#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[ZavosEsperian]

I have found myself not enjoying healing as much as I have in the past. I usually play AST or SCH depending on my mood, and I will say both jobs have seen serious decline in how they play and how they feel over the years. AST in particular hurts the most as it is now a glorified WHM with extra steps to get the most out of the kit.

I would not mind seeing this receiving attention from the devs, as the role itself is on a precipice with how satisfying it is to play, be it due to largely hitting one button over and over again and/or not feeling like they are needed due to the amount of Tank/DPS sustain in the game presently being very high.

[OliviaLugria]

It's pretty funny how active this thread is for how much they say it's pointless. Every time I come back it's got like 10 more pages since the last I checked.

Really close to 1,000 post! Bonkers imo

[Absurdity]

Bad faith.

What's a better idea to protest the changes, and the directions the devs have been taking? Please tell us.

"Just don't do anything, nothing you do will matter, leave healer role, leave game." Those have already been said. And argued against.

What's your intelligent new take to solve this?

I'm just gonna quote myself as to what these people want from you, and really every other disgruntled healer that has been waiting for improvements for 5 years already.

I'll tell you exactly what they want you to do, they want you to shut up and eat the slop or leave.

Because they're perfectly happy with getting served utter mediocrity, at best, from their holy grail FFXIV. If you're not happy with pretty VFX sparkles, and god forbid you see the bafflingly terrible gameplay for what it is, then you're just a hater and should disappear.

The fact that they keep coming back, repeating the exact same phrases like an RMT bot, should tell you as much.

[TheDruidOcelot]

I think a lot of the naysayers are missing that the point is to cause the internal metrics that square enix actually looks at to change.

if we've been playing primarily healer all this time, and stop. regardless of how much it impacts duty queues. (though with some of the panic i've seen from some of the more antagonistic naysayers, i assume they think it will be incredibly disruptive, despite them calling it 'useless') square enix will. notice. they don't read the forums, true! there are hundreds of pages long discussions on the healer forums and in general about the state of healers, and they've gone ignored!

but they changed monk 3 expansions in a row because it was one of the least played classes.

they changed summoner in EW because its player count dipped hard in SHB (for some reason).

so the best way to make our voices heard is to just. not play the role. if we weren't having fun healing, we should play something else anyway, right?

that's what the naysayers have been saying for years, "if you don't like healing you don't have to play the role". and then when a group of healers say they won't play healers at the same time... its all "this is useless why are you doing this stop it"

which is weird

are you afraid its going to impact your queues, or is it 'useless'?

cause I don't actually care about queue length.

i care about squeenix's internal metrics that track how many people play what roles and jobs.

because that IS something squeenix listens to.

actions after all, speak louder than words.

[Jojoya]

that's what the naysayers have been saying for years, "if you don't like healing you don't have to play the role". and then when a group of healers say they won't play healers at the same time... its all "this is useless why are you doing this stop it"

At least for my part, I'm not trying to say anyone should not follow their heart. If you're not having fun healing, then don't heal.

What I'm saying is that framing it as a strike is counterproductive and more likely to garner hostility/ridicule from other players instead of their support. That's especially true if the idea is to only stop queueing as healer in Duty Finder but it's okay for healers to continue healing for their friends and statics. That's contradictory ("well actually I do like healing but I don't like healing for you") and ineffective. That's taking out dissatisfaction on those who have nothing to do with why the dissatisfaction exists.

If you really want to make an impact that SE notices, you don't want to be healing anything at all. No roulettes, no hunt trains, no FATEs, no treasure maps, no Extremes, no Savages, no Ultimates.

Nothing.

Do you think that SE would stay blind to the state of healing if the usual 15% of players clearing Savage drops to 2% because parties can't get the healers they need despite so many of you claiming that healers aren't needed to clear content?

Players are still going to be getting through MSQ without much difficulty thanks to Trust. Trials will be a little bit of a problem but those still enjoy healing will have fun farming commendations as they help others get their clears. Their enjoyment comes from doing things with others, not what buttons they're pressing.

I do want to see positive change made for those disaffected by the current state of healer but an organized strike is not the way to go about it. SE lacks healer mains on their design team? Then those who enjoy being healer mains need to help them understand what it is that makes healing so appealing to us and how current design lacks some of the core qualities. That's where content creators come in. They're the ones we know the developers pay attention to. They're the ones in the best position to share personal healer stories that hopefully will get the designers to see the healer perspective and make the changes desired.

[TheDruidOcelot]

At least for my part, I'm not trying to say anyone should not follow their heart. If you're not having fun healing, then don't heal.

What I'm saying is that framing it as a strike is counterproductive and more likely to garner hostility/ridicule from other players instead of their support. That's especially true if the idea is to only stop queueing as healer in Duty Finder but it's okay for healers to continue healing for their friends and statics. That's contradictory ("well actually I do like healing but I don't like healing for you") and ineffective. That's taking out dissatisfaction on those who have nothing to do with why the dissatisfaction exists.

If you really want to make an impact that SE notices, you don't want to be healing anything at all. No roulettes, no hunt trains, no FATEs, no treasure maps, no Extremes, no Savages, no Ultimates.

Nothing.

Do you think that SE would stay blind to the state of healing if the usual 15% of players clearing Savage drops to 2% because parties can't get the healers they need despite so many of you claiming that healers aren't needed to clear content?

Players are still going to be getting through MSQ without much difficulty thanks to Trust. Trials will be a little bit of a problem but those still enjoy healing will have fun farming commendations as they help others get their clears. Their enjoyment comes from doing things with others, not what buttons they're pressing.

I do want to see positive change made for those disaffected by the current state of healer but an organized strike is not the way to go about it. SE lacks healer mains on their design team? Then those who enjoy being healer mains need to help them understand what it is that makes healing so appealing to us and how current design lacks some of the core qualities. That's where content creators come in. They're the ones we know the developers pay attention to. They're the ones in the best position to share personal healer stories that hopefully will get the designers to see the healer perspective and make the changes desired.

we dont NEED other players support. that actually doesn't matter in this situation.

if the internal metrics say healers are being played less. or that there is a drop in healer players, that is the only thing square enix will notice.

whether or not the rest of the playerbase is happy about it isn't actually material to the action at hand.

but you keep acting like it is, when its just not at all the point.

you missed the point and went to "you're pissing off other people and being laughed at" which.... like... goodness, you do a great job missing the point in every single thread you go into, huh, kiddo?

[Jojoya]

we dont NEED other players support. that actually doesn't matter in this situation.

if the internal metrics say healers are being played less. or that there is a drop in healer players, that is the only thing square enix will notice.

whether or not the rest of the playerbase is happy about it isn't actually material to the action at hand.

but you keep acting like it is, when its just not at all the point.

you missed the point and went to "you're pissing off other people and being laughed at" which.... like... goodness, you do a great job missing the point in every single thread you go into, huh, kiddo?

Talk about missing the point.

It's hard for a movement to succeed without outside support. Those players you say don't matter should matter a lot to you. They can help the cause - or they can break it.

So you go on strike. There are presumably no healers out there. But other players want to play Dawntrail and don't really care what you think about healing. Enough of them switch to healer that everyone can play through Dawntrail without you.

Do they still not matter to you then? They just killed the leverage you were relying on.

[TheDruidOcelot]

snip

here's the thing. we're going on 6 years of bad healer gameplay, and healers BLEEDING numbers slowly and steadily throughout those years.

if people actually wanted to pick up healer, at this point, they would have.

there was a tiny jump in EW with sage, that rapidly declined. farther down than pre-ew numbers.

If enough people thought healers were fine enough to play healer themselves, they already would be.

but there's not.

the gameplay isn't fun, there's no incentive to play them (ex- tank specific mounts & titles), and i really TRULY doubt that anyone who already didn't want to play a healer will suddenly want to play healer.

we've had healer instant queues for SIX YEARS. If SAM mains wanted to try healer, they could have. and might have. and didn't stick with it.

we've had this dialogue ongoing for years, on the forums, on other sites, in game... for over half a decade now. nobody plays healer who doesn't want to play a healer.

i don't think dps mains will put their money where your mouth is. They haven't shown any indication in YEARS that they would ever stick with healing, or playing healers except to get their "got everything to cap" achievement.

(and i WILL find it funny if dps mains pick up a healer class, realize how painfully boring it is to play and immediately drop it, proving my point. same goes with people flooding into trusts, )

[Jojoya]

Also what if the content creators themselves are having trouble grasping the issue? We only have 2 big healer mains in Rinon and Zepha so it would hard for probably the rest of them to comprehend it.

Even if they don't all main healers, several do have a tendency to play healer when pugging.

They also listen to the healers in their own statics. They're not unaware of the concerns.

But the point isn't to have them speak for healer mains. The point is for them to gather stories from healer mains then share those stories in their regular podcasts and other content that the developers watch. Perhaps they gather audio clips from healer mains talking about their experience. Perhaps they read the written comments of healer mains.