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

[era1Ne]

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.

A healer in this situation has to use their abilities as best they can aswell, to open himself and the co-healer more windows to dps and therefore push out more dmg. In some cases when for example the other healer is dead, you need to know how you can save the run with using the abilities to the best of your ability aswell.

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 get first clears sooner in most cases, skip mechanics, have an shorter fight and for me doing dmg as healer is about optimising my heals and think about ways to be more efficient and an better healer overall.

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.

If you play an ast as a whm you are an bad ast, simple as that. You need to keep track of your cards, thinking about usage for your time skills and have some different tools with different advantages.

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

You have to consider how much, when and how to heal efficiently. Stuff that healers should think about and not have an very complex rotation + healing, because this would make the class very hard. You do dmg to clear fights in some cases, because especially at the first clear mistakes will happen and then the dmg could be to low and you see the enrage timer without healer dpsing. I play tanks and dd aswell and while those have their own ways to optimise and are fun too, healing for me is all about the teamwork and the fun when you optimise your healing and get better and better. In the end this is more fun than playing either tank or dd imo. The dmg rotation for healers in itself isn't very fun, but it doesn't have to be, cause healing the most efficient way already is and this is what healing is about in FF14 imo.

[Kyandeisu]

I'm in a static that can't find a second healer after the other one went to school, and we're considering poaching our friend whose own static has been, and people from several different statics have approached me.

There are really only a couple things I can think about: make leveling easier, make healers more appealing, and reduce choice constraints like the dread of doubling up.

It might be due to the healing checks seem to be harder this time around in savage, at least for os4.0 so more healers are switching to other classes. my static groups main whm switch to DPS when he had the chance, but when we struggled to find a replacement healer he eventually switched back just because we couldnt find a replacement healer that was able to do a decent job in his stead.

[Trunks]

Blizzard did not kill anything, they just made the genre more popular. If my memory serves me right EQ got like 200k players during his peak. What we now have nothing to do with the tools an MMO offer, you have similar behaviors everywhere. Go ahead and take a look at how dating works today compare to years ago.

You can also take a look at how people prefer to use his mobile device to check social media instead of talking with people in front of them.

You disagree with me and then proceed to reaffirm the premise of my argument.

Anonymizing people dehumanizes them, and dehumanizing people is what leads to antisocial behavior. The rapid-fire, easy access nature of a dungeon/raid finding tool, in which you're paired with random people whom you've never met and will never meet again, helps to normalize toxic behavior. It's the same effect in all of those examples you cited. The much-advertised promise of connectivity via the internet and social media has actually had the opposite effect.

As far as the MMO genre goes, Blizzard started this. They sought popularity (i.e., profit) over all else, but popularity does not necessarily translate to quality or health (hence appeals to popularity are a logical fallacy). Of course, someone else probably would've done it eventually if they hadn't, but you get the idea. Video killed the radio star.

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.

Strawman. Nobody is arguing that people never behaved badly in the past. We're discussing causes, prevalence, and secondary / tertiary effects.

The absence of consequences is the core issue. Communities of every scale are governed by norms and mores ("thou shalt not roll 'need' to sell"), and norms and mores are upheld by collective enforcement. The ability to easily queue into a group with random people and jump from server to server precludes that collective enforcement from occurring. Without those norms, old standards of behavior fall, and none can rise to replace them.

This is decidedly not how things work IRL. If you get fired from all of your jobs for verbally assaulting clients, you're going to have trouble finding jobs -- that's your former employer enforcing a norm on your behavior. If you skip out on debts, you're going to have trouble buying a car -- that's the lending community enforcing a norm. And it's not so easy to just skip town, change your name, and sweep it all under the rug.

[Anienai]

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.

You have become my new best e-friend.

[RichardButte]

I'm in a static that can't find a second healer after the other one went to school, and we're considering poaching our friend whose own static has been, and people from several different statics have approached me.

There are really only a couple things I can think about: make leveling easier, make healers more appealing, and reduce choice constraints like the dread of doubling up.

Might have something to do with the fact that healers in XIV spend more time DPSing than healing.

It's a rude awakening when you leveled a class called "healer" but spend 90%+ of your time waiting for people to take damage so you can heal it instead of spending your time healing.

But this is entirely a problem with XIV's pacing, especially the rate at which players take damage and the rate at which healers can realistically heal that damage.

If you compare healer potency in XIV to that of other MMOs, it's kind of insane: one (non-emergency) heal in XIV can typically bring a tank to near full HP, and even AoE heals tend to be potent enough that 1-2 can bring an entire party from near dead to full.

By comparison, healers in other MMOs tend to have healing rotations, where they're constantly pressing buttons to heal up smaller portions of damage instead of waiting for a party member to lose 3/4ths of their HP before recovering most or all of it with a single spell.

Again, this all comes down to how damage is dealt in XIV, which is balanced around the 2.5 sec GCD which dictates that constant, regular damage would be impossible for healers to manage due to only being able to cast a healing spell once every 2.5 seconds.

The end result is that, while DPS and tanks both have rotations that keep them constantly engaged and interested in what's happening, healers just cycle through a few DPS spells while they wait for damage to happen, after which they quickly heal it up before returning to DPSing.

Healing is a total snooze prior to static raiding, and that's abysmal.

If you find you dislike healing and can't figure out why, it's because healers in XIV aren't so much healers but are more "mages that occasionally top the party off while DPSing".

[Tint]

If you find you dislike healing and can't figure out why, it's because healers in XIV aren't so much healers but are more "mages that occasionally top the party off while DPSing".

yeah and that's exactly why i quit healing in 3.1 - i was raiding as WHM in ARR but in HW the time i spent dpsing skyrocketed because of the new off-gcd heals WHM got and the overall damage people took seemed lower than in ARR.

[Taika]

If you find you dislike healing and can't figure out why, it's because healers in XIV aren't so much healers but are more "mages that occasionally top the party off while DPSing".

On the other hand, this is also the reason why so many players do like playing healers in XIV but not in some other games.

[RichardButte]

yeah and that's exactly why i quit healing in 3.1 - i was raiding as WHM in ARR but in HW the time i spent dpsing skyrocketed because of the new off-gcd heals WHM got and the overall damage people took seemed lower than in ARR.

I leveled AST to 70 because I thought that the card buffs mixed in with the responsibilities of healing would combine to create an engaging experience overall. When I found myself sleepwalking through content, I gave up and began leveling DPS classes instead.

On the other hand, this is also the reason why so many players do like playing healers in XIV but not in some other games.

But this is a thread complaining about how hard it is to find healers for statics in XIV.

I realize that healers and tanks will naturally be harder to come by in MMOs, but XIV seems to have a harder time with healers period and I feel like that's because of how "healers" can expect to spend the majority of their time not even doing what they thought they were leveling the class to do.

I burned out on playing a healer because it was so incredibly boring, even as an AST where I had to simultaneously manage card buffs, and gave up and switched to DPS.

[Tridus]

On the other hand, this is also the reason why so many players do like playing healers in XIV but not in some other games.

Yeah. hard to tell how the numbers tilt between the two.

[Elkanah]

All forums regarding healers and questions/answers:

Healers shouldn't be dpsing! Kick those players!
Healers should be dpsing and healing! Kick those players!
Healers should not regen before pulls! Kick those players!
Healers should regen before pulls! Kick those players!
Healers are terrible in endgame!
Why are there no healers in any content?

This is pretty similar with Tanks, but add a few skills and minus a few things, and you get the same questions lol.