I am a former physical ranged main (BRD in HW and SB, DNC in ShB), and a current healer main that has played the healers almost as long as I’ve played this game (SGE, primarily, but I play all four). So I am very well versed in salty rage and apathy. Here’s a bit of my own experience when it comes to FFXIV:

I unironically liked bowmage. Probably because it was the BRD I learned to play when I started this game in HW. I found it interesting, but I loved the SB changes much more. I had fun playing the job. And I feel like I was at least fairly decent at it. Then ShB came and stripped away the aspects I enjoyed, and I dropped it. Even now, I still think about the previous iterations that I enjoyed far more than the ShB version of BRD—and my EW play, while it has been more than it was in ShB, still leaves a lot to be desired.

Despite not touching MCH much (although I did enjoy HW MCH a bit), I’ve acknowledged that the job is the red-headed step child of the physical ranged. It seems like most MCH mains here and on other platforms have just descended into pure, self-deprecating apathy, and have accepted that their job is destined to always be in the shadow of the other two. Which is sad and should never be the case. That it has such little representation when it comes to high-end content is the only thing that might save it because I am positive the developers look at The Website That Shall Not Be Named, even if they don’t want to admit it. But there is still a part of me that is skeptical the site and what data it shows could save MCH.

The healers…well I’m an old AST boomer. Loved the job in HW and SB. Loved the card system. The Time Mage aspects. The dual sects even if Nocturnal Sect was always inferior to Diurnal. Loved everything about it. The only thing that kept me playing it in ShB after they butchered the cards and in EW is its healing kit. Otherwise, it’s a shadow of the job I loved.

WHM was my go-to healer for learning new stuff due to its low maintenance and high recovery, but that didn’t mean it didn’t have it’s problems in the past; the 6.1 changes, while some are appreciated, they are band-aids at best and do not address the real issues.

SCH is my healer I play the least, but I’ve always acknowledged the sort of anti-synergy its kit has, and the clunkiness of the Fairy. SGE is fun, but it’s no less interesting than WHM. I’m on auto-pilot when I play it—and that really goes for all of them.

All four healers are basically the same job with a different coat of paint. None require an extensive amount of thought outside of card optimization on AST, which isn’t necessary unless you want to chase leaderboards. We are healers in name only because we sure as heck aren’t spending most of our time in content healing. We spend it pressing our 1 damage nuke 100 to 150 times in a given encounter. And any requests to address the lack of healing we do or to improve the DPS gameplay aspects are blatantly ignored. I eagerly watched the Q&A PLL hoping they would answer one of the myriad of questions that was about healer gameplay, and I was thoroughly disappointed by the flippant and dismissive answer given. I’m even more abashed that my fears were confirmed, and healers in general are designed around players that struggle to progress through the simplest of content, since the good healer on the team was “replaced” because they did Extremes and were “too good”. Like what????

Healers are the only role in this game that rely heavily on their party being a clown fiesta to feel a sense of engagement, versus getting it from their gameplay. They are the only role that gets more boring and more unneeded the better one’s party is.

Why does that have to remain the case? Why do I have to basically do 24-man alliance raids on Day 1 to feel like I’m an actual healer? To feel that engagement and rush playing my role? Why can’t I feel that rush in Extremes? Or Savage (outside of week 1 progression)? I felt it a bit when I cleared UCoB on AST, but that was the first Ultimate I cleared on a healer, so it was to be expected. The reality is that I still spent most of my time dealing damage compared to healing.



I’m rambling a bit talking about my past experience in this game, so I’ll get to the point. I think everyone probably understands the full extent of my salt now.

Not playing a job has worked in the past. At least with regards to certain DPS jobs. 5.0 NIN had extremely low representation on The Website That Shall Not Be Named, and, as a result, it was adjusted in 5.1. BRD did receive a lot of backlash for its 3.0 iteration—but it still took the developers an entire expansion to rectify that. AST has always had low play counts, but they were the lowest after the launch of ShB when the AST playerbase was so divisive on the ShB job changes. Plus, its mana economy was absolute crap, and they still had to wait until 5.3 to get adjustments to that. The only credit I can give is that the developers at least upped the healing potencies prior to Eden’s Gate launch. ShB launch AST was so bad in terms of healing potency it bordered on HW launch levels of bad—where the job was literally unplayable.

However, other jobs such as DRK and the healers have consistently brought up issues in the past, and have been ignored. It took DRK 6+ years to get Living Dead addressed. Despite constant complaints about it from the NA side. Healers have been a pile of salt since SB, but they aren’t even acknowledged. When they are, the most they get are potency adjustments and mana cost adjustments. Since late HW when the SB Media Tour rolled out, WHMs expressed their criticism of the SB Lily System, and were promptly told to “just wait until the expansion comes out and try it”. Expansion comes out, Lilies still suck. “Just wait until Savage.” “Just wait until our new Ultimate mode.” “Just wait until Shadowbringers.” Even DRK got told in 4.3 that “major changes to it” would have to wait until ShB…

Meanwhile, there are jobs that have consistently always been designed well. It’s no secret that BLM is one of those, and the theories as to why seem more and more sound the more I consider them…



In all, I think the idea is a decent one in theory. If all healer mains suddenly up and left the role, I do think that they might finally get a chance to speak on the stage about what the problems are and be heard. It’s just not one that feasibly practical.

Too many people are either ignorant on the problems or simply don’t care enough to drop the jobs. I think this is one reason why WHM has suffered for so long: it’s always had high play counts despite the issues and complaints, and WHMs that don’t care to look into the job too deeply “fail to see the problem” with it. Even education doesn’t seem to help, with them usually still opting to play it. And who knows. Maybe they enjoy it. But I don’t think enjoyment necessarily means that the issues surrounding healers (primarily that we are basically gimped damage dealers and not healers) deserve to be ignored.

I’m honestly shocked that, despite the backlash surrounding the SAM and NIN changes that the developers still went through with them. I guess they were just “too finalized” to walk back, but there has never been an instance where all three regions were unanimous in their complaints. Even JP was demanding to know why these changes were made. It makes me wonder if they will be reversed in 6.2.


Anyways, TL;DR—sound idea in theory that has worked in the past. Just impractical. I wish it was simple to just drop jobs en masse to draw attention to the issues, but it isn’t. So I guess I have no choice but to either continue shouting into the wind my complaints, or just be like most MCH mains and drown myself in self-deprecating apathy while I spam Glare/Malefic/Broil/Dosis 100+ times in a fight until my X button on my controller breaks and I have to replace it again.