Has anyone quit healing?

[ty_taurus]

It's said that the harshest critics are often the biggest fans of that which they criticize. Why else would many of us put so much effort into talking about these things, even if that talk doesn't necessarily bear fruit? It's because we care. If we didn't care, we wouldn't be here. We'd play another job, or another game. The anger and frustration stems from knowing that this game could be better, and that these jobs could be more fun, both because we've seen the healers be more fun in the past, and we see other jobs being more fun now. There's no reason any or all of the healers can't accomplish that.

[ZephyrMenodora]

assuming it's from the same point of view as I have for the role, it's pretty simple: we like healing, we enjoy being healers in games, but we also can see that it's currently very flawed in this one, and hope it receives improvements. everyone whos suggesting changes for healers arent suggesting them because they hate healer role (well, not entirely), but because they like healer role and want to see it be better than it's forced to be right now

Yes exactly this. I've mained healing since 1999 in MMOs, including XIV until the last couple of patches. I always got so much joy healing difficult content and saving runs with exceptional healing. Here I don't get that feeling from it, the challenge or excitement, but still love being a healer in general.

I still spend some time playing healing in XIV just not as much as I used to. Maxing out the 4 healer is still the first type I'll have all at 90.

It's said that the harshest critics are often the biggest fans of that which they criticize. Why else would many of us put so much effort into talking about these things, even if that talk doesn't necessarily bear fruit? It's because we care. If we didn't care, we wouldn't be here. We'd play another job, or another game. The anger and frustration stems from knowing that this game could be better, and that these jobs could be more fun, both because we've seen the healers be more fun in the past, and we see other jobs being more fun now. There's no reason any or all of the healers can't accomplish that.

Exactly this here. Also the topic was "Has anyone quit healing" so I was just responding to the topic. Not trying to be a hater - I just don't find healing as thrilling as I know it can be.

[Renathras]

I just want it to be HEALING that's made more interesting, not DPSing. Mix and match Jobs, some can be more of one and some more of other, but whatever. I just don't want/agree with "make Healers better" as "...by giving them more DPS rotations". Healing in games since MUDs and I never thought, whether Healer builds or Healer classes/Jobs, "Man, I wish I had more DPS buttons and a more involved DPS rotation..."

I think everyone agrees healing isn't where it should be.

I think the confusion the Devs are having (as well as the playerbase) is the mixed signals on how to "fix" it. It's specifically why I think a mixed solution is necessary, since it's clear that different people genuinely do want different things out of the role.

[ty_taurus]

I just want it to be HEALING that's made more interesting, not DPSing. Mix and match Jobs, some can be more of one and some more of other, but whatever. I just don't want/agree with "make Healers better" as "...by giving them more DPS rotations". Healing in games since MUDs and I never thought, whether Healer builds or Healer classes/Jobs, "Man, I wish I had more DPS buttons and a more involved DPS rotation..."

I think everyone agrees healing isn't where it should be.

I think the confusion the Devs are having (as well as the playerbase) is the mixed signals on how to "fix" it. It's specifically why I think a mixed solution is necessary, since it's clear that different people genuinely do want different things out of the role.

It doesn't always have to be DPS, but what every healer needs to address is what to do when you don't need to heal. This is a gentle game where some of the highest intensity healing fights available are doable with very high healer DPS uptime, let alone easier content. There's only so much healing this game asks of us, and healing should still be fun even when there's no or negligible damage occurring. Not everyone will play to optimize as much as possible, and that's okay of course, but good healer design should allow entry level healing to clear all story-relevant content (MSQ, Alliance Raids, Normal Trials... anything with questlines) while still feeling fun and engaging for those that are able to reach that level of mastery over healing.

Now, what many of us want is replacing endless DPS spam with something else--something that involves some amount of choice and flow. The most straightforward solution is to have a variety of DPS tools akin to the level of depth that tanks have at least. It gives healers something a little crunchy to sink their teeth into while no healing is needed, or for getting through solo content. But it's also true that we can try and take more focus away from DPS and push it back toward healing more frequently. You've mentioned before that ARR and HW especially didn't offer an OGCD for every problem. You actually needed to stop attacking to heal most of the time, even as a SCH. Culling OGCD heals and/or reworking them into GCD actions can be a good thing, especially if you make optimal GCD healing all about earning refunds to your lost DPS. The lilies are a simple, but good example of that. Expanding on that concept can not only make choosing your healing tools a more important choice, but also can make it outright better than attacking directly. Misery is a DPS gain during buff windows, for example.

Even doing that, though, there's only so much focus that you can take away from offense, as healers still have to go through solo content, and most fights don't actually pressure your healing tools all that much anyway. So having more depth to DPS tools is still an important part of that equation, but I do think players who don't like DPS on healers should have a job that disguises their DPS as non-healing related support--support that is always valuable, or sets up their mitigation and utility tools to be used later. Rather than having mitigation and utility on press it and forget it buttons, you instead need to build that engine and detonate it when it's needed only to rebuild the engine all over again, and doing so generates indirect DPS so that this healer is still competitive with the others. That healer could retain having a bare necessities DPS toolkit, but even during solo play, they go through a small rotation of setting up buffs on themselves, and then detonating that passive DPS in little bursts.

[Payadopa]

Let's be real here.

One reason for simplification is so the game can get played by a wider audience.That's just good business sense.

The other reason is that a vocal minority deemed certain skills bad because they'd interfere with their uptime/DPS. That's all it is.

AST alone is testament to that. If you're not fishing for Balance you're not doing it right nonsense. It wasn't enough to delete the cards and give us this boring seal system. Even Divination got decoupled from it because mah numbers. lol Or how much people complained about Lord/Lady. I chose AST because of its randomness. /shrug
I think it's great when you get lucky and get Lady before damage comes in. Anyway.

It's a careful what you wish for scenario. And I don't think SE will step back from it much unless it's PvP that doesn't affect a whole lot of people. But who knows. Maybe 7.0 will revert back at least some of the changes.

[glamazon]

I unsubbed. this game has to figure out its healers and healing gameplay also making a bard a bard. Have to figure out my house so i'll be back before the time is up and then either stay for the house or just give it up and come back 7.0 to see if healers are fixed. Lotro has been fun being a minstrel.

[Rilifane]

I unsubbed as well.
My sub is still running for a few weeks and I made sure of that so I could get the last reclears with my static without them having to deal with a sub and reprog. I don't care about my house, I opened it to friends and FC mates to yoink whatever furniture they want, I'll vendor the rest and then demolish it. And then I'm out of here, I have no reason to stay anymore.

Healers are just downright atrocious and I was unhappy with them before but playing WoW again was a real eye opener there. I was hesistant at first, I left there for a good reason but it quickly turned from hesitantly logging in to being excited for it and just enjoying it.
I was suddenly faced with 7 heal specs and all of them different, all of them fun and all of them with talent trees that allow me to customize my kit to my and my group's needs - and it's viable, not an illusion of choice. Be that more tank healing, more aoe healing, less buttons, more buttons, solo leveling, balanced, more damage reduction, more utility like speed buffs, simpler or more complex version. I've switched spec mid dungeon when I noticed the tank was getting shredded. Or when I had an unkillable Sonic the Hedgehog speedrunning it and went full moar deeps and speed buffs for everyone mode.
I noodled down 3 elite rare mobs yesterday that each took a few minutes to kill because one of us was in solo leveling tank spec and one in solo leveling heal spec but I had 6 dps skills and 4 selfbuffs to further enhance them. Had I been on any FFXIV healer, I would've noped after 30s or less. But it was fun.
I used Leap of Faith plenty of times to pull others out of bad or up a floor or out of water when they fell down, speedbuffed/ Leap'd casters if they fell behind from having to stand still or levitated people for faster movement across water and they thanked me and were happy.
I have interactions between skills, I have real choices within my toolkit and the talent trees, leveling up feels exciting because I get a new talent point every time and can modify or expand on yet another thing about my toolkit, I can do more than just push hp bars to the right or left. Even on Holy Priest, the healiest healer, the vanilla ice cream, I never get bored when dpsing overworld or in dungeons, have interaction, choices and ways to show skill with plenty more to look forward to.
I'm home.

FFXIV was fun while it lasted but it's no longer for me and I don't have any hopes that it will be again and I have accepted it and that's fine. I'm not part of the target audience anymore. WoW isn't perfect and has its own flaws but none that are dealbreakers for me like the healer gameplay or extremely scripted and restricted combat and gameplay in general.

[Renathras]

...

To be fair, WoW just had (Shadowlands) arguably the worst expansion in the game's history combined with SEVERAL irl scandals and them restructuring the entire leveling system and a bunch of game systems with the realization that if they just phoned in this expansion, it might literally be the end of the game itself.

In other words, they just released probably the highest end product they've had since Mists of Pandaria or earlier for fear of having to shut down the cash cow if they didn't. For years, you DIDN'T get a Talent point every time you leveled, you got one every 15 levels and you could go 5-10 levels without a new ability after Ranks were removed.

FFXIV may need such a system revamp in the future as well. Though it's LIKELY been mistranslated, Yoshi P did at least hint that he and the Dev team have at least contemplated it probably in the form of a level squish after level 100, as once you get too many levels, they start to feel meaningless. A problem WoW had for years and FFXIV is starting to have with some Jobs (some more than others). I'm not sure when they might start into that, but I think it is probably on the radar.

[glamazon]

I unsubbed as well.
My sub is still running for a few weeks and I made sure of that so I could get the last reclears with my static without them having to deal with a sub and reprog. I don't care about my house, I opened it to friends and FC mates to yoink whatever furniture they want, I'll vendor the rest and then demolish it. And then I'm out of here, I have no reason to stay anymore.

Healers are just downright atrocious and I was unhappy with them before but playing WoW again was a real eye opener there. I was hesistant at first, I left there for a good reason but it quickly turned from hesitantly logging in to being excited for it and just enjoying it.
I was suddenly faced with 7 heal specs and all of them different, all of them fun and all of them with talent trees that allow me to customize my kit to my and my group's needs - and it's viable, not an illusion of choice. Be that more tank healing, more aoe healing, less buttons, more buttons, solo leveling, balanced, more damage reduction, more utility like speed buffs, simpler or more complex version. I've switched spec mid dungeon when I noticed the tank was getting shredded. Or when I had an unkillable Sonic the Hedgehog speedrunning it and went full moar deeps and speed buffs for everyone mode.
I noodled down 3 elite rare mobs yesterday that each took a few minutes to kill because one of us was in solo leveling tank spec and one in solo leveling heal spec but I had 6 dps skills and 4 selfbuffs to further enhance them. Had I been on any FFXIV healer, I would've noped after 30s or less. But it was fun.
I used Leap of Faith plenty of times to pull others out of bad or up a floor or out of water when they fell down, speedbuffed/ Leap'd casters if they fell behind from having to stand still or levitated people for faster movement across water and they thanked me and were happy.
I have interactions between skills, I have real choices within my toolkit and the talent trees, leveling up feels exciting because I get a new talent point every time and can modify or expand on yet another thing about my toolkit, I can do more than just push hp bars to the right or left. Even on Holy Priest, the healiest healer, the vanilla ice cream, I never get bored when dpsing overworld or in dungeons, have interaction, choices and ways to show skill with plenty more to look forward to.
I'm home.

FFXIV was fun while it lasted but it's no longer for me and I don't have any hopes that it will be again and I have accepted it and that's fine. I'm not part of the target audience anymore. WoW isn't perfect and has its own flaws but none that are dealbreakers for me like the healer gameplay or extremely scripted and restricted combat and gameplay in general.

I didn’t consider going back to wow the new graphics don’t appeal but I may give it a shot I do miss my Druid.

[Rilifane]

...

I know WoW's history and changes quite well, probably much better than most people here that used to play it and use things from the past that no longer apply for or against it.
And there is no "to be fair" for me - a game is either fun as it is and right now or it's not. It's not more fun for me because of its history nor is it less fun; WoW didn't get brownie points in later expansions just because I enjoyed WotLK most. If something was bad, it was bad, end of story. If something is good, it's good. I don't live in the past, the changes I disagreed with in previous expansions don't take away from the changes they made recently that appeal to me.
If anything, it's even the opposite: it proves they currently listen, they learn and they take action.
They tried to shove "no flying" down the player's throat, it didn't work, they acknowledged it and gave us dragonriding right after we land on the Dragon Isles with customization and dragon races minigame attached to it for good measure.
They considerably revamped talent trees in MoP, many players didn't like it and wanted a good version of the old talent trees, they listened, they gave us the by far best iteration of them yet.

I didn’t consider going back to wow the new graphics don’t appeal but I may give it a shot I do miss my Druid.

I don't know which specs you used to play but since you're on the healer forum, I'll assume that Restoration was among them. I can confidently say they definitely preserved the way it played really well, it was one of the first classes I messed around with after returning.
Loading a talent tree calculator and messing around with it for a bit could give you a better idea though. A true bard-like class is still missing. Hunter has one spec that leans into more support but you'll unfortunately not find what you really want in that regard.