For Shame, Mr. Yoshida - Being a Healer in 2026

[Kohashi]

Healers are green DPS in this game. If all you want to do is heal you'll have other games. They should just push forward more options to dps besides 1111 spam.

LoL don't entertain these ppl. "Everyone" was crying about everything being too easy, and when they initially released stuff in DT, the forums were filled with " I am too old, and I cannot react fast enough" type of BS.
And on top of it, ppl stuck at M11s for weeks at enrage cause they can't press their buttons.

It's especially funny to me how people just cry about stuff being easy, but god forbid they engage with something slightly more challenging, when in reality that's exactly where stuff does get more fun, and you require doing more as a healer. They are just asking the EX and above to become the norm. yeah.. ignore..

[Hyperia]

I'm just waiting for Warriors to get a 25% group wide damage shield, 25% group damage mitigation, a 25% group heal and a "Finish Them!" LB3. On the off chance they don't get it at the start of 8.0, they will be "buffed" each patch until it becomes this.

Because... you know... Warrior is the chosen one, it can do all of the jobs. Everybody else can stay back at the dungeon entrance, they got this (Warrior puts on sunglasses with a cool, confident smile and walks off).

Yes, I'm venting and this is dark humor, but it kinda feels that this is the direction we are going. I know deep down that healing won't change and that we have essentially become a green DPS with a minor utility of healing. In many ways, I envy the new players, they never knew healing the way we knew it back in ARR and HW. I'll hit healing buttons to make myself feel better, even when the group is at 100% so I can remember the good old days.

[Azurarok]

You guys just need to get sunken temple of qarn in the roulette, then you get to live out your fantasy of spamming nothing but cure 2 during W2W, because the tank will possibly die from just one glare cast.

ngl I do appreciate arr-hw dungeons for this, having to think about when I can dps rather than thinking about what free healing resource I can use next to stay dpsing.

[Alice_Rivers]

I'm just waiting for Warriors to get a 25% group wide damage shield, 25% group damage mitigation, a 25% group heal and a "Finish Them!" LB3. On the off chance they don't get it at the start of 8.0, they will be "buffed" each patch until it becomes this.

Because... you know... Warrior is the chosen one, it can do all of the jobs. Everybody else can stay back at the dungeon entrance, they got this (Warrior puts on sunglasses with a cool, confident smile and walks off).

You will play WAR and be happy - Job dev, probably.

[Alice_Rivers]

But the game doesn’t tell them that much of the time. Even in level 100 dungeons I’ve encountered plenty of tanks who needed healing to survive. And there are dungeons where the healer is required — Aetherochemical Research Facility comes to mind (see note). Dungeons, and normal difficulty content in general, are built with enough slack that any player is dispensable, not just the healer. That’s just how you make accessible content.

(A note on Aetherochemical Research Facility, because it demonstrates why healers being necessary is a bad thing. Unless the tank is a Paladin who’s on the ball with Clemency, in the second phase of the final boss the healer is necessary to keep the DPS alive, and if the DPS die before the DPS check the party wipes. Back when I was leveling Ninja I got this in roulettes with a Warrior — no party heals at 60 — and a first time healer who could not understand the Dualstar mechanic. We did our best to explain it but they kept dying and wiping the party again and again for half an hour, until I finally made a couple macros so I could give callouts in chat on the fly. It’s not good design for casual content when one struggling player can stop the entire party from clearing, and that’s what you get if any individual player is necessary, including the healer.)

The problem with this isn't that the bar to entry exists it's that said bar, even set at the lowest level a warm body can clear, only shows up at level 60, shows up for half of one fight and then disappears never to be seen again. This bar should be at level 30 at the latest and come level 50 should be raised a bit, normal content doesn't have to be hard to demand a functioning brain.

[GraceHorizon]

The problem with this isn't that the bar to entry exists it's that said bar, even set at the lowest level a warm body can clear, only shows up at level 60, shows up for half of one fight and then disappears never to be seen again. This bar should be at level 30 at the latest and come level 50 should be raised a bit, normal content doesn't have to be hard to demand a functioning brain.

To put it bluntly, demanding what you call a “functioning brain” from randomly matched casual players is unreasonable. Plenty of people are just here to mess around and be experience the story. They may not have prior MMO experience, or know what mechanics indicators mean or be used to the idea of having to figure out mechanics. Demanding more of players, or making it so one player’s poor performance can wipe the party, is just a recipe for frustration and recrimination. Save it for the optional content.

[Hyperia]

To put it bluntly, demanding what you call a “functioning brain” from randomly matched casual players is unreasonable. Plenty of people are just here to mess around and be experience the story. They may not have prior MMO experience, or know what mechanics indicators mean or be used to the idea of having to figure out mechanics. Demanding more of players, or making it so one player’s poor performance can wipe the party, is just a recipe for frustration and recrimination. Save it for the optional content.

Expecting competent players at level 100 should not only be expected but required. I am not asking them to be able to do Extreme trials and Savage raids but Expert dungeons and Normal raids, absolutely. If you're at level 100 and did not use skip potions, you should be close to 400 to 600 hours into the game. If you do not know your job by then, I do not know what to say at that point.

[Derio]

Honestly as a DRK main I only do my dungeons on WAR. It completely removes the worry of getting a bad healer and removes the reliance of having to depend on one player.

If WAR got some of their healing swapped with mitigation it would be better for the game overall but that would be more homogenization. The problem with dungeons is the average amount of damage a player takes is too small and with trusts being tuned for every dungeon that damage number has been reduced further.

[HyperiusUltima]

I see we've returned to talk about healers and dungeons. Considering the Healer Sub-Forum is practically dead on NA(because devs don't read it) and the Healer Strike didn't get a response, I'm just gonna sum up my thought.

The biggest problem, as always, is Tanks doing our job and Heal Bloat. If our Heals aren't being used, then what's the point of the role? You might as well be similar to the 1% Gang over with the Physical Ranged. AST+SCH is always valued anyhow because of buffs, but even then how does one justify a trinity when Healers are now parasitized of their purpose except in High-End Content and certain 8 Man Content? They either need something new or they need to look at Bloodwhetting in Dungeons, because raising the damage profile hasn't done a thing to address the elephant in the room.

[GraceHorizon]

Expecting competent players at level 100 should not only be expected but required. I am not asking them to be able to do Extreme trials and Savage raids but Expert dungeons and Normal raids, absolutely. If you're at level 100 and did not use skip potions, you should be close to 400 to 600 hours into the game. If you do not know your job by then, I do not know what to say at that point.

I was responding to Alice’s comment that the “you should be able to perform your role” bar should be set at level 30, but sure, I’ll address your comment too.

I have encountered my fair share of bad players in Dawntrail content. A run of Skydeep Cenote comes to mind where the tank could not figure out how to avoid the final boss attacks that knocked him off the arena; because the healer also wasn’t on the ball, this led to 15-20 minutes of repeated wiping until the tank finally got his act together. A friend of mine is a DRK main who struggles with mitigations and takes most of my healing effort to keep alive in level 100 dungeons. Another friend is a DNC who has given up on the MSQ in 7.x because she can’t handle dungeon boss mechanics any more and is too discouraged. These players exist, and their subscription money spends just as well as ours. If you want to look down on them and exclude them, go ahead, but I think they deserve to be accommodated for the health of the game.