The state of healers is affecting everyone

[Ilenya]

There is big healer shortage. Healers queues are instant and tanks have about same as a dps.

I find it varies a lot. Alliance raid is a big issue for tank queues, but that's nothing new.

[EaMett]

The healers here on the forums represent a small portion of the community as a whole, and when you start tossing words like "optimization" and fflogs out there, you basically severe the silent majority who either don't/can't/won't use the tools that monitor the stats. I'm not saying all these players are content with the changes, but the difference lies within any player's enjoyment and/or willingness to play any given job and max it out.

You can talk about how SCH was gutted all day long, and while I don't disagree, mentioning its former DPS rotation as a focal point of the job is exactly why it's gone. It was the epitome of a green DPS, and we either have to face the fact that this is not how the devs and a lot of players want our healers to be, or look the other direction.

In addition to what’s already been said, might I add that this is a case of the devs lowering the skill ceiling without touching much to the skill base. The main reason being for compacting skill tiers. The silent majority fitting the former for the most part wouldn’t have much at stake in the first place.
It’s hard to account for people who don’t care to weave or clip or sometimes even dps when trying to fine tune a class for player longevity. (Aka find a class fun once you’ve mastered the basics)

[JunseiKei]

Whm has always been what is is now though, at most we had 3 dots in heavensward but you only used aero 1 if you needed to weave since it's overall potency was less than stone 3. So we basically lost 1 dot and gained afflatus misery. I can undestand astro, but whm is what is has always been, so if you don't like whm now you never did.

This; you can tell who's played WHM in past expansions versus now because of how hard it can hit.

There is big healer shortage. Healers queues are instant and tanks have about same as a dps.

It might be because of different data centers, but healers have always been an instant queue here on aether. A lot of healers for end game stuff (extreme primals, savage and ultimate), but for the daily grinds like dungeons? It's really no different now than it has been in the past. The biggest difference I've noticed is people traded rDPS cards for pDPS glare while scholars still seem to have just as much of a presence as white mages (which I understand is just as subjective as what another notices).

[Gaethan_Tessula]

Whm has always been what is is now though, at most we had 3 dots in heavensward but you only used aero 1 if you needed to weave since it's overall potency was less than stone 3. So we basically lost 1 dot and gained afflatus misery. I can undestand astro, but whm is what is has always been, so if you don't like whm now you never did.

I'm sick of seeing this argument. You cannot say that losing a DoT, a close range oGCD, a dedicated weaving tool, and Cleric Stance in either form was nothing. Afflatus X are a nice addition, but it does not make up for the losses alone.

Extra DoTs to juggle are something both in terms of non-nuke GCDs and a skill gap. If they weren't, SE wouldn't rush to consolidate them expansion after expansion in order to idiot proof the game.

Fluid aura was something.

Cleric stance rewarded good risk assessment on program and good fight knowledge on farm. As a CD, it still played into aligning raid buffs.

[Samsta]

I'm sick of seeing this argument. You cannot say that losing a DoT, a close range oGCD, a dedicated weaving tool, and Cleric Stance in either form was nothing. Afflatus X are a nice addition, but it does not make up for the losses alone.

Extra DoTs to juggle are something both in terms of non-nuke GCDs and a skill gap. If they weren't, SE wouldn't rush to consolidate them expansion after expansion in order to idiot proof the game.

Fluid aura was something.

Cleric stance rewarded good risk assessment on program and good fight knowledge on farm. As a CD, it still played into aligning raid buffs.

The basic gameplay is the same, at least I don't feel any different playing it now versus playing it before. Yeah cleric stance was different but that has been gone for a while.

[Melichoir]

Well I mean what they could do to make everyone happy is revert SCH and AST, and Add 4 or 5 DPS skills to WHM, and tune fights so that the healers need to deal almost as much damage as DPS all the while making sure healing is not that important.

While Im being flippant, this is the crux of what Im not understanding. If youre bored with healing, then why isnt the argument to make fights even more pressing that forces even more healing and attention? Why is the fix for the classes "We need more DPS skills for healers." From what Ive been observing from Friends and FC mates doing Savage, the encounters arent designed for healers to sit there and bust out full DPS rotations, but instead use DPS skills as fillers between support and mechanics. DPS is a secondary factor, something you fill in for between handling mechanics and heals, not a primary factor where you pop heals when needed. This isnt me saying healers should just heal. Youre expected to do damage. Its not expected to be the focus of your time spent during fights.

So how come teh solution to the "Healers are boring" aspect isnt more healing intensive encounters or mechanically driven ones that force different healer interactions? Its always "We need DPS skills or its boring". Again, it comes across as people wanting to play a DPS role with a side of healing, and not a healing role with a side of DPS.

[Ilenya]

So how come teh solution to the "Healers are boring" aspect isnt more healing intensive encounters or mechanically driven ones that force different healer interactions? Its always "We need DPS skills or its boring". Again, it comes across as people wanting to play a DPS role with a side of healing, and not a healing role with a side of DPS.

Some of us have asked for that. Some of us were hoping the supposed healing focused gameplay meant it would be a thing.

It wasn't. At all.

[Granyala]

Cleric stance rewarded good risk assessment on program and good fight knowledge on farm. As a CD, it still played into aligning raid buffs.

The difficult thing about the cleric dance was hoping that the server recognized the input. Often enough it didn't and that was annoying as hell.
On that front: I don't miss the skill. With better servers it would have been cooler.

As for the 5% buff: considering the cooldown that thing was so pathetically weak it wasn't even funny anymore. Good riddance, I say.

I still lament the loss of Aero III. AoE DoT was fun and unique to the class.

Bottom line I would agree with Samsta: WHM doesn't feel too different to play. I welcome the added mobility via the lily heals.

So how come teh solution to the "Healers are boring" aspect isnt more healing intensive encounters or mechanically driven ones that force different healer interactions? Its always "We need DPS skills or its boring". Again, it comes across as people wanting to play a DPS role with a side of healing, and not a healing role with a side of DPS.

I tried to touch on the subject in this post:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post5173503

Suffice it to say: I am not convinced that a pure healing playstyle would be more engaging than a weaving of healing and DPS. I think the latter has more potential in the long run, esp when encounters are on farm status if the DPS portion of the role isn't too dumbed down.

[Billythepancake]

Well I mean what they could do to make everyone happy is revert SCH and AST, and Add 4 or 5 DPS skills to WHM, and tune fights so that the healers need to deal almost as much damage as DPS all the while making sure healing is not that important.

While Im being flippant, this is the crux of what Im not understanding. If youre bored with healing, then why isnt the argument to make fights even more pressing that forces even more healing and attention? Why is the fix for the classes "We need more DPS skills for healers." From what Ive been observing from Friends and FC mates doing Savage, the encounters arent designed for healers to sit there and bust out full DPS rotations, but instead use DPS skills as fillers between support and mechanics. DPS is a secondary factor, something you fill in for between handling mechanics and heals, not a primary factor where you pop heals when needed. This isnt me saying healers should just heal. Youre expected to do damage. Its not expected to be the focus of your time spent during fights.

So how come teh solution to the "Healers are boring" aspect isnt more healing intensive encounters or mechanically driven ones that force different healer interactions? Its always "We need DPS skills or its boring". Again, it comes across as people wanting to play a DPS role with a side of healing, and not a healing role with a side of DPS.

As many have said, you eventually outgear the content, be it sooner or later, it is impossible to keep things where you constantly heal all the time in any content. I'm not even necessarily asking for more DPS options, though I'm not opposed to them, I'm asking for something, ANYTHING, to do in downtime that isn't mind numbingly spamming 1 button over and over again. Down time in it of itself is not a bad thing, it should be a reward for playing well and using your kit effectively, but there needs to be something to do in it. I only ask for DPS because that is the easiest thing to implement for it,and they already have the assets for it.

[Gaethan_Tessula]

If youre bored with healing, then why isnt the argument to make fights even more pressing that forces even more healing and attention? Why is the fix for the classes "We need more DPS skills for healers." From what Ive been observing from Friends and FC mates doing Savage, the encounters arent designed for healers to sit there and bust out full DPS rotations, but instead use DPS skills as fillers between support and mechanics. DPS is a secondary factor, something you fill in for between handling mechanics and heals, not a primary factor where you pop heals when needed. This isnt me saying healers should just heal. Youre expected to do damage. Its not expected to be the focus of your time spent during fights.

So how come teh solution to the "Healers are boring" aspect isnt more healing intensive encounters or mechanically driven ones that force different healer interactions? Its always "We need DPS skills or its boring". Again, it comes across as people wanting to play a DPS role with a side of healing, and not a healing role with a side of DPS.

1. Because Square Enix wants sub-Ultimate fights to be more accessible, not less, they won't increase the actual healing difficulty. They balance jobs and encounters from the bottom of the skill curve up, instead of top down like they should. This is why they think verraise equals 2k rDPS.

Even Savage sees more downtime than required healing time, so that inefficient healers can still do it. Right now the DPS checks are negating that, but once the playerbase is at 460 ilvl where SE tuned the fights cure and physick mages could hypothetically clear.

So we ask for more engaging downtime, because history shows we won't get harder heal checks and could get better DPS or support (because it's "optional").

2. DPS can always be further improved even as gear increases, whereas healing difficulty and complexity scales ok inversely with gear ilvl. Min ilvl runs change this, but can be time consuming to recruit for and even then that healing will be optimized long before DPS or a combination of extra support responsibilities.