BLM not having enough movement in all of endwalker, fight design kept getting more movement and eventually BLM fell in line because no one was playing it or the fights got so stupid the devs were forced to deal with it.

There's a lot of problems, but the big one is the devs have this idea in their head that every job must do every mechanic equally. So every fight is just full of identical mechanics. "The boss is doing a donut, time to run in. Oh look, the donut is now a donut hole, time to run out. Oh look, we gave everyone a ton of movement. Time to make it more than a single wiggle can solve, more movement for all!"

This is also being combined with making fights progressively faster and faster to the point where the game's netcode can't keep up, so sucks if you're on even normal ping from east to west coast! But healing gameplay is just getting more frustrating while still being boring, and tanking gameplay is a binary pass-fail still, just with more oGCDs you need to press.

Frankly, the fight design shows the devs don't understand what the problem with the game's gameplay actually is.

I agree with the assessment but I'm pretty sure the devs are perfectly aware of what they've been doing. Even for the BLM reworks I have so many friends that are happy with it (including raiders), and for the fight design it's no different. There is also people unhappy with it but they all have left the game by now. It's why I do feel that the devs are just dead set on a vision they do have, but it comes at the cost of a fracture in the community. All of what they've been doing so far has generated a lot of heated debates and bitterness everywhere I've looked, and it's not getting any better.

[Taranok]

I agree with the assessment but I'm pretty sure the devs are perfectly aware of what they've been doing. Even for the BLM reworks I have so many friends that are happy with it (including raiders), and for the fight design it's no different. There is also people unhappy with it but they all have left the game by now. It's why I do feel that the devs are just dead set on a vision they do have, but it comes at the cost of a fracture in the community. All of what they've been doing so far has generated a lot of heated debates and bitterness everywhere I've looked, and it's not getting any better.

Which is why it will be a critical mass thing. People will grumble and gnash teeth until, all at once, the population will drop off a cliff. This happened once before in HW when the devs shocked the community by making every class way too hard to play, designed gordias with god mode, overtuned the damage, broke the game because of server ticks, and combined it with a 1 month vacation for the devs.

I'm all in favor of giving the devs a break, they just really shouldn't let off the entire dev team on an expansion release where things can, and did, go horrifically wrong. Because HW almost literally killed FFXIV off. Again. The best design FFXIV has ever had came as a direct result of overreacting to HW breaking the game. Stormblood. And if people can see stormblood-styled class and fight design, I feel people would prefer that even over 7.2's fast gameplay, especially those, like me, who have netcode-related issues.