#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Jojoya]

Honestly, they probably won't even say a thing about healers. They seem to be adopting the approach of "If we say nothing about it, they'll eventually stop talking about it" approach.

It's working out for them so far. Massive outcry over Kaiten? Eventually stopped. Massive outcry over BLM changes? Eventually stopped. Massive outcry over the DC travel restrictions? That'll stop eventually too.

Massive outcry over Kaiten stopped because most SAM players didn't really care (or were happy with its removal) and those who were upset either quit or learned to live without it.

Massive outcry over BLM changes stopped because most BLM players didn't really care (or were happy with the changes) and those who were upset either quit or learned to live with them.

I doubt the healer situation is any different overall. Most healers are at least content with the current situation. Those who are unhappy have options: quit, learn to live with healing in its current state or stop playing healer completely to play other jobs.

The problem with this "strike" is you had a lot of players jump on the bandwagon to join in the screaming but continued to play healer. You've got a few leaders standing firm but they look a lot less significant when almost all of the followers have disappeared back into the general population and random troublemakers keep using the excuse "healer strike" for their poor behavior in group content.

It's a battle that was lost before it ever began because not enough were willing to commit to it.

In the meanwhile, I'm definitely doing a lot of healing in dungeons thanks to His Royal Headness.

[Supersnow845]

Massive outcry over Kaiten stopped because most SAM players didn't really care (or were happy with its removal) and those who were upset either quit or learned to live without it.

Massive outcry over BLM changes stopped because most BLM players didn't really care (or were happy with the changes) and those who were upset either quit or learned to live with them.

I doubt the healer situation is any different overall. Most healers are at least content with the current situation. Those who are unhappy have options: quit, learn to live with healing in its current state or stop playing healer completely to play other jobs.

The problem with this "strike" is you had a lot of players jump on the bandwagon to join in the screaming but continued to play healer. You've got a few leaders standing firm but they look a lot less significant when almost all of the followers have disappeared back into the general population and random troublemakers keep using the excuse "healer strike" for their poor behavior in group content.

It's a battle that was lost before it ever began because not enough were willing to commit to it.

In the meanwhile, I'm definitely doing a lot of healing in dungeons thanks to His Royal Headness.

I can’t believe I have to explain that “enough people probably tolerate the decision that there is no point considering if it was bad” is not a viable way to run a live service game in the long term

By your own logic you could make literally every bad change imaginable and justify it with “people either don’t care enough or just grew to tolerate it”. Is it so bad that people want to actually enjoy the game they pay for, not learn to barely tolerate it

[Alice_Rivers]

I don't like the idea any more than you do but I think they're probably right, really. Look at the tags, would you really take this any more seriously than that if you weren't invested? Honestly I think we should just accept that healing is doomed to be a early game or vestigal role as everyone else gets increasing amounts of self sustain, DRK is overdue a rework at this point and looking at the other three tanks, do you really believe they're going to break the new tank model when they finally do rework the job?

The devs can just ignore healers and even if everyone who is serious about this stopped paying their sub completely tomorrow, we wouldn't make a dent in the game's revenue.

[Aravell]

The devs can just ignore healers and even if everyone who is serious about this stopped paying their sub completely tomorrow, we wouldn't make a dent in the game's revenue.

Game revenue isn't the only concern in an ongoing MMORPG.

If everyone that cares about the state of healers stops playing the role or outright quits the game, the game revenue will likely not register much of a hit, no.

But what do you suppose will happen to the actual game? Well, we've been seeing hints of it since the Abyssos tier. Veteran healers quit, making the amount of available healers to fill PF scarcer, and to make things worse, PF parties end up only getting bad or inexperienced healers, which leads to other problems.

In this tier alone, we've had people complaining about all the bad healers they're getting and how it takes so long to fill a PF. Ignoring the concerns of your players for 7+ years causes the role to stagnate and bleed out, huh, who knew? Certainly not SE!

[Alice_Rivers]

Unfortunately SE's actions say everything we need to know. They've had seven or more years to start caring and from what I've read they've only lowered the bar, I wouldn't be surprised if they decide "well people are struggling with the healing, we'll lower the requirements (further) or maybe we'll increase their healing to make it easier." afterall, why change the habit of a half decade?

I admit I'm in a fairly pessimistic mood writing this but I really don't see why they'd change course now given the time and littany of options they've had to improve the situation.

[Supersnow845]

Unfortunately SE's actions say everything we need to know. They've had seven or more years to start caring and from what I've read they've only lowered the bar, I wouldn't be surprised if they decide "well people are struggling with the healing, we'll lower the requirements (further) or maybe we'll increase their healing to make it easier." afterall, why change the habit of a half decade?

I admit I'm in a fairly pessimistic mood writing this but I really don't see why they'd change course now given the time and littany of options they've had to improve the situation.

Because it’s only recently that PF has actually started hollowing out and this is a big drama on 2chan so it’s not just aether acting like aether problems are world problems

Ever since abyssos where the community collectively decided that the shield healer is responsible for them not pressing feint causing healers to abandon the role combined with them not fixing the roles problems for 7 years has led to the current dilemma.

If square doesn’t want high end content to die after 2 weeks they need to fix healers and physical ranged because you can’t play favourite melee’s into fixing this problem forever and the fact that this is still a problem in light heavyweight despite light heavyweight being the most well designed tier from a healing perspective since promise shows that people aren’t interested anymore

[ForsakenRoe]

The problem with this "strike" is you had a lot of players jump on the bandwagon to join in the screaming but continued to play healer. You've got a few leaders standing firm but they look a lot less significant when almost all of the followers have disappeared back into the general population and random troublemakers keep using the excuse "healer strike" for their poor behavior in group content.

It's a battle that was lost before it ever began because not enough were willing to commit to it.

Problem with that stance is that you have some people who would play the inverse argument. Lets take, say, me and idk Supersnow. I healed this tier because I enjoy the feeling of Week 1 prog when everything hurts like hell, and I have to actually cast GCD heals (eg in my first M4S clear I had like 30+ GCD heals cast). Supersnow's profile says 'main class Picto' so I think it could be reasonably inferred that they did not (though it might be an alt they don't raid on idk). But it's all examples anyway, so:

Against Snow, someone could say 'you don't know what it's like healing this tier, you main PCT, so your points can be dismissed due to a lack of experience with the DT healing changes'.

Against me, that SAME person could say 'well you said all this stuff about healing being bad, and you still healed, so your points can be dismissed because you didn't put your money where your mouth is'

If the strike was 'a battle lost before it began', its because of the mental gymnastics on the part of the detractors, who are determined to do everything in their mental capacity to insist that 'no everything is fine with healing nothing needs to change'.

The 'most healers are content with the current situation' cuts both ways, too. 'Most healers' were 'content' with the SB situation. If we were to rework healers to have a little more depth, to make them more palatable to the vets again (like we had in SB), then 'most healers would be content with that situation' too. It's very possible to create a healer design that is easy to get into (like players who enjoy the current healers, enjoy now), AND has depth for those who seek it (including those players who get into the 'easy to get into' healers, and want to feel a sense of 'progression of job mastery').

Besides, 'support for the strike' can come in many forms, like IRL you don't have to be an employee of the railway service to support a railway worker's strike. As an example, I wrote like 200k characters worth of ideas on how we could improve the healers. Does my playing healer for this tier suddenly invalidate all of that, and my desire for healers to be improved? Am I a 'scab', for setting out what I view as a potential path for the 'company' and the 'striking workers' to come to a resolution, one that benefits all parties? If there were any way to, I'd love to help SE to make changes that would get this 'strike' resolved as a 'mediator' of sorts, but I've done everything that can be done (that is, leaving feedback on the official forums as per SE's direction).

If square doesn’t want high end content to die after 2 weeks they need to fix healers and physical ranged because you can’t play favourite melee’s into fixing this problem forever and the fact that this is still a problem in light heavyweight despite light heavyweight being the most well designed tier from a healing perspective since promise shows that people aren’t interested anymore

LHW was indeed very fun to prog and heal, because of how recoverable a lot of the fights were. There were very few body checks in M2S and M3S, which allowed for much faster progression, and much more agency over the party's survival as a healer. M4S stepped that down a bit (as expected) but was still a fair bit more 'recoverable' than say P12S (eg if someone is dead in Mustard Bomb, the tanks can salvage it with Invuln). But that was progression. And this is now. Where we have I725 orso, 15 ilvls over the minimum requirements, and the amount of GCDs we spend on healing has dropped immensely, and we're back to Broil/Glare/Dosis spam much more again. Any changes to the healing side of the paradigm are inherently shortlived, because the difference between our gear level, and the boss's gear 'minimum requirement', is an integral part of how that balancing act functions. We could have the hardest-to-heal fight in the game since TEA P1 and it wouldn't matter in 8 weeks time with BIS because everything would be so much easier to handle due to gear scaling.

[Aravell]

LHW was indeed very fun to prog and heal, because of how recoverable a lot of the fights were. There were very few body checks in M2S and M3S, which allowed for much faster progression, and much more agency over the party's survival as a healer. M4S stepped that down a bit (as expected) but was still a fair bit more 'recoverable' than say P12S (eg if someone is dead in Mustard Bomb, the tanks can salvage it with Invuln). But that was progression. And this is now. Where we have I725 orso, 15 ilvls over the minimum requirements, and the amount of GCDs we spend on healing has dropped immensely, and we're back to Broil/Glare/Dosis spam much more again. Any changes to the healing side of the paradigm are inherently shortlived, because the difference between our gear level, and the boss's gear 'minimum requirement', is an integral part of how that balancing act functions. We could have the hardest-to-heal fight in the game since TEA P1 and it wouldn't matter in 8 weeks time with BIS because everything would be so much easier to handle due to gear scaling.

Gear does indeed contribute to the problem.

On my first clear of M4S on week 2, I casted 5 Adlo, 25 Concitation, 9 Accession and 182 Broil
On an M4S clear 2 days ago, I casted 4 Adlo, 3 Concitation and 225 Broil

On my first clear, it's a total of 63.86% of my GCDs spent on Broil
On my most recent clear, it's a total of 81.23% of my GCDs spent on Broil

That's actually such a large difference, and I'm not even close to BiS yet.

[BunnyQueen]

Someone, probably: But they can’t make people heal in normal or it’ll be too hard!!!1!!!

And thus does the cycle perpetuate itself…

And those kids who say that can step on legos and D4s. It is because of those spineless children that we don't get to enjoy the role we like.

Edit: I main warrior now because SE can't fucking balance the game to where healers can have fun. Healers should be HEALING not being a DPS 80+% of the time.

Edit2: I mostly play WoW now, at least healing is enjoyable over there since they re-balanced things so that healers can do their job the way they should be. Constant sustained damage that actually matters with some burst damage to keep healers healing and engaged.

[ZephyrMenodora]

And those kids who say that can step on legos and D4s. It is because of those spineless children that we don't get to enjoy the role we like.

Edit: I main warrior now because SE can't fucking balance the game to where healers can have fun. Healers should be HEALING not being a DPS 80+% of the time.

Edit2: I mostly play WoW now, at least healing is enjoyable over there since they re-balanced things so that healers can do their job the way they should be. Constant sustained damage that actually matters with some burst damage to keep healers healing and engaged.

I haven't striked and enjoyed healing for a bit - but only while everyone was undergeared and didn't know any mechanics. Unfortunately with better gear and learned mechanics, Healing has gotten pretty boring again. So...this expansion I will main PCT and BLM.

I really tried to give the benefit of the doubt but the lack of any real danger once people have modest gear and skills is sad.