A summary of healer issues

[Absurdity]

For now PF is still stubbornly locking healer slots so you can't play double shields.

Not exactly a surprise there since PF has the flexibility and critical thinking skills of a concrete wall. We're talking about the same people who insisted on using ilya for Light Rampant despite it's obviously terrible success rate in random parties...for 8 months.

[Mortex]

Not exactly a surprise there since PF has the flexibility and critical thinking skills of a concrete wall. We're talking about the same people who insisted on using ilya for Light Rampant despite it's obviously terrible success rate in random parties...for 8 months.

Well new ex trial is also really good in pf. 500 million strats and no one can effectively can come to terms for 1. Every bloody party you ask 2/4 or 1/3 or boss relativ or true north. Combined with the one player that can’t bait in a circle ground aoe so he isn’t in time in mid. Also not dodging the hardest mechanic, slow moving tornados that always spawn in the same formation. And the same with sephi unreal.

[Recon1o6]

One of my dnd players paid my sub as he wanted someone to come do the story with him and it was the least I can do to oblige him for that. Still it allowed me to come back on and get my bonding anniversary done at least and barbarricia was an excellent trial.

The useful part was being able to see this forum again. I'm genuinely surprised the jpn folks asked not one but two questions related to healers. Transcribed from reddit's ever faithful unofficial translators

Q2: For Savage this time there seems to be a serious lack of healer participation going on. My question is that are you aware of the reason and is there anything you will reflect on, and if any are there plans to address this issue (that is within the means and intention of the dev team), and if there is, may I know the plan to address the issue?

YoshiP: (Super long paused followed by hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.........) things to reflect on......things to reflect on? I did see something written on Matome (Summary) sites, something about "Green skin"※......Hmmmm? (another long pause) ...n...nothing much I can say about that...

※ - A meme referring to "actually a DPS job in a healer skin"

But we also have situations where there are lack of tank participations and this seems to depend on the timing and situation...(another long pause) If I have to make a comment about it, I think the reason would be because it's a high difficulty content, and there are other factors which contributed to this issue....this is hard to answer, I mean there's also the request we got that asks us to create more situations that require healers to heal, among other things that is asked of us as well...(another long pause) So in this case, in some circumstances due to certain wall that caused deviation (bias?) to occur, and this is definitely a possibility after operating this game for a long while, but as for the state of healers right now, I think it's just an extremely...
I mean this simply is due to the healer population in general as well as the population of raiders participating in this tier...but if I have to say anything about this matter what I am able to say at this point is "give healers a try", and that's what I want to convey, since this is a game where you can be multiple roles, and if you're playing in a completely different role you'll definitely find something interesting in doing so....hmmm...well we will need to observe the situation a little more...yeah.

Q7: This is a question regarding the fourth floor of Savage (P8S), the Savage content, which includes the DPS check required, is definitely a challenging content, the healing check for the second half of this battle was really tight and compared to Dragonsong Reprise (DSR), I feel that there are certain parts in the second half of the battle contains healing check that is required which is comparable to what Ultimate would require, personally I welcome the increase in healing intensity but it causes the parties to be lack of healers when it comes to PF recruitment (be it progging or weekly clears) so I wonder what is your thoughts and opinion on the matter?

YoshiP: Ok I mean as I said before (and this happened before), if I give an answer to one question, it won't work on the other one (for some reason).
Ok, we are told that (healers) are free (to do damage) which is why healers tend to focus on firepower (dps) instead, and we should give healers more situations where they need to heal, and we increased the healing work required here...well I mean for the entire expansion and we did it but as expected this happens...(healers that never had to actually heal quitting)
so what are we supposed to do now hahaha...oh god if any I should be the one trying to discuss with you guys here.
Aaaaaaahhh I mean yeah I knew this will definitely happen (long sigh). Well I mean I thought we've achieved quite a good balance here....(long ponder)
Well yeah I mean if I have to start decreasing the difficulty and I'll get comments that it's too lax (laughs). Well I will need data...either way we did indeed increase the intensity for sure, although this was the balance that was asked of us...I mean this is personal disparity, yeah, there are healers who are completely fine with this tuning, and there are other healers who would go "this is too hard I can't do this".

Yeah I apologize but please allow us to continue ponder on this matter and find out what is best for the matter, and this is what we can do here.


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It seems pretty obvious at this point given he was practically ranting in the second question that he knows there is a problem with the healer population at large and this tier has demonstrated that a lot of good healers have quit
the moment there was some healing to do comparable to E11s or E12s checks before the enrage, the freeloading healers noped out

I note something fascinating. The first question was "are you aware the issue causing the lack of healers and what do you intend to do about it". If yoshida thought it was the heal check was high, then why did he first think of a green dps meme
He later went on to talk about healer population in general having a problem and asked for players to give healing a try.

Its plausible to assume at this point he knows that the lack of dps buttons is really upsetting healer players and caused quitting but doesn't want to admit and act on it. So as a stopgap askign more players to try healing.

[Absurdity]

Its plausible to assume at this point he knows that the lack of dps buttons is really upsetting healer players and caused quitting but doesn't want to admit and act on it. So as a stopgap askign more players to try healing.

It's a problem of their own making. Due to how incredibly boring they made the jobs a lot of veteran healers have simply abandoned their role while the new healers who filled those spots are too used to incoming damage basically being a joke, even in higher end content, so they were totally unprepared for this raid tier.

Add on top of that the general lack of difficulty in all other content and the nonexistent in-game explanations of a job's kit leading to tanks and dps also having no idea about their defensive party utility.

Everything combined results in the current state where the healers aren't able to cope with the incoming damage, due to both their own abilities and the lack of support from the rest of the party, so they just stop doing savage.

Can't say I'm particularly surprised.

[Aluja89]

It's a problem of their own making. Due to how incredibly boring they made the jobs a lot of veteran healers have simply abandoned their role while the new healers who filled those spots are too used to incoming damage basically being a joke, even in higher end content, so they were totally unprepared for this raid tier.

Add on top of that the general lack of difficulty in all other content and the nonexistent in-game explanations of a job's kit leading to tanks and dps also having no idea about their defensive party utility.

Everything combined results in the current state where the healers aren't able to cope with the incoming damage, due to both their own abilities and the lack of support from the rest of the party, so they just stop doing savage.

Can't say I'm particularly surprised.

That's the gist of everything isn't it.

You can't have Savage difficulty without building the culture around it and it's only going to get worse.

[Nizzi]

YoshiP:.but if I have to say anything about this matter what I am able to say at this point is "give healers a try", and that's what I want to convey, since this is a game where you can be multiple roles, and if you're playing in a completely different role you'll definitely find something interesting in doing so....hmmm...well we will need to observe the situation a little more...yeah.

Asking DPS or Tanks to play healer? How about you play healer yourself for a tier, Yoshida? I quit my main, SCH that I played for YEARS this tier to play BLM and I am having more fun than I've had in years in this game. If I can swap to BLM for a tier and quickly understand even more so why healers are boring in this game, surely you can swap to a healer and understand why so many healer mains have been telling you for YEARS that there is a HUGE ISSUE with these jobs? BLM has the level of "plate spinning" engagement that so many healers are looking for. It has multiple timers - Enochian, Astral/Umbral, Thunder III, - unique and interesting optimizations with nonstandard lines, Firestarter procs and even using Lucid Dreaming to get back into Astral Fire as quickly as possible, etc. And none of these optimizations are something any normal Black Mage player has to interact with if they don't want to and they can still perform fine. Healers have none of this, and optimization for a healer is 2 things - healing less and spamming your 1 key more. Every healer DoT wishes it could have the level of complexity that Thunder III does with Thundercloud and Sharpcast, and while it's not "big brain" by any stretch, it is certainly more interesting than Bio, Dia, Combust and E. Dosis combined.

Sorry to be a bit mad at that response, but seriously, before you start asking the players to give healers a try, how about you and your team do so first? Maybe you'll understand why so many people want to do anything but play healer? I don't even want to play a DPS job - I see my main character as a Scholar and that's all I'll ever be able to be happiest seeing them as, but I play this game to have fun and be engaged, and that's something Scholar and every other healer isn't at this point anymore.

[Liam_Harper]

Its plausible to assume at this point he knows that the lack of dps buttons is really upsetting healer players and caused quitting but doesn't want to admit and act on it.

I wonder at this point if the real reason they refuse to add engaging dps is their job design team can't handle it.

Their tiny 4-5 person team has been really struggling these past few expansions and there's more jobs coming in the future. The best they could do with a new healer was a SCH clone without a pet. Fixing AST's cards is such a strain it has to wait until 7.0.

Honestly I don't think they can actually do it anymore. Reworking all 4 healers to have engaging dps that synergizes with the toolkit in unique ways and is easy to pick up but rewarding to master is way beyond the current team. They have major issues with job design and ignored it for too long, stubbornly trying to keep things going with their tiny group. And they probably don't want to outright admit that. It's one thing to say "server limitations", but another to say "our job designers can't design jobs anymore".

I don't think it's that they refuse to fix healers, but at this stage they can't.

[Recon1o6]

I wonder at this point if the real reason they refuse to add engaging dps is their job design team can't handle it

they clearly can. They made the fun and engaging pvp sets and the bulk of the work is already there if they wanted to add engaging dps because they can look up previous versions of the game

[Liam_Harper]

they clearly can. They made the fun and engaging pvp sets and the bulk of the work is already there if they wanted to add engaging dps because they can look up previous versions of the game

PvP is very barebones, jobs have 6-8 unique buttons each. It's also more likely the little they managed to add to PvP drained their resources further, rather than being an indication of a healthy job design team.

It's not as easy as just pulling Seraph Strike from PvP, or looking at BLU or Bozja and pulling the fun buttons from it to tack onto healers. PvE needs to be carefully balanced and they're struggling enough even with 1 button healers and everything on 2 min bursts. Changes need to be carefully considered or you end up with jokes like Dia being a downgrade to Aero II and 1 button SMN macros. There's no way they can rework all 4 healers with the current state of the team.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not justifying the lack of improvement, quite the opposite. It's ridiculous that a huge company like SE stubbornly neglected their job design for so long until it ended up in this state. We should be able to expect engaging jobs from one of the largest MMORPG's. But until they do something about the lack of job designers I doubt we can.

[ForsakenRoe]

One of my dnd players paid my sub

If they hear 'healing boring', add more healing required, then even more people leave cos it's too hard to heal now, maybe the 'healing required' was not the issue in the first place. But this is SE, so they'll go 'yeh we adjusted it too high sorry', put it back to Asphodelos numbers to bring back the people who left because a raidwide with a bleed is too much to handle, and then forget to try a different fix (like adding more DPS interactivity) for 2 more years. You'd have thought since there's always so much chatter about the state of healer as a role, they'd have more of an answer than 'yeh uhhh we made it harder, now everyone quit (yeh we can see that ourselves), uhhh we need to get more data'. But any illusions I had about them reading the not-JP forums were put to rest when I heard them say that they had not heard anything about Blood Weapon being an issue with ping. It was only complained about in the forums for all of SHB! and LD was memed on since it's release in HW, but it took till 6.1 to get changed to be 'not complete dog', you can see it even now with MCH, people ask 'can we get stacks on Hypercharge and Wildfire it's hell with ping' and they get 'we tried it, it's fine', at this point I think SE testing doesn't actually weave the Gauss Rounds or something


i'm personally grateful for all you have done to try and catch SE's eye on this stuff Recon, like getting that fateful question asked at the Q+A (the one that had all the important examples conveniently cut off, and was hit with 'lmao go try ultimate'). Isn't it ironic, the VERY ultimate Yoshi-P was so confidently telling us burned out healer mains to try before we're allowed to express our opinion, has also now been solohealed? Yes it took luck, and a certain mit heavy comp, but the fact it's solo healable at all (or any ultimate for that matter) just shows how not only was YP's response incredibly dismissive, it's also just a case of 'confidently wrong'. I hope you keep fighting the fight while you have sub time, and again i'm thankful you care about the healer role this much. Because apparently, SE doesn't hahAAAA

One of my dnd players paid my sub

If they hear 'healing boring', add more healing required, then even more people leave cos it's too hard to heal now, maybe the 'healing required' was not the issue in the first place. But this is SE, so they'll go 'yeh we adjusted it too high sorry', put it back to Asphodelos numbers to bring back the people who left because a raidwide with a bleed is too much to handle, and then forget to try a different fix (like adding more DPS interactivity) for 2 more years. You'd have thought since there's always so much chatter about the state of healer as a role, they'd have more of an answer than 'yeh uhhh we made it harder, now everyone quit (yeh we can see that ourselves), uhhh we need to get more data'. But any illusions I had about them reading the not-JP forums were put to rest when I heard them say that they had not heard anything about Blood Weapon being an issue with ping. It was only complained about in the forums for all of SHB! and LD was memed on since it's release in HW, but it took till 6.1 to get changed to be 'not complete dog', you can see it even now with MCH, people ask 'can we get stacks on Hypercharge and Wildfire it's hell with ping' and they get 'we tried it, it's fine', at this point I think SE testing doesn't actually weave the Gauss Rounds or something


i'm personally grateful for all you have done to try and catch SE's eye on this stuff Recon, like getting that fateful question asked at the Q+A (the one that had all the important examples conveniently cut off, and was hit with 'lmao go try ultimate'). Isn't it ironic, the VERY ultimate Yoshi-P was so confidently telling us burned out healer mains to try before we're allowed to express our opinion, has also now been solohealed? Yes it took luck, and a certain mit heavy comp, but the fact it's solo healable at all (or any ultimate for that matter) just shows how not only was YP's response incredibly dismissive, it's also just a case of 'confidently wrong'. I hope you keep fighting the fight while you have sub time, and again i'm thankful you care about the healer role this much. Because apparently, SE doesn't hahAAAA

I don't think it's that they refuse to fix healers, but at this stage they can't.

i'm starting to think part of the reason is that they fear driving away the 'i play healer to heal' crowd, the ones who start breaking out in a cold sweat at the mention of 'Aero 3'. maybe they think that the amount of 'people doing content as healer' will be lower if they drive away the healbot crowd, so instead they'd rather just let the 'savage raider' crowd slowly fade out over time. as for job design, idk about you but at this point i'll probably be willing to just not have any more healers added at all ever again if it means they can make the 4 we have fun, but i dont really trust them to even get that right considering how safe they played it with SGE.