Has anyone quit healing?

[Kalise]

And this is just making me rage and cry inside because healers still clip for days, even the more mobile healers don't even compare, and just all in all... Yes, some things have improved about healers over time, but just compared to this... well, I'm asking myself over and over, where did the design effort go when it came to healers.

Yeah, it's easy to see that the class design team are DPS mains. More so DPS mains who've played as DPS in FFXIV, so they've made changes to jobs that take into consideration how the game is designed (I.e. They've reduced the effect of missing positionals considerably given that encounters don't always allow for free usage of positionals because of static bosses and mechanics that force movement)

So there's this fairly well designed set of DPS jobs, even if their balance is a little iffy at the higher levels.

As such, they copy/paste'd this design over to the tanks and slapped on a few defensive CD's and some enmity and called it a day.

But then for Healers... They get confused. Since it seems that they still think that FFXIV healers are the same as healers from other games, in which they spend their time healing and occasionally weave in a few attacks during downtime in damage.

Though, it's hard to outright blame them for their healer design, because you can tell that they tried. Like, FFXIV's healers actual healing kit is fantastic and if it was in any other game it'd be a well designed kit. It's just that it is so very out of sync with how encounters are designed in FFXIV.

Which is honestly the biggest issue with FFXIV's jobs. The way that encounters are designed. The fact that they're 90% a game of DDR and then 10% predictable unavoidable damage spikes (Be they Tankbusters or Raidbusters), all of them. Every. Single. Boss. From dungeon to trial to raid. All the same.

This singular design, does not lend itself to Tanks, nor to Healers. It lends itself to DPS whom have a Defensive CD or a Healing CD. I've said it before, but with this sort of encounter design, you may as well just delete the "Tank" and "Healer" roles and just give everyone Rampart and Assize while balancing them as a DPS. So whomever has aggro pops Rampart when the Tankbuster comes and people can pop Assize when the Raidbuster comes. With how much actual interaction there is from these roles currently it'd hardly be any different.

Encounter design needs to be revamped from the ground up if they want to be able to design Tanks and Healers to actually be Tanks and Healers as opposed to the meme worthy "Blue" and "Green" DPS. There should be far more consistent damage, leading to Tanks actually thinking about maintaining mitigation uptime and alleviating pressure on healers during periods of AoE damage. While Healers should be needing to use more resources on healing and focusing on maximizing efficiency of MP versus how much needs to be healed. With then job design focusing more on conforming to this new direction, with Tanks having more focus on active mitigation and chaining CD's to cover periods of damage, while Healers having more focus on utilizing different kinds of healing skills and knowing when it's necessary to pop a big oGCD and when they can get away with a Cure II cast instead (Also, the Cure I and Benefic I procs being actually relevant in any content in the entire game at all).

So yeah, while it's easy to shout about how poorly Healers have been designed, I think that the root of the problem is the encounter design that has simply not evolved to a point where it allows for the support roles to actually be designable.

[Synaesthesia]

I'm back healing, the savage fights are fun enough and DPS gameplay lets me play the story, do fates and normal content while having fun.. Please don't misunderstand this as me being in defense of the design choices they're making.. I still really feel like there have been a bunch of terrible design decisions made for healers in this expansion.

There's something terribly wrong when so much of the game's content is so much more fun on DPS and tank while leaving the healer in a state of numbness.

[Mesarthim]

Well lately seeing as I don't find myself healing unless I have to I guess it's no longer my main role. Need to slowly work on the gunbreaker mount achievements anyway. Healers don't have those.

It's not that I am shunning the role entirely but that I am not encouraged to play it at all unless I need to.

[Anselmet]

I did quit healing on sch for shb and after I no longer needed accessories from Innocence or weapons from Titania, I dedicated myself to drg and war and put away my book since. But at the end of the last patch I finally stopped hating whm since arr and now all I play is whm and mch the most.

I keep changing roles. I don't know what its about shb that's making me try new roles but I really am. I'm also being way more chill this expansion. Maybe that's why I like whm and its ofgcd skills. Just glare and weave.

[AduroT]

I just started healing! I’ve only played DPS previously (haven’t caped any in the year or so I’ve played though) but decided to give Conjurer a try on a lark. So yeah, only hit level thirty and got my White Mage gem right before logging out for the day, so not super experienced with it yet. Ran some dungeon roulettes and went pretty good I thought. I personally enjoyed the role of doing DPS (I threw a rock at ‘im!) but having to watch tank/party health. Will see if that changes as I work my way up.

[Daws]

I go back and forth with healing. I'll get bored, play dps, get bored with dps, and go back to healing. I miss SCH feeling like a mini SMN. I miss having multiple dots and spreading them. Now the broil spam is very apparent (and carpal tunnel inducing). It's why I'm enjoying AST the most. The cards break up the monotony, though, doing the new content as AST can be sensory overload. I don't like dying multiple times in a fight because I'm overwhelmed trying to dodge all the new dangers + heal + get those Malefics in + process the card you drew and who it should go to (or do I need to Redraw it? or should I Minor Arcana it????). I've literally just froze up from too many decisions and dropped dead from a boss ability lol.

That's my only major gripe with AST atm, though. It can be a lot but I'll take it over the easier options.

[GUkraine]

I have yes. The current role of healing is so 1 dimensional it's almost a joke. Compared to a game like WoW (M+ or Mythic tier raiding), healing in FFXIV is an absolute bot fest. Though this has how it has almost always been aside from previous tiers having more dps variety in our healing kits.

The only variability in a fight is the number of times we have to res some dps who died to the same telegraphed attack. Swapping back to SMN (despite it's terribly boring rotation) has been a breath of fresh air. Heck even tanking is more engaging than healing these days.

[Sabrenn]

Just made the decision to go RDM main last week despite the progress towards my SCH bis and did some savage weeklies as RDM today, was so much comfier and fun! I'm not as good at it yet, but I'm sure that will come with practice. Definitely worth it! Wasn't too hard readjusting to the dps positions either.

Had to come to terms with myself that the healers I fell in love with since HW are gone. It was hard, but it feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I'm enjoying the game once more.

I'm sure it's different for new healers because they have nothing to be nostalgic about and might just be enjoying the new iterations of healers but if anyone else is in the same boat as me, I'd definitely recommend it. Get yourself some crafted gear and a ruby wep and try something new, might just be what you need.

[Rai_Takara]

I've quit healing full time and am a part time as a dancer

Though truthfully, I swapped from AST to DNC because DNC fits me and my character more. Prior to the swap I was a AST main since HW release. I'm just a sucker for the Thavnairan stuff lol. I did dabble on healing on AST a lil, but after healing for 4 years, DPS is a nice change of pace. I really enjoyed the new AST as someone that raids at the top end, though I can completely understand the complaints with sleeve draw as it is very hectic.

I hope whatever new healer they bring, they don't try to reinvent the wheel like AST in HW release. The game has matured too much for them to be trying these things and with the homogenization this expansion, they should build upon it rather than trying to throw things at the wall and see what sticks. They got a great foundation this expansion and for once, all healers are competitive, even the dreaded Noct AST. Time will tell if they bork it again or not.

[ArchlordPie]

I've never really been a healer main. I keep my SCH geared because I get it leveled for free by leveling my main and tend to have more uncapped tomes than I know what to do with, and I play it whenever my FC needs a high level healer for something more than it needs a high level DPS, but it's far from my favorite class to play. I don't remember much about pre-5.0 SCH, but I do miss having more than one DoT.

That being said, the 5.0 changes ruined AST for me. I was enjoying leveling it back in the 4.x days, got it to 50 along with WHM, and vastly preferred AST to WHM because of the card system and the different things I could do with it. I liked that every card was unique and while dropping a Super Balance (at least that's what I called it in voice chat when I had a Balance drawn with the "increased power" effect ready) right at the start of boss pulls was fun and all, the thing that really sold the class for me was that, at least in low-level dungeons where you didn't have all your fancy oGCD buttons and a lot of players weren't playing anywhere close to optimally, every card had a purpose.

Of course Balance was the best, because it was the DPS card. But I still got plenty of use out of the others, whether it was Ewer helping me manage my own MP (and giving me reason to laugh at a BLM who insisted I give him all my Ewers "so he doesn't have to do ice phase"), or Bole saving the sprout tank who overpulled and can't find his cooldowns.

Nowadays, all the cards are mini-Balances, which I find INCREDIBLY boring, and they had to add some convoluted-looking seal system in order to justify still having six base cards instead of just "the melee card" and "the ranged card". I'm gonna have to level this eventually if I want my Soul of Magic title, but I'm REALLY not looking forward to that...