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

[Sunhwapark]

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

The only thing I remember well in Shadowbringers is playing as SCH in PF with WHMs that had a huge allergy to hitting Afflatus Rapture because it was a minor DPS loss unless the boss was untargetable, though it wasn't an issue with an AST since they could do the bulk of healing without stepping on their GCDs heavily which was pretty enjoyable. (For me at least) Stormblood was pretty fun overall too, but I believe it's because of the other system resources we had that sort of overlapped with healing as well.

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.

It would be nice, but when we have asked for those previous ways the developers seem to have expressed that they don't want to even go back to any of the old ways of systems like Stormblood and earlier, including healing.
I think the majority of people that were asking for this have most likely retired from the game, unfortunately.

From what I can tell, most of the healer mains here just switched to playing other roles -snip-

I know that in EW/DT the healer numbers were bleeding a lot especially when trying to savage PF it was always a class being waited on for quite some time, in my experience at least. (I can't tell if this was just unfortunate timing because of the healer strike becoming a thing and also the upped healing requirements that were filtering a lot of players overlapping at around the same timeframe) I would say I was a healer main once too, throughout HW-late ShB, loved it to death and would spend all my nights in PF or running dungeons for the fun of it, but I dropped the role entirely and tried to pick up Tank/DPS roles once I saw the direction it was headed in for EW/DT, the modern changes to healers don't appeal to me much at all which is fine since there is probably a new and larger audience that enjoys how it is currently after the big ShB population boom. At the time further changes to the role were introduced I was quite unhappy, so I took the opportunity to try something else, and I am quite glad I did or else I would probably have just quit like most others have already done, but I guess I'm lucky in a way since I wasn't holding onto the concept of only being a healer in this game. (Not that there's anything wrong with having that kind of approach to the game)

[HyperiusUltima]

Anything else of value you want to add? Please go ahead..haha.

Metrics like this isn't even a good point to start on. If you bothered to look at the percentage of casts on the other hand such as how many times I pressed Dia/Glare vs. Healing GCDs? You'd see the difference and why people are clamoring for more DPS Buttons.

Also, you can do Healing AND DPS. They are not mutually exclusive from each other. If you don't know how to heal and DPS, maybe look to optimize because you are clearly lacking. That's where the mastery of the healer comes in to do crazy high dps AND heal AND do mechanics AND babysit, however, made mistakes

I'd like to ask something: If you're talking about doing DPS and healing, it's certainly what has become the standard when it comes to the role; but can you tell me the amount of "downtime" for healing healers have? I'd certainly like to know in Casual Content since that's what your argument is basing on.

Karen's attitude has nothing to do with gender, and unless you actually give the video a watch and look at Preach's take, which is super balanced and insightful, don't bother throwing baseless insults.

Then why are you throwing insults in a discussion? Calling someone a Karen is derogatory despite context by default, and if anything you're making your basis not worth hearing when you start insulting.

And I do enjoy healing, and I do enjoy the dynamic between healing, damage, and doing mechanics as well as knowing everyone's part as well, because there is not just 1 aspect that makes the entire experience. It's not JUST about the class, and it's not just about the encounter mechanics, it's EVERYTHING else in between as well. The overall difficulty comes from all the elements together.

I do love the fact that I am not just a healing bot, and I get to do other stuff as well. Also, I said am not the target audience for casual content healing. I find it boring and annoying. Reading and comprehension is hard, I know..

Casual content is good as it is; nothing else to add. If somebody is bored and/or finds the class annoying, either change the class or go in higher difficulties. The entire game is designed this way, and actually asking to change how the entire game functions is absolutely crazy talk to me.

Yet you're basically not recognizing the problem and just telling others to "Go play ultimate" as Yoshida has said back then. It's an invalid excuse to allow an entire role to be parasitized by another role to the point that the parasitized role does not do what its identity was designed for: Healing.

If Healers didn't exist, we'd find a way to deal with fights without healers because guess what? No Healer Clears are normalized in Dungeons, Savage, and Ultimate. The entire game is designed around the Trinity, and I've said it before: The Trinity is broken when a Tank can do a Healer's job. Your argument that casual content is good as is? It's not. Casual Content does not give the healer incentive to heal at all because there are no heal checks, no concerns about the tank, and definitely not peeling up the DPS off the floor at end game when they're all playing the dungeon and mechanics correctly.

That's the problem. It takes a mistake for a Healer to feel useful - it absolutely should not and is a bad design choice on the developers' part because what healers are lacking is also Engagement. DPS like big number. They get engagement. Tanks have a decent DPS rotation that feels like they're doing something while also using Mit Tools. That's engagement.

Healers get tools that are only useful when the situation calls for them or a mistake is made, and all they can do is press Glare all day since the Tank is never in any kind of danger of dying. What's more, if you run into a Warrior, you might as well just DPS away because they have a self-Benediction on big pulls every 25s in dungeons. In raids? Heals like a wet noodle as it's supposed to be unless there is add grouping involved(M6S). If you want to keep healing as it is right now, you need to give up something on Tanks *or* give Healers more healing downtime tools, which are damage tools to keep them engaged so they're not just pressing 1 to oblivion and back in Dungeons.

[Hyperia]

Another thing I want to add is that I want to heal, I want to use my full healing kit because I need to, but what I don’t want to have is a complex dps rotation. I’m a healer, not a dps, I’d rather have a simple dps kit because I am actually healing and buffing. If the devs give us all sorts of dps spells and say, there you go, your no longer a glare mage, they didn’t get the message.

Healing and buffing first, do’s if we don’t have anything to do. IMO, dps should be less than 25% of what a healer does.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]Reine since you seem opposed to whatever this guy is saying what I your opinion is the main problem with healing what would make it better. Sorry if yall already wrote this but im too lazy to parse thru the bickering xD

Is this part directed at me specifically? I couldn't tell if that's a typo of me or I'm misinterpreting lol. But for the moment I'll assume the former.

Firstly, I don't know who 'this guy' is so I can't see what they're saying nor confirm whether I agree or disagree :P

Secondly, I personally think there is no 'one for all' magic solution to the role because their main problem is massive and all encompassing - there's just too much that's been adding up over the years.

• Healing? We heal too much & too infrequently; Tanks ALSO heals too much. DPSes heals also adds up considerably. Even the method of our healing are also barebone: "Push health bar to right"-button. Is that all they could think of?
  
  Ironically in Variant Advanced where I ran with my friends who didn't bring any Variant Cures at all, I can feel that I needed to work just sliiiightly harder to fill up those inflated HP bars. Perhaps that's the closest I could think of when it comes to nerfing overall HPS. But we can go for more.
  .
• DPS kit? Definitely too simple and most offending of all, all 4 healers plays the same. We couldn't even have SGE's E.Dyskrasia from Media Tour build because they buckle down against players who are so afraid to lose 80 potency per minute 'OpTiMiZaTiOn' under the guise of "I want to focus healing" - if that much potency loss challenges one's attention span from doing such barebone responsibility, then I'm not sure I want to be outside home in days they drive in the public roads.
  .
• Encounter design? Absolutely abhorrent. Jobs are warped so that they think it can be played within their 'new awesome encounter' which only serves to teach you to hate other players who makes mistake, because even if you want to help them, you are limited to "do they want to improve/can they learn fast enough before I get frustrated", not realizing that there's more than just 'memo game' to test a player; especially 'triaging', a common healers archetype playstyle. It's like they have forgotten that a core gameplay of a job is what creates a playerbase to main those jobs & keep them playing the game in multiple types of content, not just high-ends that they seemed to be trying so hard to push people toward.

Personally I'd like a blend of StB job's complexity with ShB's QoL/smoothness (except seraph, ew lol). There are enough room for both more involved dps and healing opportunities. ARR-StB healing paradigm itself has proven that such thing exist without having to copy MMO's that people really like to use as a scapegoat as a reason to keep the status quo.

I could go into details (i.e. how I want my WHM and SCH), but I've said so much of those in healer sub-forum I personally don't feel like bringing that over here + doesn't seem to be a proper thread for that.

[Reginald_Cain]

Well rein im glad someone else addressed how garbage the e dykrasia change upon 6.0 release was. God forbid a job have more than two dots right yoshi? Ugh...

Beyond that I can agree that most of the issues in that drop down menu are correct and I hope the devs actually see them and fix them. And this guy was referring to the other player I was questioning.

[Maltothoris]

The funny thing about E.Dyskrasia is that it's become even more worthless as the expansion has gone on. When 7.0 dropped, E. Dosis did 75 while Dyskrasia did 40 mean it was a gain back then. Then when 7.2 came, Dosis is upped to 80 meaning now it's equal now to two targets dotted by Dyskrasia and now E. Dosis doesa 85. Now it's better to just individually dot them when the tank is pulling cause even 3 targets with E. Dosis is more damage then 6 with E. Dyskrasia.

Anyways, I just find the healing in this game to be too predictable, static and not constant enough.

[Uzephi]

Anything else of value you want to add? Please go ahead..haha.

Eww, 50% overheals. What a waste. Edit: and looking closer, you can see your coheal is actually more efficient and actually beat your effective heals in most of those screenshots. You're only top because of the overheals. That SCH is actually a better healer.

[TaleraRistain]

I do believe that tank self sustain can use some looking at. That said, I still run into plenty of tanks in roulettes playing sage that need me to keep them from dying. Or others in the party because mobs have AoEs or other attacks. The entire spectrum of ability needs to be reviewed, not just the more able segment of the population. And when viewed through that lens, we're still definitely needed. So there are necessary modifications that can be made since this does make the more able tanks more overpowered. It is not every tank, though, so that needs to be part of the equation.

[Supersnow845]

The problem with tank sustain is if you meet the very low baseline it’s too strong

Like sure you will meet tanks who simply don’t press a defensive but the baseline for tank defensives becoming too strong is “can they press their short mitigation”

A jobs design shouldn’t be based around a group within another job who outright refuses to press buttons and for tanks if you are pressing your short mitigation and vaguely looking at your other mits you are already doing too much of the healers job

[TaleraRistain]

Dude I have been in so many M11s parties where we were just melting to damage in weapons and one healer went so far the other day as to say the reason we were dying to damage was because we were running double caster and had an extra addle (no overlap) instead of feint. We also had MCH dismantle as an extra.

There is a huge gap between good and bad healers in both high end and casual and thats why tanks have self sustain to make-up for the gap. Do you know how many times I have used Holmgang for a buster than been auto'd to death after because the healers were dreaming?

God I had a WHM last night trying to get my main's m11s reclear done for a book (she has static obligations earlier in the week) who absolutely would not top us off before raidwides. So we were going into Crown casts half health. I'm over there praying my Kera and E prog (Zoe'd if it was up) could get us through when I didn't have Ixachole or Pneuma to burst us back up. They ended up leaving saying they were healing way too much O_O

And then the amount of times the party has gone splat in m12s on Fixer if a party mit is missing. Healing might go braindead when everything goes perfect, but it definitely isn't perfect the majority of the time in PF.