General Healer Discussion [The Echo Chamber]

[Sebazy]

<snip>.

The same story here really, my group had a big AFK chain and we haven't been able to start prog yet, hopefully next week as long as our butt doctor isn't in the desert somewhere =(

Also in agreement with the second sentence, the day my static breaks is the day I stop playing until big changes happen with healing IMO. I did half a tier as Dancer to help another group I've tagged along between tiers and it was entertaining enough, but DPSing just isn't my bag, nor am I good enough at it to play at a level I'm happy with =P

It'll be a shame if they take that avenue really. I wonder if a better approach would be for them to look back at fights like A3S where the overall DPS check wasn't actually that huge, but the fight had specific burst phases where you needed to really step up for a specific mechanic such as Hand of Pain. This would allow them to pressure the group for DPS at key points without forcing healers down the mindless glare uptime wormhole for the full duration of the fight.

[Zolvolt]

The QnA with YoshiP gave some interesting responses towards healer issues. I'm wondering are there healers out there that think the current savage tier was too difficult to heal? did people quit healer because it was too difficult this expansion to heal? Genuinely curious, no shade at all.

[ty_taurus]

The QnA with YoshiP gave some interesting responses towards healer issues. I'm wondering are there healers out there that think the current savage tier was too difficult to heal? did people quit healer because it was too difficult this expansion to heal? Genuinely curious, no shade at all.

I mean I think it's been summarized fairly well in other parts of the forums here and there: Many strong, dedicated healers have left the role out of boredom sometime between the release of ShB and now. The weaker side of the flex healers/midcore healers have proven to be in it for the easy gameplay and stopped healing because it was no longer braindead. Of the slimmer middle selection of players who either can handle, or are willing to get better at healing these mechanics, a chunk of them left also due to PFs in particular blaming healers for wipes regardless of whether or not it was really there fault, such as DPS not using mitigation, or even having mitigation buttons on their hotbars, or having a weaker co-healer that isn't able to or willing to keep up the pace.

[Rilifane]

I think another problem with accomplished career healers quitting is that they often were interested in helping new/ inexperienced healers to work more efficiently while also often being omnihealers that knew all toolkits well, not just their own. Many even knew a tank toolkit extremely well because they saw it as part of their job to know what other roles are capable of.
They are good at spotting what exactly is the issue and working around it without overcomplicating things and have a stronger tendency to communicate and giving new/ flex/ midcore healers a little push in the right direction while many of the latter just want to get the job done somehow and are generally not as good as spotting the real reason for wipes.
It's more common for the veteran healers to ask or suggest using a particularly strong cooldown for specific mechanics or reassuring their co heal that if they use it at a specific one it will be ready for another big mechanic. If you don't have the experience and knowledge about the fight, its timeline and how a toolkit counters something easily, you can't give these suggestions even if you wanted to and many with that knowledge quit.

[Nizzi]

The QnA with YoshiP gave some interesting responses towards healer issues. I'm wondering are there healers out there that think the current savage tier was too difficult to heal? did people quit healer because it was too difficult this expansion to heal? Genuinely curious, no shade at all.

I really don't think the healer drought is entirely due to "it's too hard this tier!" but rather due a lot of factors that have been bubbling up since Shadowbringers.

1. Low healing requirements in Shadowbringers and Asphodelos
2. Discontent with Shadowbringers Healer gutting
3. Gearing and Savage

1. The low healing requirements throughout Shadowbringers and the first tier of Pandaemonium has left a lot of healers either woefully ill prepared for this patch's content in general (Barbariccia EX and Abyssos Savage) or the lack of actual healing requirements in content throughout all of Shadowbringers and the first tier of Endwalker's content (EX1-EX3 and Asphodelos) has caused a lot of hold out healers who were hopeful things would improve to drop healing. Personally, I'm in the latter; I finally quit in response to how Endwalker was proving to be even worse for healers than Shadowbringers in terms of our role being a requirement. EX1-2 being cleared within days of their release without healers and the incredibly low healing requirements in all of Asphodelos Savage was an embarrassment and convinced me that the developers were actively trying to tell healers that they didn't give a shit about our concerns. I've said it elsewhere, but it's too little too late at this point for me.

2. The gutting of identities and snapping the bones of all the healers to fit into the Shadowbringers mold of 1 DoT 1 Nuke spam monotony, and the Endwalker changes to healers showing that there was no escape in sight from this has been a factor as well. I was incredibly discontented with the state of healers at the end of Shadowbringers - you can see I registered my forums account at the tail end of the expansion specifically to complain about healers. I wanted to be fair and give Square Enix the benefit of the doubt with Endwalker, so I stuck with the role through all of 6.0 and 6.1 hoping that my concerns would have been alleviated at least in some regards. If they weren't going to give us more DPS actions and things to do during our downtime, at least they'll make sure we're healing at lot more in level 90 content, right?

What we got was two incredibly easy, healer optional Extremes, an easy to heal tier of Savage, and an Alliance Raid where you will almost definitely hit your 1 key at least 500 times in the 30+ minutes it takes to do it. Enough was enough. I swapped to a role that it was clear the developers care about in some fashion, and that's DPS.

3. Gearing and Savage: Even if I wanted to give healing a try this tier, I'm basically up shit creek without a paddle due to how gearing works. I'm stuck on DPS until my static is all BiS, and many former healers are in the same boat. I am actually curious about healing this tier, the bleeds look meaty and like a lot of fun to manage and there have been a few times during this tier where I've been thinking like a Scholar and imagining where best it would be to put heals and place Eos. (Ruby 5 seems wonderful to have Eos in the middle so you can help your cohealer with heals while you're doing Squall, and I would be interested to see if P7S's changing arena is like E3S where Eos can stay comfortably in the middle even when the arena isn't there anymore, for example.) Unfortunately it likely won't be until sometime in 6.3 when I get a chance to try and dip my toes into it, but by then most people will be at least at 620 with their gear so a lot of the early Savage challenge will be lost (which is another fundamental issue with healing when it's only challenging for the first few weeks of a tier which lasts 8+ months)

Unfortunately, we're likely to get a third tier that is on the level of healing as Asphodelos if not easier because it seems as if Yoshida and his team are constantly drawing the wrong conclusions when they aren't outright ignoring healer feedback. Apologies for the wall of text, but hopefully it helps give you a good insight.

[ASkellington]

The QnA with YoshiP gave some interesting responses towards healer issues. I'm wondering are there healers out there that think the current savage tier was too difficult to heal? did people quit healer because it was too difficult this expansion to heal? Genuinely curious, no shade at all.

Its been answered but I'll chime in as well:

Some quit because of healing requirements being too high because previous tiers both in EW and Shb did not scale properly. And SE refuses to teach healers how to properly use their kit outside of EX/Savage.

Past healer mains who would have little issue with current healing requirements in this tier quit because:

• Changes to their kit (AST card gutting, removal of Nocturnal, Time Dilation; SCH Bane, Miasma etc)
• Lack of Depth (all healers but WHM especially)
• Lack of healing mechanics and constant damage to break up dps spam
• SE's refusal to understand and unwillingness to make changes due to constant feedback

The common response (veteran) healers have been given is to leave (either the role or the game) and so they have. Why is anyone, SE of all people, surprised?

[Hellebore_Ghrian]

Agree with other ppl above, and that's the case for me too since i'm playing dps now, a lot of main healers have quit healing/the game due to current healers state.

That means the average level of healers population has drop by a noticeable margin and that's why the part of them which struggles with the current content is more visible .

Btw, from my static's healers' pov the current tier is sure more interesting than EW 1st tier and ShB ones but at the same time isn't harder to heal than Stormblood's ones.

[ForsakenRoe]

it's like a spiral that feeds itself really isnt it? the veterans are disillusioned and dont want to play the role for all the various listed reasons (tick all that apply), more casual players fill the void because 'ah healer in demand ill fill for easy queue' or whatever the reason, they cant keep up with the content that asks for actual skill when playing healer such as a savage, they also quit, SE response pending but will likely be to make it even more casual friendly, those casuals who joined get bored of the role cos it's so bland now, they leave, even FURTHER casual players (the 'ive got netflix on the 2nd monitor kind') fill the void, etc etc

might as well just delete healer as a role and make it so tanks and dps are entirely in charge of their own selfhealing via their own kits, since they can already do a bloody EX roulette without needing us healers, extremes have been cleared without healers, ultimates get solohealed despite being 'the hardest content available', i cant wait for the inevitable news that 'oop criterion savage was cleared without a healer' maybe that'd get SE to think hard about not just 'is the role screwed' but 'WHY is the role screwed, and how can we fix it with more than just a little sticky plaster?'

[einschwartz]

The QnA with YoshiP gave some interesting responses towards healer issues. I'm wondering are there healers out there that think the current savage tier was too difficult to heal? did people quit healer because it was too difficult this expansion to heal? Genuinely curious, no shade at all.

While I don't do Savage -- at least not right now (I do intend on doing them at the end of tier like I did with Eden raids); I am (was) dedicated to the role so I'll add my response to this too.
Seeing the amount of Dots incorporated in the current tier makes me excited for it. It is one of the reasons why I like E11S. I'd take having to mitigate or plan my heals for spicy dot and raidwides over "Suddenly drop to 1 HP and must heal to full".

As others before me have said, majority of the good dedicated healers have switch roles due to factors that exist since Shadowbringers. The current tier requiring more healing/mitigations has only made the role vacancy worse as new healers are caught by surprise by the sudden jump in difficulty. A few people that I've played with groaned that Barbariccia EX requires them to pay more attention. While for me and certainly other healer mains out there welcome the fast pace that fight has.

[Deceptus]

i cant wait for the inevitable news that 'oop criterion savage was cleared without a healer' maybe that'd get SE to think hard about not just 'is the role screwed' but 'WHY is the role screwed, and how can we fix it with more than just a little sticky plaster?'

Two warriors can pretty much keep up with most damage via a bloodwhetting / nascent flash rotation while providing a hell of a lot more burst than a healer could.