Where are all the healers?

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Originally Posted by Asuras

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Leveled RDM 70 Tuesday, got O3S kill with it Friday the same week.

I'm pretty sure you got more problem with your class than the fight itself.

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Originally Posted by Vyriah

Leveled RDM 70 Tuesday, got O3S kill with it Friday the same week.

I'm pretty sure you got more problem with your class than the fight itself.

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Not having any issues clearing but I thank you for elaborating on your l33tness.

Well, you're asking why people say it's easy. And I'm telling you can just level a job, sneak into a party and get a kill with barely geared DPS. I'm not specially good at this or anything, it's just really plain easier.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

*shrugs* Never needed it to be honest.

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As for Diversion... eh, why does Diversion "lower other peoples' DPS"? It reduces enmity. Nobody should be pulling hate, ever, unless the tank is failing his job. This isn't FFXI where a MBing Black Mage might pull the mob off the tank. And even if they did pull hate, that's what Provoke is for.

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That quote reminds me of a tank I played with that said they don't need Shirk for tank swapping, because they never needed it before Stormblood. So apparently living by that mantra it means they don't care about being the least bit optimal, and handing over a good aggro lead during a tank swap. All good raid tanks have that cross-role, it makes tank swaps even more smooth, like not having to change stance/use aggro combos as-aggressively than previously.

As for Diversion, Lakshmi Extreme and O4S Neo have mechanics that target #1 and #2 on the aggro list, it may not be both tanks if the other party members don't pull their weight and use aggro-dumps as necessary. Diversion/Lucid is required if you are at-least half-good at pulling high DPS. You can die because of doing very high DPS, meshed with aggro mechanics. Just like how a White Mage should use Lucid when-necessary because of heavy healing spam. That's not a tank-fault, aggro is a raid responsibility. There just happens to be skills and a job (Ninja) to help assist with that.

I have noticed the lack of healers in both DF and PF.
As a tank, I am queueing. While when I go healer it is almost instant pop.

One guy told me in DF (He mains healer but queued as dps) that healing dungeons is just awful.
I understand where he is coming from. DF is a nightmare for healers.

When things take long time to die (DPs are not using AoE or proper rotation). Making it hard on both tank and healer.
Tanks that are either under geared or not using CDs properly. Making it hard on the healer to keep them up.

It is a role where you cannot relax and have to be ready for any mistakes.

*activating the automatic lalamatic thread re-railer*

Guys, the topic is "Where are all the healers?" Not, "Should healers DPS?"

As I said in my first post, the issue is the developers mishandled white mages and scholars while introducing two exciting damage dealer classes. As a result, a lot of players jumped roles causing a shortage of healers.

I feel the solution is for the developers to reexamine all three healing jobs (WHM, SCH, & AST) and ask themselves how can we make these jobs fun? There is a book on web design called the Big Red Fez. It's ten years old and dated now but it contains advice I think is relevant to game design. Make it clear, make it easy, don't confuse people, don't abuse permission, & reward the monkey when he finds the banana.

In other words, make each ability clear to understand, make the job easy, don't confuse the player with annoying job mechanics, don't tie too many abilities to special conditions, and offer a reward* for good play. If S.E. can do this, we will see people return to healing.

*By reward, I mean something which provides entertainment for the player. This could be a grand spell effect, music, a special buff, etc... anything that gives the player the sensation of "well done!"

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

*activating the automatic lalamatic thread re-railer*

Guys, the topic is "Where are all the healers?" Not, "Should healers DPS?"

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While you're correct the two are very closely related.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

I feel the solution is for the developers to reexamine all three healing jobs (WHM, SCH, & AST) and ask themselves how can we make these jobs fun?

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Dunno about you, but many players I encountered who dropped healing, refuse to take it on, or are very slow to do DF entirely on their own acted this way because they find the healer role stressful. Either from their own experience and/or watching what other healers deal with.

And I don't really think much can be done about it unless SE do something like significantly increase the amount of gated trash to stamp down on chain pulls, make holding aggro next to impossible without a tank stance or make it mechanically too punishing for healers to ever be expected to dps. I don't think I need to explain how huge the backlash would be if any of this happened.

That isn't to say I haven't come across players who simply didn't find healing mechanically engaging or fun, just saying I have come across many more who simply don't want to deal with the stress of the role.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

*snippers*

That isn't to say I haven't come across players who simply didn't find healing mechanically engaging or fun, just saying I have come across many more who simply don't want to deal with the stress of the role.

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*nods* I have also.

Healing is not for everyone. It is a position of responsibility and a lot of players don't like that. They feel like they are under a microscope where their every action is being weighed and judged. As a result, the player feels a great deal of stress.

But, I have to counter that the other roles can be just as stressful. Damage dealers stress over how much dps they do, tanks stress over being the leader and being expected to know each encounter in the game.

So, everyone can feel stress. Everyone can psych themselves out and magnify small incidences into these horrible events.

To that I say, everyone, chill. Take ten, breathe deeply, and get your head back to where it should be. This is a just game, after all.

Play what you want to play. Learn how to do it well and learn to laugh at your mistakes. Nobody is perfect nor is perfection expected. An "oops, I messed up." is enough of an acknowledgement of a mistake. Laugh at it, learn from it, move on.

What I was trying to to say in my prior post was that healers left because white mage and scholars are stressful and boring to play; whereas, red mage and samurai are less stressful and exciting to play. I know I've enjoyed the little bit I've played them.

But, after leveling several different characters and trying various jobs, I've found that despite its issues, white mage is the job for me and I'll be switching back to that avatar. Why? Because I like healing and I found playing damage dealers and tanks more stressful than healing. Go figure.

So, in the end, I feel everyone has a job which fits them and they will experience a certain amount of stress and dissatisfaction until they find it. And, I feel a lot of potential healers are in this sort of limbo due to the fact that scholars and white mages were not given the attention they deserved. The jobs need to be overhauled to be easier, simpler, and more rewarding to play. Once that happens, the players who found healing to be the least stressful role will return to healing.

None of the healing jobs need any overhauling, whether they are fun to play is a matter of opinion.

Remember they look at job balance from an end-game raiding standpoint, and all three healers are represented by the most balanced savage clear rates since Astrologian was released in HW. That's a good sign they gotten to a point where there isn't a healer job that is substantially ahead or behind. That is not to say there isn't quality-of-life changes that could be nice or what people would like to see in the future.

Also, not everyone wants to play a green icon job, just like how a majority don't want to play a blue icon job. I usually hear someone will cite they don't like that responsibility of being very visible, or that such responsibility makes them nervous coupled with the pressure of having to be efficient with globals, that is heal and DPS to be considered "good". All it takes is one ill-timed error as a tank or healer and you can wipe an entire raid. DPS jobs will just lose damage most of the time or just end up killing themselves most of the time.

I prefer healers or tank over red dps, that's my preference. I do like ranged DPS jobs too, just I happen to find the most fun in being a healer main.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

The jobs need to be overhauled to be easier, simpler, and more rewarding to play. Once that happens, the players who found healing to be the least stressful role will return to healing.

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'More streamlined' is perhaps a better approach than simply 'easier' IMHO? Whilst SE stated that getting rid of button and ability bloat was one of their goals for SB, they failed on healers big time, AST having 9 hotkeys for cards alone now is testament to that. There's little doubt in my mind that they need to up their game in this area.

On the flip side of the coin tho, I can't help but wonder if rethink of the general design philosophy behind 4 man content design itself might be the better approach?

The way I see it, DPS have very little responsibility in the current dungeons and frankly, outside of occasional (and typically very generous) cases such as Mr Sloppy's Restraint Collar in Baelsar's Wall it's been that way for a long long time. In all honesty, I can't think of a single example of having to give up on a dungeon run because of a pure and simple lack of DPS since the days of Amdapor Keep in 2.0.

Sub par players will tend to flock to the path of least resistance for dungeons, in the past that was often a healer, now I'd argue that it's DPS and by quite some margin.

Problem is:
-IF you clear a fight: "wow gz!!! That Dps tho ! amazing" "omg look at my parse!" "Holy--- that 5k DPs OMFG" "LOL you're Tank dmg is almost like a dps that 3.5k on tank omg"
-If you do not clear the fight: "What? why? ... oh my hp wasnt full" "WHY DID YOU LET ME DIE?" "im dead, i was 25% hp and i didnt get a single heal :C" "Focus on hp please"

When people celebrate a fight, do they check at healing parses? nope, not even healers does.... They look at dps parses, and who are always at the bottom of the list? yep, healers, they arent part of the fun AFTER you clear something, tho they are the causes of the wipes BEFORE you clear something..... i know healers are not dps, but neither are tanks and they can still push 1.5k/2k more dps than a healer, yeah yeah tanks keep attacking all the time while healers need to stop attacking in order to heal, but guess what? even if you go full dps on a healer, leaving your co healer doing all the job, you still wont be anywhere close to the tank..... Tanks have fun optimizing their dps and their up times droping tank stance and such, healers cant optimize anything but keeping dots up and just spaming 1 spell till healing is needed....

Im a main healer, if you ask me what would make MY job more fun, it would be something like a burst window when i dish out tons of dps (similar to WAR's FC set-up), and in order to open that burst window i would need an special no-mp resource that i gain from attacking and/or healing (healing would give more of that resourse than attacking)... no, i dont want stance dancing back, if a tank mess up their stance dance they'll just take more dmg than they should, hence healers adjust, or they die, hence OT take agra asap and healers adjust, before with healers stance dance, if the healer messed up the dance, the tank died, the dps died and the party wiped, so i want a burst mode that doesnt stop me from doing my main job, but that also let me have fun watching at my numbers (yes, belive it or not, numbers are part of what makes dps and tank fun).

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

'More streamlined' is perhaps a better approach than simply 'easier' IMHO? Whilst SE stated that getting rid of button and ability bloat was one of their goals for SB, they failed on healers big time, AST having 9 hotkeys for cards alone now is testament to that. There's little doubt in my mind that they need to up their game in this area.

On the flip side of the coin tho, I can't help but wonder if rethink of the general design philosophy behind 4 man content design itself might be the better approach?

Sub par players will tend to flock to the path of least resistance for dungeons, in the past that was often a healer, now I'd argue that it's DPS and by quite some margin.

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Very good points. More streamlined is a better term than easier. It's what I had in mind. I look at the design of red mages and samurai and think WOW! Then I look at my white mage and go, "man, there is a lot of redundancy." For example, Cure III and Medica. Why do I need either spell after I get Medica II?

A paradigm shift in healing is definitely needed. Our healing spells are too powerful and this can lead to serious downtime. Currently, healers are expected to fill that downtime by dpsing. This has led to a split in the community as some players feel put upon by having to cast damage spells so often.

Personally, I feel fine with dealing damage but can't help but think some damage dealers slack off because they think a healer's dps can cover their own shortcomings. I saw it happen in WoW so I think it happens here too.

I wonder what healing would be like if all the healers had the potency of their spells reduced, the MP cost of the healing spells reduced dramatically, and the cast times of those spells reduced from 2.5 seconds to 1.5 seconds? Meanwhile, keep the damage and utility spells more or less as is.

Healing would end up being faster and more engaging. Meanwhile, tanks and damage dealers would have to take more responsibility for their survivability and damage.

As far as a change in the philosophy of 4-man content, I do think there is something off. But, I feel the current issue of a shortage of healers, would be better addressed by a change in the healing jobs rather than an overhaul of FFXIV's 4-man duties. In addition, while I feel something is off, I cannot quite place my finger on the problem. Is the content too easy or the healers too strong?

Should there be more emphasis on crowd control? Many damage dealers and tanks like the current philosophy of grabbing a bunch of mobs and burning them down with AoE Spells. Would they become frustrated if suddenly the mobs had to be picked off one by one instead because the healers couldn't keep up with the damage of multiple mobs?

I know in Cataclysm, Blizzard tried to change how players approached the content by weakening healers by 80%. The idea was to spread the responsibility of survival to the whole party by forcing them to work together. The experiment failed because tanks and damage dealers didn't want to change their ways. Instead of working together, they'd just kick the healer until they got one overgeared enough to get them through the instances. In response, a huge number of healers either left the game or switched to other roles. Blizzard had to revert the nerfs because there just were no healers to be found. Would the same thing happen here? I don't know. In spite of the horror stories, I've found FFXIV players more willing to work together than the players of WoW. So maybe, such a change would work here.

I disagree that sub par players flocked to healers in the past. The path of least resistance has always been to go damage dealer. This is due to the fact that one mistake by a healer can wipe the party. Damage dealers can make mistakes and all it leads to is lower DPS.

With the move to just one new dungeon in upcoming odd patch updates, I don't expect much of a change to dungeon difficulty. Obviously they want to keep it easy for those who want to login and cap in a normal fashion. Ever since the AK and Pharos Sirius nerfs they have treaded carefully in requiring anything remotely moderate in skill level. Of course we get some good leveling difficulty standouts like The Vault, because you can't really overgear those things unlike level cap dungeons.


Red DPS get away with least resistance the most in such dungeon content. The 24-man casual raids they do pick up more responsibility and that usually leads to lots of salt when wipes occur, as we saw from the last two alliance raids in HW. Being a healer in Dun Scaith could mean your rotation was usually Raise>Raise>Raise>Raise. You'd get many alt-healers that couldn't keep people alive or mess up a lot of mechanics causing wipes.

Of course I like seeing DPS checks, because those subpar red DPS players needs to be walled in some manner, and learn to work with other players, instead of being spoon-fed gear upgrades.


Also, I remember YoshiP mentioning they are going to address some things they moved to gauges that previously were listed as player buffs like Astro cards, Aetherflow, and then plentary stacks if you have 2 WHMs. Maybe it's 4.1 or after.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

I know in Cataclysm, Blizzard tried to change how players approached the content by weakening healers by 80%.

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Incidentally, I healed through out Cata in WoW and this wasn't what happened. Cata was a hardcore expansion. Cata still is a hardcore expansion. People still wipe in those dungeons. People complained that the dungeons weren't hard and so Cata was made with dungeons and such to be hard. Very hard. You'd wipe in Stonecore normal if you didn't use CC. But that wasn't the healers fault. You couldn't fault the healer if you didn't CC the right mob. There was very, very little hate going to healers when things like that happened. You couldn't overgear it and parties knew that. It was actually kind of nice because most of the deaths/wipes were obviously not the healers fault so you didn't get that healer hate. There was literally nothing a healer could do if that one annoying mob transformed into a force of nature or you let the guard sound an alarm. It was a wipe. It couldn't be healed through.

Healer wise, they didn't want us to spam heal like we did in WotLK so they did two things: give us a fixed mana pool and make us DPS to get mana back. The result was that melee DPS generally died. Blizz's response to this was manifold: 1) the gave melee DPS more survivablity via their class and gave them ways to heal themselves more, 2) the nerfs the dungeons themselves, 3) vastly restrict kicking and gave a lot of terrible penalties to kicking (which sucked because tanks were notorious for pulling everything just to wipe the group or go offline to get kicked so they could queue up instantly to a better dungeon -- you literally couldn't get a tank to do Grim Batol, for example), 4) you buffed your party when you solo queued, and 5) they started giving award bags similar to adventurer in need (though these contained much better things than in ffxiv or currently in wow -- they gave mounts and such.)

Cata was basically their experimentation in forcing healers to DPS. They didn't really revert the nerfs to healers. Oh, they gave us a buff here and there but we still had a fixed MP pool (which was the real issue) and we still had to DPS throughout. It was hard in the beginning but people got used to it. Especially the poor melee DPS. I wasn't kicked once and we're talking 14 or 15 wipes on expert dungeon bosses. LOL

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

I know in Cataclysm, Blizzard tried to change how players approached the content by weakening healers by 80%.

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Pretty sure they buffed Holy Pallys 80% in Cata iirc :)

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Originally Posted by Alisi

Incidentally, I healed through out Cata in WoW and this wasn't what happened. Cata was a hardcore expansion. Cata still is a hardcore expansion. People still wipe in those dungeons. People complained that the dungeons weren't hard and so Cata was made with dungeons and such to be hard. Very hard. You'd wipe in Stonecore normal if you didn't use CC. But that wasn't the healers fault. You couldn't fault the healer if you didn't CC the right mob. There was very, very little hate going to healers when things like that happened. You couldn't overgear it and parties knew that. It was actually kind of nice because most of the deaths/wipes were obviously not the healers fault so you didn't get that healer hate.

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BC had lots of dungeons like that too, where mistakes would result in too much stuff coming to heal through. People had to pay attention. Wrath turned it into mostly "spam Circle of Healing while people AoE everything in sight, and that will successfully clear almost every dungeon". It was pretty boring in comparison, but less stressful (because there is no stress when single button spam means failure is nearly impossible).

Honestly, Auran Vale is one of my favorite dungeons because it doesn't let you do that. Even in its current form if you just try to mindlessly zerg it in roulette, it'll push back. Not at all like the "Experts", which are absurdly easy without triple pulls at least creating a chance of a problem.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

Cure III and Medica. Why do I need either spell after I get Medica II?

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You... I... but... what?? *head explodes*

C3 front-loads the potency of all 10 ticks of M2's 30s Regen effect, and has 85% more potency than Medica for 35% more MP. Medica instantly heals with 50% more potency than M2 (initial) for 21% less MP. This defines one of WHM's current strengths: MP efficiency. It's also the only dynamic that makes healing as WHM any fun. This diversity requires you to be aware of where the rest of your group is; how much MP you have; what damage is forthcoming, and when; and the approximate amount of HP your spells will restore. These variables require you both to plan ahead and to make quick, reactive decisions. I love WHM but I would dump it in a heartbeat if this "redundancy" were "addressed" in the manner you're implying.

Please do not say things like this. A developer might read it and, well, have you ever seen Inception?

Since 4 years is not enough to allow me more than 1000 characters, cont'd from above:

I agree that WHM's design seems clunky in comparison to Jobs that were just built from the ground up for level 70. That's the way the cookie crumbles, and it applies as much to DRG, NIN, and poor, poor SMN. You could take away all of WHM's 62+ abilities and it would have a fairly minor impact on its efficacy and gameplay. And nobody would miss any of those spell effects, would they? I think that's what the widespread "meh" that 4.0's WHM has received boils down to. It's still 3.xx WHM, and people want new things from expansions.

Finished leveling and gearing up my healers a month ago, now I am leveling my crafters and do my dailies on my RDM/BLM for a more relaxing gameplay, does the queue wait time bother me, not realy, since I am leveling my crafting classes anyway. Only if need to finish a daily fast (in other words fast queue) I play my healers. I think people are just enjoying the other classes and see what new stuff they got, remember that the expansion released only two months ago. I think not having a new healing class was a bad idea.

Then there is the whole healers should DPS or not, which can be a turn off, but also an exciting part of the role for some people. During Heavensward I noticed how I was dealing more damage then healing with my healers, in a way this ruined the role for me. So when Stormblood was approaching, I decided to swap my main and alt role (main was healer and alt was dps) and started doing content with my BLM while only using my healing classes when I need to enter a dungeon fast or when a friend/linkshell/free company player needed a healer. I have talked with other healers and it seems that I am not the only one that did this.

I think for now this is the best route for me. I might start healing in the new 24man raid, but for the other content (even PvP) I am going to DPS. I hope the next expansion gives us a new healer or something exciting for the healer role. :cool:

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Originally Posted by Trunks

You could take away all of WHM's 62+ abilities and it would have a fairly minor impact on its efficacy and gameplay. And nobody would miss any of those spell effects, would they? I think that's what the widespread "meh" that 4.0's WHM has received boils down to. It's still 3.xx WHM, and people want new things from expansions.

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Not really, 4.06 WHM is almost too good for some savage healing mechanics. Plentary stacks with regens is the best change ever from Cure spam. More party heals in-a-pinch.

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Originally Posted by Trunks

You could take away all of WHM's 62+ abilities and it would have a fairly minor impact on its efficacy and gameplay. And nobody would miss any of those spell effects, would they? I think that's what the widespread "meh" that 4.0's WHM has received boils down to. It's still 3.xx WHM, and people want new things from expansions.

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Eh, I don't raid savage, but I don't agree. Plenary Indulgence is great now, and Divine Benison is better than Stoneskin. Thin Air is a ridiculously amazing cooldown, and it's part of why WHM has the best mana economy of all healers ATM.

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Originally Posted by Elamys

Eh, I don't raid savage, but I don't agree. Plenary Indulgence is great now, and Divine Benison is better than Stoneskin. Thin Air is a ridiculously amazing cooldown, and it's part of why WHM has the best mana economy of all healers ATM.

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They are great tools, but frankly, they just better enable WHM to suck the oxygen out of the room for the other healer rather than being essential components of the Job. It's like SE asks, "what do you want on your pizza?" We reply, "surprise us!" And they come back with an extra cheese pie. Cheese is good, more cheese is more good, but ultimately you're just altering the texture, not enhancing the flavor. I'd really have preferred pineapple or something (not chicken, like SMN got).

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Originally Posted by technole

Not really, 4.06 WHM is almost too good for some savage healing mechanics. Plentary stacks with regens is the best change ever from Cure spam. More party heals in-a-pinch.

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And yes, WHM is OP and AST is game-breaking. I'm not saying that these abilities are bad, I am saying that they are tack-ons and they feel like tack-ons. If you unpin the tail from the donkey you still have a donkey. WHM would be just fine without the >60 traits and actions, and there's very little that you'd do differently in the course of an encounter. Like, use a Medica instead of a Cure III here and there, and maybe ask somebody else to heal something for once.

Honestly the way healers are treated in this game baffles me. You beg for healing then turn around and dump on your healer if their anything other than optimal. And then you wonder why no one wants to heal. The sad thing is that more toxic games like overwatch actually treat their healers Much Better. In fact the game actually encourages support instead of nerfing them into the ground the way Yoshi has been doing.

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Originally Posted by Trunks

You... I... but... what?? *head explodes*

C3 front-loads the potency of all 10 ticks of M2's 30s Regen effect, and has 85% more potency than Medica for 35% more MP. Medica instantly heals with 50% more potency than M2 (initial) for 21% less MP. This defines one of WHM's current strengths: MP efficiency. It's also the only dynamic that makes healing as WHM any fun. This diversity requires you to be aware of where the rest of your group is; how much MP you have; what damage is forthcoming, and when; and the approximate amount of HP your spells will restore. These variables require you both to plan ahead and to make quick, reactive decisions. I love WHM but I would dump it in a heartbeat if this "redundancy" were "addressed" in the manner you're implying.

Please do not say things like this. A developer might read it and, well, have you ever seen Inception?

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Aerkys, I apologize. My statement regarding Cure III and Medica was not meant to convey either spell was useless. Quite the contrary, I love them. However, they are redundant in the sense they are both AoE spells like Medica II. Couldn't the three spells have their effects combined into, say, two spells; thus, reducing our button bloat by one?

I agree that the mana efficiency game is the best part of healing with a white mage. To paraphrase Greg Street, "DPS should be a running a race while healing should be playing darts." ;) Mana efficiency is such an addictive mini-game. There is such a feeling of accomplishment when you do it right while keeping everyone alive. /cheer /happy

Also, please don't be under the illusion that I have the developer's ear more than you. We are both individuals giving our opinions about a topic which means a lot to you and I. I seriously doubt SE is waiting pen in hand to see what this fifty-something, handicapped hippie has to say. :p

Ultimately, what I want is for all the ARR jobs to be overhauled so that they operate more like the SB jobs. As far as Inception, never seen it. Is it good?:confused:

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Originally Posted by Alisi

Incidentally, I healed through out Cata in WoW and this wasn't what happened. *snipping for brevity*

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Going to disagree with you. Not only was our mana bar reduced and fixed to a small amount, Blizzard also slashed the potency of all our healing spells draconically. The days of spamming heal like in WotLK were over.

However, I LIKED healing in Cata. As you said, it was hardcore. Dungeons, like Stonecore and Blackrock Caverns, were real challenges.

Now, with a good group, everyone shared the load. CC was used, dps and tanks used their own survival abilities, healers healed and dpsed as much as they could. It was soo cool!

But, I distinctly remember healers leaving in droves because of the number of dps who refused to change to the new ways of doing things. Kicks were frequent. If you didn't experience this, I'm happy for you because it sucked!

I was the #2 healer in my guild at the time. By that I mean, I was designated the co-healer and assistant healing lead for our raiding group. During the first month of Cata, I watched our pool of healers go from over thirty to me and the guild leader. That was it.

You couldn't find healers anywhere. They were either snatched up into other raiding guilds, (and only raided with friends), or they quit healing. Doing your randoms was impossible unless you had your personal healer friend. (which I was!)

It was a true healer drought and it hurt WoW for years even into Mists of Pandaria when even the smallest of healing adjustments lead to mass fears that healers were going back to Cataclysm-like levels of uselessness.

So, I guess we had different experiences. Perhaps it was due to which servers we were on. Anyways, I like Cata healing when everyone was on the same page. Sadly, not enough players made that leap which is a shame because it really was a good paradigm. I blame the healing excesses of WotlK for spoiling players about what a healer could do. We were gods and goddesses capable of saving whole raids with few casts.

And it was agreed by all that healers needed to be brought down to Earth. Unfortunately, most players forgot what that would mean for the way they ran their instances and raids.

Anyways, you seem like a great person and I'd like to chat with you more about this and our other experiences in WoW. Look me up on Coeurl sometime.:)

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Originally Posted by technole

Not really, 4.06 WHM is almost too good for some savage healing mechanics. Plentary stacks with regens is the best change ever from Cure spam. More party heals in-a-pinch.

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Concur with this. 4x D.Wave in O3S and White Hole/Almagest in O4S are completely trivialized by risk-free Cure III bombs. If it weren't for certain mobility gimmicks or eHPS checks for (Neo)/Exdeath our WHM wouldn't even need me to be there. (It's almost a bit disheartening, to be quite honest here.)

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Originally Posted by Nowakii

Problem is:
-IF you clear a fight: "wow gz!!! That Dps tho ! amazing" "omg look at my parse!" "Holy--- that 5k DPs OMFG" "LOL you're Tank dmg is almost like a dps that 3.5k on tank omg"
-If you do not clear the fight: "What? why? ... oh my hp wasnt full" "WHY DID YOU LET ME DIE?" "im dead, i was 25% hp and i didnt get a single heal :C" "Focus on hp please"

When people celebrate a fight, do they check at healing parses? nope, not even healers does.... They look at dps parses, and who are always at the bottom of the list? yep, healers, they arent part of the fun AFTER you clear something, tho they are the causes of the wipes BEFORE you clear something.....

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I really have to disagree with this...every role is needed and if people are failing to see that then they aren't looking hard enough. A parser is a useful tool but it is not the end all be all of the fun of clearing a difficult fight.

Yes, DPS jobs are usually pumped about their DPS, but I know for sure people appreciate the healer's contribution of healing and DPS in a fight. I mean if you have no healers your clear chance is 0% at least for max level current content. An excellent healer can also sometimes fix another player's mistake and avoid an eventual wipe if they can manage to pick up the pieces. If there are people who don't understand this then they aren't really knowledgeable about the role.

Healers are also not the only causes of wipes and if anyone thinks that they are being silly. Everyone has a job to do and everyone can cause wipes not just the healers due to failed mechanics, not dodging telegraphs, tanks not using cooldowns properly and many other things.

Healers are definitely part of the fun because healing and DPSing and knowing you contributed as much as possible and kept everyone alive means we cleared because of that as well not just the DPS and tank jobs. I like knowing I was able to do 4-5% of the bosses HP in O3S all by myself in my first clear because I tried really hard to heal and DPS whenever I could.

Healers can still do pretty decent DPS and I really think that is all that we need since technically our main role is to heal we don't need to do a larger amount of DPS. So of course healer is at the bottom of the DPS parser list, that is where they should be; now depending on your DPS numbers the bottom of the list doesn't mean your contribution was low.

in my opinion if you don't want to be at the bottom of the DPS parse list healer just isn't the right role to play. Healing should be the main source of your fun as a healer I would think. DPSing on healer is fun too, but if it overshadows the fun you (general you) have healing by a lot then maybe a DPS job would be better suited.

In the end if you are playing with people who blame the healer for every wipe regardless of what actually happened then it is time to get new people.

The pace of the combat is like you have to be on crack. I frankly cannot enjoy playing DPS at this point anymore since I'm staring at my bar more then looking at the game. Might as well call this Final Bars XIV since that's what you're looking at about 90% of the time during combat. I've just tried healing and I'm having lots of fun doing it just like how I have fun playing a tank. I just wish they would slow down the combat and just make the attacks hit harder so that we can enjoy the game.

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Originally Posted by Trunks

Since 4 years is not enough to allow me more than 1000 characters, cont'd from above:

I agree that WHM's design seems clunky in comparison to Jobs that were just built from the ground up for level 70. That's the way the cookie crumbles, and it applies as much to DRG, NIN, and poor, poor SMN. You could take away all of WHM's 62+ abilities and it would have a fairly minor impact on its efficacy and gameplay. And nobody would miss any of those spell effects, would they? I think that's what the widespread "meh" that 4.0's WHM has received boils down to. It's still 3.xx WHM, and people want new things from expansions.

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I would only miss Thin Air. The rest of the abilities are boring.

Yay another Stone! A reworked Stoneskin why is this even a new ability lmao? PI yay an Aoe heal dump. After the failure of the first PI everyone knew this was going to be the next route so boring.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

Going to disagree with you. Not only was our mana bar reduced and fixed to a small amount, Blizzard also slashed the potency of all our healing spells draconically. The days of spamming heal like in WotLK were over.

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Yeah, this was basically what I said. LOL. The real issue was the fixed MP bars and they never changed that so there wasn't any unnerfing to healers that went on during Cata. They didn't slash the potency of our healing spells either. Not really. What they did was change them around. I was a holy priest at the time so we had heal, greater heal, and flash heal. They upped the MP cost of FH and lowered the potency while they upped the potency and lowered the costs of heal and greater heal. So, basically, I spammed greater heal, never touched or used FH, and used heal only to renew the chakra system when you had to cast a heal every 5 seconds or so to keep that up.


The thing that just really sticks out is the shinanigans of the tanks, since I healed 95% of the time. There'd be *those* dungeons where you just knew they'd refuse to do like Grim Batol. And I'd feel so terrible for DPS because it was like a 2 hr wait for them. The tank would just be awful and camp or they'd intentionally kill the group -- anything so that they wouldn't get a debuff and could requeue again. Then Blizz was like 'we gotta protect those getting kicked!' so they started punishing those who kicked and those who got kicked. My time limit before I could kick was an hr and I solely kicked tanks who went off line. You get tanks that would also get an hr before they could be kicked. It was just hell.

I remember this one time I got the dungeon in the sky (I forgot the name of it), an easy one, but the tank camped before the first pull. I decided to wait with these poor DPS for a new tank. We got one an hr later. He comes in, sees we haven't started and says 'oh, a fail group. well, I'm going now' and camped before we could even say that the other tank hadn't started the dungeon. That was basically my experience with Cata healing. If you could find a group that would go the distance then great. But generally you'd get a jerk tank who'd ruin it all for everyone. Cata killed all my tank related empathy. LOL

Dropped healing for Samurai. Don't regret it one bit

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Originally Posted by Inosaska

The pace of the combat is like you have to be on crack. I frankly cannot enjoy playing DPS at this point anymore since I'm staring at my bar more then looking at the game. Might as well call this Final Bars XIV since that's what you're looking at about 90% of the time during combat. I've just tried healing and I'm having lots of fun doing it just like how I have fun playing a tank. I just wish they would slow down the combat and just make the attacks hit harder so that we can enjoy the game.

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If you ever want to see "World of Bars", find a screenshot of a healer in Molten Core. That had *40* people and was before the advent of compact healer UIs like Grid. It was a running joke that no healer could lead a raid in there because they'd never actually seen anything except the floor directly in front of themselves.

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Originally Posted by Alisi

The thing that just really sticks out is the shenanigans of the tanks, since I healed 95% of the time. There'd be *those* dungeons where you just knew they'd refuse to do like Grim Batol. And I'd feel so terrible for DPS because it was like a 2 hr wait for them. The tank would just be awful and camp or they'd intentionally kill the group -- anything so that they wouldn't get a debuff and could requeue again. Then Blizz was like 'we gotta protect those getting kicked!' so they started punishing those who kicked and those who got kicked. My time limit before I could kick was an hr and I solely kicked tanks who went off line. You get tanks that would also get an hr before they could be kicked. It was just hell. Cata killed all my tank related empathy. LOL

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Oh neat! I was a holy priest too!

It's been so long since Cata that I can't remember my healing style. I think I went with the Chakra which turned you into a Renew healer* while using Sanctuary(?) and Circle of Healing as my AoE.

Hahaha! So true! I forgot about that until you mentioned it. A whole lot of tanks hated Grim Batol. They'd go in all Rambo-like pulling everything and get turned into a crushed can of tomato paste in 3.5 seconds.

However, I enjoyed that dungeon because it was the perfect training ground for new players. I'd mentor them along from the vantage point of their healer. It was so rewarding when you saw the light bulb go off and everything click into place.

*no longer in the game

everyone wants healers to dps so they rolled dps instead lol

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Originally Posted by paoweeotter

everyone wants healers to dps so they rolled dps instead lol

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There is truth in what you say. The pressure to maintain good dps while keeping the party alive contributed to making the healing role too stressful and unfun for a lot of players. Players want to play what's fun.

The developer's focus on red mage & samurai resulted in two remarkable jobs. However, white mage & scholar seem to have been afterthoughts. Players can feel the inattention and go elsewhere. In this case, to red mage & samurai.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

The pressure to maintain good dps while keeping the party alive contributed to making the healing role too stressful and unfun for a lot of players.

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Really though? From my experience, it's much more demanding to maintain good DPS as a DD than maintaining at least "good enough" DPS on healer while keeping everyone alive, and it seems to be much more common to require certain DPS numbers from DDs than it is from healers (or tanks). Of course it varies a bit what different people consider difficult or stressful, but I at least personally feel maintaining good DPS in a long fight is much more demanding (and also requires a lot more planning).

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Originally Posted by Taika

Really though? From my experience, it's much more demanding to maintain good DPS as a DD than maintaining at least "good enough" DPS on healer while keeping everyone alive, and it seems to be much more common to require certain DPS numbers from DDs than it is from healers (or tanks). Of course it varies a bit what different people consider difficult or stressful, but I at least personally feel maintaining good DPS in a long fight is much more demanding (and also requires a lot more planning).

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For DPS and healers, I feel the content the players are participating in certainly affects the perception of Stress.

If you think of DPS in any 4-man content, it's pretty stress-free. You can maintain uptime fairly easily and it's not like you have to be on the absolute bleeding edge to clear the content in a decent time. You can generally pop CDs without worry about wasting them and derping a mechanic will generally not result in death thus allowing DPS to basically play on cruise control if desired. This is unlike healer where you have to contend with a large variety of unknowns such as "will the other players derp" or "is the tank going to pull wall-to-wall and will they use cooldowns?" which can lead to stressful situations.

This is unlike Savage raid content where you have to consider all the mechanics and plan your rotations and CDs around the mechanics to optimize for the fight. Your uptime will suffer due to mechanics and invulnerability phases and mechanical failures will result in a major dip in personal DPS. This can lead to some pretty high stress levels for DPS to perform well. In contrast, healers are still fixing derps like they would in 4-man content, except now they'll be using a Raise more often than naught instead of a Cure or HoT and while there is stress regarding cooldowns or not, the healer should understand fights well enough to know when they'll be needing to use their bigger heals. A lot of the variables for Savage raiding is known and it's just a matter of playing around those variables with the smaller number of unknowns leading to less stress and more "I can definitely fix this" moments.

As for personal preference and comfort, I definitely also feel much more comfortable and less stressed on healer than I do on DPS. I played MCH for the entire Creator-tier and effectively performed average at the role and it stressed me out because I coudln't play at the calibur of skill I'm used to playing on a healer. I'm currently WHMing through the entire Deltascape-tier and reflecting on my performance, I feel I'm playing exceptionally well and have very little stress. I stress about performance but not in the same way I did while playing MCH. I imagine there are players that are the exact opposite of me - they feel stressed playing a healer but not so stressed playing a DPS due to comfort.

I can definitely see where Kacho is coming from with their comment too. The large amount of unknowns that can occur at running 4-man and 24-man can lead to some particularly high tension healing scenarios which some players will revel in (*raises hand high*) and others will scream bloody murder at. Likewise for your comment, being able to perform well in a Savage raid environment can also lead to stresses that, in turn, some players will revel in and others will scream bloody murder at. I definitely do feel its important to discuss the context of type of content when talking about these stresses since each have differing levels of skill and commitment required for success.

The main thing is that healers get to deal with everyone else's derp, as mentioned. That got hammered home last night in the ugliest O4N I've ever seen. The other healer and the RDM each died 3 times. Half the group was getting hit by Pyretic somehow, the SAM never got out of Void Thunder, people falling off... it was a time. Can you say healer LB3? Because I can.

I was exhausted afterward. Forget about doing DPS. That was simply a matter of picking people up and dragging them through the fight. That's not a thing DPS players ever have to contend with.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

I was exhausted afterward. Forget about doing DPS. That was simply a matter of picking people up and dragging them through the fight. That's not a thing DPS players ever have to contend with.

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To be fair, that's not a thing a healer player should have to deal with either. It's not a healer's job to babysit and carry other players through stuff they obviously aren't prepared to handle. And if they always get carried they'll never learn.