#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Rehayem]

It's really hilarious how people keep pointing out "well this person didn't do hard content therefore it's invalid" like... my brothers and sisters in Hydaelyn, raiders themselves have expressed their dissatisfaction with savage and ultimate being a snoozefest.

All content -- regardless if it's roulettes, normal trials or raids, or hardest content in the game like ultimates -- should be fun. Period.

[Niroken]

But taking that into account makes arguing in bad faith way harder, they can't do that!

Maybe I'm the only one that finds single post accounts with "hot takes" suddenly have the urge to post in this specific thread kinda sketchy.

[BaconBits]

Guarantee if a raider had started this thread, everyone and their mother would be like "erm, actually since you're a raider the changes you've proposed are completely out of touch with the casual playerbase and you have no right to force your standards on-" ZZZZZZ

[Oizen]

As a raider I can confirm that healers are boring and you shoudln't play them

[ThaCa]

Hopefully having a massive thread like this at least manages to land on their desks, they can't pretend that everything is just fine when a decent chunk of community has expressed their concerns over years and are finally piling it into a proper movement.

[Ennrael]

I've decided to join the conversation to share my personal experience as a main healer. Please understand that what follows is strictly based on my personal feelings and experiences. My intention is not to criticize or disrespect the developers or players in tank and DPS roles, but merely to share my journey in hopes that it may shed some light on ongoing issues and perhaps resonate with others. I realize my message might quickly be lost in the shuffle, but I believe it's worth a shot.

Why do I play Healer? I chose this role for several reasons:

• Every fight is unique when you're a healer. You can never predict which teammate will fall or get hit by a mechanic.
• The feeling of being useful, of being able to support my friends.
• The promise that if you improve and play well, you can keep the team alive even in extreme conditions. I recall memorable moments in blind raids where, as a healer, we managed to pull off heroic feats and snatch victory at the last moment with a well-timed series of resurrections.

However, I find that two of these reasons are rarely present in the current healer gameplay.

I've also witnessed the massive buffs to tanks, seeing my heals become unnecessary or watching a Warrior solo a dungeon boss. While this might have been intended to encourage more tank players, making them overpowered doesn't seem to solve the problem. In dungeon dailies, there's still a high demand for tanks. Why? Because only a minority of players want that responsibility, a symptom I've seen in many games, even in different genres like Overwatch. I believe it would be interesting to explore why players choose to play tanks and develop mechanics that highlight the essence of tanking. Since this shift, I feel useless and sense that healers are undervalued, which is unfortunate.

As for Savage, my experience hasn't been a good one. To give some extra context, although I've played most healing classes, I particularly fell in love with the Sage for its aesthetics, concept, lore, and weaponry. I've tackled Savage in early Pandæmonium only. Starting with the positives, I've enjoyed the boss mechanics and mastering the subtleties of my class until I was able to understand it deeply. On the downside:

[Ennrael]

• The idea of splitting healers into regen and shield categories, and having the entire group contribute to damage mitigation, sounds good on paper. However, in practice, as a Sage, I felt like a second-rate healer, with fewer tools to save the group in case of emergencies compared to an Astrologian. I was limited to setting up barriers, DPSing, and occasionally healing to support the main healer. I've tried playing Astrologian and White Mage, but their styles don't resonate with me, and it's heartbreaking to be unable to play a healing class that suits my style because it feels more like a mitigation class rather than a healing one.
• Regarding damage mitigation, it's incredibly disheartening to realize that no matter how well you play your healing class, if a DPS or Tank fails to apply their mitigation correctly, the team will wipe anyway. Since this effect is subtle, it often feels like it's your fault. While promoting teamwork is positive, ideally, each role should have its clear purpose: DPS should focus on dealing damage, tanks on protecting the group (maybe it should be them with the shields/mitigation skills), and healers on team survival (perhaps with more buffs to enhance team DPS/Speed/Whatever could be a fun buff).

The issue with Savages is that perfection is required from everyone, which rarely (though not never) leaves room for healers to help their fellow teammates in case of mistakes and it's part of the fun of being a healer: being able to help others.

Lastly, I understand other healers desire for activities between heals, and I agree to it in some extent. However, I do hope it won't come to give us huge DPS-like tedious rotations.

[TheDustyOne]

Guarantee if a raider had started this thread, everyone and their mother would be like "erm, actually since you're a raider the changes you've proposed are completely out of touch with the casual playerbase and you have no right to force your standards on-" ZZZZZZ

Remember the Go Play Ultimate thread? The one where raiders were the ones complaining most?

Yeah this is the kind of feedback they got.

Speak for ya'll selves, I still get nervous having to heal in content, just because of the nature of healing alone. I think the issue they see if healers get more damage spells for rotations then healers in this game would start to focus more on DPS'ing rather than healing which just....negates the purpose of having a healer in the holy trinity the system was made for. I think we've grown too complacent with the idea that "healers are a dps" job when its in their job description to heal not to deal damage.

This is an extremely BASED opinion on my part though because I'm a controller user andy and having to add more buttons for full on damage rotations alongside your meaty healer toolkit will just overload the cross-bar hotbar setup into a complicated mess.

I am happy with my heal jobs, no need for more dps spells. I would play a dps job if i would like to have more dps spells.

If you want more engaging content as a healer then queue things solo and get matched with random ppl. There's lots of DPS out there that stand in mechanics they shouldn't be, and tanks that think they can mass pull with gear they should have replaced long ago while not using any of their cooldowns... >.>

I find it VERY ironic that "go play in DF" was a counter to this complaint.

It never mattered who started it, it's just dismissal. Nothing more.

[Y2K21]

I disagree, since the objective was always to not play healers in group content and that's what we are doing. It was the opposing side who created the misconception that we should unsub. Yet this strike got lots of people commenting in this thread despite them never having commented in any of the feedback threads that have accumulated in the healer forum. Looks like it's working exactly as intended. Unsubbing has never had this kind of effect, although I'm open to changing my mind if someone can link a 300+ page thread and media coverage that were sparked by healers announcing their sub cancellations.

"You're not serious", "you're cowards", "you should unsub", "you keep giving them money", "this is sad and pathetic", "you don't play hard content" and other fallacies will not stop us from rightfully complaining about healer design.

No, I just think this is overly performative. I agree 100% with the message of the strike - I just disagree with the methodology and the ideal of the end goal being a continued effort to reward the development decisions you are striking against with your money regardless if you are partaking in them. You say unsubbing doesnt work, but look where it has gotten you with being subbed for the past 2 expacs?

At the end of the day, where does 300 people striking healers end up in a month after Dawntrail? Two months? Do you sit and wait for the next expac? If nothing then, what next? To me, this seems like a lot on non-committal effort for one of the trinity to change. People will eventually get bored and go back to their healer position when they need to for either queues or their PUGs as the seeds have already been sewn well within this thread by the strikers themselves. You even know have people talking about how Forums are already low population, how Reddit has already waved off the Strike, and now content creators are covering it but majorly negative.

I hope that Yoshi-P does make the correct changes in 8.0 with job identity and impacting all jobs (especially healers) and extend it to a refocus on either healer design or encounter design. But to me, I dont think this will work in its current iteration and ideas. Good luck on it, and hope you guys do make the impact you want to make.

[PercibelTheren]

I got two wipes from two different healers while leveling my Ninja in Stone Vigil earlier this year. Healer just simply was out of it/ not paying attention. It takes a REALLY bad healer to wipe, and also a lower level dungeon given the higher level ones are too easy.

Stone Vigil can be fairly brutal if the tank pulls big. Ice sprites got hands and healers don't really have their big healing tools yet. I've seen quite a few wipes there.