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

[Fhaerron]

Tank main here.

But when I go as heal I leave groups where tank refuses to wall to wall pull.
It's simply not fun, yes it's very easy to trow in loads of DPS casts as a healer when tank does single pack pulls but wall to wall pulling is a lot faster, and you're still albe to trow in some AoE spells every now and then while keeping tank alive.
And as a WHM it's also easy to spam holy and use it defensively as well as all the mobs get interrupted.

[SenorPatty]

As a tank, I've rarely met healers who didn't want mass pulls, especially WHM. Heck, the latter seem to be practically be on their knees, praying that I mass pull just so they can feel something as they play.

From my perspective, what killed the healer population are the changes that came to their toolkit. And no new healer.

[Saidosha]

Think some are just over-complicating the issue. Sure, job changes or content stagnation may be a factor, but the reality is that the healer and tank roles have pretty much been the minority population in all MMOs ever. The intrinsic problem with both roles is that they tend to carry a higher degree of responsibility that not everyone is willing to undertake, while some also further abuse that status. This thread has been pretty demonstrative that people feel there is a right way and a wrong way to play the role(s), where some might still derive failure even if the party survives and clears content.

To that end, adding another healer class wouldn't really change anything. It'll largely be the same people just ping-ponging between the classes depending on their mood, with some drawn in by the aesthetic/feel, while others get repulsed by it. You'll see a brief surge when it comes to leveling, sure, but in a few weeks it'll pretty much be business as usual.

Ultimately, I think it comes down to the game adhering to the holy trinity so stringently. You can say to put debuffs on healers, but they would all need the same spread, lest one be preferred over the other. Insert cries of homogenization here were that the case. From the FFXI perspective, I know I wasn't really a fan of such rock/paper/scissors sort of balancing since there was very rarely an adequate middle ground to satisfy everyone. Career RDMs there would also know the pain of debuff immunities and, for a brunt of the game's life, lacking variety despite that being an implied niche. Overall, I'd say it's similar to why elemental resistances were largely purged here. It's no fun to have a favored job, just for it to have no place in the current content meta and require extra steps just to get people to give you a chance.

Right now, I'd probably say we do need some tweaks largely across the board to engender a bit more class identity, but I would also not look at it from the perspective that it should affirm wall-to-wall pulls, raider mentality, or the sometimes questionable role confusion that goes on. We also need to be wary of ability bloat, as the gamepad has its limits, nor does everyone have gamer mice/keyboards. To that end, I'd argue we actually need a better macro system and something like morphic buttons, but I've kinda jumped to too many topics already so I'll shush now.

[Sloprano]

This is the crap I don't get.

WHY ROLL A GD HEALER IF YOU WANT TO DPS. It can be said for any job. Why the hell would you main a healer if you didn't have the intentions to be a healer? Play a different job if you don't want to heal.

I think this is imporant because I've had to try to put into words why I spew so much bile about my favorite job in 4.0 and specially now in 5.0. The reason I don't play a DPS is because "Healer" was just the assigned role Scholar had when I unlocked it back in 2.0. They could've assigned it to Tank or DPS role, or Window Cleaner, whatever arbitrary role they put Scholar in I'd play it because it was so much fun.

This is why I'm so adverse against what SE did in 4.0 and specially in 5.0. They seemingly stopped thinking about the job in a vacuum in a "how much cool Scholar stuff can we put into this job"-attitude, as opposed to "how much more Healer can we make this job." Healing happend to be the assigned role and so I healed. And the job had some shields, so I shielded. And it had not one, but two fairies with seperate skills on their own gcd, so I put them to use too. And it inherited from Arcanist, so I started putting up dots and using it's tools. And cross-class skills gave me Protect, Stoneskin, Aero and Cleric Stance, so I started finding ways use those too. When I logged on and signed up for something I was thinking I was going as Scholar first, healer second.

Feel we're in this rut because of roles and with more choices than there is slots for those roles. By trying to make them all just as lucrative as each other they just end up making them the same. And I'm only here because somehow Scholar wasn't Healer enough and have been beaten into conformity.

This thread do touch on a variety of topics so just to stay on those too; I enjoyed it all. Scholar was bursting at the seams with potential. If they wanted to go slow: I had dots, cleric stance fairies etc. They wanted to pull everything? Okay, need put all mitigating and healing skills to the test. It's this design philosopy they had from ARR I'd wish they'd kept too: Make the job on it's own fun and give it it's fundamentals from early levels in it's class, then add from there. Not this thing we got in 5.0 where the job is no more than it's Role.

[Mansion]

My personal feeling here is more Shadowbringers' take on healing in general that made me less and less motivated to heal in roulettes actually. I do like to DPS as a healer, and that's not so much the problem here, it's more that I feel the game is lazily trying to make me heal more.

FFXIV's take on healing is (was) quite refreshing and interesting actually, it's nice to see you can contribute to DPS effort and that you can somehow work around healing (through shields, regens, planned healing and stuff) and for some jobs, have a bit more to do. Since 5.0, it feels uninspired to me that the only way to make us heal more is to make tanks take more damage and nerf heal potencies.

I would rather see more healing abilities like Earthly Star / Excog / Recitation, or some spell combos that could equally heal and damage (or buff/debuff). Being encouraged to and rewarded when I plan healing properly, having a proper rotation for downtime (not just big DPS, but feeling like I contribute to something when healing checks are met).
Essentially, I just want to have fun when I heal, and it's not that fun to me to spam the same 2 or 3 spells / abilities to keep the tank alive.
I don't mind big pulls, I just want it to be fun.

This tier I did not heal in Savage, so I guess I can't tell, but casual healing does not hook me anymore (and the game itself as a matter of fact). The lack of response to our feedback on healing in general is not reassuring nor motivating either.

[Noitems]

Healers got so absolutely boned in this expac that anything less then a wall to wall is asking them to throw out a regen and take a nap.

I mainly play tank but when I was leveling WHM I loved when tanks pull w2w. Getting some holy spam, ogcds, Misery, it feels good to be like another dps in the midst of it all.

[Arthrun]

Played my WHM with some things to get a perspective to wall to wall healing as I am normally a tank.

I honestly have to say that the way dungeons are now...where you are limited to 2 pulls before a wall opens up is not the issue. IMO there are times you need to pull to wall to even feel like you belong in the group when a 3rd dps would be just as efficiant. I personally dislike the fact that healers are expected to dps during down times.... and there is quite a bit downtime between healing spells.

[Melichoir]

I bring this up as a healer and a tank. I will never say I am the best player and for a matter of fact i do not do savage content because i don't need the additional stress and I do not enjoy raiding anymore (i raided in EQ1, EQ2, WoW and other games for 10+ years).

My healer i refuse to play anymore after getting to 80 (scholar) i have also seen my wife who plays a white mage refuse to heal high level dungeons and extreme roulette (she would rather play her dps)

i have had people in my former FC say they hate healing now because of tanks that just rush through dungeon, die, blame the healer and then repeat. i have seen friends say they only bring out their healers if its a friends group.

and last but not least I as a tank refuse to wall to wall pull so i usually try to pick up 2 packs at a time and that's it. And I have had a few (mind very few) where the healer would actually thank me for not pulling big.

So while i know this is a very limited spectrum and anecdotal evidence, i figured i can't be the only one that has had this experience.

W2W pulling isnt an issue unless the healer is poorly geared, or hte Tank/Party are not handling mob sizes correctly. This is something a tank needs to check for when pulling. If the healer is fresh 80, pulling W2W might not be advised. This being said, if your tanks arent interrupting and using CDs correctly, or your DPS arent using AoE rotations or standing in pancakes, dont matter how good your healer is. This isnt a healer issue, rather than player skill floor issue.

[YojimboM]

This thread has been pretty demonstrative that people feel there is a right way and a wrong way to play the role(s)

That's because there is. This is FFXIV. This MMO is baby games. You have your Fisher-Price rotations that have exactly ONE specific way to do them correctly. That's all you get. They are mathematically-proven to be the most efficient ways to play the jobs. This is because there is not a single piece of content in this game that isn't ultimately "reduce an HP bar to 0 to win", so naturally doing DPS is the only thing that matters. This is true for both healers and tanks. Healers want to contribute more DPS so they have to heal less, tanks want to contribute more DPS so they don't have to use as many defensive cooldowns.

That's really the main issue with every argument between "big pulls vs. small pulls", big pulls are always better, period. It is mathematically more efficient in every way, less healing needs to be done, less damage is ultimately taken, you are in combat for less time. The only catch is that people need to play their jobs in the correct way to accomplish it, which brings us to the argument, people who play their jobs incorrectly (or don't have gear in leveling dungeons) vs. people who play them correctly.

However, the reason that there are fewer healers this expansion is because that main factor in playing a job correctly (the rotation) has become so simplified and brainless on every healing job that it is no longer fun. WHM is the only healer that even feels mostly the same as before the expansion and it was already the most simple to play. When you make a job's rotation involve no thought at all, it is no longer engaging, and no longer fun or interesting to play for most experienced players.

[Saidosha]

"It's not fast enough for me, so it's wrong!" is what I was getting at, which the true indicator is whether or not the group succeeds. I get it, though, doing whatever faster means you can do something else faster still. Unfortunately, there just tends to be too many variables at play to guarantee you'll get that perfect run no matter how much you try to downplay the game's difficulty. If one feels inclined to cry about PUGs not meeting their standards, either politely try to teach if it's possible in the moment or don't PUG and make your own groups so you have greater control of the field.

MMOs aren't the sorts of games to be playing if you're obsessed with not losing a few minutes here and there due to outside factors.