Where are all the healers?

[miraidensetsu]

Completing (because sometimes only 1,000 chars is simply too few):

And I am also from those that thinks that a caster class must be always casting. But it appears that for the community that healers must DPS before everything, even healing.

And is from that misconception that they think that shame healers that don't meet a minimum DPS number is a good idea. And when healers begins to obey that numbers (to not being shamed), that comes another cargo of crap because they aren't healing anymore while the first problem is just worsening, adding more pressure into newer healers that's yet far from even doing savages. And all the crap generated by this misconception is what is scaring off the healers.

If we want more healers, as community, we must make healers feel welcome. That's how we can attract more people to healer jobs (and drop the queue time for DPS jobs).

[Cynfael]

Completing (because sometimes only 1,000 chars is simply too few):

And I am also from those that thinks that a caster class must be always casting. But it appears that for the community that healers must DPS before everything, even healing.

One thing I would consider is that these forums don't even begin to represent the community at large.

For example, I have never witnessed healer shaming to the degree you describe. I have no doubt that it does happen to people somewhere, but the "must DPS before everything" stance is A) not what anyone here is recommending and B) not really a thing.

The big beef is with healer entitlement and lazy players, not that healers should DPS while healing is appropriate.

[Tridus]

Completing (because sometimes only 1,000 chars is simply too few)

As an FYI, the character limit only applies to the original post. If you immediately edit, you can go as long as you want. That's how you see some very long posts here.

[Blanchimont]

I'm not sure about how others feel, but this is my reason. For a while I mained healer, but I absolutely hate it in Stormblood with the wall to wall pulls that are done. Because of this one big problem, I only play it when I'm leveling that class (usually in PvP or PotD to prevent the insane pulls) or because I need a Cracked Cluster. As of Stormblood, Healer has become the most boring type of class to play while DPS has become the most interesting. Even though I have just started leveling Astrologian (I maxed out White Mage and Scholar first), it is versatile with the mix of shield or regen. The only problem they have is the lack of mana regeneration that White Mages have. However, in a dungeon due to idiot pulls, I just spam heal on the tank 24/7 until they are down to the last 2 or so mobs. It had gotten so bad that one time, I literally fell asleep on my keyboard because I was just standing there pressing heal for so long.

While this might not seem connected to the issue with finding healers for raids in Stormblood, it has completely sucked the fun out of the class for me to the point where I only play it because I need a Cracked Cluster, my Free Company needs a healer for a trial or raid, or I'm grinding for Poetics for an Atma or Anima.

The second issue is gearing up a class. With the tomestone cap and awful savage drops, people are only able to gear up their favorite class. And guess what, when you suck the fun out of a healer class, it's probably not going to be a healer class. Most likely, the people who do play healers have placed their priorities in another class now. That means that either they aren't playing that class for end game or they simply don't care about the content. At my point, I stopped caring about Extreme and Savage content and its something I do when I'm absolutely bored and completely out of everything else to do. I literally finished two Anima weapons (with aetheric condensation) before I even bothered to go do Emanation Extreme.

[HoodRat]

And I am also from those that thinks that a caster class must be always casting. But it appears that for the community that healers must DPS before everything, even healing.

I've said this multiple times in these threads in the past week but...no one is saying healers should dps when healing is needed. If you need to heal, then by all means heal. If you don't need to heal, then please do something useful.

The big beef is with healer entitlement and lazy players, not that healers should DPS while healing is appropriate.

This is the issue people are having. Just as an example, I ran leveling roulette with 2 friends the other day and we got Brayflox with a random ast. The ast would begin pulls by spamming benefic on the tank, regardless of what the tank's hp was at, and when most of the mobs were dead the ast would stand idle. One of my friends politely explained that this isn't WoW so he doesn't need to keep everyone at full hp the entire time and can dps some, and the ast's response was that he was the healer so he could do whatever he wanted and that he didn't care about the other people in his party.

[Taika]

Mind that I'm not advocating for the right of doing nothing on downtime. [...] But if the healer have nothing to do for the next, say, 15 seconds, and doing that won't hurt his resources so bad that he can't heal when needed, then why not DPS?

These are literally what each pro-healer-DPS argument is about, no one here is disagreeing with you on this. You say you're not advocating for doing nothing, well no one here is advocating for healers having to reach any specific number at all. In casual content, I consider any level of healer DPS contribution sufficient: the only thing I have an issue with is categorically refusing to do it when you could.

But, at the same time, in content like Savage, it is reasonable to expect healers to carry their (reasonable!) weight in beating the enrage timer, because that's simply what the fights require for all the party members to participate evenly. Again, healers shouldn't be requested to pull some super numbers to make up for slacking DDs and tanks, absolutely no one here is promoting that, but the expectation should be based on the fight's party DPS requirement and dividing that between party members in a reasonable manner.

[Maeka]

This thread got derailed so hard to a Healer dps thread.. We literally have a Healer dps thread on page one of this forum.

Maybe that's because, oh, I don't know... Healer DPS and the back-and-forth bickering over it is what is causing people to not want to heal random groups or join PFs with people they don't know, that they only heal with friends?

I am not in that camp but there are times I wonder why I Q up as a healer and then I'm like "oh, right, because if I go as Tank then I'll get yelled at for not multi-pulling" because I don't enjoy multipulling as a tank.

EDIT:

And I am also from those that thinks that a caster class must be always casting.

I also disagree with this. Sometimes I just want a freaking break for a sec or two while I preposition, grab a drink, etc. If I wanted to play the "ALWAYS GOTTA MASH BUTTONS, NO WASTED GCD!" I'd play a freaking melee, kthx.

I'm not here to be in the top 1% percentile of performance. I'm here to have fun, clear content in a reasonable manner, and that can easily be done if I take a second or two here and there to relax a little. That one Stone IV here-and-there that only hits for 4,500 isn't going to add much (if any) time to the total dungeon run, and even if it did, it would be in the <2 minute range if that.

Now, before anybody wrongly assumes that I am one of those people who stand still for 5, 10 seconds at a time doing absolutely nothing, I don't. However, I am not always spamming buttons anytime they are available, either. Can't we have a happy medium?

Disclosure: I don't, nor do I have any interest in doing, current content Savage/Hardcore/Whatever raids. I'll do Omega Normal, but that's as far as I go. I'm simply not interested in cutting-edge endgame content. I play the game to relax, not to be in the top-10 players list or what not.

[Sebazy]

Healers have now a minimum DPS quota to meet. If each White Mage don't do at least 2,200 DPS on Omega, he is crap and therefore is kicked from the party.

It's comments like this that encourage me to come out with sarcastic responses TBH. I've raided alongside some of the most accomplished progression types in Europe and I've never once seen an expectation of this level shovelled on a healer. Doing speed runs with a group that's aiming for a world first? Sure it's a reasonable request in that situation. For anything else? Don't make me laugh. I'd have been kicked long ago.

As for pugs? Again, no. Decent ones won't make an scene of it, the ones that do typically start screaming and shouting about minor issues are usually the ones you don't want to be anywhere near in the first place. A few evenings ago I was helping a friend in O4S and we got 3 enrages, 2 at 1% and one of those we believe was sub 20k hp remaining on the boss, it was that close. The DPS were all above average, people weren't dieing. However I was doing ~1.2k dps and the other healer was doing ~400dps. We could have made the difference but as they were smooth clean runs all round, no one made an issue out of it. I don't even think it was mentioned TBH.

Disclosure: I don't, nor do I have any interest in doing, current content Savage/Hardcore/Whatever raids. I'll do Omega Normal, but that's as far as I go.

Indeed, this is why I always try to drop a 'for savage' comment or such in my views to make that distinction. Ironically I DPS a lot harder in dungeon and normal content than I do in Savage, but that's mostly a confidence/risk aversion thing. Playing to the best of your ability is typically very strongly recommended for Savage, if not outright required on the harder turns. For dungeons and normal modes, I view it as a very nice topping and cherry on a bun that'd be rather plan otherwise. Can you eat it as is? Of course!

[technole]

When I mention healer DPS is required for Savage, some will think we mean top-tier percentile, and that isn't the case.

One shouldn't qualify a healer just because of healer DPS alone. That's not the best metric, but it is one thing on the list. The biggest one is healer casts and uptime, are they making good use of every global they have? Or are they just simply losing globals standing around doing nothing? Sometimes drops are okay when you are learning a fight, or maybe mechanics they are probably trying to setup for and don't want to risk wiping the raid because they got greedy.

Maybe they put up decent-good DPS but their groups probably has errors making them spend globals doing patch work healing, etc.

You have to see the entire instance story and not just some healer parse. Someone dying in a fight at the wrong time can cause a pretty substantial healer DPS loss. Maybe they died during the free DPS window and now the healer(s) got them raised to the point where there isn't damage/DoTs on the boss and now they have to manually heal for more globals, along with dealing with the weakness on the DPS. The weakness changes in 4.0 do make lives easier for healers to handle since they don't need additional babysitting, but damage loss is a bit bigger. Just more reason why raid DPS is the responsibility of every player in the raid, doesn't matter the color of your job icon.

[Cynfael]

Sometimes I just want a freaking break for a sec or two while I preposition, grab a drink, etc. If I wanted to play the "ALWAYS GOTTA MASH BUTTONS, NO WASTED GCD!" I'd play a freaking melee, kthx.

I appreciate your transparency, but I would challenge this. If the other two roles are expected to stay more or less on top of their GCDs and not take mini-breaks during active gameplay, why should the healer role be exempt from that expectation? Doesn't seem very equitable.

That being said, there is a huge gray area between world-first efficiency and complete sloth, and the vast majority of players happy with a visible effort. And again, healer DPS is quite impactful if executed even to a fairly average degree.