There's something that's been on my mind this morning that I wanted to talk about in regards to the population of healers throughout the expansions we've seen pop up in a few different discussions from time-to-time. Basically, it's been brought up that there is a higher population of healer players now than there was during Stormblood, but also less than during Heavensward. The question is about what this information is actually telling us in relation to how players have responded to healer job design across the expansions. If the reason why people level healers was exclusively about what jobs players enjoyed, than it would make sense that the state of Endwalker's healers would be seen collectively as better than Stormblood's, but it's not the only factor.

What's really interesting about Shadwobringers particularly, where the number picks up from the dip it experienced in Stormblood, was the introduction of Role Quests with more interesting lore than any of the Job Quests had displayed before. I for one had never even unlocked the tank jobs up until Shadowbringers with the Role Quests as my primary reason. I also was doing it to unlock the Amaro mount which required I level every job to 80. Now that I keep up with all jobs, I'm also gradually collecting all the relic weapons (since there's nothing else I care to buy using tomestones) so it's very likely that I've counted toward the total number of tank players in recent census data despite the fact that I have never once queued as a tank for any group content at all, not even for leveling. I leveled all of them using Squadrons, Frontlines, Beast Quests, Trust Dungeons, and Wonderous Tails. I count toward the healer data as well despite refusing to ever queue as a healer for group content specifically because of how unhappy I am with their gameplay.

All of this is very anecdotal, but my point is that there are other driving forces to why someone would level a job other than because they enjoy playing as that job, more now than there was during Stormblood. Leveling has also become easier than ever. In other words, the actual percentage of players who actively play healer is undoubtedly lower than the total population implies, but without knowing by how much, how can we really say that there are more active healers now than during Stormblood?