#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Tunda]

Why playing healer if I have warrior?

I have healing + sheild + regin
And most important ROTATION

[Ramiee]

Oh I very much do want to heal, and I do heal. I am looking forward to healing savage as AST. I just don't think people should ask for changes without at the very least considering the impact it may have on others. Yes, you can say others do that, but two wrongs don't make a right.

Nah sorry I really don't care. You also don't care and don't pretend to because you don't give a fuck if I really miss HW SCH and if next expansion all healers lost their simple play style I don't care if you're upset about it either.

[Venarius]

I'm still disgusted with CBU3 when they thought a upgrade to Medica II (lol) and a budget Fell Cleave gated behind PoM was enough to keep WHM mains playing for another 2+ years. Let alone AST being WHM but with cards and now the mobility of a physical ranged.

It's unreal how tone-deaf you can be after having literal 5 expansions worth of feedback to draw from.

[Silver-Strider]

I'm still disgusted with CBU3 when they thought a upgrade to Medica II (lol) and a budget Fell Cleave gated behind PoM was enough to keep WHM mains playing for another 2+ years. Let alone AST being WHM but with cards and now the mobility of a physical ranged.

It's unreal how tone-deaf you can be after having literal 5 expansions worth of feedback to draw from.

Feels more malicious than tone-deaf at this point. Like SE is purposefully screwing over WHM to get people to play AST instead.

[Ayan_Calvesse]

One issue is that healers rarely need to heal.

Another issue is that while healers are not healing, they have nothing to do but press 1 button.

No one wants a full job dps rotation on healers. But something small and engaging that doesnt discourage healing would be nice.
Putting out random instances of small but unavoidable damage would fix most of the problem.

Agreed; to expand on this; the role homogenization of Healers and Tanks leads to unengaging gameplay. Generally the way a Astro and Sage play compared to the more vanilla WHM and SCH with their flashy card draws and Kardia buff are still ultimately the same mechanics. Tanks have it even worse; You got a big mit, a lil mit, a teammate mit, a party mit and then a DPS rotation. In the end though your almost always playing the same class with the variance being your rotation.

Honestly I feel its just Warriors being just in a really good place. The reality is many groups wipe once they lose a healer as there are many fights that cannot last for long periods without one for everyone but the Tanks. I always am reminded of the last boss of Dead ends who puts are large amounts of party damage constantly to the point where only Warrior and Paladin can reliably survive it.

Edit - I would also like to suggest removal of Tank invulns...

As for self sustain; I kinda feel that DRK is in the right place; I haven't seen a instance of Dark Knights doing no healer runs of any of the recent content (I do think there was a EW run but as I recall it had other tanks). I know Paladin provided they maintain a tight mana rotation can sustain and support...not so sure about Gunbreaker at the moment.

[Ayan_Calvesse]

SE needs to take some notes from Blizzard on the tank and healer problem. Blizzard figured out the problem and is actively fixing it. SE is not.

*laughs in Blood DK*

[Gullis]

Feels more malicious than tone-deaf at this point. Like SE is purposefully screwing over WHM to get people to play AST instead.

with a new fun gapcloser whm got and the futher butchering of AST card system, it felt more like the other way around. I made the swap to whm from ast, and I never see ast players anymore

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

It’ll be a tough, uphill climb for that AST metric to surpass or even come close to WHM given the latter’s reputation, which is something that SE probably have no clue about why.

[Supersnow845]

Trying to make more people play AST than WHM is always going to be pointless

healer is the rarest role but WHM is the most popular class in the game and it’s because it’s one of the oldest classes in FF and has remained almost unchanged through its many iterations

AST is just always going to be last because it’s really competing with SGE and SCH for play numbers but it exists in a space where WHM saps its potential playerbase

SGE or SCH would have to do something pretty badly wrong to ever be in contention for last place with AST

[Galvuu]

I think what people are afraid of and to be fair FFXIV community has shown it can become a slave to the numbers just like any community. I think people are afraid of going back to those silly debates and topics of healers and that do damage verse those that done. People that silent kick healers for not doing damage or doing piss poor damage.

There are two things being conflated here, and I want to actually address both, because I'm strongly opinionated on them.
One is the statement that "people silent kick healers for doing piss poor damage". Regardless of your job and its theoretical damage ceiling, if you're playing so poorly that it's an active detriment to the party, then kicking that person is well within the party's right.
I've done this myself recently, though all times to dps- be it a RPR that was spamming Harpe in ex2, or a RDM spamming aoe in ex1 (both doing less damage than the healers of their respective parties). This makes the runs unnecessarily long (a clear issue in a farm party), and those two particularly, made it so enrage was a consideration (I was seeing the second Mountain Fire on the party with the RDM consistently). This also goes for a very low dps/0 dps healer- playing like that actively hinders the party. I don't think we need to protect people like that, I think it's fine to expect a minimum out of the people who should be cooperating with you.

The other statement has to do with the general idea that "people optimize the fun out of the game". I never felt this statement ever had much merit to begin with- for one, some people derive fun out of finding the optimal way to do things. The process of finding the best way to go about a problem is very rewarding. Further, some people enjoy the feeling of playing optimally. I feel really hyped when I do a raid and I feel like I played perfectly- "I played that so well". It's a common feeling in many games, just like some people feel really hyped for doing an insane outplay on a mechanically demanding champion in League or something.
Further, people aren't forced to play optimally- "good enough" works. I know most optimal builds for StQ areas, but sometimes I use "meme" action combos that are half-decent for the fun of it. Sometimes I try to cook a different opener as an experiment, knowing full well it's a damage loss. Sometimes I'm legitimately just goofing around. The fact those things aren't optimal doesn't decrease my enjoyment of them- sometimes I have fun figuring out what's best and playing as perfectly as possible afterwards, sometimes I just play to have fun in a random off-job that I only halfway understand. All of this, with the addendum that you shouldn't be doing 0 damage or griefing the party.

People who truly "optimize the fun out of the game" usually are doing content as a chore, and likely have an unhealthy relationship with the game. They don't enjoy the journey to their goal, and gameplay is often the journey. It's doing the fights, it's playing better, it's trying new stuff, not getting the loot-carrot. If the gameplay feels like a chore and all that keeps someone going is that carrot, then no matter how simple or complex, how optimized or not the gameplay is... they likely won't have fun. Especially in XIV, where you throw out most of your gear every 3 months.