How are healers fairing right now?

[MitsukiKimura]

Parse runners do not make up for the player base and I feel like this is what SE took feedback from when so called "fishing for balance". There are x5-x6 more players playing WHM/SCH than Ast even when AST has been seriously buffed, and it is still the least played healer. One day they'll realize that it's their card system that made people quit the class. It's not fun, it's depressing. I still struggle to play Astrologian to this day, (Fact I just can't get into WHM). I remember people asking me to throw certain cards on them, having the ultimate choice and variety in the cards you were handed to you was the best feeling even if you were given a horrible draw. Buffing my heals, regens and shields doesn't make a class more enjoyable. So if they wanna take Parse runners into account for what makes classes more enjoyable then they can look at the horrible AST player base numbers. Even if it takes time to fix it, at least I'd want to be acknowledged on our concerns and feedback about it.

[Kabzy]

The sad part is that they could very easily implement a kludge here to at least satisfy healers until a 6.0 rework:

SCHOLAR

-Give then Shadowflare back.
-Give another DoT (Miasma) and Bane. Nerf potencies of Broil and Biolysis to compensate.
-Have the Faerie go back to operating on her own GCD.

(Personally I miss the old Cleric Stance, Eye for an Eye and Virus, and I think SCH could do with a further 1 or 2 DoTs, but we “casuals” couldn’t possibly handle that!!)

ASTROLOGIAN

-Revert the card system.
-Give Time Dilation back.

(Apart from this, I don’t mind the new abilities and the job already feels very involved.)

WHITE MAGE

I don’t really think WHM needs much, but a couple of things that would be nice:

-Return Aero III and make Presence of Mind a 120s CD in exchange for a nerf to Glare and Dia.

These changes are all giving things back to the healers, so it really wouldn’t take up too much time to implement. It’s definitely not a fix, and I’d like them to go a different direction with healing in 6.0, but I think this would satisfy a lot of players until that day!

(Should point out I’ve only recently returned to the game, so while I have all heals at 80, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to test them out!)

[Deceptus]

What gets me the most is DoTs play very well with healers and in ShB, SE forced the hard cast model more.

What it should be: Throw up dots during your down time, heal while those dots are rolling.

What it is: One dot, spam filler spell for 30 seconds and OGCD heal the tank because mobs hit like wet noodles.

[Saefinn]

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.

And yeah, right now, the Healer Forums are the absolute worst place to get advice on the state of healing. Just go to the Reddit, at least there you can post about something else without this same boring conversation starting. I've never seen the forums stay this tilted for so long.

You kinda gotta ask why the forums have stayed tilted for so long. Prior to 5.0 I wasn't even active here, although I was kinda "meh" about 4.0 SCH, I still had more to do than now and that was redeeming, but I just hoped in 5.0 what I didn't like would be improved but 5.0 made it worse, hence I figured "join in".

With regards to Reddit, it was the Reddit community that conducted the poll that put SCH and AST right at the bottom of job satisfaction ratings for Shadowbringers with an overwhelming dislike.

That said, I'd expect the strongest criticisms to be directed at the official forums because this is the place where feedback is given. And in fairness to the community here, a lot of the time when people ask about healers here, people tend to say "judge for yourself to see if you like", which is something I do too. I don't think anybody has had a problem with other people liking healers. But if people are gonna ask for our opinion, of course, an opinion will be given. The opinions here are no less valid to what might be given by the Reddit community and vice versa. If anything, I find the opinions tend to split in different camps that can relate to what versions of the healers they fell in love with when starting the game, how experienced they are with them and so on. I fall into the category of people who fell in love with SCH back in 2.0, and my favourite version of SCH is the 2.0 version and still don't see why we had to deviate from that design because I thought it was good design and would have liked an evolution of it.

I've also played SCH for years and as a result am probably more impacted by how the job has changed versus somebody who picked it up in SB or ShB because I've got a lot more of a vested interest in how it used to play. But also recognising those who have picked up healers in SB or ShB may be enjoying them, much of my feedback and feedback I've seen people agree with has taken into that into consideration. My desire: an evolution of 2.0 SCH. My compromise: 5.0 SCH with fun stuff to do in its downtime.

But the analogy is horribly flawed. If we're looking at equivalence:
- There's only 1 restaurant you like eating at
- You love dining out, it's your thing, it's what you do for fun and you really enjoy it and don't want to stop doing it, plus its what you do with your friends and it's this restaurant you go to
- Steak is your baby, you love it, you can't get enough of it, you want to like it and you keep trying
- The steak recipe has kinda gone to crap, but you're not really a pasta person, or a curry person, or a pie person. Whilst the steak is not what you like anymore, it's what you know.
- The restaurant has long queues outside of it, but people who eat steak get priority entry as do any friends who join them because every table has to have a steak eater, your friends don't really eat steak but you, a steak lover, could help them jump that queue
- You're not as good at eating other food as you are at steak and it works out better for the group if you're the one eating steak...somehow.
- Somebody asks "how's the steak?", I say "terrible". Somebody asks if they'd like the steak, I say "try it yourself, see if you like it any better than I do".


And to be honest, I'm struggling to make the analogy fit.

I mean, there's lots of reasons people still queue as healers when they're hating what they've done to it. In fact, I am still unhappy with SCH, which is my baby, I now heal on AST because out of the 3 it's the one I have the fewest complaints about and I don't main it either, I've swapped to DNC for that. But if I want a queue boost, or I'm helping friends or just having that healing itch, I'll queue as it.

[Crushnight]

ASTROLOGIAN

-Revert the card system.
-Give Time Dilation back.

(Apart from this, I don’t mind the new abilities and the job already feels very involved.)

Heck just give back Time Dilation and old Celestial Opposition and a few problems would either go away or be far less of an issue

-Buffs feel unimpactful, Time Dilation on hardest hitter and CO on Divination and Lord/Lady
-Mp issues, CO Lucid dreaming
-Help prolong Noct's Celestial Intersection Regen with TD, giving them a greater buffer easing their mp better

This also adds more interactions with Horoscope being able to prolong both the procc'd and unprocc'd versions until you feel the need to, Neutral sect lasting longer (this would be overkill on making healing easier XD).

This wouldn't help Ast current controller issues, make Ast stupendously overpowered again(especially with it being the strongest healer atm), yet it would bring back some of Ast interaction with itself that it lost.

[Ceasaria]

Parse runners do not make up for the player base and I feel like this is what SE took feedback from when so called "fishing for balance".

Based on what I have read here, it's unexperienced AST and some DPS players who have said that.
And this is why it's quite depressing. They have erased their old AST community to create a new and very small community because of feedback from not experienced AST (or even non-healer).
I hope SE could see in his statistic that I have more than thousand and several hundred hours of gameplay with SB AST while I have 2-3 hours with ShB AST (just quit at level 71).

[Saefinn]

Based on what I have read here, it's unexperienced AST and some DPS players who have said that.
And this is why it's quite depressing. They have erased their old AST community to create a new and very small community because of feedback from not experienced AST (or even non-healer).
I hope SE could see in his statistic that I have more than thousand and several hundred hours of gameplay with SB AST while I have 2-3 hours with ShB AST (just quit at level 71).

Although I didn't really play AST pre 5.0 I'm kinda sad that we have this current system, whilst my view is that it breaks up DPS nice still, I prefer the idea of the old system. It feels like as there was the view to fish for the balance, instead of giving more incentive to use other cards or embracing the idea that if you've got a card you don't want you can still use it to your advantage in a "I make my own fate" kind of way, they instead made every card The Balance and said "screw it" with variety, choice and the lore they built around it.

Literally the old card system with the current Minor Arcana mechanic would have addressed this straight up, maybe make it lesser than The Balance to save people going straight for it, but it means there's no real penalty for a 'useless' card. People who liked making their MNK's go fast could still make their MNK's go fast and people who wanted to fish for The Balance get a free "The Balance" button when they can't fish for it.

[Risvertasashi]

Based on what I have read here, it's unexperienced AST and some DPS players who have said that.
And this is why it's quite depressing. They have erased their old AST community to create a new and very small community because of feedback from not experienced AST (or even non-healer).
I hope SE could see in his statistic that I have more than thousand and several hundred hours of gameplay with SB AST while I have 2-3 hours with ShB AST (just quit at level 71).

While I don't wish to diminish AST's with feedback about being unhappy with the current system -

I've raided alongside plenty of ASTs in SB. And they almost universally fished for balance. It wasn't this thing no one did.

By all means ask SE to change it back, I'm not here to criticize that though.

[CrimsonGunner]

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 personally wouldn't believe someone who start his own post by disrespecting other people opinions and goes to call them even hypocrite because they are main healers and they give feedback about the healers they love and their problems they have at SHB all in an effort to make healers more appealing and suprise suprise enjoyable to play for all.
it immediately shows how low to take you seriously just based on that alone.

another thing to note is your example which not only is idiotic but its way way way way way wrong especially comparing jobs to stakes, a good example for everyone is "everyone a critic" which is the perfect thing.
imagine the skills as food. each job is a restaurant that serve different type of food, roles are what each restaurant specializes in making(for example dps are like Italian cuisine ,tank are Asian cuisine and healers are french cuisine).
now you got us the customers/critics, we each go to our favorite restaurant(job) and it makes the most delicious food(have great skills and kit) that we love every day but then come the moment where the menu updates and changes are made, fine some changes are not ok and some were but overall each restaurant was still enjoyable to stay and kept its loyal customers there and even attracted new ones but then comes SHB.
all the restaurants menu's were changed to:
1.they remove half of what was there with no reason or gave something else as replacement(not even 1)
2.what was left is only 1 dish for each section on that side that had his dishes removed and it is left with only 3 dishes cause it had only 3 sections(single target damage,dot and aoe damage).
3.took the uniqueness that each restaurant had(fairies and card managements), removed it, made their menu bland without any flavor or style and lastly the execution of it all is poorly done that it causes health problems to its customers(fairy ghosting/delay,AST controller based players)
4.all the restaurants now have all the same dishes only with a different name where the only uniqueness left for each restaurant as explained before is so poorly done it borderline criminal.

so those who go to those restaurants every day now find themselves not going because they love them but because they don't have any other restaurant to go. there wasn't a new restaurant opened that serve the same cuisine but they don't like/can't stand the different type the other restaurants serve so they are stuck between the only 3 restaurant that serve that type of food without any way out but those that did left them done it cause those 3 were so grotesque and could stand the spices the other cuisines have and use for the food.(which says a lot compare to leaving because "DNC was the new class and i loved it so i main it now" to "i left cause healer skills were too boring/have too much issues so i took something i find bearable to do")

so as you said yourself it speaks volume when those who trash about the healers are main healers themselves because that means that the same people who love healers, play everyday as a healer,know everything about their main,their skills and kit and how to use them, means a lot more about how severe is the problems healers have compare to someone who doesn't play one and does not even touch it.

And yeah, right now, the Healer Forums are the absolute worst place to get advice on the state of healing. Just go to the Reddit, at least there you can post about something else without this same boring conversation starting. I've never seen the forums stay this tilted for so long.

there is a reason why it stays tilted for so long but you prefer to ignore it all and disrespect your fellow healers by calling them hypocrites which shows more about you then about the forum.

[Brandedblade]

there is a reason why it stays tilted for so long but you prefer to ignore it all and disrespect your fellow healers by calling them hypocrites which shows more about you then about the forum.

This quote made me wish I was a psychology major because goodness I really want to analyze this strong attachment healing in ffxiv is to ones identity when they say stuff like this. But then again I'm the one guy who actually likes the new AST cards and have defended them so I can definitely be seen as a hypocrite in that regard.