I think this may be the single worst take I've ever seen on FF14.
"There is no accuracy" Like nigga the fights are based around resource management, how you use your mana, your OGCD's all that jazz please take the time to explain to me why adding a 1% chance to just not hit an attack and waste mana/an OGCD timer would improve anything.
"No Support." Nigga, Bard, Dancer, Red Mage are DPS that focus on supporting the team with buffs or other useful skills hell Astro, Sage and Scholar are fucking healers based around support with only white mage being a pure healer focusing on Big numbers both heal and damage wise.
"Healers don't have to heal anymore." Have you played the game? At any point? This is just objectively wrong.
There used to be accuracy. They removed it for what reason? To "streamline". There used to be main stat materia. There used to be different materia load outs you could use.
What resource management? You can't run out of MP as a healer. You just can't. You barely dip below 6k and that's if you're spamming raises. If you're having to raise constantly, you have a weak link. There's not even TP in the game anymore. So you just spam 1-2-3 until things die. You don't even have to watch for resource management 99% of the time unless you're spam raising. Which, again, if you have to spam raise, that's a player/skill problem.
Yeah, those 2-3% buffs are noticeable. Totally. Remember when AST used to have defense/skill speed/spell speed/refresh/TP regain cards? Remember when BRD used to have Ballad that actually refreshed or rain of arrows caused an evasion down status effect? Remember when SCH used to have Eye for an Eye? Remember when SMN could virus? Remember when SCH could silence with Selene? Remember when NIN had Sneak Attack and Trick Attack? Those are all gone. They're now tied in with the main rotation. For a paltry 2% buff physical or magic buff. Remember when SMN could summon Titan and emergency tank in a pinch to get a tank up?
Let's talk about AST. AST used to be the closest thing XIV had to a support job. Then what happened? cards changed. They stripped away it's ability to actually buff. Now you pull cards to gain MP back and give a paltry damage buff that can barely be noticed. What about when AST had two sects? They took that away because shields would clash with SGE (I guess?) and now you have a generic regen healer. Just like WHM. They get rid of card buffs but they keep Synastry. A skill next to no one uses.
SCH used to be required for T5 due to Eye for an Eye as Twintania could and would one shot tanks with Death Sentence. You'd need to Virus Twintania and Eye for an Eye the tank. In T2 you needed Selene for aoe Silence. You would have to sleep/repose mobs or you'd be overwhelmed. You know, tactics. Like keeping DoT's up as a SMN and using your aetherflow charges to spread the DoT's to adds. When you had to burst MP usage when jobs weren't just given 10k MP at level 1 for all jobs.
If you can't see the homogenization of jobs, I don't know what to tell you.
Yeah, healers don't really have to heal. If you look at any parse, you'll notice that 85% of the time, healers are spamming one of two attack spells. Over and over. The only time you have to heal check is unavoidable AOE damage. And you can mitigate a lot of that with second wind/bloodlust.
What makes WHM different from AST? Using a 2% damage up card? That's support? That's what causes them to stand apart? What's the difference between RPR or DRG? What's the difference between GNB and DRK?
I've played XIV since 1.0. I played when it was 1.23b, ARR when the servers imploded, when the content drought happened for Heavensward, the braindead Omega fights in Stormsblood, the weak ass story of Shadowbringers, and now the generic bullshit that's Endwalker. I've always "mained" a healer in raids/ultimate. They have been systematically stripping out anything that makes jobs unique because "balancing is hard". They have been pushing this generic DPS angle on everything. The dev team members for balance don't even play healers. They all play DPS. So it's small wonder. They get lazier and lazier with creativity and originality with every single expansion. They nerf the fuck out of jobs which they said they'd never do. They fucked SAM last patch to the point there's no reason to even have a senki charges. Just make hissatsu have a static 5 charge.
It's retarded that they take away any and all customization that people could actually achieve. Materia is next to useless outside of DoL/DoH because they hard cap stats and they took away 80% of battle materia. They took away secondary skills you could set so now jobs just get the same fucking generic set. There is no horizontal gear progression. At all. I'm not saying it needs to be like FFXI where you need 30 pieces of gear and swap them out with macros to be effective, but vertical gearing isn't a good design philosophy. Whatever has a higher ilvl is better and you just go with that.
EDIT: Remember when Elemental mitigation materia was in the game and you could boost your elemental defense? Remember when there was the elemental wheel in the game as a whole? Remember when WHM had access to water spells? BLM was slated to be given Earth spells? Remember when tanks actually felt different to play? WAR would be higher damage, but took higher damage and was designed to be an offtank? Or when DRK was risk vs reward? When a tank actually had to work to keep hate on mobs instead of spamming 2 AOE's and calling it good? When there were real positionals you had to hit as a MNK or your shit would be fucked? When Trick Attack had to have a broken line of sight between the NIN and mob? When Sneak Attack had to be used behind the mob and you could stack the two for greater damage? Remember when NIN could coat their weapons? So many things have been gutted and any kind of interesting or unique things that made jobs stand apart are gone. That, to me, is bad. I understand their desire to make all jobs viable with the lowest amount of setup and skill ceiling, but then there's no point in having different jobs or leveling different jobs. It's a travesty that most modern MMO's have completely cut out support/buff and debuff jobs completely. Having strong support/debuff forces a specific party composition, sure, but that's what we have now with 2 tanks/2 healers/4 DPS.
XIV is trying so hard to not be XI that they actively harm themselves by not taking the good aspects of XI and the depth it had/has. It's a Japanese MMO. They need to embrace that shit more and stop catering to WoW faggots. Who the fuck wants to play FFXIV for the generic western MMO experience?
