The death of savage raiding and SE's lack of action

[Arohk]

I think this also has to do with gear, most people will get dps or tank gear first , and then you cant find a healer because they dont meet the item level requirement to join groups. I would join as a healer a lot more but i only got 711 ilvl , so i cant join most parties

[Aravell]

If you want to see more Healers in PF, you have to mitigate the responsibility requirement healers innately deal with. Otherwise, you can never fix any shortage issue on the role overall. You are not gonna convince DPS to Heal in mass and your best offer is more responsibility with everything in spades. That's a bad deal no one is really signing up for. It does not matter if you add more DPS options, or better utilize the Healer kit in raid.

And this here is the problem with the healer role.

You say the only way to bring more healers into PF is to reduce their responsibilities, but the people who chose to play healer have chosen to accept those responsibilities, and taking away responsibilities from them is unfavourable.

You already said that there's no way to convince a DPS player to pick up healing, so what's the point of catering to the exact opposite of what healers play the role for?

It's precisely the stripping of responsibilities that make veteran healers feel less important and causes them to quit. Yet your idea of fixing any healer shortage is to further increase how useless healers are. Do you not see a problem here?

[Ilisidi]

I imagine the LuckyBancho numbers (which read achievements on lodestone and due to be released within the next month or two) will confirm a big jump in overall clears.

LuckyBancho's data came out two weeks ago.

[Catwho]

I would have been happy to be a Savage healer, but my static already had two healers, so I had to learn how to tank when my tanks both quit in 6.4. (P6-8 broke them. P10 almost broke me, so I get it.)

Guess what, everyone. You have the solution to the problem. IT'S CALLED LEARN TO HEAL SAVAGE JUST LIKE I LEARNED HOW TO TANK SAVAGE!

To that person who swapped over to the shield heal to fill in the gap, that's exactly what SE wants people to do. See a need and fill it in. Too many people aim for BiS on their favorite job and then quit for three months until the next tier comes out.

Better to go ahead and gear up two different roles, be able to flex wherever you need to, and make friends in the community.

We've got half our team able to flex - I can flex over to shield heals if we can get our backup tank. Our other shield healer can flex over to DNC if we're short a ranged DPS. A caster DPS can flex over to SAM. Etc.

I think this also has to do with gear, most people will get dps or tank gear first , and then you cant find a healer because they dont meet the item level requirement to join groups. I would join as a healer a lot more but i only got 711 ilvl , so i cant join most parties

This is a very real problem, too. Sometimes if you send a PM to the person who is running the PF and say "hey I don't quite meet your iLVL but I cleared this already on DPS and I want to clear it on healer to help gear up too" they'll be happy to let you in.

[Supersnow845]

I would have been happy to be a Savage healer, but my static already had two healers, so I had to learn how to tank when my tanks both quit in 6.4. (P6-8 broke them. P10 almost broke me, so I get it.)

Guess what, everyone. You have the solution to the problem. IT'S CALLED LEARN TO HEAL SAVAGE JUST LIKE I LEARNED HOW TO TANK SAVAGE!

To that person who swapped over to the shield heal to fill in the gap, that's exactly what SE wants people to do. See a need and fill it in. Too many people aim for BiS on their favorite job and then quit for three months until the next tier comes out.

Better to go ahead and gear up two different roles, be able to flex wherever you need to, and make friends in the community.

We've got half our team able to flex - I can flex over to shield heals if we can get our backup tank. Our other shield healer can flex over to DNC if we're short a ranged DPS. A caster DPS can flex over to SAM. Etc.

Nobody is going to flex to a role they don’t like. In my static I as the shield healer can flex to the regen healer or to the PLD. The regen healer can flex to the shield healer or to MCH. Does me flexing to PLD or the regen healer flexing to MCH ever matter………..absolutely not because the other 6 members in our static would rather just not run then flex to healer because they all hate it

It’s perfectly valid to not want to flex to a role you don’t like, I certainly done blame people for not wanting to flex to healers. Who would want to, I stay on that static purely because they are my friends, I genuinely get zero enjoyment out of actually playing the healer in that static

[Havenchild]

And this here is the problem with the healer role.

You say the only way to bring more healers into PF is to reduce their responsibilities, but the people who chose to play healer have chosen to accept those responsibilities, and taking away responsibilities from them is unfavourable.

You already said that there's no way to convince a DPS player to pick up healing, so what's the point of catering to the exact opposite of what healers play the role for?

It's precisely the stripping of responsibilities that make veteran healers feel less important and causes them to quit. Yet your idea of fixing any healer shortage is to further increase how useless healers are. Do you not see a problem here?

While I can understand this sentiment, it's not going to matter really at all. If the Healers in question have left the role for what it is, there is nothing that SE can do that is going to convince ALL of those Healers to come back and also NOT affect the current players on the role and make the DEDICATED players of the Healer role in PF upset.
The healers that have already left the role for xyz reason are the minority however.

There is also the hilarious and duality point that people like Xenos made about the Healer strike being ironic and dumb. Healers say they want to "utilize their healing kits more" or "be the only ones with healing" but the moment they introduce a hard hitting mechanic that is an outright heal check and require the use of GCD and oGCD heals, tanks are begged to use Tank LB instead, which is an outright DPS loss overall.

And yeah the exact solution to bringing in Healers is unironically to offload Healer and mitigation responsibilities to other roles, easing the dependency on someone who jumps on the role to actually be that good to play it.

This is literally why more people have jumped into and stayed healing with Arcadion than before. It's almost as if people are surprised that trends exist.

[Supersnow845]

While I can understand this sentiment, it's not going to matter really at all. If the Healers in question have left the role for what it is, there is nothing that SE can do that is going to convince ALL of those Healers to come back and also NOT affect the current players on the role and make the DEDICATED players of the Healer role in PF upset.
The healers that have already left the role for xyz reason are the minority however.

There is also the hilarious and duality point that people like Xenos made about the Healer strike being ironic and dumb. Healers say they want to "utilize their healing kits more" or "be the only ones with healing" but the moment they introduce a hard hitting mechanic that is an outright heal check, tanks are begged to use Tank LB instead, which is an outright DPS loss overall.

In a world with as much mitigation as we have everything is a mit check. A 10% mitigation on harrowing hell for 15 seconds is worth about 4 succors or 3 medica 2’s. The only thing you could make in this modern design that’s actually a healing check is a limitless un-mitigatable bleed. Because otherwise mitigation is always more useful as it’s basically extra eHP which is functionally pure healing by another name anyway

It’s infinitely frustrating especially as the shield healer to have the party not mitigate anything then blame the healers. When I did P10 in PF (big mistake) the DPS just used to not press any of their mits (the phys ranged was decent) then I’d get snarky comments like “oh we got a bad healer guess we have to use tank LB3”

In this current garbage design of mitigation being king healers have zero control but 100% of the blame. Actually let me control the party mitigation as the shield healer then you can blame me if we die, but if you won’t even press addle then I’m not pressing succor 5 times to cover your ass because you drifted xeno

(Note all uses of you here means proverbial you not specifically you as a poster)

[BunnyQueen]

Anyone's who's been savage raiding recently has definitely become familiar with the sight: Over a dozen parties filled with 0 healer's in sight. Spending your night sitting idle for 3 hours and only actually raiding for 2. Is this the premium experience you wanted us to enjoy this expansion YoshiP? Is this what's going to keep people paying your company's light bill (and pay them to develop terrible games that bomb on release)?

This isn't something that the players are doing wrong, it's something that SquareEnix and CBU3 have done wrong. They've repeatedly failed to address complaints from the playerbase over a significant period of time and now there is such a healer scarcity that people are outright quitting savage or planning to quit after this tier.

There's plenty of ways to incentivize healers to play high level content. Even something as simple as special mounts, minions, and achievements to bring out the achievement and mount hunters. SE has done nothing, and now this is the result. ig it's my fault for not enjoying the gameplay of healer either. Mea culpa Mr YoshiP sir I'll make sure I look forward to it harder.

Or they can make leveling a healer ENGAGING! Seriously, I started as a healer and quit healing at the stormblood MSQ and switched to warrior! The less I got to heal the less fun I had as a healer. They need to fucking fix the healer problem by letting healers heal! I said this time and time again. Increase tank health, reduce mits and sustain, make mob damage high and sustained with some burst while keeping it at a level that won't strain healers but keep them engaged. Boom problem solved.

[GartredZW]

Guess what, everyone. You have the solution to the problem. IT'S CALLED LEARN TO HEAL SAVAGE JUST LIKE I LEARNED HOW TO TANK SAVAGE!

yeah, no thanks.
I played healer until Anabaseios. then I tried the tier as Black Mage, realized just what I've been missing, and haven't gone back since.
If healer is fine, then there shouldn't be any trouble finding people to play the role.

Oh wait, there actually is trouble finding people to play the role. How 'bout that.

[Havenchild]

In a world with as much mitigation as we have everything is a mit check. A 10% mitigation on harrowing hell for 15 seconds is worth about 4 succors or 3 medica 2’s. The only thing you could make in this modern design that’s actually a healing check is a limitless un-mitigatable bleed. Because otherwise mitigation is always more useful as it’s basically extra eHP which is functionally pure healing by another name anyway

It’s infinitely frustrating especially as the shield healer to have the party not mitigate anything then blame the healers. When I did P10 in PF (big mistake) the DPS just used to not press any of their mits (the phys ranged was decent) then I’d get snarky comments like “oh we got a bad healer guess we have to use tank LB3”

In this current garbage design of mitigation being king healers have zero control but 100% of the blame. Actually let me control the party mitigation as the shield healer then you can blame me if we die, but if you won’t even press addle then I’m not pressing succor 5 times to cover your ass because you drifted xeno

(Note all uses of you here means proverbial you not specifically you as a poster)

Even stacking all your MIT available from both Healers at that moment (mind you two back to back mechanics have already exhausted some before it), you are not clearing Harrowing Hell with no GCD heals and no tank LB. Same thing can be said for M4S P2 opening currently.

As someone who mains mitigation healers in PF, generally I don't expect any mitigation from any DPS or Tank (in terms of Reprisal, Dark Missionary etc) as they get missed for different AoEs at random. I just focus on putting up a succor alongside any other oGCD mitigation I have and boom 9 out of 10 AoEs you can survive. Now realistically, some other mits can show up but I don't depend on them in PF. My entire kit is utilized on the regular.

Nothing changes the fact that the moment there is a definitive heal check people call for tank LB (doesn't even have to be a Lv3 LB) because it is the path of least resistance ultimately compared to depending on both healers having both all of their mit options and the willingness to GCD heal.

If healer is fine, then there shouldn't be any trouble finding people to play the role.

Oh wait, there actually is trouble finding people to play the role. How 'bout that.

Except it's delusional to think if you "fixed" Healers, suddenly the supply of said healers in PF will increase dramatically. Mind you, there is no clear consensus on what a "fix" entails that everyone seems to agree on, even the supporters of a "fix". Half are arguing for more DPS options, and the other half is arguing for more Heal spell usage. But neither are listening to the PF response which is asking for neither of those and asking for less Healer responsibility in raids. The fact that most of the people arguing for changes to Healer role are also the people that tend to play it in their statics, the only real place where you can see the monotonous gameplay of it after everything is optimized, further alludes that changes made would only benefit the minority of players that don't regularly engage with the healer role in PF whereas the majority which does in PF would diminish thus balancing the gains/losses or actually making it worse.

All to say, the game design at current does not support increasing damage options or healing options for Healer as we have hard proof of both cases hurting Healer supply in PF. The only answer atm, without redesigning all jobs and how encounters engage with healer responsibility, is to mitigate the overall responsibilities of the Healer role, making it easier for newcomers to get INTO the class to begin with. Sans any other system they can introduce to entice players. But considering the majority of players play DPS roles, you have to convince current DPS players to make the switch to Healer which in turn requires them to now be the focus of blame with way more responsibility. That's just not going to happen.