Why do so many statics seem to be missing healers? What can be done to solve this?

[technole]

It's hard to get treated badly as a healer in any content, low-end or high-end if you pull your weight and do some decent damage. That is because you are likely already better than almost half the healers out there by just doing that much.

However you might from time-to-time find some oddball saying healer should only heal and stuff, because how secluded they are from content that matters. Just never let such comments get into your head. Shrug it off, don't fall into the pit. This is why I like being mute in pure duty finder content most of the time. I don't have to broil over non-sense by people whom the hardest content they will ever do in the game is expert roulette.

In savage content, as long as you come prepared and even explain "hey we need a cooldown for that critical hit". Just being honest what the hardship they are causing, it's hard to argue, people should adjust when they are pugging.

[Sebazy]

And to chime in with the sentiment here.

In my 4 years of raiding in this game, I can think of maybe 4 occasions where I've been blamed for a wipe that wasn't my fault or was perhaps uncalled for.

2 were static raids which I recorded and managed to solve the issue later on, 1 was a pug akin to a sinking ship which just wasn't worth the hassle and the last was a dungeon run which was just frankly hilarious.

In all honesty, I'm far harder on myself when it comes to my mistakes and failures than anyone else has ever been. I suspect a lot of raid healers are the same even if they don't realise it. It's all too easy to think people are pissed off with you when all all likelihood they actually don't really care.

[Risvertasashi]

IDK, my experience is that it can happen not that uncommonly in raids. Not like "WTF healers what are you doing *kick*" but more like... the tank drops and then they go, "Um, healers?"

But then I pull up the death report and point out the tank ate a 60k hit, or took 60k damage during the 3 seconds I was stunned for spellblade holy, or so on. Death reports are great for making this sort of thing go away when it does happen.

[Taika]

IDK, my experience is that it can happen not that uncommonly in raids. Not like "WTF healers what are you doing *kick*" but more like... the tank drops and then they go, "Um, healers?"

But then I pull up the death report and point out the tank ate a 60k hit, or took 60k damage during the 3 seconds I was stunned for spellblade holy, or so on. Death reports are great for making this sort of thing go away when it does happen.

Oh yeah this happens, but I wouldn't really read it as "treating healers like shit". Many people who don't play healers are really blind to how their own choices and messups affect healers' job. It's not that rare to see people wondering why they "weren't getting healed" when they're standing out of range of every AoE regen, heal and shield, or they simply die because they've been collecting vulnerability stacks. Or people not standing in Asylum / Earthly Star / Sacred Soil. In those cases it is, in my experience, enough to point out their own errors (in a friendly way), and usually people understand it wasn't the healers' fault at all. In the best case they'll learn something!

[Jim_Berry]

I used to raid heavily in the Coils as WHM. I began to branch away from it due to struggling with maximizing my dps while also not being able to rely on Divine Seal (old skill) and Benediction. After it was noted that I was a bad healer due to low dps, my ability to keep the group alive without a BRD or any dominant MP regening went unnoticed. That said, I never wanted to join a static as a healer again.

However, that changed towards the end of Alexander, when I was accepted as an AST. That didn't last long due to other issues, but still...

I was reading other sources about how many people who love to heal lack the ability to push dps, so they, too, stopped healing in Raids/Statics.

[Risvertasashi]

Oh yeah this happens, but I wouldn't really read it as "treating healers like shit".

Right, was trying to make that distinction. People completely flipping their lids is...pretty rare, can't really recall it happening to me personally.

[Tridus]

I was reading other sources about how many people who love to heal lack the ability to push dps, so they, too, stopped healing in Raids/Statics.

Or the desire. People who played healers in other MMOs where it's almost entirely healing without so much DPS may simply not enjoy it here.

They also may have decided that if they're going to need to spend half or more of their time DPSing, they might as well do it on a DPS job with a fun rotation.

Lots of reasons why healers may want to drop out in such a DPS heavy focused endgame.

[Levian]

Snip: make leveling easier, make healers more appealing, and reduce choice constraints like the dread of doubling up.

I've been playing MMOs since FFXI came out about 13 years ago. I'm not a dedicated healer or nothing kinda guy, but I've always had one leveled to some degree. In FFXI if you were a in the healing slot, healing was all you did. World of Warcraft - same thing. You manage the ebb and flow of your mana pool while making sure no one takes a dirt nap. It's just a different groove than tanking or DD.

Since I can only speak for me, what would it take for me to pick up my WHM and take it all the way & fill one of those empty slots? Tune the game so my White Mage spends the same amount of his time healing as any given DD does dealing damage. Failing that? I'm just not interested, and I hope there are enough people that are interested to fill in the holes left by me (and others that are like minded).

[Kabzy]

-Snip-

I think a lot of people were hoping for more damaging fights where healing would be intense. Unfortunately after the initial few pulls, pretty much every savage turn ended up being 1) Optimise your OGCD heals and 2) DPS for 90% of the fight. It's actually quite sad when they made the healing kits so much easier to use and didn't compensate it with more challenging content.

Though if they take that route, the majority of the player base will then complain that healing is too difficult, and they probably had to take stress leave from work. So unfortunately it doesn't seem to be a winning situation for anybody. Unless Yoshi P can stick with 'git gud' and not succumb to every casual complaint. Example: I loved Cleric Stance the way it was pre 4.0, and it's a mechanic of the role that I miss the most. But I literally only saw maybe 3 other healers on this entire forum actually agree with me. Everyone wants easy mode, so that's what we're stuck with.

Edit: And just to clarify, I'm not a hardcore player in the slightest. But I do enjoy some difficulty in the game. If I wasn't so loyal to SCH, and raiding with friends, I would probably have switched to DPS a long time ago. I find all 3 healers mind numbingly boring right now.

[Tridus]

I think a lot of people were hoping for more damaging fights where healing would be intense. Unfortunately after the initial few pulls, pretty much every savage turn ended up being 1) Optimise your OGCD heals and 2) DPS for 90% of the fight. It's actually quite sad when they made the healing kits so much easier to use and didn't compensate it with more challenging content.

With how powerful healing is relative to HP pools and how much HPS can be put out, they're somewhat stuck. Intense healing requirement for any significant length of time would require putting out oodles and oddles of damage and the party would be constantly yo-yoing between full and near death.


I almost wish they'd nerf healing potency across the board to give some more options in terms of what they can do to actually threaten a group damage wise, but that ship has sailed for Stormblood. (MP management has similar problems, mostly in that in a lot of content it doesn't particularly exist. That's why just skipping Cure and going straight to Cure 2 is the standard thing at 70. The GCD is more valuable than the MP.)

Though if they take that route, the majority of the player base will then complain that healing is too difficult, and they probably had to take stress leave from work. So unfortunately it doesn't seem to be a winning situation for anybody. Unless Yoshi P can stick with 'git gud' and not succumb to every casual complaint. Example: I loved Cleric Stance the way it was pre 4.0, and it's a mechanic of the role that I miss the most. But I literally only saw maybe 3 other healers on this entire forum actually agree with me. Everyone wants easy mode, so that's what we're stuck with.

I think a fair bit of the playerbase would be happy if healing required spending most of your time healing, rather than DPSing. But that goes back to the issue of you can heal everyone to full in five seconds, so unless people are taking massive damage every 5 seconds you're back to having not enough healing to do.

Cleric stance, though? That can stay dead. That was just a clunky, error prone buff management thing. It was really great at catching newbies on an encounter they don't know that well by pushing it at the wrong time and not being able to heal, but I IMO "memorize when you can push the button that cripples your healing and makes your DPS spells actually work" is adding a whole lot of value.