Why nearly no one is playing healers nowadays ?

[Visanis]

There are plenty of healers in game. Ok they are mostly in venue showing their 2B pants but hey, at least, it's good for my queue time. I'll miss the instant pop after EW release though :s

All the new dps playing "sage mains" will realise that the class is pretty much just a copy paste of scholar with a couple tweaks and drop it hard and fast because it's still mind numbingly boring.

[ToodlesElNoodles]

Pretty sure most DPS mains don’t know how SCH plays

They’re perceived as too complex and too hard for most people to play. When the healing community says they’re “not good”, the idea is that they’re not strong not that they’re not “fun”.

It’s why when I meet folks in Alliance raids and it goes south (for mechanical reasons not from any healers), they just say: “Oh, it’s ok. You’re playing SCH. SCHs can’t heal.”

As a recent player: SCH is still a blast to learn, especially since I have 3 expansions worth and the base game worth of ultimates, extremes, and savage content to work through.

[rewd]

Pretty sure most DPS mains don’t know how SCH plays

They’re perceived as too complex and too hard for most people to play. When the healing community says they’re “not good”, the idea is that they’re not strong not that they’re not “fun”.

It’s why when I meet folks in Alliance raids and it goes south (for mechanical reasons not from any healers), they just say: “Oh, it’s ok. You’re playing SCH. SCHs can’t heal.”

As a recent player: SCH is still a blast to learn, especially since I have 3 expansions worth and the base game worth of ultimates, extremes, and savage content to work through.

Not only DPS mains lol.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Umm... nope.
As scarce as healers might look like, saying 'nearly no one' is a hyperbole.

Don't worry, we'll see a huge influx of healer counts in first 1-2 months of EW

[Deceptus]

Umm... nope.
As scarce as healers might look like, saying 'nearly no one' is a hyperbole.

Don't worry, we'll see a huge influx of healer counts in first 1-2 months of EW

I'd imagine the first 3 weeks / 1 month will see people settle into their "mains". So pretty much at that point the mold will be set and we'll be back to healer insta queues.

[HappyHubris]

I've been gwib farming recently and it's reinforced my choice to leave healing behind in Endwalker. It's easier to get groups as a healer, but the experience repeating easier fights is starkly different: On DPS you can try and optimize just a bit more, whereas on healer you have very little to do on farm content.

[Dogempire]

Pretty sure most DPS mains don’t know how SCH plays

They’re perceived as too complex and too hard for most people to play. When the healing community says they’re “not good”, the idea is that they’re not strong not that they’re not “fun”.

It’s why when I meet folks in Alliance raids and it goes south (for mechanical reasons not from any healers), they just say: “Oh, it’s ok. You’re playing SCH. SCHs can’t heal.”

As a recent player: SCH is still a blast to learn, especially since I have 3 expansions worth and the base game worth of ultimates, extremes, and savage content to work through.

I don't think anyone except people anxious to try healing thinks it's too complex and too hard for most people. Scholar has the most complex kit of all 3 healers but that's not saying much since it's not that much more complex than AST and AST is only complicated because you have to remember which card buffs which class

Not gonna knock you for enjoying the class because people like what they like, but healing is at a point where it's so easy that there's a serious shortage of skilled, dedicated healer mains. Heck I picked up AST recently and even though I find it enjoyable I also think that it gets boring/repetitive after a while and it's probably something that'll only be fun to use occasionally

[Acidblood]

Short answer: Healer gameplay in FFXIV* is boring.

Longer answer: Healers in FFXIV* can be interesting to learn, but once you do, and the content is on farm (assuming it doesn't start that way :cough: 'Expert' dungeons), it gets very mundane spamming a single button over and over again for the majority of an encounter. Worst of all though, because there is practically no resource management in FFXIV, a healer’s reward for them and their group playing well is simply more single button spam.

For contrast, there are other MMOs that have classes that practically spam a single button most of the time, but they tend to have resource management (and status effects) as a key part of their gameplay; i.e. it's not so much pressing a button that makes the game engaging / rewarding, it's timing actions and managing your resources such that you and your group can complete encounters in a safe and efficient manner.

Now I'm not advocating that FFXIV go this route - that ship has long since sailed - What I would advocate though, is that healer gameplay be re-designed to better match the gameplay style that FFXIV has adopted. That is; always having something meaningful to engage with at a job level, something to improve, something to perfect (even if you know the content backwards). And if that isn't going to healing (due to the intermittent and largely predictable nature of outgoing damage), then really the only thing FFXIV has left is damage - be it direct or otherwise.

* I say 'in FFXIV' very deliberately, I as usual play Healers in MMOs and usually enjoy the role very much. I even enjoyed WHM in HW (yes, with Cleric Stance), and SCH in SB, but the ShB iteration of healers (which also looks to the be the EW iteration) is simply not enjoyable (outside, perhaps, of brief moments on AST).

[HappyHubris]

Acidblood (a metal healer name) brings up a good point: FFXIV has very little resource management. In other games massive incoming damage necessitates management of over healing and resource optimization (to the point of cast-cancelling heals). But we have strong heals and easily-dodged scripted damage, meaning that resources are not an issue for most savage content unless you have to massively rez the fallen.

[lisaa]

Recently I have been farming alliance raids and even in this kind of easy content where you could afk and still clear, healer is the only role that keeps me awake and pay attention. Playing dps is literally put my head down and do my rotation while asleep. I thought that easy content makes healing boring, but it is the other way around. As healer it is still rewarding to keep people alive, while dps without a reason to optimize just makes me ask why am I here