Why are healers more populated than tanks?

[Skivvy]

Another nice little perk of being a healer: at times we can choose whether or not to stand in an AoE without drawing the ire of other party members. Sometimes it's worth it to remain in an AoE to do whatever it is you're doing, and then you can just deal with the aftermath with a quick heal or esuna.

Also, we twirl a lot (at least WHM)

[RukiaFae]

"Tank swaps”

[AngelCheese77]

When I tank, I tell people off the bat if it's a dungeon I have healed in before but not tanked. That usually helps ...

But mainly what gets me is the ...

- "You're going to slow!"
- "Pull more! We can take it!" *I do so and party wipes cause they couldn't take it*
- "That's not how you play that class!" / "You're not playing that class right." *which leads to one or more people rage quitting*
- *I ask for advice* "OMG NOOB TANK" *then the DPS or healer decides to 'lead' and ends up dying ... blaming me.*

So yeah, it's more the people being rude/you-know-whats over the tanking itself that keeps me from wanting to tank.

[AngelCheese77]

It's because they come from other games where there is next to no need for healer dps outside of soloing. They see Sylphie's storyline as just that, story. I mean I am a big advocate of throwing rocks at mobs but a lot of people just have a heals only mindset and it takes a while to overcome that.

This reminds me of a story from EverQuest 2.

That game has different types of healers to it, one being druid-like called a Warden. It can do heals and also DPS etc.

Well, there was a group looking for a healer, and this Warden signed up. So the party is doing a dungeon, but the players are getting beat up and struggling to stay alive. They turn to the Warden who was mainly casting DoTs and DD spells, and they're like "Dude, why aren't you healing us?" And the Warden goes ".... I can heal?"

Yes. True story.

So I can sometimes see it in the opposite light in FF14 with healers. Many healers don't even know they can DPS with DoTs and a DD spell. Granted, I main SCH so I can throw some damage in there, but there are some dungeons where either the tank has poor gear or they don't use CDs right .. or heaven forbid ... like to TURN THE MOB to face everyone else. So all I do is heal through that.

[CorbinDallas]

People heal because it's probably the easiest role of the 3 in doing it's primary role. That's not to say it isn't difficult to optimise, because it flips to being the hardest role (in my opinion). Learning when and where to optimise and DPS often can cost you a pull, and the repercussions of making a mistake are much more noticeable.

Back to my original point. Lazy players flock to healer over tank because it's easy. Incoming damage outside of savage/ultimate is laughable and it usually only takes one gcd to top the effected players up. This is why there's the ever present healer dps war, because healing in itself is so easy.

Compared to tanks, who are expected to lead the groups, and usually get the brunt of it when runs don't go as others want, for example dps pulling extras, petty healers, etc. Tank is more often the whipping post of roles.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Corbin more or less summed it up. If played primarily as a healer, i.e., only scarcely using your damaging abilities, healers are by far the easiest job in the game. You will literally spent more than 50% of your time doing nothing. At lower levels, this can somewhat ease more ambitious yet still learning healers into DPSing more. Unfortunately, it also caters towards lazy players who simply refuse to contribute more than absolutely necessary. Tanks aren't afforded this same luxury. You have to know when to rotate your CDs on larger pulls or bosses otherwise they will hurt—if not outright kill you. If you get a stubborn or petty healer, you're expected to adjust for them, i.e., a SCH not properly shielding. It's an entirely incorrect assumption, but less naturally confident players aren't going to call out those healers. They're more likely to believe they made a mistake, which only worsens their tankxiety.

[BroodingFicus]

I actually played tank before I was a healer. I was a warrior for about a year during ARR and really enjoyed the jobs 'heavy' feel as well as certain aspects of the role. I had a great time running dungeons casually with my healing buddy. We liked doing the leveling roulette and meeting the sprouts or picking up a dps trapped outside a dungeon in a huge queue. I even enjoyed the 'dungeon guide' aspect of the job and didn't usually find it overly stressful. I'd leveled a bard when the game first released and if I was anxious, I'd run it on him first and see how things went before I took on tanking responsibilities. However, seeing as I've been a healer for far longer, obviously something burned me out and most of that was to do with raids and speed runners.

As tank, running the newest dungeons that were in the recent roulettes always felt like a chore after a while. Once everyone got over the first week hump of learning the place, no one had any patience. There would always be one dps trying to pull more adds to me to speed up the run (especially because I was the sort of tank to do a few small pulls before I committed to larger ones) or at the very least one complaining I wasn't going fast enough for their tastes. Essentially people back seat driving. That alone might not have turned me off but then I started trying to do 24 man raids as a tank. Nope. This was back when you had two tanks per party and it always turned into a huge mess with no one wanting to pull or saying nothing and then fighting you for aggro after you finally decide to just do it yourself etc. It stressed me out so badly, this odd tank on tank e-pen competition, that I pretty much stopped playing warrior and leveled a WHM from scratch before HW released.

I guess the other thing was that tank fell into this strange space, at least when I wasn't with my healing buddy, where you were the defacto leader and supposedly in control but also at the mercy of the healer. If you pop your cooldowns properly and maintain aggro but the healer doesn't manage their MP or gets lost dpsing, or fails to heal up the group before a big move, that is beyond your control. As a tank, I had no ability to compensate for other peoples mistakes but was saddled with the responsibility nonetheless. As a WHM? Whole different ballgame. Tank not using cooldowns right? I can probably get us through that. DPS standing in things? I can get us through that. Someone dies? Yep. Got it. DPS slacking in damage on big pulls? HOLY TIME. Even if the tank over pulls, WHM felt like I had the tools in most cases to carry the group through and I found I much preferred that sort of power vs the ornamental power I had as a tank where my life was constantly in someone elses hands.

I also suddenly enjoyed 24 man raids again. Tanks felt like some macho power struggle every run but with healers, I feel like we are this little two man team with one common goal. Yeah sometimes its like herding cats but we are in it together and somehow that makes even awful runs seem just like a fun challenge instead of anxiety inducing. Pair all that with the fact that people are far less likely to needlessly lay into the person who keeps them alive, I just ended up enjoying it more. I imagine I'm not alone in that experience.

[Zsolen]

Purely anecdotal: Some people like to harass tanks, and some tanks like to harass other people.

I don't see dps and healers fighting with each other as much. In 24 mans, I have seen tanks fight each other. Either everyone wants to OT or MT. I've also seen DPS intentionally pull and get alliances cleaved, except for maybe the few people the tanks were waiting for.

Strange thing is DPS usually don't complain more when a healer doesn't heal, after they take unavoidable damage. They die and then the healer does not rez them for a couple of minutes with no recent rezzes, within range of the healer, no upcoming mechanic, and plenty of mp. I've seen it where a healer, RDM, or SMN from another party ends up rezzing them.

[luicei375]

People don't like being "leaders" and having a "leader responsibility" where instead someone else can just set the pace. Or we call that "tankxiety".

Some others hate having to swap stances just to keep up their DPS, while as designated DPS classes they can just only focus on mashing buttons. As healers, your primary focus is to keep everyone alive and there are no stances involved.

In reality tanking is very easy, especially in alliance where if you're not MT, you basically act like the 6th DPS and only need to tank adds for 10 seconds tops. And you'd be surprised that people still fail to do that.

But hey, I'm enjoying the instant queues.

[hydralus]

Because I can't stand playing a tank when I end up with a healer who does nothing but heal. If I play as a healer I know there's going to be an extra 2-3k DPS going out. Even a 'bad' tank will be putting out over 1k, which is way higher than literally 0.