I hate to, but I think I put down healing for now. Please make it engaging again, SE.

[Deceptus]

A well constructed survey is what I'd love to see. SE needs to get more community involvement from outside the forums. As it stands now, we're completely left in the dark, and it seems they are too. I'm not sure if it's a pride issue of the dev team, or if it's a fear of embarrassment, but I just want to know if they're making informed choices.

I'd love more involvement on healers period.

In the run up to Shadowbringers across all the stupid "influencer" interviews there were a total of ~96 questions asked. Three. . . THREE of them concerned healers and they were all brushed off.

I hate to be an alarmist but it really does seem like either

A) The development team simply doesn't care about healers, or

B) They don't know how to properly balance them.

Either of which is equally concerning.

[Shalan]

I'd love more involvement on healers period.

I'd like to throw in a third possibility: They don't know their audience has a problem with the state of healers or they think it's overblown.

The
1. Lack of interview questions
2. Dismissive tones of some questions regarding healers ("As for the job balance, setting aside healers...")
3. Lack of healing influencers
4. The selection of live letter questions (and lack of healer questions being asked)

Means there isn't much pressure being put on the devs from the English community's front. It might be different for the Japanese side, but I'm not sure as I can't read it or check the places they congregate to discuss FFXIV.

If there's not much pressure, it's not as important and doesn't need to be fully addressed. Those who are complaining obviously don't mean or know much since they're not generating much pressure.

That's part of why in the past I started a (dead) thread inquiring about current or potential healer influencers for future Media Tours and interviews. As someone who works in P.R., as much as many people dislike them, influencers are important in judging an audience's current opinions and though processes. Getting one that can operate on a larger stage, has a sizable following, or interact with the devs in some manner like we have for other roles would go a long way to having concerns recognized.

[Lodi]

I'd like to throw in a third possibility: They don't know their audience has a problem with the state of healers or they think it's overblown.

The
1. Lack of interview questions
2. Dismissive tones of some questions regarding healers ("As for the job balance, setting aside healers...")
3. Lack of healing influencers
4. The selection of live letter questions (and lack of healer questions being asked)

...

We're basically invisible, yup. We always represent 25% of any given group, yet we don't deserve anybody's time.

Not gonna lie, I felt like I received more attention as a RDM in one patch than as a healer since 5.0. AST had been bandaged until it suffocates because it was hot garbage after launch, and that's all we got.

I have become a dps now, it's the only role the devs seem to care about. If I want healing to be interesting, I have other games to play.

[Deceptus]

I'd like to throw in a third possibility: They don't know their audience has a problem with the state of healers or they think it's overblown.

The extreme lack of healers in content (healer in need bonus constantly) should give them a good idea that people are dropping or have dropped the job.

[Mansion]

The extreme lack of healers in content (healer in need bonus constantly) should give them a good idea that people are dropping or have dropped the job.

I'm pretty sure they have their own figures on their side, that's not the problem.

It is a possibility that they think the players' response is not reasonable too. They said they wanted to balance healers before adding a job, so maybe they will only look at (or prioritize) this data. I think this is the case since 5.1, AST numbers have raised and all healers are close to each other (althoug the lower number of AST clears might make the data unreliable). They can still adjust things here and there to iron out the differences (fix fairy issues for SCH for instance)

All in all, I think they just made a mistake with 5.X healing direction, and changing it would require time and resources that are already allocated in patch cycles. So I guess healing will stay how it is until 6.X. That does not mean that there won't be slight adjusments on jobs or later fights to create an illusion of healer engagement. But the system is not likely to change between two patches.

[Deceptus]

It is a possibility that they think the players' response is not reasonable too. They said they wanted to balance healers before adding a job, so maybe they will only look at (or prioritize) this data. I think this is the case since 5.1, AST numbers have raised and all healers are close to each other (althoug the lower number of AST clears might make the data unreliable).

AST still hasn't recovered from their extreme shortages.


E4S Parses:

Astrologian 11,707
White Mage 36,033
Scholar 30,555

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/29/#class=Any

Hades EX

Astrologian 5,483
White Mage 14,534
Scholar 9,691

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...1049&class=Any

They're still nowhere near the other two.

[Crushnight]

Ast also has a lot of Stigma to get past as well

-Healer stigma in general of being dull 1 nuke 1 DoT for downtime when heals aren't needed.
-New card system is underwhelming
-The reward is not worth the effort over the competition
-Controller issues especially when optimising
-Gameplay doesn't reflect lore

The devs have only addressed one of these, that being the reward/effort with Ast now being the strongest healer but the biggest one keeping Ast numbers so low is the controller issues, this problem needs to be addressed asap yet they will not even acknowledge it and thus the stigma will remain for most of the expansion alienating people before touching it.

[Deceptus]

Ast also has a lot of Stigma to get past as well

-Healer stigma in general of being dull 1 nuke 1 DoT for downtime when heals aren't needed.
-New card system is underwhelming
-The reward is not worth the effort over the competition
-Controller issues especially when optimising
-Gameplay doesn't reflect lore

The devs have only addressed one of these, that being the reward/effort with Ast now being the strongest healer but the biggest one keeping Ast numbers so low is the controller issues, this problem needs to be addressed asap yet they will not even acknowledge it and thus the stigma will remain for most of the expansion alienating people before touching it.

Funny because AST damage rotation was pretty much the framework for the Shadowbringers damage re-work and no AST would have wished their pre-ShB rotation on anyone.

Regarding their lore, I find it funny that basically that their lore is essentially useless now with the current changes.

[Ceasaria]

Ast also has a lot of Stigma to get past as well

-Healer stigma in general of being dull 1 nuke 1 DoT for downtime when heals aren't needed.
-New card system is underwhelming
-The reward is not worth the effort over the competition
-Controller issues especially when optimising
-Gameplay doesn't reflect lore

The devs have only addressed one of these, that being the reward/effort with Ast now being the strongest healer but the biggest one keeping Ast numbers so low is the controller issues, this problem needs to be addressed asap yet they will not even acknowledge it and thus the stigma will remain for most of the expansion alienating people before touching it.

The funny thing is how we could already see it with tooltips from media tour that SE didn't fixed any healer problems (except adlo crit) but instead created new ones, and I was far from to imaginate they would be numerous and quite important.
For me, it's maybe radical as solution, but healer role and every healer job need a total rework at this point (or at the very least come back to previous iterations and see what works well and build healers on them, it shouldn't be complicated...).

[LariaKirin]

AST still hasn't recovered from their extreme shortages.

10 SCH for every 1 AST in 5.0.
3 SCH for every 1 AST in 5.1.

No recovery.

Also, why is this a problem?