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

[Uzephi]

It’s a pretty funny situation. For all that people say healing sucks, tank need is still the most common need bonus. You would think people would avoid healing if it sucked so much.

Sadly, DF has a priority system on who is "in need." It checks tanks first, if tank is in need, no other role matters. DF could be starved of healers, but if tank is in need, "healer in need" won't pop, ever.

[GraceHorizon]

Sadly, DF has a priority system on who is "in need." It checks tanks first, if tank is in need, no other role matters. DF could be starved of healers, but if tank is in need, "healer in need" won't pop, ever.

I would still expect healer need to be common if the role were broadly disliked, especially if tanks were also OP and on a power trip. Perhaps the state of the healer role is such that it attracts folks who aren’t healer mains like myself, while healer mains … complain on the forum while staying subbed for years to a game they hate?

[Aravell]

You know, I think people need to stop beating on the healbot strawman, it's been through a lot, leave it alone.

I don't think anyone is asking to return to old MMO healing where you literally can't even level up solo and have to party up because you do absolutely no damage and just heal, people are more asking for old FFXIV healing.

Remember back in HW where a fantastic tank can at most solo 20% of dungeon boss HP before going down? People still managed to clear content just fine back then. Remember in old savages where it was literally impossible to do a no GCD heal run? People cleared just fine back then too.

I don't see why the pushback against bringing back a more balanced trinity, content was cleared back then all the same.

[Kohashi]

Yeah its very weird to me that these people want to absoutley blow their healing kits entire load every single pull instead of chucking a regen on the tank and dpsing to make the run faster and smoother.

I dunno, I am def not the target audience because I frankly don't want to sit there and babysit Tank. I appreciate easy and fast clears after doing that dungeon countless times.

Ah yes, spamming Glare and refreshing Dia every 30 seconds with lilies after a scripted raidwide is so much fun... Healing is needed in that content, sure, but the actual gameplay doesn’t feel fun.

Yet, nobody is actually making you play something that you do not find engaging. Playing that class and yet complaining about it makes no damn sense. Absolutely, Karen's mentality and behaviour.

Ah, I do not know why I remember that from our last conversation about this, you started in ShB.

Not sure what you remembered because I never said such a thing.

I do remember very vaguely playing even before that date, but most likely it's on an account that I completely forgot about, because I do remember healing aggro was a huge thing when I played initially, and super vaguely remember stances.

Also, I understand what you mean, but it's just not how FF14 does things now. They just want to have a super laid-back, casual, beginner-friendly game at base, and be challenged only when you dip your toes in harder content.

WoW for all the hate is actually a great example of how a healer can be fun. They still have 3-4 DPS buttons you can use to contribute damage with when possible, but otherwise managing your healing resources (cooldowns, mana, dispels) actually matters and leads to the healing part feeling actually engaging. There's a reason that WoW healer performance is measured by HPS and FF14 performance is measure by DPS.

I am sorry, but I don't agree at all with your comparison between WoW and FF14. They play extremely differently, and they both excel at what they are doing. You might like how Healers function in WoW, and that's fair, but you won't be able to play as you play in WoW here.

Preach did an extremely insightful video on the differences between Mythic and savage raiding, and he explains very well how fundamentally different they are to the point that they cannot be compared. BTW he was a healer for this tier (SCH) so.. give him a watch.
Link to his Video because it was an awesome watch
WoW made patterns static, predictable, and classes engaging and more difficult, while FF14 went in the opposite direction. It is what it is.

[Supersnow845]

Just because the design of WOW healing dropped 1 to 1 into 14 wouldn’t work isn’t an excuse for the design of 14 healers nor does 14 excel at the design of healers

14 should play to its strengths to make them enjoyable to play, not giving them the most barebones way possible to be broadly functional and not a drop more

WOW shows one way of making healers interesting. Making healers similarly interesting should be a goal of 14, not just being resigned to “sorry they will always be shit”

[GraceHorizon]

From what I can tell, most of the healer mains here just switched to playing other roles (including tank which ironically let them heal while doing other things), or they heal only with friends/FCmates/statics and avoid the general playerbase. Personally I don't tank or heal at all, because despite everything done to make them "easy" I still don't like being responsible for whether or not the party wipes in a game where people don't tolerate death or failure, especially with anything they deem "braindead" because it makes them twice as mad that you failed something "so simple".

It still feels like healer quality has changed post-strike topic though, or how a lot of the names who were pro-stike either don't talk about playing healer anymore because they gave up on the role, or I don't see them around period because they did indeed quit the game over it.

While it might not have been some game-ending impact, its definitely left a "haze" over the game, the same way the overall player dropout has, and veteran healers were among them.

Interesting! Well, good on them for doing something — either changing roles or quitting the game — rather than just continuing to complain. But I doubt the healer strike has moved SE to do anything.

As someone who started playing in Endwalker I have to say I don’t understand the complaints at all. I’ve never known the game to be different or the roles to play differently. I like playing Sage, it’s normally a fairly chill time and when things go sideways I can often carry a struggling party. But I also like playing Warrior and running through dungeons laughing and making rude gestures at the monsters. And particularly the past year or so I like playing Reaper and tearing the shit out of enemies. I definitely have my complaints about this game — I only have a little over two weeks left on my sub because of my complaints — but I found plenty of fun to be had in the jobs.

[Reginald_Cain]

A bit off-topic, but I do miss the cleric stance debate threads and sylphie wars, pretty much all threads posts regarding healer as a role from the end of Stormblood leading up to today are quite depressing to look back at.

Because the players asked for more healing in shadowbringers and devs translated that to less dps skills without increasing casual healing requirements. Its gonna happen again in 8.0 I know it. Stormblood was peak healing and they killed it forever gg

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]It’s a pretty funny situation. For all that people say healing sucks, tank need is still the most common need bonus. You would think people would avoid healing if it sucked so much.

I would also think that being a case as well if queueing as a tank does gave me instant queues on the dungeon roulos (not counting 8-mans because you require two to three anyway). But 7 out of 10 times, I did not. What happened instead: the moment I swap to healer while the icon still showing tanks, I got an instant pop. I know I'm not the only one who had been experiencing this since at least late ShB times.

A common speculation around the AiN bonus is as the following:

What people think: Players in queue = 20 tanks, 5 healers, 100 DPS. Therefore, the UI will show Healer AiN since by far they amount the least in the current frame.

What actually happens: Players in queue = 20 tanks, 5 healers, 100 DPS. UI shows Tank AiN because the system baked into the algorithm are designed to prioritizes Tank > Healer > DPS icon until they surpass an arbitrarily set number. Let's say, 20+. This means until there are 21 or more tanks, the UI will keep showing tanks irrespective to the amount of existing healers/dps in queue.

Ever recall one of those times when you queue'd as a DPS into experts and got an instant despite UI showing other icon...? Yeah, that could probably be why. And the reason why it's a common belief that there's a bias toward preferring to show tanks was partly because either HW or StB were the times when tanks were actually the rarest role of the three (also contributes to why the role has their own set of achievements vs other).

[VeyaAkemi]

Should also be noted that because the In Need status needs a few minutes to update, this actually leads to a cycle of: Role becomes In Need > Many people que as that role > Role becomes oversaturated, and start to having wait ques. This means that queing as something other than In Need is usually better, because this game is... interesting in how it works, to put it politely.

[TheDustyOne]

I see we're back to arguing about the in-need system; the unfortunate part of this entire debate around healer designs is just how formulaic it's become, and having to explain almost verbatim the same talking points that have been repeated since ShB launched.

In short; the in-need system shows tank most of the time because:

• Tanks are prioritized because they USED to be the least popular role back in ARR, HW, and SB. Square purposely altered the system to prioritize tanks to try and entice people into playing them. This is also why tanks have the unique achievements and mounts. It has been over 10 years since this system was implemented and it hasn't been altered.
• It takes roughly 40s or so for the system to update, so even if the system does get enough tanks to satisfy the system, it won't show it for a while, at which point it's possible for "tanks to be needed" again based on their aforementioned priority.

Try queueing as a healer when a "tank is in need" and most of the time it's instant. Meanwhile I usually have to wait a minute or so to get in as a tank despite how "in need" I am. I've noticed how bad the in need system is since at least ShB and it's a poor argument for trying to keep healers as they are; not to mention irrelevant as it doesn't address the problems people bring up about healer design without resorting to some form of appeal to popularity fallacy.