Why do so many statics seem to be missing healers? What can be done to solve this?

[Kacho_Nacho]

Don't you think that's equal parts new game syndrome and rose tinted glasses making those memories seem super awesome?
*snippity snip*(

Oh, the older generation wasn't perfect. The things you mentioned did happen.

What I was referring to is the overall tone of today. Everything nowadays is about efficiency. Getting together to have fun has taken a backseat to getting through the content as quickly as possible.

[Sebazy]

That's a pretty fair observation, can't argue with that.

I wonder if some of that is down to the way in which content is almost entirely menu fed now. Gone are the days of gathering up in the world to do all sorts of stuff ranging from Hydra/Chimera right up to Coil/Savage content as well as all the putzing about and faff that that came along with that. Simply accessing everything from a menu without ever having to leave the inn kind of loses something and dents the community feel of the game in some respects.

As Tech states above, there are some FCs with more of a community emphasis on content, in some respects I wish I had an alt leveled so I could help more, as is I'm usually waiting till the end of the week before pugs are willing to sacrifice loot and let me tag along to help.

[Trunks]

What I was referring to is the overall tone of today. Everything nowadays is about efficiency. Getting together to have fun has taken a backseat to getting through the content as quickly as possible.

Cross-world tools like Party Finder, and to a lesser extent the Duty Finder, are a big problem. In older games and times past, game servers tended to develop their own communities. You helped people and got to know each other. Now? Log in, hop in a PF group, get carried while you watch Netflix, collect loot (anything more involved is decried as "inconvenient" by the QQ brigades). There are no consequences for not trying your hardest or even for being an outright jerk, because you'll probably never see those people again. This can partly be traced back to the design decision for party compositions. I don't know who ever imagined that there would be a tank and a healer for every two DPS players; it really should have been 1/1/3 or something.

But mostly it's all Blizzard's fault. They started a race to the bottom and killed the genre.

[Levian]

Yeah, and steady compounding the problems. Things like realm sharding giving players all the negatives of a dense populated server with none of the benefits etc. And of course radio silence or outright derision when players lodge a complaint about a design decision.

Kinda makes you wonder what the market would be for a well built (emphasis on that phrase) MMO in the grand old style. Or if any developer will at least see fit to give an adequate balance to challenging open world content and on-rails quick-run party-finder content.

[Levian]

It has everything to do with it. The reason FFXI and early Wow players didn't behave like Halo & Call of Duty players was specifically because the people they partied with today we're very much likely to be in their party the next day. Performing well and being a general joy to be around might be the difference between being invited to a group the moment you login the next day, and having to sit with your flag up for an hour - or longer. I knew a few characters that couldn't get into a raiding guild, or even a pug group for the entire duration of WotLK because of their in game behavior. I also know a guy that was blacklisted personally, and he had alts that he didn't dare step out of line on for fear they'd get blacklisted like his former main. He didn't find it as funny as I did that he had to make another rogue to raid on.

[era1Ne]

Cross-world tools like Party Finder, and to a lesser extent the Duty Finder, are a big problem. In older games and times past, game servers tended to develop their own communities. You helped people and got to know each other. Now? Log in, hop in a PF group, get carried while you watch Netflix, collect loot (anything more involved is decried as "inconvenient" by the QQ brigades). There are no consequences for not trying your hardest or even for being an outright jerk, because you'll probably never see those people again.

This wasn't any different in the past, because while you had people on the same server, if those bad players didn't care about you then they didn't behave very good. Just like in real life. Some don't care if you are their neightboor or something. You'll always find those kind of people, in real life, in games, in the past, in the present and in the future. Nothing can and will change this.

I think you guys are not being fair. Investing time in someone not knowing if is going to stay or not is not very appealing, people disappearing without saying anything or don't show up at raid times is a very common issue. You can't blame RL these days if they don't want to take any chances. Sure, is just a game but no one want to waste their free time.

If you won't risk it, you never get an raid group. Ofc people will join and leave as they see fit, but thats part isn't it? You can't force people to stay with your group. This may sound harsh, but you just have to deal with it and move on. People who want an good fc, ls or static can find it. It just take times and a few trail and error to get one.

I knew a few characters that couldn't get into a raiding guild, or even a pug group for the entire duration of WotLK because of their in game behavior. I also know a guy that was blacklisted personally, and he had alts that he didn't dare step out of line on for fear they'd get blacklisted like his former main. He didn't find it as funny as I did that he had to make another rogue to raid on.

This has an very high potential of mobbing, if you think about it.
Person A: "Hey this guys, *inser name here* did this to me. Guys unite and don't let him in any partys and when he talks, insult him!"
Person B: "Holy, i won't play with him anymore" (<- doesn't care if what person A said is true)
Person C: (may or may not had made an mistake, may or may not be sry, but can't do anything about it, because person b and his gang destroy is reputation, (further).."

Of couse he could have behaved very, very bad and in their opinion deserved it, but with this mindset you will always have an high risk to behave bad towards people that are a) sorry or b) didn't even do anything bad and mob them. There is this risk, because you'll never know who is telling the truth and who isn't. I am glad the ff14 community in general is good and i've never encounter something like this in the game. Yes, there are some guys i blacklisted or guys that did make me angry, because of their behaivor, but at the end of the day you'll find those guys everywhere, since we all are humans and different.

It's all initiative like Taika says.

On my main's free company going back to Midas Savage, we had a clique of us raiders, and we were all part of different raid groups. We would get together to pick a night or two each week where we were mutually available and host A5S/A6S learning and weekly page clear parties for "raid-ready" members of the FC or those who didn't have a static but wanted to get weekly pages and didn't want to deal with PF at the time.

For me, growing the free company with more savage players was a fulfilling experience because that increased the pool of players we could make a parties with every week. We spend a lockout or two sometimes but we've taken people from learning to clear. For us raiders, we also get more experience on different roles and jobs. Ultimately I would have loved to taken some through A7S or further into A8S, but this was considerable time taken already. Our intent was to get them to experience savage and want to pursue it further, or get into a permanent raid group.

We did the same as a free company with mostly ex fights and then started to do some savage run. It was and still is fun to see people you like making progress and getting better at the game, while just having fun playing the game. of course as you said, this helped me aswell in the sense that i played different role in these type of contents and got better at the game in general. If you are an healer (or player in general for that matter) and you can't find patient, friendly people in pf than search for an fc or static, where experienced players help others out and most importantly you can laugh and get along well with them. I had a few fc before i found the people i know now and over the time (talking about the game, real life stuff) we became rl friends.

[QT_Melon]

I think you guys are not being fair. Investing time in someone not knowing if is going to stay or not is not very appealing, people disappearing without saying anything or don't show up at raid times is a very common issue. You can't blame RL these days if they don't want to take any chances. Sure, is just a game but no one want to waste their free time.

There's people that dream about doing things because they fear failure, and there's people that do things because they know failure is going to happen and do it anyways but get things accomplished.

If all you're going to do is dream, that's all you get. Dreams....

It doesn't make them come true.

[Levian]

@ era1Ne - No more so than it does anywhere else. The guy I know personally wanted to see what it felt like to Ninja loot something, so...he found out. And there's a big difference between a single person spreading misinformation, and a person spreading information with an entire raid party of 23 other people to corroborate their story. Especially when that raid party is comprised primarily of alts and new recruits from one of the top raiding guilds on your server. By and large he said - she said is treated as just that because everyone's met a scheming liar and we've all also had our bad days when we behaved poorly, so there's room for forgiveness (usually).

[era1Ne]

There's people that dream about doing things because they fear failure, and there's people that do things because they know failure is going to happen and do it anyways but get things accomplished.

If all you're going to do is dream, that's all you get. Dreams....

It doesn't make them come true.

Well said. You also can't find people who help you, if you don't ask about or search for help. I have made my experience in statics as an healer and while i am fairly good at healing, i still ask healers for help, because you can always improve and sometimes they know something you didn't even think about. With that said, they of course won't come to you and offer help, because you want something from them as a stranger. You need to ask and then you a) get help or b) get told about different community outside or inside the game to help you out. What you shouldn't do, despite some bad exp sit there and think everyone is inpatient, insults people and so on.

This is the same for raid groups. You can find a raid group, which is patient with healers and as them need time to get better. You have to describe your goals and then search for a group. Ofc world first groups for example won't let an inexperienced healer join, but this doesn't make them bad persons, because they just got different goals for their raid group. But most of them will help you out, if you ask them nicely outside of their raid. But and i can't stress this enough, YOU have to ask. Those guys or worse - but still experienced - healers like me won't stay around in limsa screaming "Can i help, can i help!!!".

[Connor]

FFXIV is designed to have more new players going in than old ones cancelling their subscription. This impacts the healer community for raids quite a bit as newer players are always going to be less likely to take high responsibility jobs in new raids.

The sub model also means that balancing and adjusting healers to facilitate their use in harder content is no longer on their list of concerns. Even if someone at 'raid-level' cancels their subscription because they're unhappy with some aspect of it, they're going to be replaced with 3 new players anyway. This exacerbates issues people have with healers, and thus the number of people willing to use them gets lower and lower as the newer players get to Savage, realise healing isn't very fun or engaging, then unsub, and the cycle continues.

It's also worth considering that no job has ever had its foundations redesigned. Despite having its abilities refurbished, Bard has always been a fast-paced, proc-oriented physical DPS with some utility and will never be anything else.

The same goes for healers. If you want to just heal or support the party, your only option is to play a different game. This cannot and will not ever change, so for those who enjoy the healing role but don't enjoy the heavy-DPS orientation they have, there's really nothing to do but just not play the role and play a DPS where at least it does what it says on the tin (you can't DPS too much and can always keep doing it, you cannot do the same for healing or support)

Honestly I think the healer population is likely to continue dwindling slowly; personally I think many will agree with me in that they feel almost like an afterthought compared to how well designed and interesting DPS mechanics are. Not to mention you have real options as a DPS

Want to be a heavy hitting, low utility DPS? Play Samurai or Black Mage
Lower DPS but a focus on supporting the party? Bard, Red Mage
A mix of decent DPS and some utility? Ninja, Dragoon, Machinist, Summoner

You can continually expand on this too. Want to deal heavy damage with the option to support the healers? Red Mage.
Supporting the party defensively while needing fast reaction times to hit prices as soon as they're up? Bard
Fast-paced damage dealing with lots of positionals and some utility? Monk (let's pretend Riddle of Fire isn't a thing)
Slower-paced damage with charge times and massive numbers? Black Mage
Faster-paced damage with some charge times, slightly lower numbers but more utility? Summoner

What options are there for healers?
White Mage- Dot based DPS with one DPS filler spell to spam, easy MP management on account of Lillies, Assize and powerful oGCD healing.
Scholar - DoT based DPS, one DPS filler spell to spam, easy MP management on account of Aetherflow and powerful oGCD healing. Has a pet, but only two abilities that actively influence it, one is a standard oGCD buff and the other makes you give up control of the fairy (Union)
Astrologian - One DoT, one DPS filler spell to spam, easy MP management on account of Celestial Opposition being used to extend MP restoration effects (Lucid Dreaming, Ewer) in MP-intensive situations, card buffs useable on the target every 30 seconds (theoretically). Less powerful oGCD healing, but this is equalised by healing potency increases provided by Sect

When you look at the foundations of the healers, all three are very similar. It's hard to find motivational n to play a job where you're often doing the exact same thing as your counterparts. Obviously all DPS do the same thing (deal damage), but there are many different end-goals and reasons to do so. Building proc stacks, increasing gauges, hitting positionals, linking together abilities in a way that makes them feel worthwhile to use like Aetherflow abilities on Summoner allowing use of Summon Bahamut.

As a healer, you're always going to have to default to dealing damage when healing output isn't required, which can be very often in some content. A damage dealer in this situation is using their abilities as best they can, building gauges, gaining access to new, interesting abilities for dealing damage and considering the ways in which they can push out more damage within the confines of their job mechanics and the situation.

This isn't the case when you do the same as a healer. You precast shields or regens and can always predict when damage will need to be healed. You default to dealing damage, as you always do, but it doesn't give you anything for doing it. You don't build a gauge that gives access to more powerful healing or DPS abilities, nor do you build procs or have to consider the order and potency of the abilities you use in relation to enemy positioning, job UI mechanics or make situational inferences. For example, AoE drops on the Black Mage, their Astral Fire is about to run out because they were pushing as much Fire IV as possible for some reason. If they run out of the AoE, they can't cast Fire to refresh AF. So you can make a decision based on what's going to be best. Is there someone close-by you can teleport to, with enough time to cast Blizzard and keep Enochian ticking? Do you have Triplecast and run-and-gun? Perhaps your MP is quite low, so you can use your Umbral Heart on Flare to use the rest of your MP while moving, then Transpose to refresh your timers (I'm aware this is probably very inefficient, it's just an example).

As a healer, what is there to consider? The AoE is targeting you, you don't need MP because it should be managed properly, but you have no job mechanics or aspects related to your damage. Sure, you can still Swftcast your filler spell or use something instant, but the outcome offers nothing. You're expected to deal as much damage as possible but with no incentive to do so outside of shortening the encounter time. I'm well aware that dpsing is technically the ultimate and most powerful form of mitigation available to healers, but personally I don't see what the point of the healer role is if dealing damage is essentially a better option than healing in many cases. This entire issue is exacerbated in Savage content where you have to completely
maximise your damage output as a healer or severely limit your progression potential.
I'm not saying that Raid content should be easier, but surely the stress that a healer is exposed to in Savage souls come from, well, healing mechanics? And not just the same DPS check we've seen in every single raid fight since Turn 2 (Did Turn 1 snakes have an enrage? I think their damage dealt gradually increased through the fight).

Tl;dr: people are aversive to playing healers in high level content because the bottom line is that you aren't really a healer, but you don't get the benefits of being a DPS either. Maybe if they changed the role name to 'Support', 'Defensive Caster DPS', 'Off-dps', people wouldn't start playing the 'healer' role only to find out that ffxiv has taken a lot of liberties in how they define 'healers'