Has anyone quit healing?

I wonder what the numbers are for Healers these days.

Mostly because, as a Tank main who off-roles as a Healer I've certainly noted a change in queue times for duties.

I.e. In ARR, HW and StB being a Tank was pretty much always insta-queues. With Healer usually waiting about 5-10 minutes for queues and DPS waiting 15-30 minutes (Up to 60 minutes+ for Raids)

However now in ShB, I note that as a Tank I typically wait 5-10 minutes, Healer gets insta-queues and DPS still waits 15-30 minutes. This is while "Adventurer in need: Tank" is active too.

Even when queuing up for raids, I note that Healer is the last role to start filling up with people.

Of course, this could be the release of GNB has drawn a sizable crowd of people to the Tanking role... But I'd say it was more due to how vapid Healers have become.

What I find equal parts hilarious and depressing, is way back when the ShB changes were revealed, there was a ton of people who were like "Oh, Healing is going to be much harder so healers will heal more instead of DPSing 99% of the time!"

But in reality, ShB is still 99% DPS, 0.9% oGCD heal and 0.1% GCD healing. Thanks to damage that only comes in the form of Tankbuster and Raidbusters at predetermined times, oGCD heals that are crazy strong and a heavy emphasis on everyone dealing as much damage as possible... You know, the game as it has existed since 2.0.

The only difference now, is all healers have only a single DoT and nuke to use for the 99% of their time. How exciting...

I'll skip over the less mechanical issues faced by healers, such as the eradication of the last remnants of Conjurer by giving WHM Holy nukes (Ironic given this expansion is about fighting LIGHT based enemies...), the fact that due to no job quests there's no explanation why AST works on a completely different planet, or the lack of explanation on why Lily can become Eos or Selene when they're basically just Egi-Glamour...

Honestly, ShB was all about preventing the Eighth Umbral Calamity... But it happened when it dropped, SE nuked Healers and the sad thing is it's likely not even going to be addressed until the next expansion 1.5 years away. Even then, we don't know if they'll actually do something about it or continue with the memes like "People found WHM hard to play so we're making it easier" like came up during one of the pre-release info reveals...

Seriously, SE needs to get 2 more people onto the class design team. One that mains Healer and one that mains Tank. Since, it's plainly obvious that everyone currently in the team are DPS mains that have absolutely zero clue about the other roles.

I’ve barely played at all since 5.1. Switched to Dancer for a bit. But the problem is, for me, that I see my character as a White Mage, and I have a difficult time motivating myself to play him as anything else in the MSQ. So the choices are be bored or don’t play.

Anyway, I recently started doing a DF here and there as healer. Still not exciting. Did the new Ruby weapon. The way fights are designed...healing just isn’t important. Damage to tanks is negligible while the rest of the party pretty much dies whenever they make one or two mistakes. The gameplay has become using Raise when you’re not DPSing. At least that’s how it feels.

I healed all through Stormblood and gave it up for Shadowbringers. Any sort of roulette content is balanced to barely require healing, and chain casting nuke or AOEnuke is enough to put me to sleep. Some of the more extreme content can be interesting at minimum ilvl, but as soon as everyone gears up it gets more tedious, too.

After a week of trying, healing the new tier just can't hold my attention. Gonna put my free time into other games for now.

I hot potato between GNB, SCH, and RDM. Ever since the healer changes for Shadowbringers I don't much feel like I have an actual main role. DPS is usually in 24 mans only though.

Currently on the verge of leaving my Static. It pains me because they have been amazing to me but I can't take it anymore. I've tried going SCH, AST and WHM, and I just can't get hyped for the role anymore. It's mindnumbingly dull, repetitive and frustrating. We cleared the last tier and we have just cleared E5 savage and I can't even get hyped for it.

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But in reality, ShB is still 99% DPS, 0.9% oGCD heal and 0.1% GCD healing. Thanks to damage that only comes in the form of Tankbuster and Raidbusters at predetermined times, oGCD heals that are crazy strong and a heavy emphasis on everyone dealing as much damage as possible... You know, the game as it has existed since 2.0.

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Lately, I've been noticing WHM are especially "bad" about this formula ^ right up here. They spam holy/glare, let the tank - or the entire party - get down between 5%-40% HP before they heal (either a oGCD or a Medica II! Like that helps much). I've even seen quite a few DPS before healing themselves when they're hovering between 3-5% HP (and no, there isn't always a DPS class that can rez them if they die xD). So, it's almost like if they don't have their oGCDs, they don't know how to heal (I legitimately have wondered for far too many healers, especially WHM, if they know how to heal without the readiness of their oGCD because they will prioritise DPSing until their oGCD pops out of CD or just use Medica II.). Very, very rarely will I get a WHM who actually heals, especially if there's more than one healer on a team (Eden 8 was miserable just because one of the healers would not heal. The mechs were easy, but it's not possible to do with one healer atm.). I think SCH and AST are better about balancing DPSing and healing, though both of those classes show up in part a lot more rarely than WHM does (AST more so than SCH). They still do that formula, but I would say they're more like 75-80% DPSing, but will balance out better depending on the content. The healing nowadays is very... different(???) than when I first started back in 2.x. It even feels different than in 3.x. I really think part of the problem with the "green DPS" issue is the increased amount of oGCD. I honestly wouldn't have more than 1 per class.


That being said, I'm pretty sure that SCH was supposed to be the green DPS. It had its fairy, it's ... three...? DoTs, its bane/spread, et cetera. And I'm fine with that being its identity, so long as it heals (like... 2.x Scholar was so annoying because they were basically like the WHM of today XD They really didn't heal, they just DPSed and let their fairy do the healing the majority of the time. But 3.x scholar was pretty nice. They felt a lot more well-rounded and pleasant to have as both solo healers and cohealers than they did in 2.x At least imo.).

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So I sub for story, play as my DNC since it's as support as I can get as a DPS, then wait till my sub runs out and do it all again next patch is more or less the plan now. Maybe 5.25 relic quest will get me to stick around more since I enjoyed doing those in the past, not 4.X but the others, but given that I don't really know much about that content, I'm not hopeful.

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This is literally me. I pay for the story and barely anything else. DNC is okay, but 4.x Bard was AMAZING (and I miss it and I swear it was the best version). Healing - especially as AST - was my absolute favourite for a long-ass time. But now I struggle to play it in harder content so I don't even bother with it outside of like... fating by myself. I'm going to try some other DPS classes to see if any are more invigorating. But DNC has the support skills I like (I use shields, curing waltz, etc, to help out), whereas... the others... I donno.


This is a tangent now, but ater the uhm... 5.0 release, I did that dungeon with the dogu doll boss (the one where you turn into a spriggan for a boss, right? I can't remember the name) thanks to roulette. The loss of my stun was surprisingly significant because stun in that dungeon was really helpful. So, that on top of my cards (on top of my other missing support skills) was a big hit, too. Just the other day, I go in as DPS via roulette again. This time, there's a WHM for a healer. The WHM spammed Holy every few seconds like a regular spell, and thus stunned the aoes every few seconds. Why is it that AST lost their stun - which had a long CD - when WHM could keep their's, which has no CD and can be spammed relentlessly? Pretty sure SCH doesn't have a stun skill either. Drives me nuts.


On a side note: still amazed that this thread is still going on.

I wasn't there when this thread started, but to give my opinion on the current state of healers (and WHM in particular, since it's my main) : Once a healer, always a healer.

I've played WHM since the open beta of ARR, and i've never let it go once.
I have to admit that losing a DoT for no reason (and Stoneskin a couple years ago) were for me unnecessary, annoying changes. But at the same time, the DPS as WHM has always been ultra dull, with or without my other DoT.

One thing i would hope for is that they make the class a little bit more complex (in the future). Currently WHM is a lot about reactivity, but once you know the strats of each run, you know just when to start casting AoE heals and stuff, so you have a lot of downtime, during which you ... DPS. I remember when i played AST during SB, it was such an enjoyable class, because i actually didn't have much time to DPS. When i was not healing, i was busy trying to find the perfect combination of cards to give that sweet 60s resist buff to the tank for the upcoming boss fight. Then i would DPS when time allowed me to, basically. I really felt like i was playing 100% support (which was never really the case with WHM, because the only thing you could do when you were not healing was DPS).

I have yet to try AST with its new version, but from what i've seen so far it's really been dumbed down, and i don't know if i will like it enough to replace my WHM with it. I really, really liked the version they had in Shadowbringers, and i just can't understand why they would change it so much just to make it "more accessible" when there were so many players who liked it as is.

Now after reading this, you might think "But wait, you don't really sound like you enjoy healing though ...", but i do.

The reason i love healing is not because the rotation is tough or because i have many DPS skills to play with during downtime.
The reason i love healing is because, for example, when i know by heart the strat for a Savage trial, and do everything perfectly, and when i raise fallen party members while dodging AoEs, or use Rescue on a DPS who's just about to get kicked out of the platform, it feels SO good.
I just live for these moments as a healer, the moments where you know that the fight is going smoothly because YOU know how it works and YOU are making sure that the team will get to the end of it.

Every role is important, but personally only healing has been able to provide me with such a sense of accomplishment, and contribution to the group.

I'll only play WHM anymore, and that's about 70 percent of the healers you find in Roulettes.
SCH and AST work fine, but they have been wrecked in terms of fun they were to play prior to 5.0.

AST needs the old card system back, and SCH needs to go back to being a DPS based healer. At least that was interesting.
Three healers that have most the same moves in everything but animation/name makes little reason to have 3 healers.

I've actively started avoiding my roulettes and it's something I've noticed.

Been playing since 2.0 beta and have never been more upset with healing than Shadowbringers; I could kinda level with them/shrug it off in Stormblood, I wasnt happy with it mind you, but I could see where there were coming from.

Shadowbringers is like they ran the healers with bots during testing because no one actually wanted to touch them.

It's made me focus on crafting and gathering more, so I guess silver lining?