The state of healers is affecting everyone

[Gemina]

Healers are relatively balanced, but they are dull and boring to play. Balanced does not mean fun. That is why a lot of players are quitting healing or complaining about it.

I think healers quitting is more of a earnest desire than it is a reality. Truth is healer mains, like all other mains do things outside of their chosen role. They craft, gather, decorate their houses, level other jobs, go solo, etc. It's getting late into 5.0 now, and most are waiting for 5.1 content to continue their progression. The few healers you're seeing around now, are likely either catching up, are casual, or they are alts to those who normally main a DPS or tank.

The actual state of healers really isn't that bad. Not so bad that we're in the middle of some kind of healer revolt. Some healers are still sour because of changes to AST and SCH, but for the most they've adjusted and have taken their healers to max level and into the current raid tier. Once an expansion is out, a player can continue to cry about the changes, or find a way to adjust and provide constructive feedback. Or play something else. Either way, it won't be until next expansion that major changes happen to jobs.

[Nyvara]

I think healers quitting is more of a earnest desire than it is a reality. Truth is healer mains, like all other mains do things outside of their chosen role. They craft, gather, decorate their houses, level other jobs, go solo, etc. It's getting late into 5.0 now, and most are waiting for 5.1 content to continue their progression. The few healers you're seeing around now, are likely either catching up, are casual, or they are alts to those who normally main a DPS or tank.

The actual state of healers really isn't that bad. Not so bad that we're in the middle of some kind of healer revolt. Some healers are still sour because of changes to AST and SCH, but for the most they've adjusted and have taken their healers to max level and into the current raid tier. Once an expansion is out, a player can continue to cry about the changes, or find a way to adjust and provide constructive feedback. Or play something else. Either way, it won't be until next expansion that major changes happen to jobs.

tl;dr Suck it up cupcakes!

[EaMett]

I think healers quitting is more of a earnest desire than it is a reality. Truth is healer mains, like all other mains do things outside of their chosen role. They craft, gather, decorate their houses, level other jobs, go solo, etc. It's getting late into 5.0 now, and most are waiting for 5.1 content to continue their progression. The few healers you're seeing around now, are likely either catching up, are casual, or they are alts to those who normally main a DPS or tank.

The actual state of healers really isn't that bad. Not so bad that we're in the middle of some kind of healer revolt. Some healers are still sour because of changes to AST and SCH, but for the most they've adjusted and have taken their healers to max level and into the current raid tier. Once an expansion is out, a player can continue to cry about the changes, or find a way to adjust and provide constructive feedback. Or play something else. Either way, it won't be until next expansion that major changes happen to jobs.

I mean, this thread is full of healers that have stopped playing that role. Also the state of static recruitment has been going through a dry spell of healers ever since slightly before the expansion (short of whm which there seem to be a decent amount of atm). And the healers you do find generally don't have logs past the current tier (aka weren't healers or even around during SB raids) so usually have limited raiding experience.
A lot of us who stuck around don't enjoy the changes but did so because the role suits us or we already had a static. All in all considering these past 4 years they've made changes that consistently go against what we've been wanting, we surely are going to whine until something is done. Even if that's in 2 years. Though I'm sure in 2 years they'll find another way of going against what people have been asking.. again.

Edit: also the changes aren't so bad if you're new or not really optimizing your class. As soon as you start optimizing it's a big slap in the face compared to what we had before. Went from managing many aspects on sch, from weave window timers (miasma II), multiple dots (significantly diff from handling a single dot), micromanaging a fairy, melee placement for miasma II, shadowflare you had to time/place correctly. It's a lot we lost (thank god they gave us ED back, dunno what on earth they were thinking)

[Gemina]

I mean, this thread is full of healers that have stopped playing that role. Also the state of static recruitment has been going through a dry spell of healers ever since slightly before the expansion (short of whm which there seem to be a decent amount of atm). And the healers you do find generally don't have logs past the current tier (aka weren't healers or even around during SB raids) so usually have limited raiding experience.
A lot of us who stuck around don't enjoy the changes but did so because the role suits us or we already had a static. All in all considering these past 4 years they've made changes that consistently go against what we've been wanting, we surely are going to whine until something is done. Even if that's in 2 years. Though I'm sure in 2 years they'll find another way of going against what people have been asking.. again.

Edit: also the changes aren't so bad if you're new or not really optimizing your class. As soon as you start optimizing it's a big slap in the face compared to what we had before. Went from managing many aspects on sch, from weave window timers (miasma II), multiple dots (significantly diff from handling a single dot), micromanaging a fairy, melee placement for miasma II, shadowflare you had to time/place correctly. It's a lot we lost (thank god they gave us ED back, dunno what on earth they were thinking)

The healers here on the forums represent a small portion of the community as a whole, and when you start tossing words like "optimization" and fflogs out there, you basically severe the silent majority who either don't/can't/won't use the tools that monitor the stats. I'm not saying all these players are content with the changes, but the difference lies within any player's enjoyment and/or willingness to play any given job and max it out.

You can talk about how SCH was gutted all day long, and while I don't disagree, mentioning its former DPS rotation as a focal point of the job is exactly why it's gone. It was the epitome of a green DPS, and we either have to face the fact that this is not how the devs and a lot of players want our healers to be, or look the other direction.

[ForteNightshade]

You can talk about how SCH was gutted all day long, and while I don't disagree, mentioning its former DPS rotation as a focal point of the job is exactly why it's gone. It was the epitome of a green DPS, and we either have to face the fact that this is not how the devs and a lot of players want our healers to be, or look the other direction.

Except they're still green DPS, which is part of the problem. People wouldn't be complaining if they added new and interesting healing mechanics alongside more intense healing to keep people both busy and engaged. They did neither. Instead, they neutered the DPS aspect, kept heal scaling as though it were still Stormblood and called it a day. Scholar does only a few hundred rDPS less than all four tanks now. And with the little amount of healing required outside Titan Savage, nothing changed. You'll just be spamming Broil instead of more dot management.

[Granyala]

Except they're still green DPS, which is part of the problem. People wouldn't be complaining if they added new and interesting healing mechanics alongside more intense healing to keep people both busy and engaged.

Agreed, I hoped for more healing stuff to do but that just isn't the case.
It's not so much of an issue in savage, imho there is a good mix of mechanic dodging, healing and DPSing, that's cool.
But dungeons with a good tank consist of OGCDs and mashing one button. Ugh.

[Hatstand]

The healers here on the forums represent a small portion of the community as a whole, and when you start tossing words like "optimization" and fflogs out there, you basically severe the silent majority who either don't/can't/won't use the tools that monitor the stats. I'm not saying all these players are content with the changes, but the difference lies within any player's enjoyment and/or willingness to play any given job and max it out.

You can talk about how SCH was gutted all day long, and while I don't disagree, mentioning its former DPS rotation as a focal point of the job is exactly why it's gone. It was the epitome of a green DPS, and we either have to face the fact that this is not how the devs and a lot of players want our healers to be, or look the other direction.

The problem is, the dps abilities were a big focus of the job because that was the way encounter design made it. Once the healing is done, there is nothing to do except dps or spam emotes. I know there are some healers who would rather sit there and do nothing than dps, but I can’t imagine that’s the “average” healer.

Now, as a SCH you press broil more than every other button put together. By removing SCH’s other dps moves, they haven’t taken SCH’s focus off DPS because a good SCH will dps the same amount no matter what their dps tools are - that being as much as they can without letting the healing slip. It’s just that now doing your job well means risking repetitive strain injury.

I’m not a hardcore raider. I don’t use a parser. I try to optimise, but I do that for my own enjoyment. Maybe you’re right and there are a lot of healers out there who don’t mind the broil spam. Or maybe there are a lot of healers out there who don’t like it but either don’t realise that the forums exist or who don’t think posting here will make any difference. I was one of the latter in StB. I was very unhappy with the changes to SCH in 4.0. But I didn’t say anything.

None of us can just assume that the silent majority agrees with them. However, the increase in unhappy healers on the forums suggests that at the very least there are more healers who dislike this iteration of healers than who disliked the previous one, so it would be nice if there was some way to get decent data on what the majority actually think.