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

[Aviatorhead]

Easy content is supposed to be brain-dead easy.. shocker I know.

Anyway, I appreciate dungeons that I have to run for the millionth time, and I can turn off my brain—a welcome respite.

Man I pay a monthly sub to play this game. I expect it to be FUN. Not just something I do to fill time or as chores.

[Azurarok]

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.

which also brings us back to the other topic we've been arguing in these boards for most of this expac, if not longer: the game's difficulty largely being shifted onto the content and less on job gameplay also hurts casual gameplay.

The game doesn't require jobs to be played well to clear normal content, but it does punish players for messing up a mechanic in an encounter much more heavily, and visibly so.

[Asako]

I don't get it. The content was hard, people complained so they made it easy. Later people complained again so at the start of DT they tried adding more difficulty to the Expert dungeons and then people once again complained that it was too hard so once again they have reverted to easy mode 'Expert' dungeons.

What do you really want? Make up your mind.

If we go back to older difficulty like ARR/HW then tanks are just going to die again because most casual healers can't do their jobs, I don't wanna be mean, but let's face it, the common casual healers are the worst players in the game to have in your party. You're just in for a bad time when they are in your party. Casual Tanks are pretty awful too, but at least with a good healer you can make up for the crap tank. You couldn't make up for crap healers before Tanks got the extra healing. You just had to suffer until they left or the instance got abandoned. I never wanna go back to those times personally.

That's one of the reasons the game was made so easy, Yoshi wants everyone to be able to play casually no matter their skill level, it's why we no longer have enrages in normal mode raids or trials. It's just part of the game now. Tanks are OP, no one is denying that, but it's just so everyone can clear the casual content no matter who in your group is bad.

If you're looking to have fun on healing roles then you should be heading to Extremes or Savage content as it's the only place you actually get to fully utilise your kit. Dungeons are whatever.

[Alice_Rivers]

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.

By the time you're doing Brayflox you've already done six dungeons, a trial and been pointed at the Hall of the Novice for "tutorials", plus you should have been doing job quests which are literally dressed up tutorials. It should be expectable that people know the basic mechanic indicators by then and have a basic understanding of their job's fundamentals (press mitigation for tankbuster, press heals when tank low, press buttons in general if dps). By level 50, if the game were designed properly, people would have practice doing their jobs and so the bar can rise gradually. So no, I don't believe that the demand of a functioning brain is unreasonable.

[Gwenkatsu]

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.

The agenda in this echo chamber is that anything in the game is baby easy. So if you fail doing the baby easy stuff, you suck and do not deserve to play the game at all.
Then I return into the real world, do a low level roulette (Qarn) , and the tank (all jobs maxed, iLvl over 9000) wipes the group twice by dying both times to three uninterrupted and unmitigated Final Stings.
Echo chamber vs. reality
Reality wins. FATALITY!

[Azurarok]

I don't get it. The content was hard, people complained so they made it easy. Later people complained again so at the start of DT they tried adding more difficulty to the Expert dungeons and then people once again complained that it was too hard so once again they have reverted to easy mode 'Expert' dungeons.

What do you really want? Make up your mind.

If we go back to older difficulty like ARR/HW then tanks are just going to die again because most casual healers can't do their jobs, I don't wanna be mean, but let's face it, the common casual healers are the worst players in the game to have in your party. You're just in for a bad time when they are in your party. Casual Tanks are pretty awful too, but at least with a good healer you can make up for the crap tank. You couldn't make up for crap healers before Tanks got the extra healing. You just had to suffer until they left or the instance got abandoned. I never wanna go back to those times personally.

That's one of the reasons the game was made so easy, Yoshi wants everyone to be able to play casually no matter their skill level, it's why we no longer have enrages in normal mode raids or trials. It's just part of the game now. Tanks are OP, no one is denying that, but it's just so everyone can clear the casual content no matter who in your group is bad.

If you're looking to have fun on healing roles then you should be heading to Extremes or Savage content as it's the only place you actually get to fully utilise your kit. Dungeons are whatever.

Different players having different opinions clashing with eachother? When one's content with the current state of the game they'd be less likely to post here and vice-versa, so it'd keep teetering one way or the other. They still refuse to reverse any job simplifications though.

I've also kinda assumed healers became the bad player sanctuary after they've been lobotomized in ShB also

[Valence]

I don't get it. The content was hard, people complained so they made it easy. Later people complained again so at the start of DT they tried adding more difficulty to the Expert dungeons and then people once again complained that it was too hard so once again they have reverted to easy mode 'Expert' dungeons.

What do you really want? Make up your mind.

If we go back to older difficulty like ARR/HW then tanks are just going to die again because most casual healers can't do their jobs, I don't wanna be mean, but let's face it, the common casual healers are the worst players in the game to have in your party. You're just in for a bad time when they are in your party. Casual Tanks are pretty awful too, but at least with a good healer you can make up for the crap tank. You couldn't make up for crap healers before Tanks got the extra healing. You just had to suffer until they left or the instance got abandoned. I never wanna go back to those times personally.

That's one of the reasons the game was made so easy, Yoshi wants everyone to be able to play casually no matter their skill level, it's why we no longer have enrages in normal mode raids or trials. It's just part of the game now. Tanks are OP, no one is denying that, but it's just so everyone can clear the casual content no matter who in your group is bad.

If you're looking to have fun on healing roles then you should be heading to Extremes or Savage content as it's the only place you actually get to fully utilise your kit. Dungeons are whatever.

The good old infamous "if you're not happy just go play ultimates"

[Kohashi]

Man I pay a monthly sub to play this game. I expect it to be FUN. Not just something I do to fill time or as chores.

Nobody forces you to play something you don't enjoy. Anything else?

[Zarkovitch]

Nobody forces you to play something you don't enjoy. Anything else?

Damn bro you are cooking gordan ramsey type of burn.

[HyperiusUltima]

I don't get it. The content was hard, people complained so they made it easy. Later people complained again so at the start of DT they tried adding more difficulty to the Expert dungeons and then people once again complained that it was too hard so once again they have reverted to easy mode 'Expert' dungeons.

What do you really want? Make up your mind.

If we go back to older difficulty like ARR/HW then tanks are just going to die again because most casual healers can't do their jobs, I don't wanna be mean, but let's face it, the common casual healers are the worst players in the game to have in your party. You're just in for a bad time when they are in your party. Casual Tanks are pretty awful too, but at least with a good healer you can make up for the crap tank. You couldn't make up for crap healers before Tanks got the extra healing. You just had to suffer until they left or the instance got abandoned. I never wanna go back to those times personally.

That's one of the reasons the game was made so easy, Yoshi wants everyone to be able to play casually no matter their skill level, it's why we no longer have enrages in normal mode raids or trials. It's just part of the game now. Tanks are OP, no one is denying that, but it's just so everyone can clear the casual content no matter who in your group is bad.

If you're looking to have fun on healing roles then you should be heading to Extremes or Savage content as it's the only place you actually get to fully utilise your kit. Dungeons are whatever.

The first part I read made sense because the playerbase can't make up their mind, no matter what they do. Complain this, complain that - nobody is going to be completely satisfied because you can't pander to both crowds unless you make the content a mixed bag. You can't please everyone, but what's important is determining whether the complaint is valid or not.

I still remember back when when Vishap was literally the gate to Heavensward and everyone complained about it being a long, Monster Hunter-esque Trial. I actually enjoyed it myself when it was a Trial, but it was made piss easy so people don't have to struggle on Vishap right before Heavensward.

The rest of your argument falls apart because if we went back in time to the point where Tanks didn't have the extra healing? Healers were more busy healing than they were DPSing, unless you were good. And no, there's no Cleric Stance to cry about this time. I've had my share of the 'common casual healers', but you got to remember: They're still learning. The biggest problem with the XIV Community is really the inability to read, which just as much upsets PF as much as it does the next guy because they don't know what their buttons do or how to manage MP unlike a WHM spamming Cure III to heal everything.

What's more, is that by giving Tanks these "OP" options, it's not helping people. It's either denigrating them or perpetuating the problem. WAR is a primary source, but just about every tank except DRK can easily create this problem in current dungeon content. If you want me to point at the amount of times I've seen Tanks Solo Fights from 50% to 0, I can definitely count that more than the amount of fingers I have throughout both Endwalker and Dawntrail. Do I also have to relay that a influencer also did Healerless Dungeons on a Media Tour Build before Dawntrail launched? Because that's what the Bald Man did.

Healers won't learn how to heal or do anything if they are carried through a fight constantly - and the only way to learn is to actually put up a difficulty barrier of the bare minimum to entry and challenge healers to be using their buttons more when we get next expansion, as the next dungeon is more or less going to be more of the same.