Where are all the healers?

[Catwho]

I was a SCH primary healer in 3.0 and I jumped at the opportunity to play healer in almost all content because I loved the complexity of the job. And I was good at it.

The 4.0 changes really destroyed the soul of SCH. Personally, I liked having a ton of buttons! I liked having more actions than I could ever possibly use - because it made for on the fly instant decision trees. It was never about just what I wanted to do, but what the party needed at any given moment. Tactical healing is the theme of SCH, and by killing our DPS and nerfing our bottomless mana regen, we lost a lot of the utility that made us a useful co-healer.

I've got it to 70 now and I still refuse to play it in progression content because I feel so handicapped.

[Deceptus]

5) I don't know if it is just me but the abilities that were given to us for Stormblood feel really lackluster. None of the Healer abilites made me go "Wow Cool".

Same with tanks. Take away a TON of our abilities, and give them back to us as Role Actions. The level 70 capstone spells on healers do seem extremely lackluster. Not to mention SCH 60 (dissipate) and 70 (Fey Union) contradict each other.

[Kyrian12]

AST reporting in. I personally enjoy healing in dungeons and most of the time it's not nearly as bad as people say. I also solo queue 99% of the time, so I almost always run with randoms. When I play tank, I sometimes get terrible healers, and when I play healer, I sometimes get terrible tanks. It happens. I rant about it and I get over it. So, I still queue for some stuff as healer.

I already tried Scholar and WHM and I'm not liking them as much as AST. A big draw of AST for me is the ability to buff the team - it allows me to do something more than heal and DPS. I actually enjoy DPSing in dungeons - knowing that my DPS is appreciated makes me feel happy sometimes. Coming from TERA as a priest main, I got utterly sick and bored of just being a heal bot. Priest damage was so negligible that it crippled our ability to solo effectively on the map, and just healing... it was great for a few months, but eventually became boring and tedious for me.

That said, the only content I *don't* do as any class (including healer) is Savage raiding. I have two reasons: it feels like a job where I have to show up at fixed times. It feels like something I'm obligated to do instead of a hobby, especially given the pressure on healers to keep the whole raid alive AND push out respectable DPS. I like DPSing as healer, but I consider it a bonus rather than an obligation. The second reason is that high end gearing is designed so that you can only 'main' and gear up one job at a time. This is a deal breaker for me since I play all three roles, and therefore have to gear three jobs. Being a 'pure' healer is as boring for me as being a 'pure' tank or 'pure' DPS main. I like to switch roles whenever I feel like it. The last thing I want to experience is the boredom I went through in TERA, being able to do only one thing.

[Galaktica]

I've been healing less and less as this expansion goes on and this is coming from someone who has sworn by SCH since the day they started playing. I can't exactly put my finger on it, maybe it's a combination of things, but whatever the hell they did has slowly siphoned all the fun out of healing. I will say thought that it has nothing to do with cleric stance. That's one thing I've definitely never liked about healers in ARR and HW. I tolerated it, worked with it just fine, but the removal of it is probably the best universal change to healers in SB.

I've slowly switched to BLM as time went on because it's just infinitely more fun to play than any healer is at the moment.

[gti443]

I dunno... I play WHM/AST and personally the whole "tank stance is for losers" meta has me jaded to the point that Savage is pretty much the only thing I'll do on healer jobs.

[Aezryn]

Healer main for 3.x here who has swapped to dps.

For me I'm just really bored with the role as a whole. I mained AST for most of HW and before that SCH and healing is honestly the most boring role in the game to me. Taking away cleric stance and gutting the dps variety of the class made it so that most of the time you are just spamming one button. In Savage content things sorta get a little better since the content is difficult enough to have to heal but it's still not really better since Imo healing is easier than it was in 3.x with the new healing skills. There is no aspect of the role to try and push you to do something better.

This is on top of everything else people have mentioned about pressure and the inability to fuck up because you basically wipe your party. The role is just very undesireable to play Imo. You can have a hell of a lot more fun tanking or dpsing.

[Mitsubashibash]

Well, to be honest, I think a lot of people hung up their white mage and scholar robes due to Stormblood's handling of their jobs.

White mages have a mechanic which doesn't mesh well with how they heal. In fact, they heal just fine if they they ignore the mechanic. Months of feedback have resulted in minor tweaks but no real fix to mechanic.

Scholars were nerfed and no longer play like they used to play. Shields are much weaker, their fairy was majorly nerfed, and mana regeneration is slashed. Months of feedback have resulted in the introduction of an AoE damage spell. No fix to the job's critical issues.

Meanwhile, two powerful and fun to play damage dealers were introduced. Guess where a lot of those dissatisfied healers went?

That's why there's a shortage of healers.

Nailed it for me.

My main classes were WHM and SCH. Got them both to 70 then haven't played them since.


Oh and I got tired of being pushed into DPS'ing. They could remove all Healer DPS spells for me and I'd be happy.

[Irohma]

As a PUG-healer myself for most of 2.x and 3.x I can tell two things.

1-) Game Content. It became far more challenging to be a healer in end-game content. Alexander was the first to made me stressed in random parties because there were a lot of mechanics exclusive to healers and failure to understand them (or a slight lack of attention to them) meant party-wipe. I found out it was less stressfull to wait 30 minutes as a DPS in those contents and only later, when gear level was better and I fully understood the deatils of the raid, switching back to my healer job. Healers require visual attention to the party status bar AND the mechanics, something tanks and DPS do not, as your rotation is something more akin to muscle memory.

[Irohma]

2-) Tanks. Random dungeons became a pain in the a*s when tanks started mobbing dungeons like this is Ragnarok Online. The average job of a healer became boring as at many PUGs my job is to simply spam any heal on the tank and be stuck at that. It is even worse when such mobbing tactics means absolutely no benefit (dungeon running time is basically the same as taking mobs as intended).

[Hyperia]

Nailed it for me.

My main classes were WHM and SCH. Got them both to 70 then haven't played them since.


Oh and I got tired of being pushed into DPS'ing. They could remove all Healer DPS spells for me and I'd be happy.

I'd be fine with pure healing. Remove healer dps, increase dps jobs output by 10% and up single target damage to keep healers busy.