#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[BunnyQueen]

Well, yes, because the the actual problem is a blue river. I'm always waiting on tanks to fill. I'm always seeing parties that could fill if only there were one or two more tanks.

Unless, of course, that sort of thing depends on your data center, the time of day you want to raid, the people you normally raid with, your own personal choice of job, etc. etc.

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I mean, "popularity" strikes me as one of the worst metrics to base class/job design around. It's better that a class/job (or role) attract a dedicated following than the mercurial folk who will jump ship as soon as another hotness appears on the scene.

2 of 3 NA datacenters have next to no healers, and waiting ages for one in PF.

[GartredZW]

2 of 3 NA datacenters have next to no healers, and waiting ages for one in PF.

2 of 3 NA datacenters have next to no raiders in general. That's a different issue though.
I've really never noticed any instances where Healers outnumber Tanks, especially in the current raid tier. It's been mitigated a bit in recent weeks though. It feels a little more balanced than week 1. If I had to guess, it's that everyone is just gearing alt classes, and don't want to raid week 1 on Healer because of the general trend of blaming the healer for anything going wrong in prog.

[BunnyQueen]

2 of 3 NA datacenters have next to no raiders in general. That's a different issue though.
I've really never noticed any instances where Healers outnumber Tanks, especially in the current raid tier. It's been mitigated a bit in recent weeks though. It feels a little more balanced than week 1. If I had to guess, it's that everyone is just gearing alt classes, and don't want to raid week 1 on Healer because of the general trend of blaming the healer for anything going wrong in prog.

As a tank main I don't blame anyone for not wanting to heal in this game with the state it is in RN, the devs at SE are too blind to see what is wrong.

On WoW I am a healer main and it feels soooo goooooood. They fixed healing over there and are doing more adjusting to make it even better. If you wanna heal 70-90% of the time WoW is where to go. They are still trying to make it so healers gotta heal even more in all content. Blizzard is finally listening to players other then tanks.

[Kacho_Nacho]

As a tank main I don't blame anyone for not wanting to heal in this game with the state it is in RN, the devs at SE are too blind to see what is wrong.

On WoW I am a healer main and it feels soooo goooooood. They fixed healing over there and are doing more adjusting to make it even better. If you wanna heal 70-90% of the time WoW is where to go. They are still trying to make it so healers gotta heal even more in all content. Blizzard is finally listening to players other than tanks.

Square Enix absolutely needs to look to WoW for how to make healers fun to play again in FFXIV. Square has been in their ivory tower for far too long.

[GartredZW]

Square Enix absolutely needs to look to WoW for how to make healers fun to play again in FFXIV. Square has been in their ivory tower for far too long.

I'll agree that WoW healing is more fun in a vacuum, I don't think it's the right choice to just transplant that design philosophy into final fantasy.
For one, the gameplay in WoW is a lot more fast pace and rhythmic. There are very few skills that are off the global cooldown. They can't be weaved in between your attacks, and they have no animation lock. It's designed for fast reactive healing. Now compare this to FFXIV, where the GCD is far slower, and instant casts have long enough cooldowns that you need to manage them.
In WoW, damage is being output at such a high rate that the default gameplay for healers is to constantly be spamming heals on your tank. Only the really good healers can break for damage. If they tried this in Final Fantasy, because of how strong almost all single target heals are, the tank would be constantly on the edge of death with the healer constantly spamming Cure2. (Maybe even cure 1 because of the MP concerns) Using a GCD for damage could very easily mean the tank dies, and you don't have the time to heal them.

(also side note, the way healing works in FFXIV is actually a good approximation of how most healers work turn based RPGs. Heal when needed, Damage when not.)

Now I'm certain that with enough development time, they could find a way to balance this, but there's another massive problem in this "solution" that we've talked about many times in this thread.
They're not going to change the old fights. Every single Dungeon, Trial, Raid, and even Ultimate in 2.0 to before this change would still use the old design philosophy of healers needing to do a decent amount of damage. So for everything in the first 100 levels, Healers would be stuck just spamming one button with no healing skill curve until they hit the current expansion. Then suddenly their tank dies in five seconds, and they've got no idea what just happened.
I can guarantee, this will happen for every single player that just plays the game and doesn't look up anything about how the design is changing in live letters and the like. And who are they more likely to blame? Themselves, who are just playing the game as they were taught for the first 100 levels, or the Tank, whom they have no idea the skill level of?

This is why I think the best solution is to just make healers' damaging buttons just a bit more engaging. If you have fun just hitting buttons when nothing needs healing, then no one will care that barely anything needs to be healed. This is why we don't see a Tank Strike asking for more tank swaps and mitigation checks in normal content.

And by the way, I think it's just a bit ignorant to claim that Square lives in an Ivory Tower when it comes to the MMO landscape as if A Realm Reborn didn't take heavy inspiration from WoW for most game design aspects, even improving most of them in the process.

[Kacho_Nacho]

*snip*

And by the way, I think it's just a bit ignorant to claim that Square lives in an Ivory Tower when it comes to the MMO landscape as if A Realm Reborn didn't take heavy inspiration from WoW for most game design aspects, even improving most of them in the process.

That was ten years ago, Gartred.

My statement about Square Enix living in an ivory tower is based on their actions and inactions over the past five years. It is clear the devs are in an echo chamber of their own ideas.

[Kes13a]

That was ten years ago, Gartred.

My statement about Square Enix living in an ivory tower is based on their actions and inactions over the past five years. It is clear the devs are in an echo chamber of their own ideas.

unfortunately... there is no healer echo chamber since that one got too good. if its not an ivory tower, then it is certain that they have forgotten where thy came from, their former values and former intentions. I think when Blizzard imploded recently... SE just.. gave up trying to outdo WoW. now they are coasting while singing in their cubicles.... I think thats called flying fat, dumb and happy while they head for a mountain