The death of savage raiding and SE's lack of action

Can someone define "engaging" and explain how all the other roles have it and healer doesn't?

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Originally Posted by Sensui

Can someone define "engaging" and explain how all the other roles have it and healer doesn't?

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go on a striking dummy and compare an optimal rotation for any DPS or Tank class to Healer.
everything else has an actual rotation that takes practice to master. Healers just have the one button with a dot to use once every 12 GCDs.
Essentially, it's something to actually draw the player in, and keep them from falling asleep at the wheel. I think that's actually why you see so many bad healers lately.

The actual healing part of playing healer is all over the place. During progression, it ranges from annoying to boring. Either you're constantly babysitting the DPS who just can't stay out of danger puddles, or you're just spamming Glare waiting for the next raid wide or tank buster to require you to press something else.

I've heard a few other people say this, but after a while, I've started just convincing myself that I'm doing something meaningful. Place down a sacred soil, and now instead of everyone surviving a raid wide at 50%, they all survive at 55%. and I say to myself "Perfect. My contribution was the difference between life and death. I'll need to plan around the next raid wide with a Fey Illumination, or perhaps a Deployed crit-Adlo" even though I know that I can get away with just spamming Fey Blessing, Indom, and Excog if it's going to a tank.

The only optimization we have with healing is doing as little as humanly possible. That's the only way to make it fun and give some spark of life to it. That's why you see healers not doing any healing. 90% of the time, the game doesn't require GCD healing, so it's just seen as expected that they don't need to, or that they can just make it work without it. It's because most of the time they're right. And then once you get good enough to not heal, you realize that you're still just spamming one button the whole time.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

Even stacking all your MIT available from both Healers at that moment (mind you two back to back mechanics have already exhausted some before it), you are not clearing Harrowing Hell with no GCD heals and no tank LB. Same thing can be said for M4S P2 opening currently.

As someone who mains mitigation healers in PF, generally I don't expect any mitigation from any DPS or Tank (in terms of Reprisal, Dark Missionary etc) as they get missed for different AoEs at random. I just focus on putting up a succor alongside any other oGCD mitigation I have and boom 9 out of 10 AoEs you can survive. Now realistically, some other mits can show up but I don't depend on them in PF. My entire kit is utilized on the regular.

Nothing changes the fact that the moment there is a definitive heal check people call for tank LB (doesn't even have to be a Lv3 LB) because it is the path of least resistance ultimately compared to depending on both healers having both all of their mit options and the willingness to GCD heal.

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To be honest, I think this boils down to trust in healer ability in PF. I can't count how many times I'm throwing out mitts and self defense abilities only to watch the party still wipe because of lack of shields from the healers.

Static tactics aside.. if it means clearing, you do what works. Also, the 1% DPS LB likely won't be missed.

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Originally Posted by GartredZW

go on a striking dummy and compare an optimal rotation for any DPS or Tank class to Healer.
everything else has an actual rotation that takes practice to master. Healers just have the one button with a dot to use once every 12 GCDs.
Essentially, it's something to actually draw the player in, and keep them from falling asleep at the wheel. I think that's actually why you see so many bad healers lately.

The actual healing part of playing healer is all over the place. During progression, it ranges from annoying to boring. Either you're constantly babysitting the DPS who just can't stay out of danger puddles, or you're just spamming Glare waiting for the next raid wide or tank buster to require you to press something else.

I've heard a few other people say this, but after a while, I've started just convincing myself that I'm doing something meaningful. Place down a sacred soil, and now instead of everyone surviving a raid wide at 50%, they all survive at 55%. and I say to myself "Perfect. My contribution was the difference between life and death. I'll need to plan around the next raid wide with a Fey Illumination, or perhaps a Deployed crit-Adlo" even though I know that I can get away with just spamming Fey Blessing, Indom, and Excog if it's going to a tank.

The only optimization we have with healing is doing as little as humanly possible. That's the only way to make it fun and give some spark of life to it. That's why you see healers not doing any healing. 90% of the time, the game doesn't require GCD healing, so it's just seen as expected that they don't need to, or that they can just make it work without it. It's because most of the time they're right. And then once you get good enough to not heal, you realize that you're still just spamming one button the whole time.

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I've partied with some amazing healers. AST that hit me with perfect timed buffs, shields that mit 100% damage. Its a joy and makes the experience wo much better for everyone.

I get the feeling they're enjoying themselves when they push to be the best healer they can be VERSUS someone spamming their dps button and not pushing themselves. There is a huge skill difference. I get being bored if that's you.

When I play SGE I make a game to mitigate everything I can. Not let everyone dip to almost dead then react. Makes a difference in how I enjoy myself.

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Originally Posted by Sensui

To be honest, I think this boils down to trust in healer ability in PF. I can't count how many times I'm throwing out mitts and self defense abilities only to watch the party still wipe because of lack of shields from the healers.

Static tactics aside.. if it means clearing, you do what works. Also, the 1% DPS LB likely won't be missed.

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Absolutely. PF optimizes for the path of least resistance, whether that's via LB usage or overall strategy used for mechanics. Whatever is the most reliable option for clears is the option that is favored. What you explained, is the AVERAGE if not the majority of happenings in PF.

This is how you know for sure the complainers largely don't engage with PF on reclears because increasing things like DPS would create two major issues.

1) Healer responsibility (and the overall party responsibility) goes up in the form of raid dps requirements, thus now requiring healers to press even more buttons to maintain their raid DPS contribution.
2) It will make raids even MORE unstable then now because it will reinforce a DPS mindset for Healer role while simultaneously admonishing the people that enjoy Healing on the job as is.

So one piece of content is experiencing a shortage of one role and now we need to restructure the entire game to please them? Tell me again how raiders don't feel like they own the game and everyone else is just allowed to play it.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

Absolutely. PF optimizes for the path of least resistance, whether that's via LB usage or overall strategy used for mechanics. Whatever is the most reliable option for clears is the option that is favored. What you explained, is the AVERAGE if not the majority of happenings in PF.

This is how you know for sure the complainers largely don't engage with PF on reclears because increasing things like DPS would create two major issues.

1) Healer responsibility (and the overall party responsibility) goes up in the form of raid dps requirements, thus now requiring healers to press even more buttons to maintain their raid DPS contribution.
2) It will make raids even MORE unstable then now because it will reinforce a DPS mindset for Healer role while simultaneously admonishing the people that enjoy Healing on the job as is.

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A ton of people use PF to learn. So many are not PF exclusive. Would not surprise me if this is why so many healers are mostly in learning parties but not reclear. I think we're on to something here.

I have been in pf reclear parties and it's still boring. Fights are too scripted and too predictable in both the timelines and damage.

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Originally Posted by Maltothoris

I have been in pf reclear parties and it's still boring. Fights are too scripted and too predictable in both the timelines and damage.

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It's no different for DPS or tanks. That's the game battle design. That's the point of optimization mini game. I think it boils down to people just not enjoying the game. Might not be for you. Myself I find ways to have fun.

Well thing is, they've lowered the amount of both tankbusters, a fight like o4s has 17 tankbusters while here m4s has 7 in total over the same timeframe.

Edit: Either way, at this point, you're not gonna convince me and I won't convince you.

Optimising your DPS rotation is a completely different challenge on its own. DPS tunnel vision is real because you are basically playing two mini games at once (your rotation and the boss puzzle). For me personally the difference is night and day. On healer I can easily dodge even bothersome stuff like honey bee's hearts or the leonogg zombies because I'm just pressing 1 anyway (and reactive healing of people who make mistakes in those phases is still easier for me than tracking a tightly timed DPS rotation).
I'm having way more fun optimising my DPS mini game even in fights I know well. With healing, once I have mapped out when to play what heal it's all pretty much done. :/
(Or, if I don't have a plan, like in random normal fights, I have enough tools to salvage pretty much every scripted situation without thinking if others play well.)
I can just hope that other players make mistakes to spice things up for me.

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Originally Posted by Maltothoris

I have been in pf reclear parties and it's still boring. Fights are too scripted and too predictable in both the timelines and damage.

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It's all subjective, but I haven't grown bored of healers in PF and almost always have to adjust my gameplay around my co-healer or the parties gameplay overall. It is never a dull moment on reclears even considering the scriptability of the damage and mechs. I have had more satisfying saving the raid moments on PF then ever in a static, especially when a co-healer goes down on a big mech. That happens way more often on PF and I stand by the optimal gameplay experience for current FFXIV healers is in PF, not in statics. You can't really use your full toolkit in a static. While that is a problem, it is also a separate one with a separate solution.

If the goal is to increase Healer supply in PF, the solution is to reduce responsibility (including a more lenient gameplay loop) of the role so people would be enticed to the additional responsibility. Separate from any other enticing solutions SE could implement.
If the goal is to make Healers "fun" or "fixing" them, both of which are also subjective in their suggestions, then the best path that everyone can deal with is to redesign all of the jobs from the ground up and how encounters engage with the healer (and other) roles.
Even still for either solution, you will still absolutely have a problem getting people to play the role as the AVERAGE MMO player tends to play a DPS role in literally any MMO. No game has found a perfect solution for this but SE does have some options like Job-in-need guaranteed drops or specialized role tome acquisition bonuses they can implement to soften the blow.

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Originally Posted by Maltothoris

Well thing is, they've lowered the amount of both tankbusters, a fight like o4s has 17 tankbusters while here m4s has 7 in total over the same timeframe.

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TB's happening less, does not equate to difficulty in PF. In fact, TB's on average don't matter because they either don't hit hard enough where a healer has to pre shield them (despite tank mits), or if they do hit hard enough, the occurrence of said TB's is so spread out that the tanks can just cheese them with invulns. Something more to PF determining dificulty is like the AoE's that are followed with hard ticking DoTs, which require more of a follow-up of GCD heals on average or overlapping body check/ doom mechs that require re-topping players. The problem is, when this happens in a raid tier, the PF supply of healers goes down not up.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

It's only a hard fact in your dreams.

So the circles you run in think there's no issue and you don't run into any issues yourself. Alright, there's no issue in your narrow circle. That doesn't make it a hard fact.

In my circles, everyone agrees that healers suck to play and nobody wants to play them, so now we're at odds, we both have different experiences, that now dissolves your "facts" into an anecdote.

So since we're comparing, I waited over 40 minutes for a regen healer on reset day, right at reset, on a JP DC. People said JP loves healers, so what gives? And here's another one, my friends made a PF 2 hours after reset, at JP peak time, and they waited close to an hour for healers.

Huh, looks like your experience isn't fact after all.

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So you are surprised you had trouble finding a healer at midnight on a weekday in Japan when most people probably had to work in the morning and wouldn't want to be up that late.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

Honestly speaking, there's actually not enough information to say with 100% certainty whether or not there is a healer shortage. It's all just anecdotes against anecdotes.

But we do have some things that are facts:
- More people have been pointing out that PF is lacking healers recently.
- There's been a lot of screenshots of all the empty green slots in PF across multiple regions.
- There's been documented screenshots of people offering healers gil to help their party, and no one is offering tanks any gil to help their party.

That's all we really know about the current situation. SE is the only party with the actual numbers and we won't know about it unless Yoshi P chooses to address it in the upcoming LL.

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Honestly the whole - Pure healer vs Shield healer Bs doesn't help either; as many groups are looking for either a SCH or SGE or a WHM or AST so the scarcity increases due to limited options.

I guess last question I have is, the ppl complaining about content being too easy, are they using plug ins that make the fights easier? I play on PS5 and don't join others in discord, so I gotta learn the fights (actually learn it) without callous. Maybe try turning it off. Makes if more fun.

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Originally Posted by Sensui

I guess last question I have is, the ppl complaining about content being too easy, are they using plug ins that make the fights easier? I play on PS5 and don't join others in discord, so I gotta learn the fights (actually learn it) without callous. Maybe try turning it off. Makes if more fun.

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A good chunk of the raiding community does rely on callouts from ACT and don't actually look at boss mechanics / wording etc but it's hard to say how much of that population are also complaining about Healers. It wouldn't be farfetched to say its possible there is a correlation between people who complain and people who get callouts on average but it also doesn't bear too much on the situation with Healer as a role in an optimized environment. If everyone plays perfect with proper mitigation and communication from all players, healers are essentially reduced to a very simplistic playstyle with generally low heal GCD requirement.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

A good chunk of the raiding community does rely on callouts from ACT and don't actually look at boss mechanics / wording etc but it's hard to say how much of that population are also complaining about Healers. It wouldn't be farfetched to say its possible there is a correlation between people who complain and people who get callouts on average but it also doesn't bear too much on the situation with Healer as a role in an optimized environment. If everyone plays perfect with proper mitigation and communication from all players, healers are essentially reduced to a very simplistic playstyle with generally low heal GCD requirement.

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I don’t like using ACT but I absolutely adore a good raid caller. Those people are the true MVPs. When I did savage and things got messy, they helped give the healers heads up on events while we tried to salvage things.

I’m on long term break from healing because I had my baby boy, so I don’t have a good opinion on the current savage. Last tier I cleared was P8S.

One potential solution is to just hand out healer gear/make it easier to obtain than the other roles. I am in the group of people that would like to heal from time to time but I can't be asked to gear a healer in place of my preferred roles.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

Even stacking all your MIT available from both Healers at that moment (mind you two back to back mechanics have already exhausted some before it), you are not clearing Harrowing Hell with no GCD heals and no tank LB. Same thing can be said for M4S P2 opening currently..

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Cross-Tail Switch does almost 900k in 8 seconds, if you can find me any party that can heal through that without tank LB, I'll be impressed.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

So you are surprised you had trouble finding a healer at midnight on a weekday in Japan when most people probably had to work in the morning and wouldn't want to be up that late.

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Did you even read the post? I literally wrote right there that I looked for a weekly savage PF "at reset", weekly reset is 5pm in Japan, not midnight.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

If the goal is to increase Healer supply in PF, the solution is to reduce responsibility (including a more lenient gameplay loop) of the role so people would be enticed to the additional responsibility. Separate from any other enticing solutions SE could implement.
If the goal is to make Healers "fun" or "fixing" them, both of which are also subjective in their suggestions, then the best path that everyone can deal with is to redesign all of the jobs from the ground up and how encounters engage with the healer (and other) roles.
Even still for either solution, you will still absolutely have a problem getting people to play the role as the AVERAGE MMO player tends to play a DPS role in literally any MMO. No game has found a perfect solution for this but SE does have some options like Job-in-need guaranteed drops or specialized role tome acquisition bonuses they can implement to soften the blow.



TB's happening less, does not equate to difficulty in PF. In fact, TB's on average don't matter because they either don't hit hard enough where a healer has to pre shield them (despite tank mits), or if they do hit hard enough, the occurrence of said TB's is so spread out that the tanks can just cheese them with invulns. Something more to PF determining dificulty is like the AoE's that are followed with hard ticking DoTs, which require more of a follow-up of GCD heals on average or overlapping body check/ doom mechs that require re-topping players. The problem is, when this happens in a raid tier, the PF supply of healers goes down not up.

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Your final paragraph combined with your third (sorry I would quote them directly but I’m on mobile) is EXACTLY the problem of why people are dumping the healer role faster than usual

Your point is “if you want the healer role to be more popular you need to lower the responsibility of the healer” but then later you say “PF struggles with hard hitting raidwides that apply a DOT”. Do you know why PF struggles with these? It’s because how much the raidwide is mitigated determines the DOT damage.

Right now square is going down the path of removing healing responsibility. How do they do that……..by giving healer tools (mainly mitigation) to the other roles so the healer isn’t the single fail point. Okay but what happens when these other roles don’t use the mitigation they’ve been given? They blame………the healer

Square has picked the worst of every world with the modern healer design because you get no joy out of responsibility if you are a career MMO healer but you also don’t get to enjoy relaxing with no responsibility because you get blamed for everything anyway even when it’s far out of your control.

Who wants to play a role that’s both boring with no responsibility but according to the party has limitless implied responsibility. Just as you’ll never break the law that healers are less popular than DPS you’ll never break the law that mistakes are always implied to be the healers fault. Why try to give zero responsibility to the role that players have been trained to associate responsibility with for as long as MMO’s have existed

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

That was one of the points I was getting at by admitting my lack of desire to play healer, that no amount of oversimplification and responsibility-drain is going to make me start queuing with it.

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That's basically the main point.

I'm pretty sure healers picked up the role in HW/SB because they enjoy and accept the responsibility that comes with the role. It stands to reason then, that those people would leave the role if they lose what they enjoyed having.

There's also the fact that there's nothing anyone can do to force a DPS player into maining a support role.

So, if we take these together, we have to then question why SE is further pushing the role in the direction that veterans dislike? If support roles are never popular, why then would it be a good idea to alienate the ones you have?

Striker doesn't care about actual data, they tend to speak out of the wrong end.

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Originally Posted by All_Nonsense

You're gonna wanna sort to "duty complete, weekly reward unclaimed" and try again, taking into account that 10pm EST at night is not indicative of the health of the pf healer population and that what we're looking for is trending patterns over the course of the entire evening, then over the course of the week, and finally over the course of the expansion to unearth role shortages, not just a single datapoint that serves as a confirmation bias to your viewpoint.

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but your first post is also just a confirmation bias isn't it?

also tbh, i never ha a problem finding healers and those we get are actually playing their role as it should be.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

Cross-Tail Switch does almost 900k in 8 seconds, if you can find me any party that can heal through that without tank LB, I'll be impressed.

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???

Hyper-mitting this attack is a strategy employed since week 1. My static switched from tank LB to hypermit last week, gives us 2 melee lb3, skipping last mechanic. It's harder, sure, but not impossible. It does require GCD healing though.

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Originally Posted by AllenThyl

???

Hyper-mitting this attack is a strategy employed since week 1. My static switched from tank LB to hypermit last week, gives us 2 melee lb3, skipping last mechanic. It's harder, sure, but not impossible. It does require GCD healing though.

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The person I was responding to was talking about PF relying on tank LB. Your static can hypermit it, sure, but would you trust PF to do it?

I've healed Harrowing Hell in PF with no tank LB, I wouldn't trust PF to heal through Cross-Tail Switch with no tank LB.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

Cross-Tail Switch does almost 900k in 8 seconds, if you can find me any party that can heal through that without tank LB, I'll be impressed.

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So people are having hard time healing thru mit/heal check but... want more healing. Hmmmmmm.

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Originally Posted by SaltyDaddy

So people are having hard time healing thru mit/heal check but... want more healing. Hmmmmmm.

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Ah yes, some healers can't heal, so let's delete healing from the game.

Let's also delete mitigating from the game because some tanks don't press their CDs. Maybe also delete damage rotations from the game because some people can't play DPS properly.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

Maybe also delete damage rotations from the game because some people can't play DPS properly.

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They already been doing that. For example the PCT 123 by just bashing on button or GNB Gnashing comboes that got turned to 1 button, or PLD Goring Blade that was took out of normal rotation so they can just 123 and many more other cases in that effect.

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Originally Posted by SaltyDaddy

So people are having hard time healing thru mit/heal check but... want more healing. Hmmmmmm.

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Healers have consistently hated massive spikes that have to be mitigated by the party or you lose.

Healing should just be a thing that exists throughout a fight, not using Broil for 90% of the encounter then spamming out every ability ever for the 10%

more instances of damage to actually tax bloated heal kits, not making existing spikes taller.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Your point is “if you want the healer role to be more popular you need to lower the responsibility of the healer” but then later you say “PF struggles with hard hitting raidwides that apply a DOT”. Do you know why PF struggles with these? It’s because how much the raidwide is mitigated determines the DOT damage.

Right now square is going down the path of removing healing responsibility. How do they do that……..by giving healer tools (mainly mitigation) to the other roles so the healer isn’t the single fail point. Okay but what happens when these other roles don’t use the mitigation they’ve been given? They blame………the healer

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First, people aren't dumping the role "faster than usual". Its the same thing that always happens in this time frame.

As for my point, you misquoted and changed the meaning of what I wrote. I stated you need to lower the responsibility on the role to entice new players (specifically DPS) to want additional responsibility they don't have. If the role seems too gatekept, no one will ever jump into it. It is after all specifically DPS we need to switch.

PF doesn't necessarily "struggle" with a raidwide DoT but the average pf healer doesn't like it regardless.

And I'll disagree that healer gets criticism when everyone can see their mits on there characters. If I have 2 mits up for every mech, that's an everyone elses problem if we die and no one has ever dared to say otherwise. If people so much try to say it and you are doing your job on heals and mit, you can easily deflect anyone. The benefit of shifting mit off healer is exactly to change the perception of Healer role and what it's "expected" of after the fact. Meaning you train the playerbase to not expect as much from the Healer role.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

I stated you need to lower the responsibility on the role to entice new players (specifically DPS) to want additional responsibility they don't have. If the role seems too gatekept, no one will ever jump into it. It is after all specifically DPS we need to switch.

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You say that responsibility needs to be reduced to entice DPS players to switch, yet you also say that it's impossible to make a DPS player play a healer. So by that logic, catering further on the off chance that some DPS players would give healers a try is a very bad decision. Especially since if you want a larger healer population, you'd need to not only entice DPS players to swap but to stay on the role in a more permanent basis.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

You say that responsibility needs to be reduced to entice DPS players to switch, yet you also say that it's impossible to make a DPS player play a healer. So by that logic, catering further on the off chance that some DPS players would give healers a try is a very bad decision. Especially since if you want a larger healer population, you'd need to not only entice DPS players to swap but to stay on the role in a more permanent basis.

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Yes, sadly a pretty crappy task but something that has to be done. The overwhelming amount of DPS in the game compared to support roles will have it's own negative affect in PF. Now granted, it could balance out naturally after some time with people just getting fed up of waiting for support queues and switching but SE has to bring the role down to a position ready to greet DPS players that are just trying it out. Is that really so hard to understand about the games current battle design?

I never said it was impossible to make a DPS player switch only that it's very difficult to do but that is what SE needs to do, regardless. You cannot sustain a raid scene for years where an overwhelming amount of DPS trumps support roles.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

but SE has to bring the role down to a position ready to greet DPS players that are just trying it out. Is that really so hard to understand about the games current battle design?

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Isn’t that exactly where we’re at now though? Healers practically play like crappy dps with more ogcd healing than they’ll ever need, next to no need for gcd healing, and the vast majority of healing ‘mechanics’ can be dealt with using like 1+2 oGCDs. Like they literally cannot make healing any easier outside of giving all healers an AoE Benediction. They’ve already made the healer role for ‘dps who don’t want to heal’ and it hasn’t exactly made people jump to try out the role lol. So I’d say that designing healers for not-healers has been a pretty major failure all around in my view. Now nobody likes it.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

Yes, sadly a pretty crappy task but something that has to be done. The overwhelming amount of DPS in the game compared to support roles will have it's own negative affect in PF. Now granted, it could balance out naturally after some time with people just getting fed up of waiting for support queues and switching but SE has to bring the role down to a position ready to greet DPS players that are just trying it out. Is that really so hard to understand about the games current battle design?

I never said it was impossible to make a DPS player switch only that it's very difficult to do but that is what SE needs to do, regardless. You cannot sustain a raid scene for years where an overwhelming amount of DPS trumps support roles.

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Oh I understand very well that the balance of DPS vs supports cannot be tipped too far or the raid scene would falter.

But what I do not understand is how alienating the people who were already enjoying healers for the very slight chance of getting a DPS main to become a healer main is anywhere within the same galaxy as a good idea.

If your population is already small, you don't start culling people and hope more people join your village, that's not even remotely a good idea.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

Yes, sadly a pretty crappy task but something that has to be done. The overwhelming amount of DPS in the game compared to support roles will have it's own negative affect in PF. Now granted, it could balance out naturally after some time with people just getting fed up of waiting for support queues and switching but SE has to bring the role down to a position ready to greet DPS players that are just trying it out. Is that really so hard to understand about the games current battle design?

I never said it was impossible to make a DPS player switch only that it's very difficult to do but that is what SE needs to do, regardless. You cannot sustain a raid scene for years where an overwhelming amount of DPS trumps support roles.

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why exactly would they have to switch off DPS to heal.. SE is in the process of giving healer abilities to DPS... we'll see how that works wont we?

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Originally Posted by Connor

Isn’t that exactly where we’re at now though? Healers practically play like crappy dps with more ogcd healing than they’ll ever need, next to no need for gcd healing, and the vast majority of healing ‘mechanics’ can be dealt with using like 1+2 oGCDs. Like they literally cannot make healing any easier outside of giving all healers an AoE Benediction. They’ve already made the healer role for ‘dps who don’t want to heal’ and it hasn’t exactly made people jump to try out the role lol. So I’d say that designing healers for not-healers has been a pretty major failure all around in my view. Now nobody likes it.

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No we aren't there yet. Responsibilities for Healers have not changed.

The current situation of Healers in the current game design is as follows:

- The PF Healers already have shown with previous tiers they don't like more heal checks on the role or more DPS requirements on the role. Increasing either of these causes the Healer population to decrease more than usual.
- For better or worse, the majority of Healers are ok with the current design of it, no matter how good or bad that is to the forums. Making the tweaks people have suggested for more Heal or More DPS "as is" are not going to help bring people to the role. The forums doesn't like it but that's a small minority compared to the amount of Healers clearing the content every tier.

Despite this we still have a support role (but especially Healer) shortage, as we always have. Now we've had a surge of players over the years so we need to evaluate how that factors in. With the overwhelming amount of most players choosing to play DPS over other roles, PF will eventually collapse not only from a lack of healers but of all support roles. Which means SE has to do something anything to prevent that outcome.

My suggestion is two fold:

1) Remove mitigation from Healers. If I had to choose between (Healing, DPS or Mitigation) with the games current design (an important point here) I would hands down choose mitigation. It makes the most sense. Why? Well with the game's current design, you have to wait for more healing to show up then not and in between that we have a 1-2 button DPS string. Not exactly great but at least we have that. There is no encounter they will or can design where if you remove those 2 DPS buttons we have (giving Healers all the Healing and MIT from everyone now) that will be a good fight. It would be a stress test bonanza that most PF Healers will falter on because such an encounter would have to include so much damage going out that warrants Healers owning all healing and all mitigation. Just take a second to imagine the Pandemonium fight but with more damage going out. Perhaps you are capable, bravo. Average PF Healer is definitely not.

Mitigation off the role is actually a newer concept too. In coil days and a bit in HW, Healers did not have as much mitigation tools as exist now. And surprise surprise what else existed then? DPS stance dancing for Healers. Now I won't argue we should return to stance dancing BUT we can have some sort of a rotation added to DPS. Again, only AFTER we remove responsibilities from the role first. Remove MIT beyond say that one shield (like succor,adlo) and then SLOWLY add back a DPS button or 2 and see how PF responds. Things like a healing/DPS rotation become possible at that point.

2) Job-in-need bonuses: If a PF is sitting with a specific role unfulfilled for more than 10-15m, system creates a bonus for a player who joins on that role. The bonus rewards players with a separate loot roll (a 5th gear drop) that only those who joined the "job-in-need" bonus can roll on.

Either of these options will bring people onto roles that are in shortage. But to target Healers, I think both are needed. Both the incentive and the easier perception. Shifting Mitigation to DPS instead also trains them to have a different mindset. "Oh I have to do my rotation AND mitigate consistently properly?" Getting that mindset on DPS trains them to now pick their option of DPS / Mitigate or Heal / DPS and I genuinely believe if you do that, you will see alot more people willing to shift.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

Oh I understand very well that the balance of DPS vs supports cannot be tipped too far or the raid scene would falter.

But what I do not understand is how alienating the people who were already enjoying healers for the very slight chance of getting a DPS main to become a healer main is anywhere within the same galaxy as a good idea.

If your population is already small, you don't start culling people and hope more people join your village, that's not even remotely a good idea.

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Going to disagree here on one point. If you don't like current Healer, then they aren't alienating you if you left already. You already moved on from the role so at this point, you aren't really part of the solution.

However there are two types of PF healers. Hardcore who generally don't give a crap how SE changes the role, they still enjoy playing it and regardless of any changes

and

casuals who aren't hardcore so depending on how "stressful" the role is on any particular tier they either play it or abandon it. If you already abandoned the role because it's not "fun" then odds are you weren't really in the Hardcore group that will play anything and not care to complain to begin with. As for that casual healer, we need to create that audience and understand why role can be interpreted as "difficult" to begin with. This is where the majority of the healers in game fall into (in PF).

As for it being a slight chance, I don't generally believe it's that slight. Arcadion proves that more people are willing to Heal if the content isn't overtly stressful. I would even argue that Arcadion was the perfect difficulty for Savage PF. Anecdotal, but I know more people that wish they could heal savage or willing to give it a shot but see how much healers deal with and are immediately turned off.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

why exactly would they have to switch off DPS to heal.. SE is in the process of giving healer abilities to DPS... we'll see how that works wont we?

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I don't think it's the same mentality personally and would prefer more healing coming out of the healer role specifically but if they indeed shift enough healing off the role unto other classes, they essentially do the same thing as removing the mit and thus they can focus more on something else like DPS. However I don't see the gain in creating Healer / DPS and DPS / Healer hybrids here as it's kinda the same thing. We should be establishing more Hybrids like

Healer: Prio 1 Heal / Prio 2 DPS
DPS: Prio 1 DPS / Prio 2 MIT
Tank: Prio 1 MIT / Prio 2 DPS / Prio 3 Heal (passive maintenance)

They could also do

Healer: Prio 1 Heal / Prio 2 MIT
DPS: Prio 1 DPS
Tank: Prio 1 MIT / Prio 2 DPS

The issue with this I foresee is that it changes nothing to approach the shortage of Healers and I don't see them creating an encounter that puts so much emphasis on Heal and MIT coming out of one role.

As for why we need to shift DPS role players to Healer role players, its because we can't just have tanks swapping to healers, that's creating the exact same issue for Tank role. Game, as it is, needs to entice the overwhelming amount of DPS players onto the role. And there is a difference between DPS -> Tank, which is a more seamless transition of responsibilities and DPS -> Healer. Understanding first how easy DPS can switch off to tanks or the willingness to do so is key to solving a shortage for the Healer role. It works because they have the same amount of responsibilities by design now. Tanks are essentially blue DPS.

All in all, the current game encounter design and the job design of all jobs is the problem. If we aren't going to redo / get rid of the whole trifecta balance nonsense then we need to work within it.

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The PF Healers already have shown with previous tiers they don't like more heal checks on the role or more DPS requirements on the role. Increasing either of these causes the Healer population to decrease more than usual.

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"The PF Healers"? Is this another iconic boogieman camp a la "The Casual Player"? Else, anecdotal evidence seems mixed at best.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

"The PF Healers"? Is this another iconic boogieman camp a la "The Casual Player"? Else, anecdotal evidence seems mixed at best.

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Have to assume, since they're likely not raiding with all the healers in all the statics out there, it's the cumulative experience with and impression gained thus far from the general community of healers that partake in raid via the Party Finder.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

"The PF Healers"? Is this another iconic boogieman camp a la "The Casual Player"? Else, anecdotal evidence seems mixed at best.

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Healers in PF dropped off dramatically in Abyssos, and Anabaseios, two tiers that both encompassed alot more AoEs + DoTs and successive high damage mechanic overlap, both things the forums consistently asks for to incorporate more Healing opportunity or stress on the Healer role. Every tier that operates like this, more often has low clear rates or the overall perception of the raids is poor. Every single one since at least SHB. If the goal is to increase healer roles in PF, this is clearly not the direction to go.

Now anecdotally, I've known more people who were career healers to switch off the role during these tiers than ever before cause it was "too much stress to deal with", then people screaming praise at the design choices of those tiers.

I don't see anyone for example, asking for more "limit cut" (as it's misnamed) mechs in PF. Arguably the most hated type of mechanics overall.

Edited: Changed from Asphedelos -> Abyssos as was the intended second tier reference.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

If the goal is to increase Healer supply in PF, the solution is to reduce responsibility (including a more lenient gameplay loop) of the role so people would be enticed to the additional responsibility. Separate from any other enticing solutions SE could implement.
If the goal is to make Healers "fun" or "fixing" them, both of which are also subjective in their suggestions, then the best path that everyone can deal with is to redesign all of the jobs from the ground up and how encounters engage with the healer (and other) roles.

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Well then, how do we reduce responsibility? Do we take away damage, therefore making it more tedious for solo and msq quests while making deep dungeons harder, if not impossible? Do we reduce the stress of mp, which they've done heavily since Shb? Do we reduce mitigations that the healers have and then just give everyone else a super mit that they need would need to press for harder hitting stuff?