Where are all the healers?

[Nowakii]

Problem is:
-IF you clear a fight: "wow gz!!! That Dps tho ! amazing" "omg look at my parse!" "Holy--- that 5k DPs OMFG" "LOL you're Tank dmg is almost like a dps that 3.5k on tank omg"
-If you do not clear the fight: "What? why? ... oh my hp wasnt full" "WHY DID YOU LET ME DIE?" "im dead, i was 25% hp and i didnt get a single heal :C" "Focus on hp please"

When people celebrate a fight, do they check at healing parses? nope, not even healers does.... They look at dps parses, and who are always at the bottom of the list? yep, healers, they arent part of the fun AFTER you clear something, tho they are the causes of the wipes BEFORE you clear something..... i know healers are not dps, but neither are tanks and they can still push 1.5k/2k more dps than a healer, yeah yeah tanks keep attacking all the time while healers need to stop attacking in order to heal, but guess what? even if you go full dps on a healer, leaving your co healer doing all the job, you still wont be anywhere close to the tank..... Tanks have fun optimizing their dps and their up times droping tank stance and such, healers cant optimize anything but keeping dots up and just spaming 1 spell till healing is needed....

Im a main healer, if you ask me what would make MY job more fun, it would be something like a burst window when i dish out tons of dps (similar to WAR's FC set-up), and in order to open that burst window i would need an special no-mp resource that i gain from attacking and/or healing (healing would give more of that resourse than attacking)... no, i dont want stance dancing back, if a tank mess up their stance dance they'll just take more dmg than they should, hence healers adjust, or they die, hence OT take agra asap and healers adjust, before with healers stance dance, if the healer messed up the dance, the tank died, the dps died and the party wiped, so i want a burst mode that doesnt stop me from doing my main job, but that also let me have fun watching at my numbers (yes, belive it or not, numbers are part of what makes dps and tank fun).

[Kacho_Nacho]

'More streamlined' is perhaps a better approach than simply 'easier' IMHO? Whilst SE stated that getting rid of button and ability bloat was one of their goals for SB, they failed on healers big time, AST having 9 hotkeys for cards alone now is testament to that. There's little doubt in my mind that they need to up their game in this area.

On the flip side of the coin tho, I can't help but wonder if rethink of the general design philosophy behind 4 man content design itself might be the better approach?

Sub par players will tend to flock to the path of least resistance for dungeons, in the past that was often a healer, now I'd argue that it's DPS and by quite some margin.

Very good points. More streamlined is a better term than easier. It's what I had in mind. I look at the design of red mages and samurai and think WOW! Then I look at my white mage and go, "man, there is a lot of redundancy." For example, Cure III and Medica. Why do I need either spell after I get Medica II?

A paradigm shift in healing is definitely needed. Our healing spells are too powerful and this can lead to serious downtime. Currently, healers are expected to fill that downtime by dpsing. This has led to a split in the community as some players feel put upon by having to cast damage spells so often.

Personally, I feel fine with dealing damage but can't help but think some damage dealers slack off because they think a healer's dps can cover their own shortcomings. I saw it happen in WoW so I think it happens here too.

I wonder what healing would be like if all the healers had the potency of their spells reduced, the MP cost of the healing spells reduced dramatically, and the cast times of those spells reduced from 2.5 seconds to 1.5 seconds? Meanwhile, keep the damage and utility spells more or less as is.

Healing would end up being faster and more engaging. Meanwhile, tanks and damage dealers would have to take more responsibility for their survivability and damage.

As far as a change in the philosophy of 4-man content, I do think there is something off. But, I feel the current issue of a shortage of healers, would be better addressed by a change in the healing jobs rather than an overhaul of FFXIV's 4-man duties. In addition, while I feel something is off, I cannot quite place my finger on the problem. Is the content too easy or the healers too strong?

Should there be more emphasis on crowd control? Many damage dealers and tanks like the current philosophy of grabbing a bunch of mobs and burning them down with AoE Spells. Would they become frustrated if suddenly the mobs had to be picked off one by one instead because the healers couldn't keep up with the damage of multiple mobs?

I know in Cataclysm, Blizzard tried to change how players approached the content by weakening healers by 80%. The idea was to spread the responsibility of survival to the whole party by forcing them to work together. The experiment failed because tanks and damage dealers didn't want to change their ways. Instead of working together, they'd just kick the healer until they got one overgeared enough to get them through the instances. In response, a huge number of healers either left the game or switched to other roles. Blizzard had to revert the nerfs because there just were no healers to be found. Would the same thing happen here? I don't know. In spite of the horror stories, I've found FFXIV players more willing to work together than the players of WoW. So maybe, such a change would work here.

I disagree that sub par players flocked to healers in the past. The path of least resistance has always been to go damage dealer. This is due to the fact that one mistake by a healer can wipe the party. Damage dealers can make mistakes and all it leads to is lower DPS.

[technole]

With the move to just one new dungeon in upcoming odd patch updates, I don't expect much of a change to dungeon difficulty. Obviously they want to keep it easy for those who want to login and cap in a normal fashion. Ever since the AK and Pharos Sirius nerfs they have treaded carefully in requiring anything remotely moderate in skill level. Of course we get some good leveling difficulty standouts like The Vault, because you can't really overgear those things unlike level cap dungeons.


Red DPS get away with least resistance the most in such dungeon content. The 24-man casual raids they do pick up more responsibility and that usually leads to lots of salt when wipes occur, as we saw from the last two alliance raids in HW. Being a healer in Dun Scaith could mean your rotation was usually Raise>Raise>Raise>Raise. You'd get many alt-healers that couldn't keep people alive or mess up a lot of mechanics causing wipes.

Of course I like seeing DPS checks, because those subpar red DPS players needs to be walled in some manner, and learn to work with other players, instead of being spoon-fed gear upgrades.


Also, I remember YoshiP mentioning they are going to address some things they moved to gauges that previously were listed as player buffs like Astro cards, Aetherflow, and then plentary stacks if you have 2 WHMs. Maybe it's 4.1 or after.

[Alisi]

I know in Cataclysm, Blizzard tried to change how players approached the content by weakening healers by 80%.

Incidentally, I healed through out Cata in WoW and this wasn't what happened. Cata was a hardcore expansion. Cata still is a hardcore expansion. People still wipe in those dungeons. People complained that the dungeons weren't hard and so Cata was made with dungeons and such to be hard. Very hard. You'd wipe in Stonecore normal if you didn't use CC. But that wasn't the healers fault. You couldn't fault the healer if you didn't CC the right mob. There was very, very little hate going to healers when things like that happened. You couldn't overgear it and parties knew that. It was actually kind of nice because most of the deaths/wipes were obviously not the healers fault so you didn't get that healer hate. There was literally nothing a healer could do if that one annoying mob transformed into a force of nature or you let the guard sound an alarm. It was a wipe. It couldn't be healed through.

Healer wise, they didn't want us to spam heal like we did in WotLK so they did two things: give us a fixed mana pool and make us DPS to get mana back. The result was that melee DPS generally died. Blizz's response to this was manifold: 1) the gave melee DPS more survivablity via their class and gave them ways to heal themselves more, 2) the nerfs the dungeons themselves, 3) vastly restrict kicking and gave a lot of terrible penalties to kicking (which sucked because tanks were notorious for pulling everything just to wipe the group or go offline to get kicked so they could queue up instantly to a better dungeon -- you literally couldn't get a tank to do Grim Batol, for example), 4) you buffed your party when you solo queued, and 5) they started giving award bags similar to adventurer in need (though these contained much better things than in ffxiv or currently in wow -- they gave mounts and such.)

Cata was basically their experimentation in forcing healers to DPS. They didn't really revert the nerfs to healers. Oh, they gave us a buff here and there but we still had a fixed MP pool (which was the real issue) and we still had to DPS throughout. It was hard in the beginning but people got used to it. Especially the poor melee DPS. I wasn't kicked once and we're talking 14 or 15 wipes on expert dungeon bosses. LOL

[Ilyrian]

I know in Cataclysm, Blizzard tried to change how players approached the content by weakening healers by 80%.

Pretty sure they buffed Holy Pallys 80% in Cata iirc

[Tridus]

Incidentally, I healed through out Cata in WoW and this wasn't what happened. Cata was a hardcore expansion. Cata still is a hardcore expansion. People still wipe in those dungeons. People complained that the dungeons weren't hard and so Cata was made with dungeons and such to be hard. Very hard. You'd wipe in Stonecore normal if you didn't use CC. But that wasn't the healers fault. You couldn't fault the healer if you didn't CC the right mob. There was very, very little hate going to healers when things like that happened. You couldn't overgear it and parties knew that. It was actually kind of nice because most of the deaths/wipes were obviously not the healers fault so you didn't get that healer hate.

BC had lots of dungeons like that too, where mistakes would result in too much stuff coming to heal through. People had to pay attention. Wrath turned it into mostly "spam Circle of Healing while people AoE everything in sight, and that will successfully clear almost every dungeon". It was pretty boring in comparison, but less stressful (because there is no stress when single button spam means failure is nearly impossible).

Honestly, Auran Vale is one of my favorite dungeons because it doesn't let you do that. Even in its current form if you just try to mindlessly zerg it in roulette, it'll push back. Not at all like the "Experts", which are absurdly easy without triple pulls at least creating a chance of a problem.

[Trunks]

Cure III and Medica. Why do I need either spell after I get Medica II?

You... I... but... what?? *head explodes*

C3 front-loads the potency of all 10 ticks of M2's 30s Regen effect, and has 85% more potency than Medica for 35% more MP. Medica instantly heals with 50% more potency than M2 (initial) for 21% less MP. This defines one of WHM's current strengths: MP efficiency. It's also the only dynamic that makes healing as WHM any fun. This diversity requires you to be aware of where the rest of your group is; how much MP you have; what damage is forthcoming, and when; and the approximate amount of HP your spells will restore. These variables require you both to plan ahead and to make quick, reactive decisions. I love WHM but I would dump it in a heartbeat if this "redundancy" were "addressed" in the manner you're implying.

Please do not say things like this. A developer might read it and, well, have you ever seen Inception?

[Trunks]

Since 4 years is not enough to allow me more than 1000 characters, cont'd from above:

I agree that WHM's design seems clunky in comparison to Jobs that were just built from the ground up for level 70. That's the way the cookie crumbles, and it applies as much to DRG, NIN, and poor, poor SMN. You could take away all of WHM's 62+ abilities and it would have a fairly minor impact on its efficacy and gameplay. And nobody would miss any of those spell effects, would they? I think that's what the widespread "meh" that 4.0's WHM has received boils down to. It's still 3.xx WHM, and people want new things from expansions.

[Laerune]

Finished leveling and gearing up my healers a month ago, now I am leveling my crafters and do my dailies on my RDM/BLM for a more relaxing gameplay, does the queue wait time bother me, not realy, since I am leveling my crafting classes anyway. Only if need to finish a daily fast (in other words fast queue) I play my healers. I think people are just enjoying the other classes and see what new stuff they got, remember that the expansion released only two months ago. I think not having a new healing class was a bad idea.

Then there is the whole healers should DPS or not, which can be a turn off, but also an exciting part of the role for some people. During Heavensward I noticed how I was dealing more damage then healing with my healers, in a way this ruined the role for me. So when Stormblood was approaching, I decided to swap my main and alt role (main was healer and alt was dps) and started doing content with my BLM while only using my healing classes when I need to enter a dungeon fast or when a friend/linkshell/free company player needed a healer. I have talked with other healers and it seems that I am not the only one that did this.

I think for now this is the best route for me. I might start healing in the new 24man raid, but for the other content (even PvP) I am going to DPS. I hope the next expansion gives us a new healer or something exciting for the healer role.

[technole]

You could take away all of WHM's 62+ abilities and it would have a fairly minor impact on its efficacy and gameplay. And nobody would miss any of those spell effects, would they? I think that's what the widespread "meh" that 4.0's WHM has received boils down to. It's still 3.xx WHM, and people want new things from expansions.

Not really, 4.06 WHM is almost too good for some savage healing mechanics. Plentary stacks with regens is the best change ever from Cure spam. More party heals in-a-pinch.