Has anyone quit healing?

[MPNZ]

Literally, AST was such a bad experience that I have just zero motivation to level-up WHM OR QUE for ruellettes as an AST. I'm just so burnt out of healing, atm....

[ForteNightshade]

I'm mostly only doing it for tomes and queue times. Beyond that I have other more involving games to play.

Also affected me buying the next expansion until this is resolved. One expansion? Fine. Two expansions? Less fine. If they dare do 3 expansions well... I know of other games and devs with less contempt for a role.

It isn't so much contempt but fear. Unfortunately, the dev team seems both uninspired but entirely too afraid to provide healers anything complex, intense or even interesting. They adamantly refuse to increase outgoing damage enough to warrant how insanely powerful healers are. Hell, despite leveling the Stormblood scaling, they reduced the outgoing damage on tanks this tier. Which defeated the entire point. They don't want to make DPS engaging. All because there's this strange belief it would drive baby healers are from the role. Ironically, it's now driving everyone away from it.

They need to decide what healers are supposed to be. If they want healers to heal, then all content—even normal modes and dungeons—needs to hit hard enough to push healers. Additionally, make healing spells a bit more engaging. Lilies 2.0 is a step in the right direction in this scenario. On the other hand, embrace the hybrid nature of healers or take a third option and turn the whole role into "Support." Buffs, debuffs, CC and healing. Allow healers to essentially be the tactician of the battle. But until they get over the idea healers need to essentially be in perpetual "baby" mode. I doubt much changes...

[Mesarthim]

Yeah I know that much. It just... begs the question, or questions rather.

Is the silence towards us worth it? That and what exactly ran through their minds at the time when they did what they did to 5.0 AST, deciding "oh this is fine" when we have skills like Celestial Opposition be absolute garbage (at least they fixed that, though the loss of the stun was confusing). Anyone could have looked at AST before Shadowbringers launched and tell each other something is wrong (WHM and SCH have their own issues but AST was what I mained before ShB launched). It's just difficult for me to convince myself that fear is what drove AST to have a page long list of buffs when savage launched.

Whatever the case is if they can't get their stuff straight then this could possibly be my last expansion. No sense in beating around the bush if the game is getting less enjoyable in the gameplay (story is great though). Which is why I've taken to a little bit of tanking in my spare time with how little I've been logging in (got to get gunbreaker its mounts somehow).

[Sloprano]

I would like to join content that's more lenient than a strict script and dancing step you have to take from the top again if one out of eight dancers make a misstep. Yet this continuation to push Healers towards a skillset that only feels rewarding if someone needs healing or ress all the time. Something like a boss that every minute straight up kills two dps in 4-mans and one of the healers and two dps in 8-mans. Maybe not as cruel as that, simply NPCs or objects that need to be actuely healed and ressed. So you will be forced to hardcast Ressurection while also dealing with the rest of the party needing healing and mechanics being thrown at you. Only places this happens is in 24-man and PotD, but not by design, someone will have to not be paying attention for going there as a healer to be interesting. And I'm not sure going me going around hoping people don't do mechanics is what SE had in mind.

Before 4.1 there was excited talk of that Shinryu Ex would have Healing checks, but then that was never brought up again. I would love for the act of straight up healing to be interesting, but right now there's little to heal, often long pauses between bosses actually doing damage and little to do when there is no healing by design. It just soured an otherwise great expansion for me where I enjoyed every bit of the sights, sounds and story and then had to actually do fights as a Scholar it stood out like a sore thumb.

It isn't so much contempt but fear. Unfortunately, the dev team seems both uninspired but entirely too afraid to provide healers anything complex, intense or even interesting. They adamantly refuse to increase outgoing damage enough to warrant how insanely powerful healers are. Hell, despite leveling the Stormblood scaling, they reduced the outgoing damage on tanks this tier. Which defeated the entire point. They don't want to make DPS engaging. All because there's this strange belief it would drive baby healers are from the role. Ironically, it's now driving everyone away from it.

It never stops being jarring how they seem to go about every Shadowbringers questions with breathless enthusiasm, yet never find a single sound for Healer gameplay. Are they just dependent on journalists bringing issues up with their own game. Keep telling myself not to assume, but it's hard when they won't dispel any of the ever increasing myths.

I have no idea if we who ask for some complexitity and depth to be added back to Healers (and those who were lacking, got some) are in the proverbial minority, but even those who enjoy it how it is now I wonder how long it'll last before there is nothing more to master or improve left.

[Thoosa]

The problem with AST is it feels like the hardest of the healers to play but you don’t get rewarded for it.

The cards just now feel underwhelming and don’t seem to make any real contribution or difference to your party (6% dps increase seems tiny) so why use them?

There’s little point playing in noct sect because of the MP cost to shields.

Some of the healing abilities are nice, like lightspeed, earthly star and neutral sect, but they don’t feel that strong and earthly star is very situational. It could do with more aoe heals like scholar for example.

AST dps also feels very weak too.

All I see mostly in savage is White Mage and Scholar combination so I guess AST is out in the cold this expansion.

[Brandedblade]

The problem with AST is it feels like the hardest of the healers to play but you don’t get rewarded for it.

The cards just now feel underwhelming and don’t seem to make any real contribution or difference to your party (6% dps increase seems tiny) so why use them?

There’s little point playing in noct sect because of the MP cost to shields.

Some of the healing abilities are nice, like lightspeed, earthly star and neutral sect, but they don’t feel that strong and earthly star is very situational. It could do with more aoe heals like scholar for example.

AST dps also feels very weak too.

All I see mostly in savage is White Mage and Scholar combination so I guess AST is out in the cold this expansion.

Earthly Star is the opposite of situational, it's very powerful even if you have to pop it earlier and even if the heal isnt needed you can still use it for some additional damage. And if your ranged refuse to stand in it? Oh well. This is a team game,

As far as aoe heals go they're in a very good spot, especially with the 5.0 buffs.

The cards only seem overwhelming, but considering you're constantly providing 3 to 6% additional damage every 30 seconds, and said 6% party damage buff stacks with the cards, you're providing more group damage then you think.

Noct AST is probably the only point I remotely agree with you on. But even then it still has a trick or two, like the regen on its version of Intersection. Fortunately, the last live letter did mention nocturnal ast is being looked at, so at least something has been promised.

[Gemina]

I got AST and SCH to 78 last night. Working on getting my WHM there as well. FTR, I don't level jobs I don't enjoy playing.

I do not feel the changes are anywhere near as drastic as people make them out to be; at least in progressive content anyway. WHM and AST both feel improved. SCH is the only one that truly feels different from what it used to be, but not bad different; just different. I am having a lot of trouble adjusting to the removal of pet actions, but can still place Lily. This still has me access the pet hotbar, which pretty much defeats the purpose of removing the pet skills.

[Saefinn]

The problem with AST is it feels like the hardest of the healers to play but you don’t get rewarded for it.

The cards just now feel underwhelming and don’t seem to make any real contribution or difference to your party (6% dps increase seems tiny) so why use them?

There’s little point playing in noct sect because of the MP cost to shields.

Some of the healing abilities are nice, like lightspeed, earthly star and neutral sect, but they don’t feel that strong and earthly star is very situational. It could do with more aoe heals like scholar for example.

AST dps also feels very weak too.

All I see mostly in savage is White Mage and Scholar combination so I guess AST is out in the cold this expansion.

I like that AST is harder, hence its what I will queue as now when we need a healer versus my former main, SCH.

I hope if SE does fix this that they opt for making it more rewarding than making it easier. Sadly less rewarding and making things easier has been their approach thus far.

[Saefinn]

I got AST and SCH to 78 last night. Working on getting my WHM there as well. FTR, I don't level jobs I don't enjoy playing.

I do not feel the changes are anywhere near as drastic as people make them out to be; at least in progressive content anyway. WHM and AST both feel improved. SCH is the only one that truly feels different from what it used to be, but not bad different; just different. I am having a lot of trouble adjusting to the removal of pet actions, but can still place Lily. This still has me access the pet hotbar, which pretty much defeats the purpose of removing the pet skills.

I found when I was levelling SCH and AST it was mixed. I did the level 75 and 77 dungeons thinking, "hey this is kinda fun", then I got to the level 79 dungeon and most of it was me spamming Art of War. I found if people's gear, including my own was low, which it has often been on the 70 to 80 dungeons, then it has been more enjoyable. The problem comes when there is a lot of downtime, which increases the better we get and the better gear we get, as well as others getting better and getting better geared.

I think the healing spells when they get their proper usage are suitable and can be enjoyable to use. But I don't often find I get the proper usage out of them. Hence one of my arguments has been adjust the content so we get better use, rebalance the jobs so they get better use, or accept downtime is a thing and make it more interesting.

[rachcouture]

Healer main from my first day playing; it's my favorite role outside of support, which this game lacks. Leveled all healers to 80 at the start of ShB. Pretty much only play PLD at this point.

When the dev team can stop disrespecting this role by gutting identities, trampling job lore, and balancing around an extremely small percentage of Savage raiders, is when I'll go back full-time.