Why are healers more populated than tanks?

[PerrinTaveren]

I think healing in this game is more engaging then any tank job. You have to heal accordingly to unavoidable damage, you have to keep an eye on party members, raise staph dps who keeps dying to mechanics and dps as a healer as well. Dpsing as a healer does give a satisfaction to the job in my opinion. I can dps crazy as sch in aoe, which is better than any tank dps and most dps who doesn't know how to aoe. Probably whm is same. Ast has also cards which keeps the job really engaging at all times.

Tanking can be boring in this game, especially in low level content. It is a 1-2-3 combo for all tanks and it is not really fun. Also, if a tank loses agro and if healer or dps dies because of that, it is entirely tank's fault. But if a dps or tank dies because they failed mechanics, or stepped into aoes, or tank didn't use any CDs and pulled like 4-5 stacks of mobs, it is not ENTIRELY healers fault. Part of the fault lies within them as well. I know dps has enmity buttons well but idk, a well geared tank can keep agro anytime even without any enmity reduction from dps, which lets us come to the other point: Gear.

There is an opinion that healer dps isn't a must. While i don't agree for the most part - i think healers should do to contribute in every way they can - , their primary job is to heal, like tank's primary job is to keep agro. So, a badly geared healer may struggle at healing, but if he/she choose not to dps, or minimize it, tank can be kept alive and party too, so healer job done. But a badly geared tank - %90 OF THE TIME- loses agro if dps doesn't use enmity reduction abilities. THat's because enmity is based on damage entirely so a badly gear tank = bad tank. badly geared healer = mediocore if they know how to heal etc.

Because healing is -on casual content- really easy in this game. Tanking may not be easy because dps can be op (like think about a ilvl370 blm with a ilvl340 tank), and most of the dps LOVES to snap agro from tanks. So let's not put all fault to tanks, there are dps who intentionally doesn't use enmity reduction because they feel op. Or they just don't because lazy. So, in casual content tanking may be really struggling as well, while healing is at its worst, only keeps you from not dpsing at the same comparison (340 healer vs 370 tank/dps). Gear is much much less required for a healer.

Another point is, tank is the leader of the group. Yes, it depends on the healer too, if healer cannot heal that much damage, pace must be reduced (like a 340 healer trying to heal 3 stacks of mobs in ex). But still pace is determined by tank. Even if healer says "go go i can heal 10 stacks of mobs", if tank prefers a slow pace, he is entitled to tank 1 stack as well, and most parties blacklash this because "gotta go fast".

So, i think healing is more beginner friendly, more gear friendly and all in all more friendly, while tanking requires much more responsibility and knowledge about the pace, dps enmity, healer capabilities etc. Because if tank pulls so many mobs without even looking at healer's gear etc, he/she can wipe the party with that and i don't think it is entirely healer's fault.

Anyway well, those are my opinions.

[Tint]

as a healer you only have to react. react to the attacks of the boss, to the party members who take damage, to the downtime you have and throw some dps spells...

healing is a difficult job and you have to plan ahead and make decisons like wich spell for wich situation you use, who gets a raise first and so on. but in the end you just react to the situations the game and your party serves you.


the tank on the other hand has a greater impact on creating those situations. how much you pull, how you rotate your cooldowns, how you position the mobs... even dodging an aoe in the wrong direction can have an impact on the gameplay of the other people in your party.

a tank acts, while the other jobs react - often to the actions of the tank. and not many people want to be responsible of the gameplay of the other people in the party in such a way.

[reivaxe]

The process of learning tanking in this game is brutal. Once you hit your first "big boy" DNG around 30 and see the effects Gear have on aggro it's a shock to the system. Nothing in this game hurt as much as being in a low level dng and not being able to hold aggro because the DPS out geared me by a ton and then being laughed at or bashed on for it.

Friends got me into this game so the start of my leveling was played with the same healer and DPS leaving only one random DPS spot in a dng run. But as I got to 30 they didn't play as much so I had to do things on my own. I legit felt stuck, my server has a crap MB so I couldn't afford to BUY better gear at that level ... I had all the DNG gear I could get to that point ... but I could not hold aggro unless the DPS slowed waaaaay down (Which they rarely did because many were likely higher level and didn't care or just wanted to see their big numbers. Either way, they would put you down for not holding). Made me afraid to do DNGs until I made friends with a healer main randomly who crafted a full set of HQ level 30ish gear for me after I told them why I wanted to learn crafting.

So yeah ... that type of stuff is part of why many tanks turn into tanks who only tank for their friends and don't bother queing for random dice roll groups. I had to get thicker skin and soon found a macro to help (The "mark 1 on shield lob" one. Had to do this to take charge of dng runs and tell the other noobs in their roles that I'm marking THIS as the first to die and this as the 2nd. So if you wanna go smashing on the none marked one that I'm not building aggro on yet then have fun cause I'm not gonna pull em off you).

Tanking is a demanding role. Not only does it demand you stay on top of gear but you also have to focus on both Micro (your rotations and DPS) and Macro (the pace of your group/ the mechanics of the Dng-boss-primal/ how to position the mobs for the classes you're with/ how much can your healer handle). So when you mess up it's clear and even when you're not at fault people blame you.

Heck, I remember running the Ruby Sea Dng, farming the sexy glam. On one run I noticed something strange ... it was taking forever to kill a pull of 3 trash mobs. Like legit, it was taking 3-5 mins for each small pull. So I keep it slow and only pull one group at a time, healer rages at me and tells me to do bigger pulls cause we have a BM. I tell them it's taking us forever to kill these small number of mobs so clearly the DPS needs help/ needs a slower pace. I don't play DPS but something was missing from the visuals ... something was off. Things taking forever to die is one problem but theres not as much visual noise as I'm use to.
We yell at each other through out the DNG with both the DPS not saying a thing till the final floor ... where we find out that the BM gear is all broken and they don't know why that's a big deal cause they've only been playing this game for 2 weeks (meaning they 1- likely got the leveling book and 2- Don't know their rotations cause of not knowing the class/ game).

You think the Healer said sorry? Heck no, she says "You didn't say they had broken gear!"

As a healer I feel like as long as the tank doesn't die in most parties you can just lay back and chill. If the DPS get hit by an AOE they shouldn't have been standing in then that's on them, as long as the tanks not dead and you're alive you can tell them to get gud as you revive or heal em and most wont fight you on that.

[KaivaC]

I honestly didn't realize that there were still new comments being posted here. But I appreciate it nonetheless. Thanks for the responses, everyone.

[Ignimortis]

No idea, really. I find tanking to be much easier than healing, both as MT and OT.

I've levelled WHM to 70, did a few dungeons on it, still didn't like it.

Being a tank is very rewarding in FFXIV: you still do good damage if you know how to play, you get to flaunt your skill a bit pulling door-to-door, etc. Never had as much fun healing, even though I wasn't really that bad at it.