Why do so many statics seem to be missing healers? What can be done to solve this?

I'm in a static that can't find a second healer after the other one went to school, and we're considering poaching our friend whose own static has been, and people from several different statics have approached me.

There are really only a couple things I can think about: make leveling easier, make healers more appealing, and reduce choice constraints like the dread of doubling up.

I'd say it's just bias since you're a healer. Our group spent hours just looking for a single PUG tank for o4s, and I took a look and at least 4 other groups were looking for a tank.

Honestly for statics all 3 roles are looked for at some point, because it's so difficult to find people who are dedicated enough AND have the time to raid every week. Sure DPS might be the easiest to fill, but a DPS who can consistently hold 4k/5k+ is rare and valuable since they make the encounters so much easier.

IMO healers fill up fast up to o3s, then become a bit rare for o4s, if only because o4s actually has some difficulty in terms of healing.

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Originally Posted by PondHollow

I'm in a static that can't find a second healer after the other one went to school, and we're considering poaching our friend whose own static has been, and people from several different statics have approached me. There are really only a couple things I can think about: make leveling easier, make healers more appealing, and reduce choice constraints like the dread of doubling up.

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Nothing to do with that. It's either that healers are at fault for everything, and some don't want to go through that hassle, or when looking for healers you find only people that can't play their job correctly. Good and outstanding healers do have static spots, or when they lose their spot, they are picked up quickly by extremely good groups. I as a healer myself, wouldn't join a group of strangers I don't know anything about, because that mostly just leads to more frustration, specially if the group doesn't have the same mindset or group composition I am looking for. GL with finding a new healer tho.

O4s is a betch to heal lol I switched from ast to dps so quick lol but some healers stop at O3s becuase O4s has a lot of healer liabilities.....But honestly tanks are the scarce ones on O4s I believe specifically that fight is terrible to both healers and tanks starting from the thunder III crap, BH mechanic to meteors hitting stupid hard, white hole, Almagest, Delta attack, cyruptis(spelling), and plenty more crap healers and tank mechanics I'm a dps now and I feel for them lol

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Originally Posted by Aomine1992

O4s is a betch to heal lol I switched from ast to dps so quick lol but some healers stop at O3s becuase O4s has a lot of healer liabilities.....But honestly tanks are the scarce ones on O4s I believe specifically that fight is terrible to both healers and tanks starting from the thunder III crap, BH mechanic to meteors hitting stupid hard, white hole, Almagest, Delta attack, cyruptis(spelling), and plenty more crap healers and tank mechanics I'm a dps now and I feel for them lol

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Whether it be healers or tanks, this is an entirely normal situation for progression raids. Seen it to a lesser extent in previous mmo's over years.

The one thing that seems to have changed - for the worse - is the attitude to these classes.

Here's one from the past:
Our progression raid group in WoW lost a tank (work related), so we asked around for a replacement. We managed to get someone who wasn't that experienced, but willing to stick at it and learn.

So we ran raids to help. More often than not the initial ones weren't successful, but over time you could see the guy improving. In the end this tank proved to a be cornerstone of the static, and we ran raids together for a long time.

Now? What do we see?
Talk of just good or bad tanks/healers.

This is the difference I see, the loss of the teaching and helping approach to help someone learn through repeat runs.
It mirrors the modern expectation to have everything 'there and ready', rather than an older mmo approach where it was a gradual and common learning experience - players accepting the norm, that raid groups where a 'family', with support and help freely given.

We had class tutors in the guild, who would guide players through the initial, then further stages with their respective classes.
The reaction to this now would be either learn to play, or if you can't play properly leave.

So now we have a shortage of these critical healer/tank classes - is it really surprising?

People are jerks to healers. Not just in raids but even in dungeon runs. Pull half the zone and to screaming at the healer for the whipe, and don't forgot we have to do DPS to make up for the rest of DPS that cant do its job as well.

You ask why healers are scarce...

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Originally Posted by Teraluna

This is the difference I see, the loss of the teaching and helping approach to help someone learn through repeat runs.
It mirrors the modern expectation to have everything 'there and ready', rather than an older mmo approach where it was a gradual and common learning experience - players accepting the norm, that raid groups where a 'family', with support and help freely given.

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This is a good point. Many groups are only looking for players who are already at their level, with certain item level, clears, and long previous raid experience.

I've only been raiding in PF for a couple of weeks now and I haven't had trouble finding healers. Good healers, on the other hand... Many healers seem to be playing reactively now for some reason. For example, I have had to ask for a WHM to put Medica II up when there's upcoming AoE damage (the latest time was last night in OS4 exdeath tentacles / black orbs) more than once.

The big problem with static is usually the times. Quite a few of the ones I see expect people to static the same thing 4 nights a week. For 3-4 hours a night..

I think that's where a lot of the difficulty finding people comes in. Cos group's set there demands so high.

I'd probably be more inclined if group's did 1 or 2 nights a week. For a couple of hours. But more than that nah..

The playerbase is in its post expansion decline, which always happens once the story content runs out, the shiny wears off, and things go back to raid the same dungeons until the next patch adds something else to do. That makes the in demand roles hard to find, as lots of statics are trying to recruit from a shrinking pool. That's always going to be true at this phase of the expansion, regardless of other factors. Raid groups have had this problem since forever, really.

Then you have the other factors that everyone else is bringing up, like Savage healing simply not being that fun for a lot of healer players with the sheer amount of stuff to keep track of and the DPS requirements on top of that. If the content itself is stressful to do and not fun, you'll have a hard time getting people in a role to do it no matter how easy you make leveling. I mean, playing a healer in savage and playing a healer in leveling dungeons are very different experiences, so making that easier wont really help anything.

And of course, you get groups wanting specific jobs and people who've already cleared, which is an even smaller group to draw from.

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Originally Posted by PondHollow

There are really only a couple things I can think about: make leveling easier,

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This solution won't work, since leveling isn't the big issue here and making it easier will only result in more people, who are not able to heal trying to heal in savage.

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make healers more appealing, and reduce choice constraints like the dread of doubling up.

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I think healing is appealing to me, despite the rage post i'll make now :D
The biggest and worst issue is the fact that the comunity can be toxic towards healers. Starting in low level dungeon for new healers... They get blamed for example and this doesn't help, since doing dmg as healer for instance is all about confident imo. How are they suppose to get confident when some people tell them, when, how they should heal and that everything the dd or tanks does wrong is their fault?

Almost everytime when i help healers to get better, i tell them, they should learn very fast who mistake a death of a teammate was and filter good criticism out of bad criticism, because there are so many people, who talk about healing and either never played it or think because they can heal sastasha or any other dungeon, it is easy. Healing also depends a lot on the group and no this shouldn't be an excuse for healers, because there are many bad healers out there. Don't get me wrong.

The next issues are people talking about healing, because they read somewhere for instance main- /offheal is considered good. It isn't! I played this way myself - one healer almost solo healing, other doing dps - for various reason, one beeing that at some point, i couldn't bother to start an discussion anymore with one of my statics and just dealed with it. This is especially a problem for new healers, since they will believe an good dps or tank player what they have to say about the game, even thought, those experienced players can be wrong sometimes. My advice here would be just ask an healer you know is good and ask him, if he can help your healer or give im advice. DON'T TRY TO DO IT YOURSELF.

Another issue are people who say "healing is easy" or try to heal themselves, because they believe it is easy. Those healers will probably fail in v3 or especially v4 and thats why you see so many statics looking for healers. What can be done? Well, i could go on and on, but the first and most important thing that needs to change is the mindset of people.

1. If you never healed in savage, don't tell your healers how they should heal. Ask an main healer in your fc, ls, whatever to give them advice
2. If people die ask yourself what you could have done, instead of blaming healers first. Reducing the dmg for meteor in v4 for example is key and this can be done by almost every role.
3. Don't think healing in v3-4 is as easy as an dungeon and try it yourself. If you want to switch, train and talk to people for advice.
4. Stop, and i mean, just STOP, telling healers to "top you of" in raid and try to trust them. I can only speak for myself, but this stuff triggers me hard. Especially since most dd have other stuff to worry about and for this reason don't know how much hp they need to survive. But if you don't know how much hp you need to survive, then just be silent and let the healers do their job. We won't tell you as an dd "oh look there is an add, maybe use ofcd to kill it", either. It is just annoying.
   
   Usually and of course mistakes happen and healers are different, they know how much hp you need. For example i had an pug an week ago, who told me someone didn't have full hp and while this was true the attack doesn't do enough dmg to kill you even when you have half of your hp pool. Additionally the person he was talking about died, because he made a mistake himself and admit it himself. But yes #blame the healer

tl;dr
Be less toxic, give healer space to get better and support them by telling them about other healers, which they can talk to instead of trying to teach them yourself. You might be the best tank in the world or an good dd, but this doesn't mean that you have an clue about healing in savage. Also try to work together to reduce dmg incoming and don't kick healers out of the static asap. First think about what you as a team can do to solve the issue and hey sometimes you need to kick people, but first you should talk about issue. Communication is key in every situation. This starts at the bottom with new healers leveling their class to 50, 60 and then 70, really, because if some people destroy their confidence here, those healers will probably switch to another class before they even are able to do ex fights or savage as healers. Resulting in less people trying to do savage as healers.

Edit: Sry for the long post :(