Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Havenchild]

The lack of healers in PF can just as easily be explained by the role being incredibly boring to play. Healers are essentially the exact same as they were in ShB but we're still seeing a decline compared to last expansion despite the lack of additional complexity or responsibility.

If that were true, why have healers been in such a heavy decline since the beginning of HW Raids, when they were arguably far more involved than their current iterations and their DPS became much more important?

In fact, the most popular healer at the time was WHM followed by AST and then SCH (lowest play rate), because SCH was the most complex at the time to play correctly. Mind you, at the time, this was a big complaint on the forums.

When SB hit, they nuked the SCH kit and it went up higher than AST play rate wise. AST got nuked next in SHB and it went higher as well.

History definitely leans towards simplification of the healers has increased player rates of them.

The only clearly visible feedback we have as to why people don't want to play healer anymore is from healer mains in this forum, of which the vast majority considers the role to be a mess with boring gameplay and no clear vision behind it's design.

The forums, more specifically the NA forums, are such a hilariously small vocal minority in the bigger pie. While their play rate data doesn't DIRECTLY show the REASON, it likely illustrates a trend between the healer roles. Combining that with the feedback they are getting from their internal teams, fanfests / live events, instance testing etc,, I don't think it's rocket science to understand the conclusions that are being drawn. Alot of the development team are also players (yoshi-p has confirmed this), so they get direct feedback from the populace by mutual conversation as well.

[Laphicet]

If that were true, why have healers been in such a heavy decline since the beginning of HW Raids, when they were arguably far more involved than their current iterations and their DPS became much more important?

In fact, the most popular healer at the time was WHM followed by AST and then SCH (lowest play rate), because SCH was the most complex at the time to play correctly. Mind you, at the time, this was a big complaint on the forums.

When SB hit, they nuked the SCH kit and it went up higher than AST play rate wise. AST got nuked next in SHB and it went higher as well.

History definitely leans towards simplification of the healers has increased player rates of them.

Dafuq are you talking about, percentagewise AST and SCH dropped off like a rock in ShB, especially compared to WHM. It even took until 5.3 and the mana economy fixes for AST to not have less than a third the play rate of WHM.
Are you going by raw numbers for this data? That's a very poor metric to follow since the game's population has mostly gone up over time, look at percentages compared to the rest of the playerbase and amongst the healers themselves instead. Because if we're going by raw numbers one could claim stupid shit like "more people are playing healer now than ever before so it must be working fine the way it is" only for one to take a look at the percentages and realize healers are played at a similar rate to Shadowbringers if not less played overall, even in the expansion with a new healer.

[Havenchild]

Dafuq are you talking about, percentagewise AST and SCH dropped off like a rock in ShB, especially compared to WHM. It even took until 5.3 and the mana economy fixes for AST to not have less than a third the play rate of WHM.
Are you going by raw numbers for this data? That's a very poor metric to follow since the game's population has mostly gone up over time, look at percentages compared to the rest of the playerbase and amongst the healers themselves instead. Because if we're going by raw numbers one could claim stupid shit like "more people are playing healer now than ever before so it must be working fine the way it is" only for one to take a look at the percentages and realize healers are played at a similar rate to Shadowbringers if not less played overall, even in the expansion with a new healer.

SCH was still widely prefered to AST because Nocturnal sucked ass (when in a party with a WHM.
AST did have MP issues, but was still a favored healer post progression compared to WHM. That's been the same pattern every expansion since AST's addition sans maybe HW regardless of the MP issues.

Playerbase has exploded true and compared to every other role, healers are probably the second rarest classes to fill in PF (on Aether), tanks seemingly the rarest.

That however, does not conflict any points that I've stated though about how healers, rare as is, can become more rare if you make them more complex. I use history with SCH and AST as perfect examples of toolkits that have been nuked over time to become more accessible to the playerbase because of feedback that had been provided to the devs during HW and SB.

[AngeliouxRein]

My point in that example was purely that if everyone else is playing perfectly, a bad healer who is not managing cds correctly (or dies) during such a mech is far more condusive to a wipe than a DPS or Tank missing a Reprisal or Addle. You can absolutely outheal the tether explosions with a lack of some mitigation from DPS / Tanks. Again PF is the best sample size I can give for this, where almost NO DPS mitigates without being told to and tanks barely Reprisal.

Thus the responsibility on a healer, perspectively, is definitely still higher.

But a bad player will always be a bad player. A normal player (which can be from a newbie to veteran), on the other hand, will always naturally get better over time. You can give a healer 50 ways to keep a party alive but if it's in the hands of a bad healer it won't even make a difference. You're focusing way too much on an problematic healer vs a normal healer. When I was playing this game in HW and StB, I was hardly on these forums simply because I was too busy having fun as a healer main and SMN main. After the changes to both though, yeah I needed to vent.

The healers back then, had a lot more reasons to actually heal vs now. The reward for getting good during those days was that the other half of your kit can now be comfortably used and push you further. When I first played SCH back then, I was terrible. Over time, however, I got more comfortable and suddenly being able to use bane, dots, shadow flare, miasma 2 was the best part of mastering SCH. It was just satisfying to be able play SCH like that. Same for AST. Was terrible there too (especially on shield aspect). But just like SCH, I got good and was able to really put all of those unique cards and both aspects of AST to full use. Again, pure satisfaction. Healers back then had a literal choice on how to play their roles. If you were struggling, then just focus on keeping people alive. Once you got skilled, welcome to the wild side of being a healer. Now you can help burn the adds down with all those glorious AoE abilities. Apply those powerful 10-20% buffs to a dps or tank and manipulate those buffs even further after you applied them. The ultimate reward of gettin good on healer.

What the majority here is asking for is the option to have this type of skill floor for healers again. Where both veteran and newbies can have fun playing a healer again and not just one side or the other.

[Havenchild]

But a bad player will always be a bad player. A normal player (which can be from a newbie to veteran), on the other hand, will always naturally get better over time. You can give a healer 50 ways to keep a party alive but if it's in the hands of a bad healer it won't even make a difference. You're focusing way too much on an problematic healer vs a normal healer. When I was playing this game in HW and StB, I was hardly on these forums simply because I was too busy having fun as a healer main and SMN main. After the changes to both though, yeah I needed to vent.

The healers back then, had a lot more reasons to actually heal vs now. The reward for getting good during those days was that the other half of your kit can now be comfortably used and push you further. When I first played SCH back then, I was terrible. Over time, however, I got more comfortable and suddenly being able to use bane, dots, shadow flare, miasma 2 was the best part of mastering SCH. It was just satisfying to be able play SCH like that. Same for AST. Was terrible there too (especially on shield aspect). But just like SCH, I got good and was able to really put all of those unique cards and both aspects of AST to full use. Again, pure satisfaction. Healers back then had a literal choice on how to play their roles. If you were struggling, then just focus on keeping people alive. Once you got skilled, welcome to the wild side of being a healer. Now you can help burn the adds down with all those glorious AoE abilities. Apply those powerful 10-20% buffs to a dps or tank and manipulate those buffs even further after you applied them. The ultimate reward of gettin good on healer.

What the majority here is asking for is the option to have this type of skill floor for healers again. Where both veteran and newbies can have fun playing a healer again and not just one side or the other.

See I'm in the camp right down the middle. I understand the standpoint you are coming from. I played through all of those same moments and despite everything stated, do believe that they have stripped too much over the years. SHB being particularly gross.

However, I also believe that in some cases while mastering these aspects of those versions of SCH and AST were fun, I can see the other side of the fence where someone interested in playing a healer ran towards WHM instead or decided not to heal entirely because the perception of SCH and AST came off as too complex for entry. Countless people still believe SCH is far more complicated then it actually is for example.

I couldn't tell you how they resolve it beyond adding a skill or two back they removed or making encounters more heal intensive, but I think it's safe to say the latter is not going to happen much more different than what you currently have.

If they could aim all of the classes to where SGE is, personally I think thats the sweet spot for complexity but it needs to ,if even possible, be introduced slowly over time to the other healers. I also rather have them fix the glaring issues on WHM, AST, SCH currently before they consider added any layers.

[Semirhage]

Healers are critical to party success? LOL.

When my friends and I feel like running roulettes we just go with three DPS + tank. Wall to wall pulls. There isn't any fear of death at any point in time during any run of any high level dungeon. Healing is so unbelievably easy and unnecessary in this game's casual content it's a joke. We don't go into Mount Gulg with a healer because not one of the four of us looks forward to spending 15-20 minutes going Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy....boss time! Dia Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare.

We want to play classes that are designed so a chicken couldn't play them at full efficiency within a few minutes.

[Nethereal]

I kinda hate how many of the people shouting about "healing is easy and boring" is that they actively ignore the many players in this game that struggle with managing heals during normal content. Its not as blatant in 8-man or 24-man stuff because of the fact that you have co-healers to synergize with when things get bad as well as other alliance healers who can spare a rez or two.

Ive commented on this thread about it before but in my time playing this game Ive had many situations where if a healer is down on a dungeon mob pull pretty much the entire party is just dead unless the tank is very good in its mitigation to finish the rest of the culling. There's people of different skill levels and I agree with Havenchild that there's this odd situation between the casual and mid/hardcore where each side has a different view of healing in general. So I can see the struggle behind the devs trying to find that rough middleground.

Although I will say they have yet to find it. Healing classes in general needs a bit of a rework, at least with its dps department. Having a single button rotation for it is so outdated and we could use just a bit more useful things to support the party instead of just spamming a single spell for damage. Thing is, some classes already have those extra dps damage abilities, like a White Mage's Assize and Afflatus Misery or a Sage's Toxicon and Phlegma. What we need is for those abilities to get retooled to being able to be more freely available to use for dps time. Sage's design is a step in the right direction but it can definitely be a lot better.

Get to level 80+ content and you won't have to worry about healing, because you're not needed.

[Nethereal]

I just want to make this clear though.

Keeping the tank as your target and spamming a single button(cure 2) all while using another to recover you mana(Lucid) ever so often and then using another button to heal the party(Medica 2) if the situation requires it all while still being able to keep the tank targeted is not hard. And if you think it is you should probably look inwards rather than outwards. Now if you don't think the above is hard and people are still dying while you're playing healer, then the issue isn't healing, it's you.

I find a large amount of the people making excuses for bad healers is that people already struggle healing currently.
Are they really struggling healing or are they simply just struggling. If you put them in a vacuum where they have 3 buttons and no other responsibilities is it their inability to hit the 3 buttons or everything else?
I would like to say that for the majority of the player base it's everything else, we've all been there it's fine but if you're one of the select few having an issue pressing those 3 buttons you should probably consider placing them in a more convenient place.
Disregarding dungeon pulls as they don't matter there is no boss in this game that can out damage a healer spamming their cure 2 equivalent, especially if they have a regen running. This isn't a healing issue, it's entirely a player issue.
And we shouldn't be catering to the extremes of either end, billy who can't hit 3 buttons should not be the reason EVERYONE can only hit 2 buttons.

Curtain Call is a rather bad example

It most definitely is. Shield up, tank lb3, don't do the mechanic, clear.

[Banriikku]

Healing needs a new skill ceiling and at the moment we are in the situation that skill- ceiling and floor are way too close. Also we have the problem that healers are still to close to the concept of "you need random GCD healing or random healing spikes". This concept is not really the case any more (if ever true) and needs to be changed. The coud be done in two ways: First, we could get more to heal but this is outruled by the Dev for many years now and second we get more to do in the dps department. This is in my opinion, if the the Dev dont want change the healing, the only possible solution especially if you are considering that healer dps is needed to clear in harder content. This is for me the clue that the Dev's have a more dps oriented healer in mind.

On the other hand the Dev's don't play healer and this is the major reason we have such bad designed healer at the moment - they are treated as a resource not a class. A spot that needs to be filled, not a class to have fun with.

[Nethereal]

Healing needs a new skill ceiling and at the moment we are in the situation that skill- ceiling and floor are way too close. Also we have the problem that healers are still to close to the concept of "you need random GCD healing or random healing spikes". This concept is not really the case any more (if ever true) and needs to be changed. The coud be done in two ways: First, we could get more to heal but this is outruled by the Dev for many years now and second we get more to do in the dps department. This is in my opinion, if the the Dev dont want change the healing, the only possible solution especially if you are considering that healer dps is needed to clear in harder content. This is for me the clue that the Dev's have a more dps oriented healer in mind.

On the other hand the Dev's don't play healer and this is the major reason we have such bad designed healer at the moment - they are treated as a resource not a class. A spot that needs to be filled, not a class to have fun with.

The reason people still think they need to randomly GCD heal is because they're not taught right. I would say most of the people who main healer don't even know what their co-healers abilities are and when they do and don't need to pick up the slack.
The most infamous being when star is down and your WHM goes for that medica 2.

They're also afraid of dying(Failure). Which is a big issue that they usually develop on their way to max level from dungeons.

And I agree our future only has more dps buttons, hopefully a dps combo.