do you think this Wall to Wall pulling (in roulettes)is hurting the healer population

[Kobalos]

It hurts as an astro >.<

[Rasikko]

It's a problem when tanks are doing it when they

1) Do it without knowing what their body can handle.
2) Do it without any CD usage.
2a) Do it when CDs are down.
3) Do it when the healer can't handle it.

I imagine a lot of healers as of late are running into tanks that fall under 1-2a. I will welcome any pull size, but I am thinking to myself as they continue going for more and more mobs "Can your body handle all of that?". Once they stop, it's clear for sure what my answer is, if it I cannot get not even 1 holy off before I need to chuck Cure II at them, followed by tetra.

[Keddera_StormMoon]

Wall to wall pulls only hurt at the newbie level as it overwhelms people who are learning the game. By 80, they should be settled in and used to it.

I don't like the mass pulls at 80 either, but I still do it in order to challenge myself as a healer. As long as people don't bitch that I'm not DPSing because I have to chain heal, mass pull away.

What I object to are the ones that do it mindlessly, even if the group can't keep up with the pace. Those guys piss me off.

[Ksenia]

Healers in a Square Enix game know what they are getting in to

[Videra]

I highly doubt that pulling at a humane pace is hurting the healer population. It's the only way any of them can have fun in this game outside of trials and raiding.

[Jybril]

Actually, they outright said they catered to the people who complained about getting "useless" cards. While some might assume that meant everything but Balance, I suspect a lot of people on the casual side found Spire, Ewer and even Arrow "useless" because they didn't know how to use them. It wasn't catered at all towards Savage raiders. No one in Savage was asking for Astro changes whatsoever. It's my belief these changes occurred because the devs overreacted to "meta" and basically destroyed most utility in this game.

I say this as a casual player but I feel like it had everything to do with balance. Since people kept hollering "If you don't fish balance, you were bad."
They had to strip every single thing that made AST what it was into a boring balance bot with no variety whatsoever.
Now people aren't fishing for balance it's fish for seals where I can barely be asked to do that.

When I played AST, I dealt with the cards I got and changed if I really needed to.
Spire has it's TP in need moments, but I usually fodder up for AoE. I loved AoEing cards, loved potency + cards and extending cards.
I liked old Crown/Lady cards. I can add a bit of DPS to the boss or I can use a mini ED on someone.
Don't forget about the old C/O and the most loved Time Dia. I had fun, which what should matter in this game.
I didn't try and get balance, but was happy when I did get it. I don't care for big numbers. I just wanna have fun.
The old card system is what definitely made AST what it was.

This was as close as Time Mage as we were going to get as well. The identity is gone now.
I'm just irritated that I mean...you stripped us down to nothing, give us no new healers to play with.
Use a sorry excuse to balance us, listened to the few guys screaming in the back and now even he ain't happy lol.
Healers have always been a dime a dozen but now look.

[Novae]

I think there’s a lack of healers in this game because as a healer, it’s killing me to be paired with bad DPS. And there are A TON of bad DPS in DF. They don’t aoe, pulls take forever to die, it makes me spam holy for hours, which is boring, and it drains ressources/ tank cds for absolutely nothing. I queue more and more as BLM solely for this reason, and it has nothing to do with w2w or healers rework.

[Brandedblade]

Honestly, sometime in heavensward I came to just accept that tanks pull big whether I like it or not, and taught myself how to handle it. Sometimes the tanks to squishy and sometimes it's perfect. No use crying over spilt milk.

Also say what you want about ast and its cards, from my experience proper use of them makes mobs melt, so no complaints here. While holy has the stun, I prefer gravity's range to keep me out of the aoe spam in melee.

[Gemina]

I'll echo that wall to walls pulls are pretty standard starting @50. As a matter of fact, several of those 50 dungeons allow some of the most ridiculous wall to wall pulls seen in the game and they've been around for ages.

Perhaps it really is spite that is causing this apparent shortage of healers. Is it due to their simplified kits though? That I am not to sure about. It's very easy to assign the culprit to that, but I believe it goes much deeper, and say it is more like 'the straw that broke the camel's back' kind of situation.

I don't feel the current healer DPS kits are the true issue. WHM was always the dungeon mower. It was the most enjoyable during dungeons because you were getting the best bang for your buck. What several fail to see is that pre ShB, SCH and AST toolkits were underutilized because you basically go in there and do what we are doing right now: Spam your AoE on trash, your filler on single target, and toss an ogcd heal when required. You didn't need to spread shields, place a fairy; hell, even AoE balance was overkill and just gave AST something to fish for. In order for SCH and AST to truly shine, they needed to be in difficult 8-man content.

SCH suffered the most when it came to DPS buttons to push. Having those buttons gave them some sort of satisfaction when running dungeons. Their toolkit in dungeons is now more underutilized than ever. I can't say I blame them for bowing out. AST is actually improved for running dungeons. The constant damage buffs are satisfying to me, and keeps me busy between the nuking and any actual healing that is required. However, unlike other ASTs out there; I support the change to the system. WHM is just better at what it was already good at, so they don't have much reason to be griping right now.

If we look at the problem with healers being with just SCH and AST; I can get behind the SCH woes, but AST I feel is improved because I always saw through the illusion of choice that was its predecessor. However, regardless of how I or anyone feels about the SCH and AST changes, I can still understand that such a drastic change to both jobs will cause some disarray for sure. Just not enough because of healer diversity.

As far back as I go, there has always been diversity within the healer community between those who prefer to spend their time healing, and those who enjoy weaving offensive abilities between situations that require healing. However, the former really never had much of a defense against the latter because DPSing when heals are not needed is basically common sense. Over time, their arguments began to shift more towards the side of faulty encounter and job design in order to establish validity in their arguments. This is when the amount of healer downtime and how powerful ogcd heals are started coming to the surface.

One would think, that one healer demographic would simply replace the other, which would have been the case if SE didn't try to fix the healer issues from two totally different angles. They simplified the kits, but did not change encounter design to give them more to do and now both camps are dissatisfied. Healers that DPS during downtime not because they enjoy it, but because it is required of them along with the new recruits make up the majority those in the queues. A very similar situation to tanks when it's late in an expansion.

All of this is without mention of healer neglect during all expansions, no new healer for two expansions, and the leap frogging AST and WHM have been doing since late HW.

tl;dr healers from all camps are fed up with the devs choices in regards to healing.

[Gemina]

Healers in a Square Enix game know what they are getting in to

Sometimes, I think that is why I am still doing it. Over the last several years, I haven't been surprised by any decisions SE has made when it comes to healing. I'm basically shooting the rubberband in my soup back at the chef, and then just keep right on eating it.