A summary of healer issues

you will all need to forgive me for not updating this, rl, a bug in the login system and my contempt for the way healers are being treated by yoshida put me off trying. Still going to do it but now i got more to add.

good to hear youre back

Couldn't the all the problems just be summarized with "the devs don't care and don't wanna even take the time to know".

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Originally Posted by deadman1204

Couldn't the all the problems just be summarized with "the devs don't care and don't wanna even take the time to know".

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Yes, and at this point, I have no idea why we're even bothering to offer feedback. They clearly dont care about the role and veterans feedback, that much has been made clear.

The official statement from them for not being satisfied with the role is 1 of 2 items:

"If you are not satisfied with the current playstyle of healers, there are many other roles and jobs within the game that you might find appealing, we suggest you try them."

"If you are not satisfied with the current difficulty of content for Healers, please que for Ultimate."

Point?

Go play another role.

We're still offering feedback mainly because how else are we supposed to air out the issues? Even if it looks ugly, we still have to press it. The DRK Megathread in particular in the Tank Subforum is a veritable example of this - and they've still yet to have their requests answered properly, akin to how we deal with it. Face it: Yoshida and his team CANNOT and WILL NOT take criticism from the West because of Japanese work culture. The "influencers" themselves aren't allowed to air out the laundry either because it'd basically be "OH! You're making SE look bad! Oh well, hope you liked working with us." and they'd prevent them from criticizing certain aspects.

I think Asmongold said it best when he was reacting to Preach's talk about Bozja and Eureka - if you don't focus on the systems, then it feels better to summarize. Our issues stem from the healing system itself and flaws in battle design, which I've felt the team's gotten lax with outside of Savage, Alliance Raids, and Ultimate. Why we cry about it is because we're dissatisfied with the state of healers and how the job feels at a basic level. The only way the playerbase can believably bite back is if we continue to offer constructive, yet scolding criticisms ad nauseum until they properly fix healers. Give credit where it is due of course, because not everything is unicorns and rainbows for WHM(even though it ought to be given the rose tinted glasses people get at the mere mention of it if they haven't healed yet).

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

We're still offering feedback mainly because how else are we supposed to air out the issues? Even if it looks ugly, we still have to press it. The DRK Megathread in particular in the Tank Subforum is a veritable example of this - and they've still yet to have their requests answered properly, akin to how we deal with it. Face it: Yoshida and his team CANNOT and WILL NOT take criticism from the West because of Japanese work culture. The "influencers" themselves aren't allowed to air out the laundry either because it'd basically be "OH! You're making SE look bad! Oh well, hope you liked working with us." and they'd prevent them from criticizing certain aspects.

I think Asmongold said it best when he was reacting to Preach's talk about Bozja and Eureka - if you don't focus on the systems, then it feels better to summarize. Our issues stem from the healing system itself and flaws in battle design, which I've felt the team's gotten lax with outside of Savage, Alliance Raids, and Ultimate. Why we cry about it is because we're dissatisfied with the state of healers and how the job feels at a basic level. The only way the playerbase can believably bite back is if we continue to offer constructive, yet scolding criticisms ad nauseum until they properly fix healers. Give credit where it is due of course, because not everything is unicorns and rainbows for WHM(even though it ought to be given the rose tinted glasses people get at the mere mention of it if they haven't healed yet).

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Even though they completely and actively ignore feedback? It's literally pointless, they themselves have shown they don't care, and if you get particularly rowdy about it, they ban you from the forums for a week or so to make it clear you should stop complaining about it loudly.

It is literally useless to provide feedback on Healers; there is no pay off, there is no real acknowledgement, there is no solutions that are viable offered from them, and the changes they continue to make to healers borders on bizarre and head scratching at best.

Give up, that is the unofficially official implication from the Devs and their management, "Que for Ultimate if you are unsatisfied with the difficulty of current content."

White Mage will always be bad for reasons they cannot appropriately or accurately explain; they actively hate Scholar and genuinely don't care about its player bases feedback, Astro is something they legitimately don't know what to do with, and Sage is just Scholar.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

Even though they completely and actively ignore feedback? It's literally pointless, they themselves have shown they don't care, and if you get particularly rowdy about it, they ban you from the forums for a week or so to make it clear you should stop complaining about it loudly.

It is literally useless to provide feedback on Healers; there is no pay off, there is no real acknowledgement, there is no solutions that are viable offered from them, and the changes they continue to make to healers borders on bizarre and head scratching at best.

Give up, that is the unofficially official implication from the Devs and their management, "Que for Ultimate if you are unsatisfied with the difficulty of current content."

White Mage will always be bad for reasons they cannot appropriately or accurately explain; they actively hate Scholar and genuinely don't care about its player bases feedback, Astro is something they legitimately don't know what to do with, and Sage is just Scholar.

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Isn't going on a public forum to tell people to give up kind of an oxymoron? If you're of the mindset that you should give up, then what drives you to log in just to tell others to give up? If you've given up, wouldn't you logically have... given up and not log in to talk about it any further? It actually hurts my brain trying to think about that.

I think that 'megathreads' aren't really effective at communicating player wishes on the EN forums, given how frequently people post. More often than not, they end up turning into a glorified discord chat room with a flurry of disposable comments. So even if you do post something clever that catches people's interest amidst the dross, it usually doesn't get the visibility that it needs for long enough. If a thread has 62 pages, you'll probably encounter the first page of comments when you enter, but how often do you actually bother to flip back to see what people were saying on page 54? This type of thread format, in contrast, is good. Not because forum-goers are going to necessarily sift through 70 pages of chat comments to find a hidden gem to upvote, but because you have a (relatively) structured OP post that players can pool their support behind.

If I had to offer a critique on it, it would be a lack of focus. The first two points listed are excellent and hit the mark on the bulk of the complaints across the past two expansions. But yet, there's only one line written on each. Of the remaining eight points, there's four fluff points about visual effects, glamour, and lore, one point reiterating that healing sucks, and one point about healer feedback being ignored. This is length for length's sake, and it almost would have been more effective as a two line post.

Of course, what's even more effective is to take those two to three key issues (i.e. a large amount of healer downtime and a corresponding lack of damage options to use in that downtime), and then expand on each one of those under section headers. I'd personally probably put a relative lack of playstyle diversity as a third point (why does every healer released have to be a caster?) But I don't think editing the OP from two years ago adds anything to it.

In Q+A, people similarly spread themselves too thin, either posing multiple questions at once or offering opinion pieces in place of questions. When you do this, you risk getting an answer that doesn't address your main point. You have to be selective. When you wade through the short essay posed as a question during the last live letter, the bulk on it is a mini-rant on fight difficulty and how tanks are clearing Asphodelos without healers. So the answer itself focuses on how Asphodelos was undertuned because it is the intro raid, subsequent raid tiers will be harder, and there's Ultimate if even that is too easy for you. But that wasn't even the central issue that you actually cared about in the first place.

In short, this is the sort of high quality thread that is needed, it just needs to be articulated in a more focused way.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

snip.

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when i eventually get round to it, im going to finish updating this post. Hopefully before my sub runs out if i would no longer be allowed on the forums to make it more concise as discussed on previous pages.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

This type of thread format, in contrast, is good. Not because forum-goers are going to necessarily sift through 70 pages of chat comments to find a hidden gem to upvote, but because you have a (relatively) structured OP post that players can pool their support behind.

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Maybe someone should revive Shin96 to do the same with the DRK megathread

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

Yes, and at this point, I have no idea why we're even bothering to offer feedback. They clearly dont care about the role and veterans feedback, that much has been made clear.

The official statement from them for not being satisfied with the role is 1 of 2 items:

"If you are not satisfied with the current playstyle of healers, there are many other roles and jobs within the game that you might find appealing, we suggest you try them."

"If you are not satisfied with the current difficulty of content for Healers, please que for Ultimate."

Point?

Go play another role.

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Ahh, I wonder how long before the queues suffer from no one healing and they're forced to pay attention

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Ahh, I wonder how long before the queues suffer from no one healing and they're forced to pay attention

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DW, trust will be there to fix this issue. The queue won't suffer at all and healer will only be a role from the past at that time.

It seems crazy to me how this thread has managed to go on with this many posts. It feels like we must have run through the entire gamut of permutations concerning healer issues... several times.

"Still, if it must be said..."

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Originally Posted by Hellebore_Ghrian

DW, trust will be there to fix this issue. The queue won't suffer at all and healer will only be a role from the past at that time.

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Precisely, the addition of trusts in lower levels is to mask the larger issue. No one wants to play Healers, so they've fixed the issue with trusts in lower levels to mask the issue.

The writing is on the wall, but no one wants to read it; eventually if the healer population gets really low, they'll figure out how to get a healer bot into the que to replace a person instead of fixing the overall issue at hand. With the changes to Paladin, they might as well just remove the Healer role entirely.

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Originally Posted by Hellebore_Ghrian

DW, trust will be there to fix this issue. The queue won't suffer at all and healer will only be a role from the past at that time.

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How does that even make sense? Duty Roulletes exist and will synch you down. Just because soneone reached level 90 doesn't mean they're magically protected from a sprout going through Sastasha.

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Originally Posted by RinaShinomiya

How does that even make sense? Duty Roulletes exist and will synch you down. Just because soneone reached level 90 doesn't mean they're magically protected from a sprout going through Sastasha.

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That's if they queue up into those kinds of roulettes. It only takes like 5 days of only doing 1 Expert roulette a day to cap out Astrology tomes (40 from the roulette itself and 50 from the dungeon makes 90 tomes, over five days makes 450). :B

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

That's if they queue up into those kinds of roulettes. It only takes like 5 days of only doing 1 Expert roulette a day to cap out Astrology tomes (40 from the roulette itself and 50 from the dungeon makes 90 tomes, over five days makes 450). :B

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Mentor roulette exists and people might still have alt jobs to level. I still have WAR/GNB to level before being finished with my jobs and I swear Tam Tara has been popping up every other day I do leveling and it SUCKS.

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

That's if they queue up into those kinds of roulettes. It only takes like 5 days of only doing 1 Expert roulette a day to cap out Astrology tomes (40 from the roulette itself and 50 from the dungeon makes 90 tomes, over five days makes 450). :B

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God, this. I've burnt out healing things I'm clearly not needed for. Tanks just heal themselves, DPS hit way better. I have to make up games like "i'm gonna try to get all my cards to match" or "i wonder if i can keep addersting up to 3 charges? as fast as possible" and... it's dull. I hate sitting and feeling unnecessary. ;_;

I'm considering switching main permanently to RDM because healing is just... not good to play anymore. Already got way more comms and positive feedback in two runs than I have all month. If I'm just expected to dps i may as well have a few more spells and vercure/raise only when necessary, like everyone seems to want.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Mentor roulette exists and people might still have alt jobs to level. I still have WAR/GNB to level before being finished with my jobs and I swear Tam Tara has been popping up every other day I do leveling and it SUCKS.

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Won't suck anymore, they removed the slow sludge.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Mentor roulette exists and people might still have alt jobs to level. I still have WAR/GNB to level before being finished with my jobs and I swear Tam Tara has been popping up every other day I do leveling and it SUCKS.

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Again, that’s if they do those kinds of roulettes.
How many people become mentors to actively help vs doing it because they want the little crown next to their name and/or already met the requirements and thought “why not?”?
And how many people actual try to level every job?

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Originally Posted by RinaShinomiya

How does that even make sense? Duty Roulletes exist and will synch you down. Just because soneone reached level 90 doesn't mean they're magically protected from a sprout going through Sastasha.

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They're still expanding the trust system, we can't be sure that, in the future, they won't expand it to roulette to assure roulette to proc in a acceptable period of waiting time if healers are too scarce. Although I really doubt they will.

I'm only saying if a role become too scare in the future, I'm almost certain SE will use the trust system to fix the issue.

And as Mimilu said, if sprouts don't tag to standard dungeons and go through trust instead, there won't be any need for a lvl 90 player to go into Sastasha.

Finally, what will happen if, one day, the already instant queue trust system allows you to complete a dungeon faster than with pickups?

5 days before my sub runs out. I'm not renewing it out of disgust for the way this game is going. I gave my gil and house to my eternal bonding partner. May rng favour her upgrading to a mansion. The demolition timer being paused is something at least.

I loved this game once upon a time. But while yoshida is saying "go play ultimate" and removing Kaiten while we are experiencing a massive content draught, there's little left for me here to give a damn about because it sure as hell seems the devs dont care for long term players

anyway, enjoy the updated summary of healer issues guys. I'll be keeping an eye out in case the intern on pvp job design sneaks in astro's cards again come 6.2

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Ahh, I wonder how long before the queues suffer from no one healing and they're forced to pay attention

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I play on three different data centers and they all still say "tank".

I suspect a large part of this is down to how the role in need is calculated tbh.

It's not often that I actually see healer in need on expert roulette, yet my queue as a solo healer is nearly always instant. The only time it isn't? Is when healer actually is the role in need :rolleyes: (In that case it's usually about a minute).

Its known the role in need is still biased in favour of tanks. They added a bias but never took it off.
I've been tank in need and still took 5-10 minutes queues. Or more if its alliance roulette. Healer always gets in instantly no matter what the in need says these days though because nobody is playing healers for some reason
*eyes summary in frustration*

Sure you see those tank icons being in need. But reality is, everytime I'm queueing as a tank (I want the tank credit achievement too!) when it is showing tank icon in need, I rarely get an instant or under 3 minute pop ups. Five to 7 minutes of waits are the more common occurrence. Then if I switch to healer, 9 out of 10 times the duty will instantly pop. Nine.out.of.ten.times.

This is not unique only to when I see my tank queue wasn't instant despite being in need. Healer queue are almost always instants, regardless of the icon shown in the adventurer in need slots. Can you still even call that a mere coincidence? Personally speaking, no. And I'm aware I'm not the only few ones that noticed this oddity.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the recent Lucky Bancho census show that at every level of the game, healers are by far the least played role? I think that would almost definitely prove that the "in need" bonus has a bias/manipulation rather than being indicative of reality. My experiences echo the same of other healers in this thread, I have to wait when I queue on tanks but healers are always instant queue for me.

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Originally Posted by D6Damager

I play on three different data centers and they all still say "tank".

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Meanwhile, I'm sitting in Adamantoise like:
https://i.ibb.co/Gsm5Yvz/Healeroopsies.png

But personal anecdotes, blah blah blah, right?
P.S.: I ended up going into PVP anyway lol

They may say tank but even tanks have a 2-3 mins queue time, queue for anything as a healer and it pops before you can even close the tab

Typically there may be a few minutes wait on Crystal even when it displays healer in need during peak times. Incidentally, tanks are more often in need than healers.

My sub runs out in 2 days, so if folks would be kind enough to keep this thread bumped that would be grand

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

My sub runs out in 2 days, so if folks would be kind enough to keep this thread bumped that would be grand

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its kind of a thing that happens with this forum where perfectly reasonable posts get buried if you dont have something controversial to keep ghem afloat. especially after pretty much everything said has been discussed a million times.

perhaps we should thank all the trolls that actually kinda keep the healer threads alive

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

My sub runs out in 2 days, so if folks would be kind enough to keep this thread bumped that would be grand

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Thank you for fighting the good fight. To be honest, I'd probably drop my sub as well; but since there's still one more healer I haven't tried yet (AST), I will give the game one more shot.

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Originally Posted by currentlemon

Thank you for fighting the good fight. To be honest, I'd probably drop my sub as well; but since there's still one more healer I haven't tried yet (AST), I will give the game one more shot.

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Its just like the others- 1 button dps but unlike the others its got a coin flip to pass the time between gcds

AST is going to get major changes in 6.2 and we all know what that means anyway. If you dislike it now, you will probably still dislike it in 6.2. If you like it now, my condolences. Go to the support room with SAM and NIN mains. Make room for DRGs too.

I never touched AST. Not when I first started in Stormblood, and I didn't touch it in Shadowbringers either. When I first started in 4.01, I played WHM and SCH. Got both to level 50 and enjoyed both to an extent, but I ended up playing WHM throughout the MSQ. Dropped WHM in 6.0 because it received no major changes. Haven't touched SCH since 4.01 because they removed everything that I liked about the job in 5.0. I played Sage, but the job is "meh" to me. It's playstyle so mediocre. If there were more ways to generate Addersting, I would've played it more.

AST is the only one left now.

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Originally Posted by rewd

AST is going to get major changes in 6.2 and we all know what that means anyway. If you dislike it now, you will probably still dislike it in 6.2. If you like it now, my condolences. Go to the support room with SAM and NIN mains. Make room for DRGs too.

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on one hand please no just stop the torture already, on the other i am morbidly curious on what's actually left on AST to cut out wholesale short of removing it from the game entirely

My own honest opinion is that the changes they made to the healers in Shadowbringers was a massive mistake. I never liked one bit how they gutted alot of DPS abilities from the healing jobs and essentially turned them into a 3 button DPS with 1 single target 1 aoe and 1 dot ability.

This was a major mistake. It's dumbed down the jobs and made them less engaging to the point we have Glare Mage as a meme as well as SCH ending up with the "look at what they did to my boy" too. It's also been acknowledged and said that Jobs at lower levels are lacking because so many abilities from ARR have been removed due to them being obsolete and it's made lower level play less entertaining.

The simple truth is that healing in the game isn't fun. It's boring and lacklustre. If anything the best way to approach healer's is to make it fun to both heal and dps at the same time. It let's people enjoy the Role but doesn't leave it stagnant and disinteresting. They made Tanking a bit more enjoyable in Shadowbringers though this was at the cost to healers. The best strategy I can recommend is to approach Tanks as Vanguard combatants who counter damage while retaliating, Melee DPS who obviosly excel at destroying opponents, Ranged DPS who bombard their enemies and Healers who should bombard their enemies while healing their allies. This Pure Healer stuff just doesn't suit the games design outside a small niche.

Changes I can recommend for the jobs based on my own experience.

For WHM there need's to be a rebalancing to have more of a mirror to it's BLM counterpart in terms of Role.

Give WHM Water at lvl15 (Potency 100 1.54 cast time) and give it an AoE effect similar to Gravity. Have it Upgrade to Water II at lvl45 (120 potency) and Water III (140 potency) at lvl60 before becoming Glare II (160 Potency) at lvl78. This give CNJ/WHM a castable water spell at lower levels, fits thematically with the job and adds the castable water element that's been missing from players spells from Day 1 that only Y'shtola has now.

Return Aero III. Have it function in the same way as Thunder Does on BLM and have it Upgrade to Dia III at lvl78. It made no sense to remove this and making the dot single target is cumbersome and annoying.

Change Holy from a spammable aoe to a High Damage AoE spell (800 potency) with a 30 second cooldown. This also solves the issue of WHM making mobs stunlock immune. Holy 3 adds an extra 200 Potency.

Remove Freecure and replace it with Tetragrammation at lvl32. Have Cure upgrade directly to Cure II. This frees up a button.

Additionally have Medica just strait upgrade to Medica II at lvl50 and increase it's potency to 400. This removes another Button.

Bring back Stoneskin at lvl24 with 10% Damage Reduction. Have this upgrade to Divine Benison at lvl66 adding in the 500 potency shield and add an extra charge then have this upgrade to Aquaveil with yet another charge. This reduces 3 buttons to one.

Change Lilybell to be a strait upgrade for Asylum and have it's duration match asylums. This free's up another button.

Give WHM Break and make it an AoE with a dot effect that weighs down opponents.

Make Afflatus Misery OCD with a 30 second CD (This makes no major change to it it just means it's not on the GCD anymore).

Additionally Give WHM back Eye for an Eye at lvl26 and change it to reflect 5% of damage received. Upgrade this to Reflect at lvl66 with 10% damage reflected.


For SCH there needs to be a return to the poison mage theme that was so much more popular with players of the job pre Shadowbringers not to mention SCH has only 4 DPS buttons and needs more variety.

In terms of functionality the Fairy Gauge should entirely replace Aetherflow at lvl30 and be the basis of the job entirely charging by 10 everytime the fairy uses her heal as well as with certain scholar abilities.

In addition change the fairy so that it upgrades as well, Eos stats at lvl1. Changes to Selene at lvl40 with higher potency cure and hot. Upgrades to Seraph at lvl80.

Remove Ruin 2 and Aetherflow. Have Energy Drain on a 20 recharge timer with 3 Charges that restores 700MP with each use as well as increase the fairy gauge by 20. Increase it's potency to 220.

Have the fairy gauge start at lvl30 and charge by 10 everytime Selene or Eos Casts her healing spell.

Have Physic Strait up upgrade to Lustrate at lvl30 keep the heal potency and instant cast but change it to GCD ability with 400mp cost that generates fairy gauge. Lower Adloquium's MP cost to 600.

Have SCH learn Broil at lvl30.

Return Shadow Flare as well.

Add a diseased effect to Art of War that slows mobs attack and movement speed but is separate from slow.

Return Miasma and Miasma III to SCH to act as their 2nd DoT.
Return Bio III and give it to SCH.
Change Recitation to make the next dot spell an AoE. Changes Miasma to Miasma II, Bio II instead of being an upgrade of Bio becomes an AoE Bio. At lvl72 Biolysis replaces Bio II as the AoE and Biolytic's replaces Miasma II.
Both of these abilities funtion like Thunder mechanically on BLM.
Move the critical HP restoration effect from Recitation over to Excogitation.

Remove Dissipation it's an ability that works against the job as well as being redundant without aetherflow. Instead have deployment tactics gain the 20% Healing recovery while doubling shield strength for 15 seconds while also charging the fairy gauge to full.

As for AST I'm going to hold off on recommendations on this for the time being since it's been announced that the job is getting a rework with 6.2. That being said if there's once change that needs to be done it's make all the cards AoE by default.

Also return the heavy effect to Gravity and Gravity II.

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Originally Posted by SpiralMask

on one hand please no just stop the torture already, on the other i am morbidly curious on what's actually left on AST to cut out wholesale short of removing it from the game entirely

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Undraw and Crown play have literally zero functional uses. It's amazing they've survived multiple prunings. Probably because whoever designs healers has zero functional knowledge of how they actually play.

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Originally Posted by SpiralMask

on one hand please no just stop the torture already, on the other i am morbidly curious on what's actually left on AST to cut out wholesale short of removing it from the game entirely

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if im being realistic uhhhh theyre gonna make cards gcd like ninjas mudras. to address the weaving issues or something. who knows.