Healer Survey:

[Renathras]

So I'm working on creating a google sheets that will show each job's mean, median, and mode for their scores as well as include the pie charts for things like which expansion did you start/which expansion was your favorite iteration. It's going to take some time to do every job and format the document nicely, but it will update in real time, so as soon as new submissions come up, the values will auto update and I won't have to do that manually. I'll put that up on the general forum when it's done, probably later this week or weekend?

Have you posted it to FFXIVDiscussion yet?

Can you tell how many of your respondents are from here vs from Reddit?

[Aravell]

Nah, ForsakenRoe REALLY doesn't like me because we have a difference of opinion on WHM changes and she takes it personally. She tends to harass and badmouth me in threads all over the forum. I can't post anything in here without her doing so, and she also does so in other threads she sees me post in like in the DPS forum. It's like having my own personal stalker.

If you're throwing in with her, you...well, poor life decisions, but do you.

As for insults, I try to avoid them. I will ever now and then break if someone's just been harassing me and pushes and pushes and pushes or does something pretty egregious like outright lying about me when they actually know better from prior (or even that very same) exchange, but I try to stick to facts and arguments/points of discussion. I dislike threads devolving into derailed personal insult/ad hominem fallacy chains. But certain people have decided that the best way to "win" arguments here is to just harass, derail, and smear the people that disagree with them at every turn, preventing any actual discussion and they seem to feel this means they will "win" by default.

It's obnoxious, but I try to avoid it. At this point I'm just not replying to the personal insults much anymore because there's no way to reason or get these people to stop doing it. I've tried.

I stopped because I DON'T want to get into an insult fight with you, despite you suggesting one first completely out of the blue and uncalled for.

Excuse me, I never once insulted you. I called your post maybe disingenuous and I called your argument dumb. But I never once attacked you, the person behind the screen. You, on the other hand, went straight to attack me directly on your 2nd reply to me.

If taking someone's advice is akin to "throwing my lot in with them", then sure. I already said I don't know you well, if someone else that knows you better gives me advice, why would I refuse it?

Anyway, you've shown yourself to be very assuming of me and very difficult to discuss anything with, I'll be taking my leave, continue thinking of me as a meanie that insulted you if that makes you feel better. I'm out.

[ty_taurus]

Have you posted it to FFXIVDiscussion yet?

Can you tell how many of your respondents are from here vs from Reddit?

Someone else did already

[ty_taurus]

Just want to add that I've gotten around 40-50 responses on all the healers so far (except SGE for some reason who's at 30), but lots more feedback is rolling in for all the jobs. Excited to get all the info down to share. Overall, really cool stuff.

EDIT: The "check all that apply" questions are truly evil at letting me organize that info in a way that updates in real time.

EDIT 2: NVM on the spreadsheet waiting. I just cranked it out and the link's in the general thread. I couldn't yet figure out a way to communicate the percentages on who wants to add or remove what from the "check all that apply" questions, but I'll look into it more and see if I can make something work.

[ForsakenRoe]

If taking someone's advice is akin to "throwing my lot in with them", then sure. I already said I don't know you well, if someone else that knows you better gives me advice, why would I refuse it?

Just want to clarify: I don't know Ren at all, except for 'turns up everywhere with bizarre ideas on how class and encounter design should be, gets yelled at by pretty much everyone, resorts to 'you are all attacking me!!!'' Saw a thread in the DPS section about SMN or something, turns out everyone there was 'attacking' him too because he made the cardinal sin of saying new SMN is fun. Not just that it's fun, though, but wording it in such a way that if anyone else thinks it's not fun, they're wrong (which is probably the actual source of antagonizing). You can check my and his comment histories though and see who's more trustable (or better yet, don't cos that takes effort, I wouldn't). Funny they think I'm their personal stalker though, like I have nothing better to do (RuneScape doesn't grind itself), or that they're somehow special enough with their dumb takes to earn my attention (they aren't, anyone who posts 'benediction was a 6min CD' would have gotten called out just as quick). But nope, Samantha's a elitist, a meanie, doesn't know anything about how healer design should work, and probably ate a puppy at some point, I guess welcome to the club

Just want to add that I've gotten around 40-50 responses on all the healers so far (except SGE for some reason who's at 30), but lots more feedback is rolling in for all the jobs. Excited to get all the info down to share. Overall, really cool stuff.

Give me the numbers I need them I require them hand them over

[ty_taurus]

Just want to clarify: I don't know Ren at all, except for 'turns up everywhere with bizarre ideas on how class and encounter design should be, gets yelled at by pretty much everyone, resorts to 'you are all attacking me!!!'' Saw a thread in the DPS section about SMN or something, turns out everyone there was 'attacking' him too because he made the cardinal sin of saying new SMN is fun. Not just that it's fun, though, but wording it in such a way that if anyone else thinks it's not fun, they're wrong (which is probably the actual source of antagonizing). You can check my and his comment histories though and see who's more trustable (or better yet, don't cos that takes effort, I wouldn't). Funny they think I'm their personal stalker though, like I have nothing better to do (RuneScape doesn't grind itself), or that they're somehow special enough with their dumb takes to earn my attention (they aren't, anyone who posts 'benediction was a 6min CD' would have gotten called out just as quick). But nope, Samantha's a elitist, a meanie, doesn't know anything about how healer design should work, and probably ate a puppy at some point, I guess welcome to the club





Give me the numbers I need them I require them hand them over

My page didn't update and I edited my last post with the info that I put the link up on the general thread.

[ForsakenRoe]

Yes I see them now, thank, the results are very interesting to see. For example, I'm not surprised that BLM is so high, being as it's not really had any massive changes outside of making Enochian 'not miserable to use' going from HW to SB, everything since that has mainly been 'logical evolution of the class' and it shows in the results. Similarly, RDM is pretty high, because as much as we meme on the 'one extra combo finisher step lmao', the base kit doesn't get messed with. Then you see stuff like BRD SMN or PLD, ooo boy.

If anything, I'm surprised the healer averages managed to scrape it over a 5/10. Well, except AST. But still, a 5/10 isn't exactly 'this is a job that is in a healthy spot' territory is it. If anything I'd call it 'this is functional'

Maybe we could ask in a few streams to see if streamer's chats might be interested in filling it out too? Or would this skew the data because 'oh if someone's watching a stream of FFXIV they're going to be super invested and that'll throw the data off'

[fulminating]

I've been using the blue mage as a baseline to compare the others to. I'm not going to say it's dreadfully scientific, but by my entirely arbitrary metric there's some jobs in deep trouble. I'm disappointed endwalker warrior is so popular even if only just obtaining a positive score - I think neither the stacks nor primal rend are terribly healthy for its future, nor bloodwhetting/nascent being a potency rather than % of damage dealt. Absolutely thrilled by the summoner results though, it's nice having evidence that I'm not really alone on that opinion. The healer results are really interesting given how long ago the perceived peaks of the jobs were, with black mage being interesting for opposite reasons. It really does raise the question of how there can be so much disparity between what the devs believe the playerbase wants.

Maybe we could ask in a few streams to see if streamer's chats might be interested in filling it out too? Or would this skew the data because 'oh if someone's watching a stream of FFXIV they're going to be super invested and that'll throw the data off'

The thing I'd be most concerned about by that is whether or not it'd just be x copies of the streamer's opinion parroted incessantly.

[Estecka]

Gonna add my answers to the reddit asks here, because I don't do reddit.
What are those spreadsheets y'all are talking about? I suppose it's lost somewhere in the thread, but I missed most of the discussion.

Are you satisfied/dissatisfied with the healers currently? What do you like/dislike about them?
Do you believe the healers could be better/worse? If so, what would make them better/worse?
Gameplay sure could be more deep, but sure could be worse. I have not played any other mmo I can draw comparison to, but I think they're fine as is.

To me, healer is the embodiment of support. The appeal is in keeping your eyes on the team, what they are doing and what woe that is about to befall them, and improvise accordingly.
I dislike that there is rarely any meaningful opportunity to make use of non-heal supportive abilities (cleanse, shield, rescue, mitigation). Please let me use my funny utility, give me something to esuna. Did you know that shields can protect you from knockback and debuffs ? Please give me something to shield people from.


Would you stop playing healer if the healers received a few more offensive spells?
Would you stop playing healer if the healers received a DPS rotation on par with a DPS Job (you will still be expected to attend to all your healing duties while also juggling that rotation)?
If it's just a couple of dumb damage buttons, I'd keep playing, but I wouldn't be thrilled. Phlegma and Chain Stratagem are uninteresting, it's just more clutter for my hotbar.

If "offensive spells" also includes offensive buffs like AST card's system, then I'm all for it. I mean, you could turn Draw and Play into GCDs, and call that a part of yout rotation.

With a full-on rotation on par with tank or dps, I'd be a bit more worried:

As dps, I tend to get tunnel-vision onto my own hotbar, which I think is incompatible with healer duties. As healer, I'm more acutely aware of what individual mobs or party members are doing; being able to play my "rotation" on autopilot while the rest of my brain power is redirected to playing overseer feels like a necessity to me.

There's also the matter of hotbar clutter. For healers, every button is potentially a panick button, that needs to be accessible fast and reliably.
For dps kit, I already struggle to put every action on my hotbar in a place where I can easily reach it when needed; I can't imagine merging a healer's full kit into that. Dropping supportive abilities to make some room is a no go for me.

I think tank is a good example of what I don't want to see healer to become.
They're the class I have the most trouble with when it comes to hotbar clutter, and the only reason I can play them at all is because I merged most of my mitigation into a single macro button.

In short, I could be interested in some form of rotation, but only if it's a supportive rotation, not a selfish dps rotation.

[Sebazy]

Gonna add my answers to the reddit asks here, because I don't do reddit.
What are those spreadsheets y'all are talking about? I suppose it's lost somewhere in the thread, but I missed most of the discussion.

They can be found here++

I actually set these up for...

WHM
SCH
AST
SGE

But I haven't posted them anywhere except in this post yet. Figure it'd be too redundant to have both this and Ren's running at the same time.

I'll give a +1 on the meaningful support abilities as well. Go back some years and we used to be able to do stuff like Esuna Warrior's pacification penalty. I really do miss quirks like that. Shielding to protect against debuffs and vulnerabilities even used to be a key mechanic that saw use in Coil (gogo prey), surely that's something worth exploring again now that all healers have some means to single target barrier.