COUPLE things:

1) 5.25? Got anything more recent? Like...ANYTHING from 6.0 or later on Job satisfaction? To put things into perspective, 5.25 was before Seat of Sacrifice. That's rather dated data.

2) The second one is even OLDER, and likely captures a lot of the SCH/AST players mad at losing DoTs/Cards but not the people who came in to fill the spots after they left NOR the people who returned to the Jobs after taking a break as a healer/tank. Again, got any current data on this? Also note that in that survey, WHM was #5 from the top, which is a pretty good spot. This seems more reflective of the knee-jerk reaction of 4.X SCH/ASTs, not an overall view of the role or healers in general. We need more current data than a full expansion and a half ago. Note the top of that thread "3 years ago". I know you might try to counter this with "Well, they haven't changed since then!", but they very much HAVE. And if that view WAS correct, surely 6.0/6.1/6.2 data would support it and should be available, right?

3) The number of tanks vs healers is ~3.4M vs 3.2M, which isn't exactly a massive difference, and, as has been noted, doesn't count alt Jobs (which unfortunately can work on both directions - I'm a healer main but have WAR, GNB, and SMN all at 600+). I should also note that both are higher than Ranged (2.5M) or Caster (2.6M), so even if we were going to use these numbers, the result would be that "popularity" goes Melee > Tanks > Healers > Caster > Ranged, wouldn't it?

4) The fourth one even has in the blurb right under it "It's an online fan poll so take with the usual grain of salt,".

Healers get middle of the pack, which is a pretty good spot to be in. Middle of the pack isn't bottom of the pack. Though you hit on something interesting at the end - if healers NEVER rank high on anything (e.g. for the entire game's history), then nothing has changed. That same argument could be used to say 3.X healing models were as bad or worse, could it not?

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I would like to see some current data on this. Everything here seems to either be massively outdated OR, for the stuff that's current, shows that healers are in a decent/middling place. While no one fantasizes over being the "middle child", it's worse than being on the bottom. Right now, it seems Casters and Ranged have it worse.

But you might say that's only because they have fewer Job options. But by that token, Tanks/Healers being behind Melee fits under that same argument, and Tanks/Healers being approximately equal would indicate both roles are equally healthy (or unhealthy, as the case may be), and Tanks have had 4 longer than Healers have.