Has anyone quit healing?

[althenawhm]

If healers dont get our concerns addressed in the next live letter, or maybe even something nice in the 5.2 patch, I am thinking of quitting until healer see some real improvement.
I just cant keep playing the game when healers, which are 1/4 of every party, get tossed under a bus by the devs.

[MerlinCross]

would just like to add to this thread, a couple of friends on mine, one a life time sch the other a fresh healer both dropped their books. the former did it a few months ago but has quit ff14 until 5.2 and said she decided not to play sch when she returns, the other has done all healers to 70 and basically given up finding whm too boring and not suited to his playstyle, ast stressful with no payoff and sch dull and "not feeling like a pet class"

I think this is something we need to look into and hear about more. Most experienced Healers I know hate the changes(All the healers in my FC, a very small sample size mind you) HATE the changes. But I wondered what new players would think of the current healers. Would they get enjoyment out of it? Perhaps we need to hear more from people that won't learn the healing Role in it's current state rather than just the people leaving it.

To put a different way, the devs could be banking on a new wave of fresh blood Healers to replace the previous group who hate the changes. But if the new ones also hate the current state, well then that's an issue for them.

[RinaB]

No but these damn tanks bring me pretty close.

This. The tank changes invite the cream of the crap to play a role that at least needs to be understood but that's apparently a lot to ask for these days. The tank changes hurt healers more then the healer changes imo and honestly when I see a gunbreaker or paladin I'm expecting the worst as default.

[Risvertasashi]

This. The tank changes invite the cream of the crap to play a role that at least needs to be understood but that's apparently a lot to ask for these days. The tank changes hurt healers more then the healer changes imo and honestly when I see a gunbreaker or paladin I'm expecting the worst as default.

For the first time yesterday, I ate a tankbuster as a healer. I was rather surprised. Whereas in 4.x and previous it was reasonably common.

You also don't have cases like "tank has 6 vuln stacks and my cohealer is dead/out of MP but won't turn on tank stance" now.

Not saying it's all rainbows and roses, but previous iterations weren't either.

[MOZZYSTAR]

I guess what bothers me the most is that Celestial Opposition lost its stun -- which I would have been less angry about, if another healer job (WHM) had lost theirs, because I'd just assume that Squeenix didn't want healers to have a stun. But JEBUS the fact that the other job's stun was already better than AST's and wasn't touched, really just pisses me off.

And don't get me wrong: there are still buttloads of issues with AST, e.g. the card system, but taking away our stun was a real slap in the face.

THIS! WHY did we lose our stun? White Mage still has stun with their Holy, so why did we lose ours? It wasn't an underused tool. I used it all the time, basically whenever it was off CD and there was a large mob of heavy AoEs. I had seen other Astrologians use it, too. It was useful, it was strategic, it was helpful for both us and our party.
What were they thinking making that yet another heal? We don't need another heal. /Rubs face

I think this is something we need to look into and hear about more. Most experienced Healers I know hate the changes(All the healers in my FC, a very small sample size mind you) HATE the changes. But I wondered what new players would think of the current healers. Would they get enjoyment out of it? Perhaps we need to hear more from people that won't learn the healing Role in it's current state rather than just the people leaving it.

To put a different way, the devs could be banking on a new wave of fresh blood Healers to replace the previous group who hate the changes. But if the new ones also hate the current state, well then that's an issue for them.

There have actually been some posts in the healing forums in the past few months with new players trying healer and being very disappointed by the new iteration of healers. One in particular mentioned how AST's class quests build up each card to being something different and significant and grand, but ended up being all the same in practise - which they were really bummed out about. Another player posted up their thoughts on the new iterations and said that after reading around of what the healers used to be, they were pretty bummed about how they were now.

There weren't too many that I saw, but they do exist and don't necessarily appeal to new players. I think the changes might actually appeal more to players who already played FFXIV but were too intimidated to try healer classes beforehand based on comments I've read.

[RinaB]

Well, from the pov of a relatively new AST main, I don't think the new card system is bad enough to dump the class in the garbage. After understanding how the cards used to function I can understand the anger but how much of it is an inability to adapt vs the class being actually unplayable? all I ever read is healers going on about dps, dps and moar dps! well, now you have cards that do nothing but contribute to dps.

with that being said the players are kind of putting the devs in a tough spot by constantly wanting to have their cake and eat it too. Am I saying all the healer changes were good or bad? no, it's perspective really and if the changes were bad enough to make you quit the game entirely, perhaps you were already burnt out and wanting to quit.

a lot of players jumped ship and started tanking since it's so easy mode and still more in demand then dps which makes healing even more difficult now. the key word here is healing, not dpsing. with the plethora of awful tanks and new players who are learning (not saying they're awful), having my cards in the current state simplifies my job so I can focus more on healing.

I actually retired from tanking for a lot of reasons but one big one was the constant healers not actually healing and leaving groups always teetering on death so they could dps more. I vowed not to be that healer and low and behold I'm usually the only one healing in 8 players while my partner is casting stone 4 until the button breaks. With all that being said it's not really confusing to me why devs are staying quiet on the healer front. if you emphasize healing you piss off the green dpsers, if you emphasize dps then you piss off the people who actually want to heal as a healer. so what do you do when you can't give them everything?

[Saefinn]

Well, from the pov of a relatively new AST main, I don't think the new card system is bad enough to dump the class in the garbage. After understanding how the cards used to function I can understand the anger but how much of it is an inability to adapt vs the class being actually unplayable? all I ever read is healers going on about dps, dps and moar dps! well, now you have cards that do nothing but contribute to dps.

with that being said the players are kind of putting the devs in a tough spot by constantly wanting to have their cake and eat it too. Am I saying all the healer changes were good or bad? no, it's perspective really and if the changes were bad enough to make you quit the game entirely, perhaps you were already burnt out and wanting to quit.

a lot of players jumped ship and started tanking since it's so easy mode and still more in demand then dps which makes healing even more difficult now. the key word here is healing, not dpsing. with the plethora of awful tanks and new players who are learning (not saying they're awful), having my cards in the current state simplifies my job so I can focus more on healing.

I actually retired from tanking for a lot of reasons but one big one was the constant healers not actually healing and leaving groups always teetering on death so they could dps more. I vowed not to be that healer and low and behold I'm usually the only one healing in 8 players while my partner is casting stone 4 until the button breaks. With all that being said it's not really confusing to me why devs are staying quiet on the healer front. if you emphasize healing you piss off the green dpsers, if you emphasize dps then you piss off the people who actually want to heal as a healer. so what do you do when you can't give them everything?

I don't think it's so much it's unplayable, but people aren't enjoying it. Though to me, AST at the moment is the most enjoyable of the 3 by the merit it has more to do in its downtime. The card system isn't a game breaker for me at least, but I was never an AST main, SCH was my baby. Though I preferred the old card system, the fact it gives me something to do is about the only reason I will still sometimes queue as a healer.

As for the green DPS versus pure healing focus. I don't think they've achieved either approach. Because by adding more and more healing skills that makes healing a lot more efficient. And without the content requiring it means for a lot of content your healing can be so efficient you can have a considerable amount of downtime. And whilst there's more healing skills there's less of a healing focus. This means that your option then is to DPS more, which would sound great for the green DPS supporters, but DPSing is now dead boring. But the biggest complaint I've seen of the forums is not so much their vision of healers not being achieved but not wanting to be bored and wanting to feel like they're doing something.


The job with the strongest healing focus at the moment is BLU with healer mimicry and they have about 4 healing spells and a butt load of DPS ones. It seems paradoxical, but when it comes to healing less is more (within reason of course, there is also such thing as too few healing spells). And they used to have the balance of healing and DPSing right. I'd argue for the majority of the game's content a DPS focus as a healer is not required, my view is generally just don't be lazy, which just goes for anybody on any role (heck if you're a nervous healer or a new healer not DPSing because you're being cautious, I don't class that as 'lazy' so that's fine).

Whilst I can understand the frustrations of people not playing their roles properly...to dumb down jobs to me seems totally the wrong solution (because even then, people still focusing on their DPS as a healer, as people's worth in the endgame is measured by their rDPS). I don't like it especially as one of the things I liked when this game came out is that it eased you into your role to learn how to play it through the game design, this was something I praised the game for. Whilst their original approach is now outdated, I'd have liked to have seen more of that principle. Even then as somebody who tanks, heals and DPS's, I never found it to be widespread enough of a problem, just one people tended to vent about.

[Billythepancake]

snip

I don't see how having more DPS options would suddenly make you not heal as a healer. I healed just fine in SB when I had more DPS buttons to press. DPSing is a part of your job as a healer, I am not going to kiss away every booboo people get, I will heal them when they start to get low. I genuinely don't know how anyone could heal so much to the point where they don't think about DPSing, outside of ultimate. I'll be honest, TEA has been the one fight this expac where I don't mind having a smaller DPS pool, because I'm so focused on everything else I don't have time to worry about my lack of things to press, but I cannot reasonably expect every piece of content to be on that level, hence why I would like more DPS options. Do I want to be a full blown DPS? Not really, I enjoy the responsibility of healing and being in charge of people's health, but when I'm playing well I want more to do other than spam 1 button (and in most content that is the VAST majority of what I'm doing) with DPS being the easiest thing to add. Could they add something else to keep my occupied? Sure, I'd be fine with that, but that's a lot more work then just giving back a few dots and bane, so it's much more realistic to ask for that. Unless I have a tank with glass bones and paper skin, I will always find plenty of time to DPS, and I want that time to be as engaging as when I'm healing.

As for AST, I wouldn't mind the changes myself, I am one of those dreaded people that enjoys parsing and improving. However, that does not mean I think the changes are good because most people do not play just to stroke their e-peen to their parse. I also hate the changes because playing that class well is asking for carpal tunnel with the amount of target swapping you have to do in such a short period of time. I did one run of e1s as AST and I have never struggled so much as a healer. It wasn't a fun Dark Souls like struggle either, where it makes you want to kick its ass, it was just flat out miserable. At a casual level, sure, the changes aren't awful, but that kind of negates the entire point of the change, the change seems like it was made for the hardcore parsing savage/ultimate players, but most healers at that level hate playing it too because the target swaps make it miserable, especially in the opener. So I have no idea who the new card system is supposed to appeal to, maybe people with wrists made of titanium?

[Recon1o6]

Here's a question for folks, does ditching healing in all content except savage count? That's pretty much all I'm using my whm for during the last 3 weeks and ONLY when I need to. I tried ot do a level in AST but it was more soul crushing than I could put into words and so my cards and globe are going to gather dust until 2021. I haven't touched my SCH book on my alt since 5.0 came out either.

If it isnt ditched, then its pretty damn close.

[Risvertasashi]

Here's a question for folks, does ditching healing in all content except savage count? That's pretty much all I'm using my whm for during the last 3 weeks and ONLY when I need to. I tried ot do a level in AST but it was more soul crushing than I could put into words and so my cards and globe are going to gather dust until 2021. I haven't touched my SCH book on my alt since 5.0 came out either.

If it isnt ditched, then its pretty damn close.

I pretty much play DPS in non-savage content now. Since we're basically DPS there anyways it seemed like the logical choice. I do enjoy healing savage content, however, so I'm not likely to stop.

Or tank if I'm feeling the need to be more active. Occasionally I'll do leveling roulette on healer to grab the extra materia, but in expert, never.