How to easily have healers dps engaged ( yet another thread)

[Supersnow845]

Let me see the receipts.

Last I checked, the game is doing phenomenally well, and there are more players using healers now than ever. The devs have even quadrupled down at this point that they are not going back to the old healers. Seems to me there is just a loud minority of nostalgic healers.

Healers currently have the lowest job satisfaction, besides WHM they have the lowest player number and they regularly rank amongst surveys for “needs changing the most” plus they are most in demand role for duty finder and it’s not even close

If the game got bigger but the amount of healers either didn’t get bigger or got bigger at a smaller rate then it’s evidence that the role isn’t doing well and healers haven’t had a positive survey in years

[Aword3213]

they are most in demand role for duty finder and it’s not even close

Depends on datacenter though. PF healer slot fills faster than DPS in JP datacenter since patch 5.2. I've tested it even before the release of datacenter traveling.

Healers also have slower queue time in Duty Finder. Rare instant pop-ups. Usually have to wait around 3-5 minutes even with Healer-in-Need.

However, healer number seems to drop a little in Abyssos. My fellow healer-main raiders who run with randoms a lot concluded that some healers got scared away by those spicy dots in this raid tier.

[Sani2341]

Depends on datacenter though. PF healer slot fills faster than DPS in JP datacenter since patch 5.2. I've tested it even before the release of datacenter traveling.

Healers also have slower queue time in Duty Finder. Rare instant pop-ups. Usually have to wait around 3-5 minutes even with Healer-in-Need.

However, healer number seems to drop a little in Abyssos. My fellow healer-main raiders who run with randoms a lot concluded that some healers got scared away by those spicy dots in this raid tier.

Interesting. Because over here on light Healers usualy get insta queues even when it Displays Tank in need. Only time I actually had to wait for a queue for a few minutes when healing was for alliance raid Roulette with dps in need.

Similar story for PF ime. Usualy it's the Healer slots that fill last unless you run stuff at really off hours.

[Renathras]

Healers currently have the lowest job satisfaction, besides WHM they have the lowest player number and they regularly rank amongst surveys for “needs changing the most” plus they are most in demand role for duty finder and it’s not even close

If the game got bigger but the amount of healers either didn’t get bigger or got bigger at a smaller rate then it’s evidence that the role isn’t doing well and healers haven’t had a positive survey in years

Got any sources for this?

My personal experience and knowledge more matches this guy's statements:

Depends on datacenter though. PF healer slot fills faster than DPS in JP datacenter since patch 5.2. I've tested it even before the release of datacenter traveling.

Healers also have slower queue time in Duty Finder. Rare instant pop-ups. Usually have to wait around 3-5 minutes even with Healer-in-Need.

However, healer number seems to drop a little in Abyssos. My fellow healer-main raiders who run with randoms a lot concluded that some healers got scared away by those spicy dots in this raid tier.

Healers are disliked by some, but it doesn't seem there's been some mass exodus and groups aren't having trouble finding healers. So a lot of people seem at least satisfied with the current state of things. Healer ques are OFTEN near-instant, but no moreso than tank ques are (and generally less-so), the only exception being 24 mans due to the different party setup (1/2/5 instead of 2/2/4;1/1/2 ratio), and in those, DPS is often the AIN and quickest ques.

Healers ARE frequently in demand, but no moreso than SB, and less so than early ShB (when a lot of people complained initially about the role and left it, only to either later come back or be replaced by new people flocking to the role)

Again, I get that some of you don't like the current state of healers, but your anecdote isn't exactly data, and overall, healers aren't exactly in short supply overall in the game right now. It's definitely been worse in the past. Ironically, during the periods that many of you say we should go back to - HW for example healers had effectively instant ques all the time and were widely seen as a role in shortage. Tank is always the most short role (except during a VERY brief time in early ShB partly due to the disgruntled healers and partly due to a lot of DPSers trying Tank for the first time seriously in ques as GNB), but outside of that, it's been pretty consistent as it is now as the most shortage role, not healers.

EDIT:

My personal experience with PF is that the healer slots takes the longest to fill. Longer then tanks even. A quick look through PF right now shows me a ton of groups needing healers. So I have to wonder what your evidence is for "there are more players using healers now then ever" because it certainly doesn't match up with reality.

I find this a bit curious. EVERY PF I'm in (whether or not I start one as a healer), healers are often either the first slot or second to fill. Even at different times, they're rarely the last (that's consistently tank, and sometimes DPS). I often have to swap to my tank or DPS Job to get into PFs for a lot of stuff because the healer slots are already all taken.

The Problem is that from my experience, doing high end counted that requires optimization and class understanding on the part of the player is counter-intuitive to healer design, which punishes optimization with higher 1 button spam uptime and makes one grasp how not very exciting a majority of healing tools in this game are, especially since most healers have exactly the same with different mild flavors.

Exactly this, healing is more fun the less you know about high end healing because high end healing just shows the healing role is a complete mess, dungeon healing can be somewhat interesting if you get like a quad pull with an undergeared tank or your DPS all stand in stupid but raid healing is just horrid because all you do is spam broil

I think...a lot of you need to learn to grasp a concept:

No one speaks for everyone, and it's rare one person even speaks for a majority of like-minded people.

I see a LOT of comments like this, but I've literally never met a fellow healer that feels this way, nor do I. To many of us, we want to help our team, but don't want to be TOO stressed out, and would find 1 button spam "rewarding" not "punishing", and just getting to support our friends and clear content "fun" not...what you guys consider fun, which sounds terribly stressful and un-fun to a lot of us.

Now, everyone's different, and I don't claim to speak for a majority, either. But I think folks with your mindsets tend to vastly underestimate the number of healer players who don't think like you. It may be a meme, but many healer players really ARE like the Anime mmo healer characters where they don't think they're good enough and just want to be useful to their friends. That is legitimately a thing irl as well as in fiction. Not everyone fancies themselves the star player of the game, many just want to be a team player and help their team win, even if that means they aren't making all the game winning shots or on the cover of the Wheaties box.

I'm not saying it's wrong to do one or the other, I'm just saying you may vastly underestimate how many people DON'T like optimizing things to a T or having detailed "healing CD plans" for encounters and the like; people who don't find any of that fun at all.

[Supersnow845]

Got any sources for this?

My personal experience and knowledge more matches this guy's statements:



Healers are disliked by some, but it doesn't seem there's been some mass exodus and groups aren't having trouble finding healers. So a lot of people seem at least satisfied with the current state of things.

Here is the 5.25 job satisfaction survey

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...urvey_results/

A 5.0 one for JP

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...dark_red_most/

Current census data for capped classes with healers besides WHM at the bottom

https://ffxivcensus.com/#class

6.2 results for JP main classes

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...in_jobs_in_62/




The healers at best get middle of the pack for main jobs (which is biased by the fact that raids need healers), they always do extremely poorly on job satisfaction and never rank highly on pretty much anything

[Renathras]

COUPLE things:

1) 5.25? Got anything more recent? Like...ANYTHING from 6.0 or later on Job satisfaction? To put things into perspective, 5.25 was before Seat of Sacrifice. That's rather dated data.

2) The second one is even OLDER, and likely captures a lot of the SCH/AST players mad at losing DoTs/Cards but not the people who came in to fill the spots after they left NOR the people who returned to the Jobs after taking a break as a healer/tank. Again, got any current data on this? Also note that in that survey, WHM was #5 from the top, which is a pretty good spot. This seems more reflective of the knee-jerk reaction of 4.X SCH/ASTs, not an overall view of the role or healers in general. We need more current data than a full expansion and a half ago. Note the top of that thread "3 years ago". I know you might try to counter this with "Well, they haven't changed since then!", but they very much HAVE. And if that view WAS correct, surely 6.0/6.1/6.2 data would support it and should be available, right?

3) The number of tanks vs healers is ~3.4M vs 3.2M, which isn't exactly a massive difference, and, as has been noted, doesn't count alt Jobs (which unfortunately can work on both directions - I'm a healer main but have WAR, GNB, and SMN all at 600+). I should also note that both are higher than Ranged (2.5M) or Caster (2.6M), so even if we were going to use these numbers, the result would be that "popularity" goes Melee > Tanks > Healers > Caster > Ranged, wouldn't it?

4) The fourth one even has in the blurb right under it "It's an online fan poll so take with the usual grain of salt,".

Healers get middle of the pack, which is a pretty good spot to be in. Middle of the pack isn't bottom of the pack. Though you hit on something interesting at the end - if healers NEVER rank high on anything (e.g. for the entire game's history), then nothing has changed. That same argument could be used to say 3.X healing models were as bad or worse, could it not?

.

I would like to see some current data on this. Everything here seems to either be massively outdated OR, for the stuff that's current, shows that healers are in a decent/middling place. While no one fantasizes over being the "middle child", it's worse than being on the bottom. Right now, it seems Casters and Ranged have it worse.

But you might say that's only because they have fewer Job options. But by that token, Tanks/Healers being behind Melee fits under that same argument, and Tanks/Healers being approximately equal would indicate both roles are equally healthy (or unhealthy, as the case may be), and Tanks have had 4 longer than Healers have.

[Supersnow845]

snip.

Oh yeah I forgot about this since I ran out of daily posts

I’m legit impressed you managed to misinterpret every single piece of data I gave you in one shot, I’m kinda impressed, first point, the data might be a bit outdated but at least I have data, you have legit nothing but anecdotes and making posts so long people can’t be bothered replying to you

Second point I’m amazed that you, you know didn’t realise that if a major change is followed by the job satisfaction crashing for a job the change wasn’t popular, almost nobody who played healers at the time liked the changes and that data reflects it

Third point, why the hell are you adding those up, they include people who have more than one job at 90 so none of those bars can be added, fact is non WHM healers are some of the least popular classes to have at level 90

Fourth point yeah all survey data is online polls and unofficial, I’m amazed you somehow managed to both wave that poll off as being totally unofficial but also zeroed in on one of 4 polls saying the healers are “kinda okay” and then made your entire point that they are “kinda okay”

Nobody is saying you can’t like current healers but until you present some evidence they are popular rather than roundabout refutations to my data I’m pretty confident in my original point that the healer role is dying

[Renathras]

Oh yeah I forgot about this since I ran out of daily posts

I’m legit impressed you managed to misinterpret every single piece of data I gave you in one shot, I’m kinda impressed, first point, the data might be a bit outdated but at least I have data, you have legit nothing but anecdotes and making posts so long people can’t be bothered replying to you

Second point I’m amazed that you, you know didn’t realise that if a major change is followed by the job satisfaction crashing for a job the change wasn’t popular, almost nobody who played healers at the time liked the changes and that data reflects it

Third point, why the hell are you adding those up, they include people who have more than one job at 90 so none of those bars can be added, fact is non WHM healers are some of the least popular classes to have at level 90

Fourth point yeah all survey data is online polls and unofficial, I’m amazed you somehow managed to both wave that poll off as being totally unofficial but also zeroed in on one of 4 polls saying the healers are “kinda okay” and then made your entire point that they are “kinda okay”

Nobody is saying you can’t like current healers but until you present some evidence they are popular rather than roundabout refutations to my data I’m pretty confident in my original point that the healer role is dying

Where to begin?

Data that is old beyond a point (or when something significant has changed) isn't valid. It's not "at least I have data" if it's BAD data. Like after an election, you can't cite Presidential Approval (of the prior office holder who no longer is in office) as if it's the approval rating of the successor. There's a point where data becomes bad. Citing 5.0 data in 6.2 is bad data as so much has changed - despite you likely wanting to argue otherwise - which is why I asked if there was ANY 6.0 or later data you had (other than just the numbers of people with max level weapons)

I don't make posts "so long people can't be bothered replying". I cut the posts down and quote individual people so if they want to respond they can instead of making dozens of posts and clogging a thread that way.

EDIT:

On the second point - no, that doesn't mean the change wasn't popular. It means the change wasn't popular with PRIOR PLAYERS OF THAT JOB. That isn't the same argument as the change isn't popular WITH HEALERS AS A WHOLE or WITH THE PLAYERS AS A WHOLE, which is a separate argument. How do you determine that latter question? By doing what I said and having a survey once removed from the passions of the moment. That then will tell you if the changes were long-term unpopular. Remember how everyone hated Expedient seeing it in the Job trailer? If you took a poll on Expedient right after the Job trailer for Endwalker, the overwhelming view was it was trash, SCH was a dead Job, and SGE was going to be the most popular healer ever. Now we're in 6.2. How did that pan out? Expedient was so popular - and powerful - it had to be nerfed and people are talking about how SGE is the least played in high end content.

"why the hell are you adding those up"? Because it's the only way to meaningfully use the data! I'm sorry actually USING the data you provided disproves your point. YES, people have more than one Job at 90; which means you even posting the data is 100% meaningless. How many SMNs are SCH alts that are never played? How many people leveled a Melee Job just so they could do the Role Quests? Yet YOU presented that data as-is because you WANT it to say "look how unpopular healers are", completely ignoring the caveats you now are introducing to limit my critique of the data and my pointing out that, if anything, it says healers are actually fairly popular today AS A ROLE, which is what we're discussing, not individual Jobs.

Fourth point, I'm amazed at your ability to gaslight. I noted the problem with all the data you presented, but still in a "benefit of the doubt" way, chose to engage in it to actually show you why it doesn't support your position. Even the data YOU CITE says healers are "kinda okay", and your own post used the accurate phrase "middle of the pack". Middle is not bottom. Middle is not last. It isn't first, sure, but that's not what we're arguing. We're arguing if healing is horribly unpopular, "the healer role is dying", to use your words.

The data - YOUR data - clearly indicates it is very much not.

.

Again, as I've said before, hyperbole kills these discussions.

It's absolutely hyperbolic to say the healer role is dying, or is even the least popular in the game. It is absolutely hyperbolic to use extremely dated surveys that don't capture the current moods at all to make that case.

Healing may not be in the best place, but it's hardly in the worst, much less "dying". Indeed, subjectively by reading around the webs, it seems the Caster role is the one in most need of change, and the Job in the game in most dire straights is MCH. Criterion Dungeons (which don't allow combat raise) are going to quickly show SMN and RDM being underperformers since so much of their balance is based on them having a combat raise. And MCH is already doing fairly abysmally across various metrics. There's also a real fear that WAR may dominate the tanking scene in Criterions.

These are all upcoming major concerns, and some of them are reflective of current concerns (e.g. the SMN/RDM low damage numbers) as-is.

[Supersnow845]

Where to begin?.

I love how you just make the statement oh yes things have changed, what things, oh you know things, the healer role is exactly the same as it was in 5.x and has received no major changes other than SGE which didn’t move the dial on anything, the same classes are still meta, the same skills are still used, all we got was like 1.5 new souls per healer, so you know data from ShB can be used because it shows exactly where there was a turning point in healer design

And no you can’t just go “yeah but you were annoyed because your main got lobotomised, but MCH mains don’t see a problem with new SCH so it’s all fine”, job satisfaction crashing after a major change is the cleanest way of showing a change was unpopular, and the fact that it didn’t recover from 5.0-5.25 shows it was a sustained bad decision

And no adding those points up says absolutely nothing because you are counting people multiple times, 750k or so people have SCH at level 90, about 850k or so have PLD at 90, adding all 4 healer bars together and going “see look at all the healers” is not how you interpret that data because then it all comes down to (as you even said in your “interpretation”) how many jobs are within the role

And I said “kinda okay” with the caveat that raids don’t work without healer mains and that data is not a good look for healers, there is little to no data for endwalker I’ve found the most up to date data there is, but if you want to wave that away as “old data” when none of the healers have functionally changed in any meaningful way (no you pre-empting that argument doesn’t invalidate it) then go ahead, it’s obvious that you don’t really care what I have to say

On the subject of expedient if you actually believe that people were clowning on the skill and not how square chose to display it then that’s a reading comprehension issue

[T-Owl]

See this?

Don't do this again.

Ever.

I will not be kind the next time you do it.

(And you call me toxic and aggressive? Seriously: Don't do this again.)

There's a saying in the military: An army marches on its stomach. What this means is that without logistics, all wars are lost causes. Your argument here is essentially if you aren't a front line rifleman, you aren't contributing to the war effort and you aren't needed. Yet an army of only riflemen will lose every war. The fact you have a child's level of understanding of this topic is obvious, but if you press this button again, I'm going to be much more...direct...in slapping it down. This is thrice you've now done it, and Thrice Comes Ruin.

You are literally threatening me here. Thats an implicit threat. Like, maybe don't threaten people if you want others to take your whole "I want to support others"-Attitude seriously and not consider you toxic and unhinged?

Again, as I've said before, hyperbole kills these discussions.

It's absolutely hyperbolic to say the healer role is dying, or is even the least popular in the game. It is absolutely hyperbolic to use extremely dated surveys that don't capture the current moods at all to make that case.

Healing may not be in the best place, but it's hardly in the worst, much less "dying". Indeed, subjectively by reading around the webs, it seems the Caster role is the one in most need of change, and the Job in the game in most dire straights is MCH. Criterion Dungeons (which don't allow combat raise) are going to quickly show SMN and RDM being underperformers since so much of their balance is based on them having a combat raise. And MCH is already doing fairly abysmally across various metrics. There's also a real fear that WAR may dominate the tanking scene in Criterions.

These are all upcoming major concerns, and some of them are reflective of current concerns (e.g. the SMN/RDM low damage numbers) as-is.

Having played multiple MMOs my whole life, the only reason to like FF14s healers really is either enjoying the idea of dpsing while healing because FF14 made it mainstream before WoW and still has a higher DPS focus than WoW, the superficial animations without regard for gameplay or never having played any MMO before and having no point of comparison what proper healer gameplay looks like. I mean, again, look at WoW. Can you make up any explanation how FF14s healer design is not objectively shit compared to what its biggest competitor came up with in terms of their healer classes, healing styles and healing gameplay?