FFXIV Healer Strike and the 'How would you fix it?' line

[Qyoon]

The game launched with higher relative popularity among its healers than we see now; most of the drop-off is quite recent. So how is low popularity the "default"?


No, but it's also one of the areas that'd take the least work to see likely substantial improvement.


The problem is that this doesn't account at all for the number of players who, say, already swapped off healers and then quit outright because their favorite role being gutted increasingly proved itself not to be temporary.

Yes, whichever role has the least popularity inherently self-corrects its participation somewhat, since it then offers instant queues (even if rarely Adventurer-in-Need bonuses, the role selection for which favors tank even when tanks remains a 2 to 5-minute queue and healers instant), but that does nothing for whether a given existing player will continue to have their reason to play -- that thing that 'hits the spot' for them enough to warrant continue playing XIV over other games, be that between patches or at all.

Focusing solely on queue ratios/times (which, even then, generally shows that things are worse than they used to be) while ignoring dwindling between-patch or even on-patch player numbers (even more obvious of warning signs) in not a good idea.

Not saying you are lying, i personally don't know those numbers.
I don't know how low it has to be for SE to decide to do something about it.

To me i don't know if revamping the healers would be as easy as you say, but in my opinion the game definitly needs it.

I don't see massive complains about the healers on the japanese side of the forum, wich is the most likely for the devs to read.
I never had any issue to find healers to do dungeons, while tanks are. (talking about europe on Chaos DC, dunno about the rest.)

The game has a lot of incentives for people to play tanks, while those are also clearly overpowered.
I don't see any of those about the healers, they also rework and balance other jobs a lot.
And again, they are not reworking the healers at all.