Why isn't there a shortage of healers?

[Ghishlain]

Because many people like myself, have every DPS class leveled to 50, and I Q as healer 99% of the time.

This is a good point, without knowing how S-E tabulated the results, it's possible to get a great dividing between people who "main a healer" versus people who "have a healer leveled to 50".

The SCH/SMN dual job is a good case in point because many people may have leveled SMN and just unlocked SCH just because it was an easy unlock.

Hard to make a good analysis of the numbers without actually knowing the process S-E employed to reach these numbers.

[rawker]

how did they arrive to those figures? i mean if they will loosely base on the level of classes each player has, there are quite a number of people who have all classes maxed. are they basing it on the actual time spent all players did per job? 1 variable that could also be having an impact is how each content require at most 2 tanks, 2 healers and 5 dps. are people forced to think that they have better chances landing on a spot if they dps than let's say a tank?

[Feylie]

Simple:

[Ghishlain]

Simple:

Impossible, it can't be done!

[KisaiTenshi]

This is a good point, without knowing how S-E tabulated the results, it's possible to get a great dividing between people who "main a healer" versus people who "have a healer leveled to 50".

The SCH/SMN dual job is a good case in point because many people may have leveled SMN and just unlocked SCH just because it was an easy unlock.

Hard to make a good analysis of the numbers without actually knowing the process S-E employed to reach these numbers.

Oh that's easy to figure out. They just sampled the data based on what people were playing over a specific period of time. Like they probably picked a week or a month and logged how many hours were spent in each job.

The question comes from asking "DPS/Tank/Healer" as in 8man Coil, 24-man Raids and 8-man Mainstream vs 4-man dungeons and guildhests. Logically someone on a DPS class would queue as their DPS class, and then go do something else while they wait, while tanks and healers just queue up for just about anything and get in in under 2 minutes. So the amount of time spent in tank or healer is likely less than the amount of time DPS spend as DPS... especially considering some people just go off and watch TV or netflix while they wait in queue.

Or at least that's how I would read it.

What will be interesting is when the three new jobs come out, how many people actually switch from what they currently main to one of the new jobs and stay there.

[Ooshima]

Because many people like myself, have every DPS class leveled to 50, and I Q as healer 99% of the time.

Same thing. I have every DoW and DoM to 50, but I almost always queue as a WHM.

Why? Because Holy. That job that gives me non-DPS queue which means express queue, and at the same time, dish out a considerable high DPS output in most instances.

[MXMoondoggie]

from the 38% dps lies a portion where sch are since they come from acn, which is a dps class. this leads to a safe conclusion that tanks are still at the bottom since there's this unknown issue that needs to be addressed to encourage players to main tanking classes.

It's not really an unknown issue it's been an issue for MMO's since forever. The reason being most people would rather be the guy that kills stuff than the guy who controls the fight or the guy who keeps people alive. There is also a stigma about Tanks and Healers always taking the blame when things go wrong so a lot of people shy away from that because they don't think they are good enough to handle the responsibility or they just don't want to.

[Ghishlain]

Oh that's easy to figure out. They just sampled the data based on what people were playing over a specific period of time. Like they probably picked a week or a month and logged how many hours were spent in each job.

The question comes from asking "DPS/Tank/Healer" as in 8man Coil, 24-man Raids and 8-man Mainstream vs 4-man dungeons and guildhests. Logically someone on a DPS class would queue as their DPS class, and then go do something else while they wait, while tanks and healers just queue up for just about anything and get in in under 2 minutes. So the amount of time spent in tank or healer is likely less than the amount of time DPS spend as DPS... especially considering some people just go off and watch TV or netflix while they wait in queue.

Or at least that's how I would read it.

What will be interesting is when the three new jobs come out, how many people actually switch from what they currently main to one of the new jobs and stay there.

While what you suggested is one possible method to tabulating the results of the census, I don't think what it's how they calculated the results. On my server, there is a plague of what I believe to be RMT BLM bots just going in and out of instances - I'm pretty certain this is the same for many other servers as well (except maybe the eternally locked Balmung). Therefore, if they did this method of tabulating census, it would probably skew the results heavily towards showcasing these 24/7 BLMs.

Job soul count @ 50 would be the most straight forward method, but again, there are players with all jobs at 50 for the sake of completion - this would also skew the results.

Total maximum play time on a job is also a possibility, but again, as some posters have already indicated, this result can be skewed by queuing on a different job to get something for your main. Notably, "Hey, I want Zodiac on my BLM, but I hate the queue, let's go on Tank/Healer queue!" or "I want to do my EX / Trial / Story / Low Level / High Level DRs on tank so I don't have to wait for DPS queue" or etc. Admittedly, of the three different methods I have listed, this one seems to be the most plausible as it's a single result per account and (generally speaking) you should have the most hours on the job you consider your main. This method will probably need some sort of soft reset or beginning time frame when the expansion hits or else we'll see very few DRKs, ASTs, and MCHs on the following census (assuming this is the methodology they use).

So, yeah, I stand by my statement - hard to make a good analysis of hte numbers witout actually knowing the process S-E employed to reach these numbers.

[Spoekes]

As long as you do not now what data SE is exactly collecting about our online-behavior, how can you say "easy to figure out"....

So we don't know what data they are collecting exactly implies we have absolutely no idea how they work with said data and everything is more or less technical guesses.

[rawker]

It's not really an unknown issue it's been an issue for MMO's since forever. The reason being most people would rather be the guy that kills stuff than the guy who controls the fight or the guy who keeps people alive. There is also a stigma about Tanks and Healers always taking the blame when things go wrong so a lot of people shy away from that because they don't think they are good enough to handle the responsibility or they just don't want to.

or being that lazy dps that afks.