How are healers fairing right now?

[Lodi]

I think that something people seem to miss is that healers have been made a lot simpler, and without ever getting an explanation from the dev team. No reason, no justification, nothing. It just happened, deal with it.

We've lost more than we gained, and even what we gained is questionable for the most part (copy-pasted, rebranded, nerfed actions everywhere). Devs response? Absolutely none. It's been months already.

AST population is ridiculously low since Stormblood ended, healer queues are extremely short, people all over the forums and other places have been saying the role is dumbed down.

While all other classes are talking about numbers and balance, we're worrying about fun and gameplay.


You just can't pretend that everything is fine and the devs are listening.

If we have been complaining for months, it's because the devs are pretending we're not there. If we're complaining, it's because the role we loved has been gutted and we have nothing to replace it.

[Side-Eye]

Yeah, the hypocrite part. I mean, I personally wouldn't believe someone who says "I don't like steak" as they're stuffing their face with it, and it's more than just "Oh, I only don't like the damage portion," or "Oh, I don't like the downtime," the most dedicated forum users at this point thrash their "preferred" healer as if it's broken beyond redemption, and needs immediate changes every patch.

AST players haven't been stuffing their faces -- the number of people playing it has drastically decreased since SHB released. Numbers don't lie.

To the point: some people like the ROLE of healing, and will continue to prefer and play that role over others even when their favorite healer job is having QoL issues, or simply isn't as engaging and fun as it once was. Should they just shut up and pray that devs telepathically figure out how to make the jobs better or more fun without any feedback? Should they walk away from the game because the other roles don't appeal to them, and just check back when 6.0 drops to see if there's a new heal job that might actually feel engaging and rewarding beyond filling health bars?

As long as Squeenix does not acknowledge the feedback and/or announce improvement plans, people are naturally going to keep discussing it, keep making suggestions, and keep hoping that some of the ideas or complaints trickle upwards.

Nobody is forcing you to read these discussions. Unless you're a dev, feel free to skip ahead...

[Lodi]

AST players haven't been stuffing their faces -- the number of people playing it has drastically decreased since SHB released. Numbers don't lie.

To the point: some people like the ROLE of healing, and will continue to prefer and play that role over others even when their favorite healer job is having QoL issues, or simply isn't as engaging and fun as it once was. Should they just shut up and pray that devs telepathically figure out how to make the jobs better or more fun without any feedback? Should they walk away from the game because the other roles don't appeal to them, and just check back when 6.0 drops to see if there's a new heal job that might actually feel engaging and rewarding beyond filling health bars?

As long as Squeenix does not acknowledge the feedback and/or announce improvement plans, people are naturally going to keep discussing it, keep making suggestions, and keep hoping that some of the ideas or complaints trickle upwards.

Nobody is forcing you to read these discussions. Unless you're a dev, feel free to skip ahead...

This.

And the steak face stuffing thing is just wrong. People are not playing healers just to complain.

I'd compare it more to a restaurant.

You love this restaurant, it's the only one you really like in your district and you've been going there for years.
And then one day, your dinner seems odd. Not as good as it used to be for so long. When you ask about it, a waiter whispers to you that management has decided to go for cheaper ingredients and cooks.
Management refuses to talk about it despite your repeated attempts.
So, well, you still like this restaurant. But everytime you go there you feel disappointed by the food quality.
It's still your favourite restaurant, yet you can't help but remember how much better it used to be, and wonder why did management make this decision.


That's how healers feel right now.

[Cyrocco]

Nobody is forcing you to read these discussions. Unless you're a dev, feel free to skip ahead...

I mean, they only read the couple most popular threads, but sure, spread the complaints across 10 5-page threads. Works out fine.

[Crushnight]

Though people are complaining about how much the playstyle was changed in ShB, Sch had 6 years with its full fairy management, myriad DoTs and resources being either for heals or dealing damage, Ast had 4 years with its myriad of card buffs and card interactions (Time dialation/RR etc), these were changed completely in ShB, people are going to be upset and it certainly doesn't help when the only response from SE(in regards to Ast) has been "We don't want to touch it because of the people who like it now", well what about the people who liked it before it was changed the ones who had 4/6 years of experience on it, "crickets".

Then you have the issue of the solo experience as a healer which is the majority of the MSQ where you have your entire way of killing single target monsters for over 70 levels, that can be considered stupid design, as that is mind numbing, any new player that truly wants to get the most out of healers is going to be bored very quickly especially if they have no interest in the story.

Ast numbers are the lowest they have been since 3.0 where the devs purposely undertuned it for fear of invalidating Sch and Whm, but unlike 3.X they have already buffed Ast to be the strongest healer yet the numbers are still very low, Whm which was classed as inferior throughout SB had a far healthier population than current Ast. This suggests that either everyone is whining and just not playing out of spite or their is a genuine problem the majority of the Ast community has with the current implementation to not want to play it in content. Personally i think it is the latter.

Current Ast biggest problem right now is that it is controller unfriendly especially trying to go for optimal gameplay, so much so 8+ macros are preferred despite their input delay, the only ways to fix this is to either look at Ast design or change the targeting system which effects every job or ignore it, those are SE's choices and they historically go with ignore it until it is too late ala SB Mch and Whm.

[EaMett]

Going to reiterate what many have said. Playing healer is still the same as it was after shb. Boring for the most part. TEA is pretty much the only piece of content that will keep you busy during downtime. SCH is still a one button spam, WHM hasn't changed at all (although I think WHM is close to the best it's ever been this expac), AST card system is still roughly the same so if those changes weren't appealing then they won't be now. Diurnal AST got balanced though so if that was initially your main concern with the class then you're in luck and should give it a spin.

Solo content on healer is absolutely abysmal and probably the worst gameplay experience I've had in a long time. Esp as SCH compared to before.

I think it hasn't helped that the savage tier this time around was pretty easy.

[GrimGale]

Look, if you want objective data, just check the parsers in high level content, heck check the parsers in any type of group content.

You will notice how many times people cast heals VS damage spells.

And I am talking about casting, not actually healing with oCDs.

In my personal case I find myself casting damaging spells three times as often as I cast healing spells. And I still get around 25% of overhealing.

Meaning, most of my fights I spend them casting Broil, Biolysis and ED.
And the more gear and experience my static gets the less damage I have to heal and the more I have to spend on Damaging.

So at this point, it's clear that the game is designed in a way that has healers not heal for long periods of time.

What should we fill that time with?

[Sloprano]

Yeah, the hypocrite part. I mean, I personally wouldn't believe someone who says "I don't like steak" as they're stuffing their face with it, and it's more than just "Oh, I only don't like the damage portion," or "Oh, I don't like the downtime," the most dedicated forum users at this point thrash their "preferred" healer as if it's broken beyond redemption, and needs immediate changes every patch.

I can understand your frustration so lets be frustrated together. And it's really been five months already, that's some serious dedicated shunning on SE's part. Time flies when you're having fun, and time have disappeared into the small hours writing about Scholar of yore, complain about current iteration and post possible fixes to drive up post count. It's a damn sight more engaing and fun than playing Scholar in it's current form. Because it's not just downtime, damage options, ogcds overflow, butchered fairy etc. It's everything. Every ittle thing coming together and when all the little things are gone there is just refilling healtbars and Broil III.

Another reason for posting is to hopefully clear up misconceptions. If I'm choosing to still represent the job here, talk about it or straight up complaing for five months straight I want you to know it's not because it's some Flavor of the Month that suddenly got sour. I still play healer, it's my favorite job in this game for it's theme and lore. Certainly not anymore the gameplay, as I find myself only signing up to anything if friends needs help. It's more an investment of up to six years for some, hoping for better times in Stormblood and getting an even worse hand dealt in Shadowbringers and feel extremely underapriciated with how the developers talk about everything from other jobs to hairstyles to tripping overthemselves for a new event that took my server one week to clear off, but these jobs that are part of the pillars of the all the endless fights we are forced to do. Had I not still had this vivid memories of fun it used to be, you can be sure I wouldn't have written tomes of text on the subject.

And come, Healers aren't trash, they are filling healtbears for days with no issue. Now current Scholar on the other hand, that is some straight dreg with that don't show much thought behind it. I like healing too, but I also like unorthodox playstyles and approaches and do it under stress that comes with having the life of the party in your hands more. Combine them together and you had Scholar 3.0 that shot morphine out it's eyes, dance with faires and sprayed rainbows out it's bum. At no point did it occur to me to say: "Man this is really fucking good, but if only all these debuffs and buffs went away, all that dot management was reduced to one, instead of having to use whole skillset to help reduce most damage I instead get a lot of free healing on oGCD cooldowns, I got a job gauge with slow reacting abilities I barely use, Aetherflow got locked out of combat, I didn't have to take risks with Cleric Stance, I actually get the third fairy I wished for on a Monkey Paw that took away the second, instead of being crap at healing and have to rely on a bit wonky but loveable AI to handle healing I would rather it's presence be barely felt on this PET job."

I still chalk the old Arcanist and Scholar combo up to some kind of underpayed and underapriciated genius intern. Just from the way everything flowed and ebbed as you could control Lily while casting, had a tool for everything and could go form single-target to aoe with just Bane, Miasma 2 and Shadowflare. With how blissfully unaware SE is for this brilliance when they removed Miasma 2 to make way for Summoners stuff but didn't think about the consequences this had for Scholar until months after. Then forced the genius intern to make into some kind half-damage/half-dot meant to be spammable but not really despite protests. Then they stepped in the exact same bucket of paint with Energy Drain: Just unlabled a skill and find out months later there actually was another job that benefitted from it. And when they found out they put it on the wrong end of the store on aisle 45. Young genius intern was still intent to save this trainwreck but his work got cut off by a senior project manager's uncle sister's kid who go the job by nepotism that wondered why even have so many spells when you can have one for single-target and one for aoe and then whack Lily for less hassle. He got a promotion for that, the young genious intern probably left for greener pastures and is creating fun and engaing playstyles elsewhere.

Something is seriously wrong about healer designers at SE and the lack of willingness to talk is almost bordering on it being an embarrasing secret. This isn't complaining for the sake of Quality of Life potency ajdustments, this is complaining to bring entire Quantities of Life back into the job.

[Deceptus]

I think that something people seem to miss is that healers have been made a lot simpler, and without ever getting an explanation from the dev team. No reason, no justification, nothing. It just happened, deal with it.
.

Bad players cried about Cleric Stance (swapping int/mnd) so we lost it. Bad players cried that they wanted to be "pure healers" so we got forced into that role.




This is despite the game telling you that you should do damage during downtime in multiple places.

[Miziliti]

I've never seen the forums stay this tilted for so long.

So you knew and you know why people are posting angrily. Wait, you want what? Discussion about healers? I thought over the 6+ months people are constantly posting constructive criticisms and suggestions. SIX+ FREAKING MONTHS WORTH OF IDEAS.

Hold on, let me go dig some posts and copy paste those good ideas for you. No, why should I bother with something people said already.

As the result, every posts will end up with similar replies whether it's positive or negative.