#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[OliviaLugria]

I don't think they hate healers.
I think they forget they exist until they need to design new skills for the next expansion.

Not that they spend a lot of time designing new skills for healers >.>

[Jojoya]

The healers who are healing in my static are generelly fine with playing the role but I don't think either of them particularly loves it. This makes me a little sad because being fine with playing a role and actively loving it (like some are loving the new jobs and like I'm loving Dancer) are two very different things.

So ask them instead of making assumptions about their feelings.

I've been seeing a few people make this argument that more clears this tier means more healers exist, which really baffles me where the correlation is.

I personally would wager that this tier has about the same amount of healers, but more of them cleared because the tier isn't as strict as previous ones. Really only M4S has any sort of body check and it doesn't even have that many.

It's not an argument that more healers exist. It's pointing out that for the most part, it looks like those who have healed in the past are continuing to heal. As much as some want the general community to think that healers are giving up healing, we've got nothing to substantiate that outside of some cherry picked screenshots and others have turned around to share their cherry picked screenshots that show different.

Healers have always been one of the hardest roles to fill in MMORPGs and that's not because of job design. Most players have no interest in the role. They want to be the damage dealers watching huge damage numbers flash across their screen and feeling like superhero because they're bringing down the big bad. Healers rarely get those superhero moments. It's a rare fight that's designed to put the healers front and center. I remember all my years of raiding in WoW and the only two fights like that I can think of were Dreamweaver (which DPS generally hated because they spent the fight killing trash) and Tsulong.

The healer voids in PF are getting noticed more this year because players are paying more attention after the strike publicity. In game, I've been hearing more comments about healers not healing in dungeons than I have heard comments about people having a hard time finding a healer to fill their PF. If it was that much of a problem in PF, I would think there would be a lot more players complaining.

since you have ALL the answers.... how would they know why people quit when.. THERE IS NO EXIT SURVEY?

oh right.. they know just because they always know and always make the right decisions regarding everything.

I don't have all the answers. I have my observations and experience from almost 2 decades of playing MMORPGs, and not just FFXIV. There are the things I've learned from reading developer blogs and interviews. And like everyone else here, I have my opinions about what is good, what is bad, and what simply is. I try to be practical and realistic in my comments, putting aside my personal feelings as appropriate to see the greater picture.

So far, I'm not seeing anything out of the ordinary compared to prior expansions so I have no reason to believe that there are a lot of healers participating in the strike, whether by quitting the game or switching to play only tank/DPS jobs.

I also haven't said that the developers know everything and always make the right decisions. I've said multiple times that I do see problems with healing design and that I wish they would address them. But I'm not the only player of the game. What I see as a problem may not be seen as a problem by others.

Whether we like it or not, reaction within the JP players base is going to affect the developers a lot stronger than NA player reaction if for no other reason than they play with the JP players and not the NA/EU players. They're going to see what players are saying in the JP chat about the game. They're not going to see what NA and EU players are saying.

The best information we have about what JP players think is from those that came over from the JP forums to post in this thread. They said overall the JP player base is fine with healing design because it's what they're used to getting from JP games. If that's the case and in game comments in JP chat more or less support that, what do you think they're going to do?

[Aravell]

Healers have always been one of the hardest roles to fill in MMORPGs and that's not because of job design.

Why would job design not factor into this? Job design and content design has always been tightly linked because you experience the game content through your job, if either of the 2 components fail, it also sours the other side as well.

The healer role can be hard to fill because of the responsibilities that come with it AND the job design can be terrible, both can be true at the same time.

[Willemdarke]

So, how has this been going? I've not kept up with the thread in quite a while and it's been a few hundred pages since I last checked it, lol.

Personally, I leveled WHM and SGE mostly through dungeons and fates and I didn't notice them feeling any different, aside from the WHM dash, which is nice, but inadequate when compared to, say, what PCT got. I've mostly played damage dealers so far, but even then nothing really feels fun, exciting, or new (I mean, I liked VPR, but playing it still kinda feels like all the rest).

I know no healers have gotten sweeping changes (aside from AST cards) and the new damage buttons are forgettable fluff at best, but how are heals feeling in the harder content when accounting for the newly faster paced mechanics?

[Silver-Strider]

So, how has this been going? I've not kept up with the thread in quite a while and it's been a few hundred pages since I last checked it, lol.

Personally, I leveled WHM and SGE mostly through dungeons and fates and I didn't notice them feeling any different, aside from the WHM dash, which is nice, but inadequate when compared to, say, what PCT got. I've mostly played damage dealers so far, but even then nothing really feels fun, exciting, or new (I mean, I liked VPR, but playing it still kinda feels like all the rest).

I know no healers have gotten sweeping changes (aside from AST cards) and the new damage buttons are forgettable fluff at best, but how are heals feeling in the harder content when accounting for the newly faster paced mechanics?

You still weave in oGCDs, same as before. Nothing has realistically changed. Mechanics firing off slightly faster is largely irrelevant since my oGCDs are no less potent than they were in EW and Seraphism gives me an extra Regen that I really didn't need. It's all the same crap

[PercibelTheren]

So ask them instead of making assumptions about their feelings.

Healers have always been one of the hardest roles to fill in MMORPGs and that's not because of job design. Most players have no interest in the role.

Let me rephrase what I said. I was trying to express things politely but I guess that made what I meant to say unclear. I KNOW they don't particularly love it. There is exactly one person I know of who actually loves healing and that person is a Sprout who just started Shadowbringers MSQ, so he's still in the "shiny new game" phase. Most healers I know also continue healing because that's what they're good at. It took me over two years to dare step into harder content on something that wasn't a healer because I have healed in every single MMO and it's what I'm fairly competent at. FFXIV is the only game that has made me more or less quit healing because it's in no way a fun or satisfying experience unless things are going horribly wrong.

Healers being unpopular absolutely is a job design problem. In fact, job design IS the problem making healers unpopular. Most people aren't excited at the prospect of dealing barely any damage, having very little rotation to speak of (if any) and just watching green bars go up. Because the jobs themselves are like this, the only people who stick with them are those who enjoy supporting the party. And there are very few of us to begin with - most people want to feel like the main character and, as a healer, you don't get to feel like you are.

[Tigore]

The 90 - 100 additions to the healer kits didn't really change up what I do with my play style casually either. It feels like the Medica 2, Aspected Helios, Succor and Prognosis upgrades just fizzled with the perceived usage for them. The oGCD cooldowns and unique resource systems are still sufficient to keep the party alive for the wall to wall pulls. The last 95 boss might get us to use those upgraded GCD heals, but typically just a few times. I did notice one of the expert dungeons did try to add more AoE pulses on a couple trash pulls while I was SAM for it. Since most of the group was in 700 - 720ish gear when I did it my first time, the healer seemed to be chuckling, "That's it?!" after we finished the pull.

In my opinion, the new sound effects given to the upgrades don't feel as impactful as the old sound effects. The Glare 4 additional was probably the only one that reduced the "Glare 3 spam" and it was just a small amount by 3 every 2 minutes. The other 3 healers were given oGCD versions for their damage, so their GCD usage almost didn't change at all. Although SGE at least has something new for their AoE DPS GCD filler.

Edit: I should also clarify that I was using Tengetsu, Feint / Addle as well as stuns on the trash doing the AoE pulses too. That probably contributed quite a bit to "boring" the healer as well.

[Supersnow845]

The 90 - 100 additions to the healer kits didn't really change up what I do with my play style casually either. It feels like the Medica 2, Aspected Helios, Succor and Prognosis upgrades just fizzled with the perceived usage for them. The oGCD cooldowns and unique resource systems are still sufficient to keep the party alive for the wall to wall pulls. The last 95 boss might get us to use those upgraded GCD heals, but typically just a few times. I did notice one of the expert dungeons did try to add more AoE pulses on a couple trash pulls while I was SAM for it. Since most of the group was in 700 - 720ish gear when I did it my first time, the healer seemed to be chuckling, "That's it?!" after we finished the pull.

In my opinion, the new sound effects given to the upgrades don't feel as impactful as the old sound effects. The Glare 4 additional was probably the only one that reduced the "Glare 3 spam" and it was just a small amount by 3 every 2 minutes. The other 3 healers were given oGCD versions for their damage, so their GCD usage almost didn't change at all. Although SGE at least has something new for their AoE DPS GCD filler.

i have no idea who heard the chunky “book slam” power of succor and decided the “upgrade” should sound like a fairy twinkle

[Shurrikhan]

Healers have always been one of the hardest roles to fill in MMORPGs and that's not because of job design.

One of. Out of three. For which one has the most consistent means of engagement, largest cool factor, and typically the least responsibility required of it.

So, in effect, "it's one of two non-DPS"... and for that fact we should accept utter complacency, even while far better experiences are to be had from the same role in other games?

The best information we have about what JP players think is from those that came over from the JP forums to post in this thread.

The JP forums themselves are not region-locked to view. Can head right over there and see what complaints about or defenses of the current iterations they have.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Saying the healer role would always be the one with shortage is such an odd statement to me. I remember there was a period in my limited time of playing AION where healer (Priest) numbers was fairly abundant there were more people looking for DPS classes.

Obviously that’s just an anecdote from my part and situation must’ve been different at the time, but still… lol.