Healing is now a state of permanent hatred.

[Mesarthim]

I'm not sure why you keep saying 'we' like you are the ambassador for Healers United. I never complained about the healer changes because I personally like to see how things will play out. There was definitely some healer things that needed to be adjust come ShB launch but as of right now I'd say the healers are more balanced then they have ever been. Again, I'm sorry that you are not having fun on the role you wanted to play but you don't speak for the majority of healers and neither do the forums. In my limited time being here I've realized alot of you are vocal but usually the minority in opinions.

Is that why I see a lot of distaste for healing everywhere I look? Of course my mistake. I forgot your lot are the only kind that's ever correct. You must be living under a rock when even the JP side of the game has complaints about healing. Well duh some people enjoy healing but don't act like there hasn't been drawbacks to how they've treated healers too.

I don't see why you had to write common sense like you can't tell context. Why do you have to post acting like they spoke for you?

[Billythepancake]

I'm not sure why you keep saying 'we' like you are the ambassador for Healers United. I never complained about the healer changes because I personally like to see how things will play out. There was definitely some healer things that needed to be adjust come ShB launch but as of right now I'd say the healers are more balanced then they have ever been. Again, I'm sorry that you are not having fun on the role you wanted to play but you don't speak for the majority of healers and neither do the forums. In my limited time being here I've realized alot of you are vocal but usually the minority in opinions.

I can't speak for others, but I've found it very difficult to run into healers, and the ones I tend to run into are, well, to put it nicely, not where they should be. I've noticed when I queue as a tank that I'll have a 5 minute queue, yet healers are instant, even when the roulette clearly says tank in need. I've also noticed, in my experience, the people who enjoy healing are the ones who don't play it very well, the ones they do know how to heal either A: stopped playing healer or B: will play it just for roulette rewards or what have you. Sure I've met the occasional WHM I've been pleasantly surprised by that knows how to use holy, but those are few and far in between.

Is my experience everyone's? Not at all, I'm sure there are people who've had massively different encounters, but I've also met plenty who've had similar run ins.

Want my opinion? Literally everything about this iteration of healers is a downgrade, except maybe the lily mechanic on WHM. (which is probably why every healer now plays WHM) Nothing was improved, and you are punished for doing well. Instead of being rewarded with something interesting to do, you are instead relegated to spamming a single button.

[Kalise]

There was definitely some healer things that needed to be adjust come ShB launch but as of right now I'd say the healers are more balanced then they have ever been.

This is true.

However, most of the qualms about Healers is not predicated on their balance.

Most of the qualms stem from how FUN they are to play. But since ALL 3 Healers have been homogenized down into 1 nuke, 1 DoT, 1 AoE nuke for the majority of their gameplay, they're all equally balanced and equally boring as sin.

Again, I'm sorry that you are not having fun on the role you wanted to play but you don't speak for the majority of healers and neither do the forums. In my limited time being here I've realized alot of you are vocal but usually the minority in opinions.

Forums don't necessarily equate to being the voice of the majority...

However, it's notable that in game, queueing up for duties sees a significant lack of healers. With queues for TANKS (The role notorious for being the most lacking role in all MMO's and indeed was the case for all of FFXIV's life up until ShB) being far longer a wait than for Healers.

Which is indicative that people simply aren't playing Healers as much here in ShB, which would suggest a number of people are unhappy with the state of them.

[Kummies]

Is that why I see a lot of distaste for healing everywhere I look? Of course my mistake. I forgot your lot are the only kind that's ever correct.

That's not to say I dismiss your side's opinion, but you need to stop dismissing people who disagree with you. You must be living under a rock when even the JP side of the game has complaints about healing. Drop the holier than thou attitude while you're at it.

I don't see where I acted like I was better then everyone else. All I said was that I disagreed. I'm not the one acting over-dramatic and acting like its the end of the healer role because some skills got taken away and some numbers adjust.. Please quote me on when I dismissed ANYONE who has disagreed with me? I'll wait. I've kindly pointed out that not everyone shares the same opinions as the forums. I mean, where are you looking that you see so much distaste in healing because the only place I see it at this magnitude is here. So please link those too. I'd like to see what is making the healer roles so unfun to them.

[Mavrias]

I don't mind dying to an occasional slip, especially if the healer is new to the role (and since many prior healer mains are playing other jobs, there's a greater chance of that) ... what irks the crap out of me is when the healer lets the whole group ride at low health after unavoidable damage, while they furiously mash their precious few DPS buttons trying to parse higher.

On that note, I've gotta admit, duty finder PUGs are more pleasurable while people are waiting for a plug-in update, and healers seem a bit more willing to cast that extra heal or two. I can see why Square doesn't provide an in-game parser. :P

The only HP that matters is the last one. If your too chicken to let HoTs handle topping you back up, or sitting low until my next instantcast is ready, then you come on healer and do it yourself.

[Mesarthim]

I don't see where I acted like I was better then everyone else. All I said was that I disagreed. I'm not the one acting over-dramatic and acting like its the end of the healer role because some skills got taken away and some numbers adjust.. Please quote me on when I dismissed ANYONE who has disagreed with me? I'll wait. I've kindly pointed out that not everyone shares the same opinions as the forums. I mean, where are you looking that you see so much distaste in healing because the only place I see it at this magnitude is here. So please link those too. I'd like to see what is making the healer roles so unfun to them.

The context of my post changed because it was hastily written. But I've grown very tired of having to constantly recount all of the problems with healers over the course of two major patches with no word from the devs. Just see Billy's and Kalise for examples. There is a noticeable amount off less healers ingame too. Of course queues will proceed but a lot of the time tank queues are having to wait (but not always). 24 mans also have a lack of healers, etc.

Likely only going to get worse of they shun healers for a third expansion.

I suppose I should apologize but I've gotten tired of seeing posts where people act like healers are the best thing in the world because "they" feel it is fine. Perhaps I took that out on you. People have their right to enjoy it but it is certainly not in the best position in terms of fun for everyone. Everyone.

And god help me if I get into what is wrong with AST and SCH, and to a lesser degree WHM.

[Saefinn]

I don't think either side is wrong for liking/disliking healers in their current state. If anything, I think it's testament to a big issue when we're arguing the playstyle of healers in general in a game that embraces a multiple job/class system that's equipped to deal with multiple approaches to a problem and offer a variety of play styles.

The healer design philosophy of 5.0 could have been made into healer #4. Meaning those who're satisfied with healers now would have got what they wanted.
Those of us who loved how our existing healers were before would have got to keep them that way.

How I'd have done it is perhaps:
SCH -> Evolution of 2.0 or 3.0 SCH
WHM -> Evolution of 2.0 or 3.0 WHM
AST -> Evolution of 4.0 AST
New Healer -> Adaptation of 5.0 WHM (which I believe is the best designed of the 5.0 healers)

Then arguably, you satisfy more people, accommodate more variety and playstyles and so on. Then we don't need to be arguing over what playstyles healers should accommodate.

Sure healers are doing better for balance. But I hate the overemphasis of balance people in this game. As long as the job is good enough to clear competently enough then balance should only really matter once we're hitting that top percentile of players who're pushing world firsts, which is only a tiny part of the population. Because if your job is lower on the table, but good enough, you just have to be better at your job to match the next guy, which is not a big deal, some jobs/classes have higher brackets of difficulty and some people find that rewarding.

The leaves those pushing for high optimisation, people of that level are a small percentage and it might not be so unreasonable they compromise on the jobs they're playing to do that, because chances are they're going to be playing what's meta and they can't all be meta.

[Kummies]

The context of my post changed because it was hastily written. But I've grown very tired of having to constantly recount all of the problems with healers over the course of two major patches with no word from the devs. Just see Billy's and Kalise for examples. There is a noticeable amount off less healers ingame too. Of course queues will proceed but a lot of the time tank queues are having to wait (but not always). 24 mans also have a lack of healers, etc.

Likely only going to get worse of they shun healers for a third expansion.

I suppose I should apologize but I've gotten tired of seeing posts where people act like healers are the best thing in the world because "they" feel it is fine. Perhaps I took that out on you. People have their right to enjoy it but it is certainly not in the best position in terms of fun for everyone. Everyone.

And god help me if I get into what is wrong with AST and SCH, and to a lesser degree WHM.

I'm sorry that you are frustrated and I'm sorry if what I said came off the wrong way but I simply can not grasp why people are so upset.

Lets look at what changed and maybe then you or someone else can point me in the direction I need to face because I must be missing something.

AST: Got the card system reworked. Lost cleric stance. Lost time dilation.

Only thing I see people complain about on AST are some QoL changes for some skills. Also some people dont like the new cards. Others have a problem with the opener on controller.

WHM: Lilies got reworked (?). Lost Cleric stance. (This is the healer I am least familiar with because I find it extremely boring with little to no challenge but with big reward with its blood lilies)

and then there is ... SCH: Prob took the most hits from the move from SB to ShB. Lost like 3 dps skills and cleric stance.

Now if you are speaking from a SCH perspective, I can sympathize with you. You lost skills but it was to streamline you with the other healers. So from what I've listed I don't see much that has changed (dps related) for healers in the move from SB to ShB.. Hell, AST dps skills are the same since SB. And WHM got a new dps skill..

Soo what is making healers so unfun for you all? Was it losing cleric stance or something? Or not getting enough dps skills?

[Mesarthim]

SCH:

-Loss of various ACN related battle skills
-Biolysis cannot be spread since bane is gone.
-Jarring 2 second delay added to Seraph when summoned, leaving this awkward delay.
-Skill ghosting. Using two pet skills too fast might make the second go on cooldown without use, or using fey illumination before summon seraph will cause seraph to eat the first skill and not use it.
-Pet deployment was removed
-None of the level cap skills are compatible with each other
-Aetherflow locked to combat only
-Selene was just flat out removed from the game rather than fixed
-Quickened Aetherflow gone
-Fairy skills cannot be cast simultaneously, required you to physically use a skill
-Fey Blessing is very weak, uses the forgettable fey gauge, and has too long of a cooldown
-/+Energy Drain was removed and added back... for the second time
+At least we got recitation?
+Lv 78 trait makes sacred soil worth using, but only for 78+ content, not below
-Low level ARR content feels terrible now that aetherflow is locked to 45+

AST:

-Time Dilation removed
-Old Celestial Opposition removed
-Cards reworked to something that just doesn't feel impactful (at least as far as my opinions go)
-Card durations shortened
-Celestial Oppositions stun was removed
+New Celestial Opposition at least doesnt suck after they buffed it when tier 1 savage released (but the stun is still gone but WHM gets to keep their spammable one?)
+Divination seems like a neat concept, at least partially fixes the problem I had with AoE card overwriting
-Sleeve Draw feels like ass. Before it was a sleek one and one skill, now it feels so bad to use.
-Devs clearly did not care to balance AST when ShB dropped because anyone with a shred of knowledge about AST could've seen how horrible it was on 5.0 release that the devs had a ONE PAGE LONG list of buffs for AST when savage dropped.
-Seals are combat only so you risk not getting a seal because YOU werent in combat yet but your party member was.
-Horoscope could use the auto detonation treatment
-Cards feel horrible with a controller
+Charge system for essential dignity is nice, but only for 78+
-Supposedly went from balance fishing to seal fishing, still fishing.

WHM:

I stopped playing this at 3.4 but mostly...

-Fluid Aura has been progressively made more and more useless with each expansion
+Lillies are made better, overall handy mechanic over it's mostly useless Stormblood counterpart
-Aero 3, a handy AoE DoT, just... gone.

I'd elaborate more but I don't much feel like playing WHM. I preferred AST and SCH (I was an AST main from 3.4 to ShB launch and I want nothing to do with the job now, mostly because of cards). I feel like I got gutpunched for being an AST and SCH player.

Edit: Oh and not getting anything new for two expansions now. Everyone keeps wanting everything to be a DPS.

[Volkaj]

Soo what is making healers so unfun for you all? Was it losing cleric stance or something? Or not getting enough dps skills?

In terms of just DPS, SCH lost Miasma, Miasma II, Bane, Shadowflare, Cleric Stance, Selene, Quickened Aetherflow and had its fairy skills be put as OGCDs rather than pet OGCDs. Bio also got its duration increased to 30s.

What does this change in terms of gameplay?

No Miasma means one less DoT to keep track of.
Bio duration at 30s means perfect alignment with most cooldowns, which translate into a more static flow.
No Miasma II single-target weaving, with its dynamics: melee range, high MP cost, DoT.
No Quickened Aetherflow to get more MP, DPS and healing out if you knew how to use your Aetherflow stacks properly.
No Shadowflare.
No Miasma + Bio + Bane.
No using fairy skills while casting.

Stormblood's SCH didn't have a thrilling DPS rotation compared to actual DPS and tanks, sure.
But that small DPS toolkit, combined with the healing kit, was what made SCH fun to play and optimize.

You can absolutely still optimize, but it isn't gonna be getting extra Energy Drains, snuffing healing GCDs out, getting higher DoT uptime, etc.
Its gonna be one more Broil III.