Where are all the healers?

[s3ystic]

Your tanks and healers are playing with friends. Tanking or Healing isn't worth it in PUGs honestly, not with they way they get treated half the time if the run isn't a total face-roll. I plays one tank, healer and dps. I will only play my healer or tank with my buddies because i know if one person starts talking trash after a odd wipe here or there, the majority of my party has my back. Honestly, this story is as old as MMOs by this point. If people were nicer to each other, it would be easier to party up.

[Elleia]

Lots of healers quitting because of change to the healers or they switched to Astro. Then they put that little bit in that said you can't class stack. LOL.

The stacking classes is only for duty finder/queuing raid finder without a full party. I've been in O1S-O3S with two ASTs, two PLDs, two SAMs, etc. As long as you have a full party your comp can be whatever you want it to be.

As for the topic, I also was a healer main since I started playing (WHM in ARR, AST in HW) and currently have two of them leveled, working on SCH now. However, I got super burnt out healing savage raids and now that SB has released, I've switched to BRD. I know they wanted to simplify the healer role by removing cleric stance and DoTs, but AST felt very boring to me in Susano EX, just spamming Malefic 3 while occasionally healing and throwing out cards. Maybe it's always been that way...I'm not sure why I feel so bored when I heal now, but that's the reason I've swapped. Maybe I just needed a change of pace.

I certainly have noticed that every other role in our PF groups is filled while we sit around and wait for healers, even on Tuesday after reset for our weekly savage clears. I think many healers have switched or stick to their static groups.

[Alisi]

The stacking classes is only for duty finder/queuing raid finder without a full party. I've been in O1S-O3S with two ASTs, two PLDs, two SAMs, etc. As long as you have a full party your comp can be whatever you want it to be.

I stand corrected. Thanks. That makes me feel kind of bad though. I thought that this was their acknowledgement that the classes aren't balanced. Like, throwing Sch's a bone or something. But let's not talk about that. That'll derail this thread waaaay to fast.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Not many people want to sit on an awful job and pretend to have fun with it.
SE obviously didn't spare WHM or SCH a second glance this expansion, while they cradled AST to absolute perfection. It's essentially a better WHM and a better SCH. That leaves the only healer that actually feels strong and important to play as AST, and not many people like they'd playstyle.

SE really dropped the ball with healers. Many of us were expecting sweeping changes because of no healer this expansion, but they actually put less effort into them this time than they did in HW.

[Aomine1992]

I used to main heal in HW but with SB healing became crap and it seems like everything is the healer fault,

I can't count how many times I see someone die in V3s or V4s and the reasoning is they weren't topped off or the healer didn't shield them >_>

Healing just isn't fun anymore especially when the hard on dps meta has gotten worse for healers I've seen groups talking about 1.9 - 2k to enter their savage group as a healer...So i happily switched to tanking and dps which I'm dropping tanking because as a DRK I don't see myself pushing out this magical number of 2.6k as the mt lol I'm not that good

[Jxnibbles]

I find it cute how even Hyur Midlander refuses to be a Healer. Shows how little Healers are cared for by the Devs.
Archer, Glad, Warrior, Drag, Monk and Sam.

[Fufupel]

It doesn't help that leveling a Healer is extremely boring as well. Our DPS abilities aren't very flashing and it's just DoT a target and Stone/Broil/Malefic Spam. PvP is decent exp as a healer but it feels like teammates go out of their way to avoid being healed and then you just nuked when trying to catch up to them.

[Justin_Uriel]

Your tanks and healers are playing with friends. Tanking or Healing isn't worth it in PUGs honestly, not with they way they get treated half the time if the run isn't a total face-roll. I plays one tank, healer and dps. I will only play my healer or tank with my buddies because i know if one person starts talking trash after a odd wipe here or there, the majority of my party has my back. Honestly, this story is as old as MMOs by this point. If people were nicer to each other, it would be easier to party up.

I couldn't agree with this more. Well said
I main a ScH now and have been for years and this expansion no doubt has brought out the crazies in Party finder groups. Sprint tanks, DPS that refuse to AoE, and the blame and hate either hit heals or tanks full force now. I had a mentor tank tell a first timer in Doma to keep up and stay out of AoE. That was it. The whole time. I was typing what to do on the last boss while we were fighting him. So yeah, I will run with friends first, and if I have no choice... Well wait for one.... then if that doesn't work and I can't think of anything else hit up duty finder and pray. LoL

[Tridus]

My reasoning is a bit different, in that I'm really happy with WHM and love playing it in Stormblood. The higher end content like savage simply feels like its right at the upper limit of my skill level, though (or maybe beyond my skill level). Getting that in PF or what have you can very quickly degenerate into not fun territory. Mess up as a healer in a group like that and it's likely going to cause a wipe, and you're *very* exposed in terms of everyone knowing it's your fault.

Given that, I feel pretty self-conscious about going into PF or joining a group of people I don't know for that high end content. Normal Omega and dungeons are different, I'm extremely confident there. But the high end stuff? Not really. So I just kinda don't do it.

I doubt that applies to everyone playing healers, but I know I'm not the only one in that boat.

[HolyGlassofWater]

People always tend to gravitate away from the most stressful jobs. In the past, these were tanks. You were always expected to be the leader and know the dungeons and the fight to a T. Nowadays, I feel like the healer is the most stressful. Of course there's things like cracked cluster rewards in leveling roulettes and extra tank mounts but, that doesn't fully explain the much higher number of tanks in the expert roulette now does it? Tanking can still be pretty stressful, and for me it was especially stressful in the past but nowadays? You generate enmity like nobodies business now and having recently gotten my PLD to 70, it's a FAR more relaxing job than it was in heavensward.

Alternatively, having healed in both Heavensward and now Stormblood, I can definitely say that healing stresses me out like crazy in Stormblood compared to Heavensward. For one, there seems to be a lot more people that got comfortable with the tanking job, so they pull wall to wall all day and if your mind blanks out for half a second trying to figure out what you should use to keep the tank up, the tank is dead, and afterward the tank will either say something rude or say nothing and start aggressively spamming clemency when they reach 80% health, in some alternative way of showing their frustration towards you. Some really annoying PLD had a macro attached to their clemency, so whenever they used it, it would mockingly say "Oh, don't worry, I can tank AND heal at the same time." I love clemency, I really do, but I also hate it with a passion at the same time. That precious mana could also be used for Holy Spirit to help kill things faster.

Back on topic, another reason why healing can be extremely stressful is just the sheer amount of healing you need to do this expansion, coupled with the fact that everyone else still expects you to DPS just as much as you did in Heavensward. Speaking of DPS though, that's another issue entirely. There are some that just don't want you to DPS PERIOD. With tanking, what everyone expects you to do is extremely straightforward. But with healing? There will be some that hate you if you don't DPS. There will be some that hate you if you do DPS. Personally, I always DPS, I sometimes get some great tanks that appreciate that. But then I get some of the aforementioned clemency at 80% hp tanks who obviously aren't just doing it to help me out because I get no commendations at the end or they just say something rude or have that annoying aforementioned macro.

But I'm not saying that healing is harder, just the most stressful. And by god if I just want to relax, I'm definitely not playing my healer, screw that.