It's time to hire dedicated Tank an Healer devs!

[Melorie]

How am I the one on a high-horse, when you're the one citing your time playing? You're the one dismissing an opinion. Like I said, I've played these games enough. I've also had a lot of good discussions about development and gained a lot of insight. Just because I wasn't here the whole time doesn't give you the right to act that way. Miss me with that elitist bs.

'm just saying I need more context for your side to make any kind of sense to me or even some of the team.

I'm not being elitist by any means. You haven't experienced the history of this role so of course you don't understand it. I'm just saying that some people here have their own reasons to feel this way because of how this role has been treated over the years, and acting like they're being entitled just because the dev team has dropped the ball over and over again with the healer role is unfair. You could always go to the healers forum and read the post over the years, the suggestions, the lengthy discussions instead of just telling people to "wait for the expac, stop being entitled, i'm certain they'll fix things, you clearly don't understand the devs".

When you play a class that you love and that over the years have been constantly having their tools being stripped off, without having them replaced by anything at all and that rewards you with spamming one button the better you master it, you might understand how people feel about that, until then I doubt you have the right to call anyone entitled.

Yeah, complaints have value.
But that doesn't mean the conlmplainers can pretend theirs is the voice of the majority. Citing discord groups as one of the primary sources should have been the first red flag that the sample is flawed.

Over the years, the healer discussion has just grow. If you access the section in the forums, the reddit, the discords... Even in the media tour, there was (finally) questions about it. So yeah, of course some portion of the player base don't really access these places and have nothing to say, just like they had nothing to say at 2.x, 3.x, 4.x and so it goes. Some people aren't really into discussing these things, others don't really care about it deeply (I have a friend that play as healer and agrees with their problems, but he loves the aesthetic and since he doesn't do that much content every day, he never really thinks too much about it), I bet that some wouldn't even care that much if something changed (specially since we're talking about spamming 1 button) and might even notice if they felt something about it at all after this particular change - but regardless of all that, when you're speaking of an MMO it would be hard to gather the true data that these discussions needs. This isn't just for the healer issue, but for all the possible issues the game has and will have.

That doesn't really make the discussion less important, though. That doesn't mean that people saying that this is a serious issue don't have a point just because you don't have 80% of the playerbase talking it in the same place.

[ItMe]

- but regardless of all that, when you're speaking of an MMO it would be hard to gather the true data that these discussions needs. This isn't just for the healer issue, but for all the possible issues the game has and will have.

Exactly~
That's why I found their comment so egregious and strange.

[Wobi]

I’ve been healing since 1.0 times, while I’d appreciate more variety in our DPS kit I’m not sure making encounters require more healing outside of higher end content is the answer. Some people only run with their raid crew and don’t meet the people who struggle to heal even basic dungeons. How do you make content for those players? If they amp things too high less people want to heal and queue times rise.

They already scale up the heal checks as we progress the content, and when they tried making harder dungeons people complained and stopped running expert roulette. It’s a fine balance to keep every tier of player happy.

Also things like stance dancing was a terrible idea, if you had higher ping more often than not it would delay and you’d swap right back to the wrong stance and end up healing for nothing or as a tank miss your mitigation to survive tankbusters. While this was appreciated by high-end raiders it was just a pain to the general population. They had to simplify things to get more people to play, as a result queue times are not as bad as they once were.

[Deveryn]

I'm not being elitist by any means. You haven't experienced the history of this role so of course you don't understand it. I'm just saying that some people here have their own reasons to feel this way because of how this role has been treated over the years, and acting like they're being entitled just because the dev team has dropped the ball over and over again with the healer role. You could always go to the healers forum and read the post over the years, the suggestions, the lengthy discussions instead of just telling people to "wait for the expac, stop being entitled, i'm certain they'll fix things, you clearly don't understand the devs".

When you play a class that you love and that over the years have been constantly having their tools being stripped off, without having them replaced by anything at all and that rewards you with spamming one button the better you master it, you might understand how people feel about that, until then I doubt you have the right to call anyone entitled.

I understand a lot more than you give me credit for, but please carry on, put more words in my mouth and continue to prove my point. You'd rather argue and criticize me than get your issue solved. Please continue on your own, since you seem to have my side of the convo handled as well.

[Nyarlha]

I keep seeing this argument that it is problem for few vocal minority or the devs deem it not a big issue buuuuuuuut;

I am just going to leave this here.

Those two roles will always be the roles in need, it doesn't mean anything. You have more people not playing tank/healers because of "anxiety" than not playing them because they are "boring".

Also, "in need" doesn't mean much. I still get almost instant queues as DPS (at worse 5 minutes) for expert roulette. It would NEVER have happened during StB, back then DPS queues were at least 15/20 minutes long. We have more tanks and healers than we had in past expansions.

[kaynide]

I still get almost instant queues as DPS (at worse 5 minutes) for expert roulette. It would NEVER have happened during StB, back then DPS queues were at least 15/20 minutes long. We have more tanks and healers than we had in post expansions.

This is the bottom line I think most players don’t realize. The devs want short queue times before anything else. If tank or healing jobs are complex to play, it might be fun, but if few people play them then that complexity is undesirable.

This is a big reason games like Guildwars have thrown roles out the window, allowing each job to spec somewhat, but ultimately each job is self reliant. While fun, it feels less like a party based MMO and more like playing 3D street fighter. It works in GW, but with the trinity being so core to FFXIV, the Devs gotta do what they gotta do to keep active numbers up in those two roles.

[Melorie]

This is the bottom line I think most players don’t realize. The devs want short queue times before anything else. If tank or healing jobs are complex to play, it might be fun, but if few people play them then that complexity is undesirable.

Yeah, but like, between being something complex no one wants to touch and literally using 1 button most of the time, because your encounter design allows it, since you have overpowered healing ogcd healing skills and the lack of need for all of them given that the damage comes in bursts that you can easily recover...... There's a huge gap. There's a concept that is called learning curve, and a class can be easier to start but rewarding to master, which isn't the case WITH HEALERS. You can also have options, like an easy WHM (that being said, again... easy =/= spam 1 button) and a more complex ast, or vice-versa. You don't really need to spread this "easy mode" across all the options or leave it at supposedly just one (sage, which doesn't really look like it is truly escaping from the one button spam hell, but we shall see).

Dancer is a very easy class, but still feels "dynamic" at least when you play it. People are simply asking to stop spamming one button forever the better you get at the class. And you don't even need to be good at it to achieve this stage, the content literally throws you at it because of the way it is designed, and unless you go for the hardcore content (and even there...), you don't really have any options to avoid the spam glare/malefic/broil hell.

[TaleraRistain]

Also things like stance dancing was a terrible idea, if you had higher ping more often than not it would delay and you’d swap right back to the wrong stance and end up healing for nothing or as a tank miss your mitigation to survive tankbusters. While this was appreciated by high-end raiders it was just a pain to the general population. They had to simplify things to get more people to play, as a result queue times are not as bad as they once were.

CS was really finicky, too. Those old memes about healing in cleric stance weren't just because we were screwing up. You would think it was off but it wasn't. And while we do often have to make up for our parties doing stupid things, CS almost seemed to punish us more than help us, since it had that cooldown before you could swap it off and inevitably someone would take avoidable damage the second you put it on. I was really happy when they changed our damage to MND and got rid of the whole process.

[Lanadra]

Aion's Claric healer was a fricken monster wearing chainmail armor with twelve or more deeps skills! Where is this healers only heal nonsense even coming from? I do not understand.. I have always done damage on healers in every game I play them in even Overwatch.

There is something most satisfying about Lucio booping someone to their demise or unleashing five Zenyatta orbs directly into the cranium of one unsuspecting soul.

Healers are within the "support" tier or considered this in most places even within table top. Support doth not mean "healbot" it means "support" which can be accomplished in many many ways. To give example, if the thing is dead no healing is required and thus you have supported the party.

Aye you did indeed queue as the healer which is your primary function within the group. It is not the only function within the group. If the intention was for healers to only heal then Astro would not have cards and no healer would have percent damage reduction abilities. Can you imagine what might occur if tanks adopted similar mentality? "Welp! My job is to hold aggro so I will only do enough damage to sustain threat, I suppose."

It is not unreasonable to desire complexity beyond push the big heal button after the big damage, and after seeing some of Sage it appears there is some light at end of tunnel. Square must have noticed something or Sage would never have been given a skill that heals through dealing damage. It even gets a fricken engage! That is smexy as all heck!

Pretty sure most of us healers do get that though. It's pretty intuitive in the game.. like.. you feel just how much down time you get pretty much all throughout, and most will do the thing that makes sense.. everyone is at full health or not in need of immediate attention.. I don't need to heal.. so toss in some damage. This is how most people who aren't maliciously trying to 'not bother to learn their job' will operate.

What I personally tend to take issue with, and it's mostly here on the forum, is the people who want to argue that you should be green DPS first, Healer second. I can't speak for others but that is not what I sign up for when I play WHM. As you say, being healer is my primary function, that means for me that I heal and/or ress first, and when there is down time I will DPS. Does that happen a lot? Yes it does because we get a lot of down time, but in the end I still regard it as part of my job to determine when I need to focus on what.

[Floortank]

Having more complex rotations would make tanks and healers incapable of doing their jobs. Even if Yoshi P thought OP's request was a great idea, he wouldn't implement it because it would require rebuilding four expansions worth of content around healers and tanks doing an expanded number of things the game wasn't built for them to do.

All the fights in the game are scripted with timed beats requiring you to use the appropriate healing/mitigating skills at the appropriate times. To whit, you're too busy for much else. Adding complexity would mean needing to change all the current content.

And there's no reason to do that because the game is wildly successful. Most tanks and healers are happy with it.