#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Tint]

So if these numbers are to be believed, HW actually had the perfect ratio (25% players to 25% of the 'slots in a dungeon party composition'), and ever since we've not had the right balance. If I were to make an assumption about the way the numbers have progressed since, I'd expect it'd be something to do with 'WHM was awfully designed in SB, SCH got actions removed for launch (and later returned after complaints came in), and two fanfavourite jobs were released (RDM/SAM), so any healers that were not happy about WHM/SCH's situation on launch, might have hopped to the new jobs instead of remaining within the healer role'. Then, we lose more and more as SHB happens, GNB/DNC come out and potentially take more Healers out of the role (plus the whole 'SHB prune' thing), and finally with EW, we see a bit of an uptick (presumably due to SGE launching, which may have taken some players off of other roles and made them into Healer players). But, the number of players we've gained according to these numbers, hasn't equalled how many have been lost

Also Cleric Stance was removed in SB which made it easier than ever to dps on a healer job. So it became expected to dps more. Which alienated that part of the healer players who were not interested in playing a green dps job.

[Kohashi]

@ Kohashi
Even Warcraft has near instant queue times for healers and tanks with DPS possibly waiting for an average of 10 - 20 minutes.

+ snip

Indeed, well said because while a great deal of people cannot stop yapping about WoW and how amazing supposedly healers are, a light google would very much tell you the state of that role without playing the game itself. This makes me believe that people crying after WoW designs are just the victims of the grass being greener on the other side effects, with nothing to back them up and actually justify their claims.

If you played enough MMOs you know Healers and tanks will always be in shortage, no matter how complex or fun or amazing the class/role design is, it will never be as popular as a dps. In short, that means, the entire point they made is useless.


As for the 5% it's just plain garbage with 0 verifiable data, however, if you go on the lucky banjo website that also holds the census and class/role distribution you will find out that is entirely not true. (much wow, I know). As for the "true" healers, it's such an absolutely preposterous claim. What defines a "true" healer? what makes them the "true" healers and others not. If that is not virtue-signaling toxic waste to fit their narrative I dunno what is..

@ForsakenRoe

let me highlight the part you conveniently skipped reading from the message you have included.

"but it's hard to draw concrete conclusions from this since that could all be artifacts of the data ". Yes, I get it you enjoyed HW design but guess what.. it's GONE.

[Supersnow845]

Can you like point to the place any of us are arguing for role parity

Whether WOW has more or less relative healers than us the fact remains WOW healer mains actually LIKE their healers as evidenced by their forums and their Reddits, our healer mains hate our healers

Maybe instead of randomly looking for role parity solutions out of nowhere we should be trying to make the people who actually play the role enjoy it because there is literally zero evidence people like our healers (to the point even yoshi p had to deflect away from complaints)

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

The only time I recalled healers being more abundant in other MMO that's not WoW was in AION but that was long time ago. Priest and Cleric were both very highly played jobs over there. But considering this was over a decade ago and I wasn't as invested with statistics, what I was hearing and seeing could've been something that's not universally true at the time---there's no real way to find out.

Over here however is the only MMO healer that I recognize to have history of having ungodly monotonous, unintuitive design that also receives so much flak for it, firsthand and secondhand.

[TheDustyOne]

When someone recommends a game to me, I first ask "is it fun?" The same is true if someone were to recommend a different class, different build, content I don't usually do, etc.

If the people who normally play healer say that healer isn't fun, then it doesn't matter how much Square intends for it to attract new players, why would they stick around when the people who supposedly enjoy it most don't even want it? It's one thing to lower the skill floor so that new healers can get a feel for the job without getting too overwhelmed, it's another to do what Square has done and crash the ceiling to the ground.

Quite frankly, the floor should be raised a little; we're at level 100 now and we still don't have enough incoming damage at a decent frequency to justify the amount of healing healers are capable of.

If we want the healer population to grow, you first need to get people to find it fun; making it easy is only a short term solution. Word of mouth can do the rest.

[Kes13a]

When someone recommends a game to me, I first ask "is it fun?" The same is true if someone were to recommend a different class, different build, content I don't usually do, etc.

If the people who normally play healer say that healer isn't fun, then it doesn't matter how much Square intends for it to attract new players, why would they stick around when the people who supposedly enjoy it most don't even want it? It's one thing to lower the skill floor so that new healers can get a feel for the job without getting too overwhelmed, it's another to do what Square has done and crash the ceiling to the ground.

Quite frankly, the floor should be raised a little; we're at level 100 now and we still don't have enough incoming damage at a decent frequency to justify the amount of healing healers are capable of.

If we want the healer population to grow, you first need to get people to find it fun; making it easy is only a short term solution. Word of mouth can do the rest.

100% agree.

I like healing in games because its fun, and part of that fun is the challenge. having something so braindead isnt fun, and only having a "challenge" when the rest of the party are, turnips... isnt enough to carry the job as it now sits.

[ForsakenRoe]

If you played enough MMOs you know Healers and tanks will always be in shortage, no matter how complex or fun or amazing the class/role design is, it will never be as popular as a dps. In short, that means, the entire point they made is useless.

What are you trying to say? That SE shoudn't bother trying to make the healer role fun/amazing, because 'DPS will always be more popular'? Additionally, there's a difference between 'Healer (24% pickrate) is not as popular as DPS (54%)', versus 'Healer (12% pickrate) is not as popular as DPS (62%)'. In both examples, the statement 'Healer is not as popular' is true, but in the former, the number is much closer to the right balance, because we need 2 DPS in a party and only 1 Healer. DPS is MEANT to be more popular, the game's designed that way. If Healer were as popular as DPS, or more, then we'd have dungeon queues grind to a halt because there's not enough DPS in the queue to serve all the Tanks and Healers.

"but it's hard to draw concrete conclusions from this since that could all be artifacts of the data ". Yes, I get it you enjoyed HW design but guess what.. it's GONE.

I'm fully aware that HW is gone. I don't actually want HW though, I'd prefer something more like SB. Far more accessible for casual players, far less punishing, still gave us depth to chase. The 'best combined healer run' of O12S still had some GCDs in it, because optimizing a fight to be clearable with 'zero healing GCDs used' was something to aspire to but never truly achieve, now it's commonplace. But since you imply I didn't read:

So if these numbers are to be believed, HW actually had...

I did already quantify the numbers as 'maybe they have merit, maybe they don't'. I dunno if they're real or not. Only way to know for sure either way is if SE were to give us the data themselves. Until then, estimations done by third party sources such as FFXIV Census, or Lucky Bancho, are all we can go on. On which note...

As for the 5% it's just plain garbage with 0 verifiable data, however, if you go on the lucky banjo website that also holds the census and class/role distribution you will find out that is entirely not true.

'Lucky Banjo' (lol) is a third party as much as FFXIVCensus, and if one can be used as a citation (as you are here), then the other (the FFXIVCensus numbers I quoted previously) can be too

Lastly, I've seen some Vanilla WOW census data (which is a lot easier to get because they have addons for such things) from around a month ago, saying that for a lot of PVE servers, Paladin (which the majority of players will play as a healer) and Priest (which is played as a healer) have a higher playrate at max level than Rogue (a DPS) and Warlock (a DPS). On the Horde side where they have Shamans instead of Paladins (but are also played mainly as healers), they too are incredibly popular, and have not only higher pickrate than Rogue and Warlock, they're equal pickrate with Hunter, and are a very small gap behind the pickrate for Mages, of all things. But maybe Vanilla WOW doesn't count, because it's too old, or because back then there was more reason to bring a specific class (eg Rogues are needed for the Suppresion Room in BWL, or Hunters are needed for Tranquilizing Shot despite having lower damage than some other classes), so it's not apples to apples. But I'd also posit that maybe Vanilla WOW is a good example actually, precisely because it's been out for over 20 years, people know that the DPS specs for Shaman are not so great (doing like, 25-35% of the damage of an equally geared DPS Warrior), and so the vast majority of people who decide to play a Shaman go in knowing that they'll be healing at endgame

I'd also estimate that more players play certain Healers here, than certain DPS (eg I expect there's more WHMs than BLMs). The issue is that we have 4 Healers, and 13 DPS. But, if SE releases a new healer (to eventually try to have 7/14 and have the Healer/DPS ratio of 1:2 that the DF format asks for), the addition of Healer jobs won't take from DPS numbers enough, instead it'll be mainly already established Healer players, swapping within the role. Maybe if SE were to add a proper 'DPS focused Healer', that is, one with an actual rotation, they'd actually capture some of the players who usually go for a DPS. Giving the playerbase four Healers (or five in the future maybe), that all have the core damage rotation of 'refresh your DOT twice per minute, then press <filler spell> to fill', doesn't attract as many players to the role as could be attracted by having the Healers have different gameplay designs.

[Maltothoris]

Honestly I'm not sure if they want to add more healers or if they can. If I remember, they want all healers to be magical which kind of rules out physical healers. Plus we have the pure/barrier dichotomy which would veeate an imbalance in the role.

[TheDustyOne]

Honestly I'm not sure if they want to add more healers or if they can. If I remember, they want all healers to be magical which kind of rules out physical healers. Plus we have the pure/barrier dichotomy which would veeate an imbalance in the role.

Honestly, a physical/magical (or melee/ranged) dichotomy sounds more interesting than what we have now. I don't expect it to happen considering that pretty much most fights are designed with healers being ranged, but an attempt at a "sometimes melee" healer akin to what RDM is for casters would be neat. Square just needs some inspiration and to be able to take some risks in job design.

[Supersnow845]

Honestly at this point I’m more leaning towards them even regretting RDM being partially melee because they seem to suck at designing mechanics that allow RDM the flexibility to actually do its melee combo when it needs to

If you really want to gold parse RDM you really want a melee spot but to facilitate that you kinda need a BLM/PCT but then you’d get more benefit out of giving the melee spot to them anyway