The healer issue? I really dunno what to put here.

[DaKitten]

So I had a couple of questions revolving around the FFXIV Healer Strike thing I saw, what was it all about? What do healers really want?

I mean I mained SGE through EW and ended up really liking it but admittedly it is a unique healer from what I have seen, is there something wrong with the other healers I am missing?

[BigCheez]

If 50% of the role is supposed to be damage dealing (and it's arguably more than 50%), they should have a more interesting dps rotation. Dia > Glare*10 > repeat isn't very engaging.

[dezzmont]

So I had a couple of questions revolving around the FFXIV Healer Strike thing I saw, what was it all about? What do healers really want?

I mean I mained SGE through EW and ended up really liking it but admittedly it is a unique healer from what I have seen, is there something wrong with the other healers I am missing?

I don't necessarily agree with the strike, but I understand at least some of the context. If your involved, feel free to correct me.

Healer has been in a really weird state for a while. Its DPS rotation is extremely simple, to the point of actively being boring, in order to allow healers to abort to healing in a pinch. But in 90% of content, healing is so simple that you never will do so. This leads to healing being really unsatisfying outside of savage. This is by and large the biggest complaint about the role: we aren't allowed interesting things to do in fights besides healing, and healing isn't important in most content. Compounding this is changes to jobs that constantly remove non-healing sources of complexity (ex: Astro cards got changed twice, the first time somewhat understandably, to make them simpler).

On top of that, healing is not actually necessary even in savage, with many parties finding ways to clear with 1 or even 0 healers after a bit of time. This I think is less of a core problem, because the vast vast majority of players who do that content will do it with 2 healers and the healing in them is still more dynamic, but it is a problem some people taking part in the strike mention, so its important to bring up. Basically tanks have so much self healing now that if your a good tank you don't strictly need a healer in a lot of content. This is true for every role (basically the game is designed so that if one part of your group is a potato, the others can pick up the slack) but because healers are the 'most' optional due to providing the least DPS if everyone is playing well, they are the ones who get cut in these hyper-optimized runs.

There is also a bit of weirdness with how healing is so oGCD focused rather than being about resource management and moment to moment play in other MMOs. Especially in easier content, you just smack an oGCD button every few seconds and everyone should live. We constantly get new healing buttons every expansion which do subtly different things and have interesting ramifications in higher end content, but don't do much when your in 'mash heal button to keep tank alive during pull' mode in dungeons or the 'don't even bother pressing heal buttons except after tankbusters or raidwides' trials. Dawntrail made healing in dungeons require more buttons, but its still kinda a 'faceroll on the keyboard' moment.

That said, we were told before Dawntrail launched they had plans to change their philosophy for healing overall, that would not make it into dawntrail but instead be ready for next expansion, so I am fairly sure they got the message a long time ago (these complaints have been around for a long time) and the healing strike is a wee bit dramatic. But it definitely is based on real stuff.

[elioaiko]

Healer strike is basically the community of veteran healers that are fed up with the devs essentially ignoring healers. Every expansion has been the same song and dance.

Promises of increased healing checks but not actually doing it?
Check.

Healing being boring but there's nothing to heal?
Check.

AST/SCH either being broken or weak at the start of the launch only for the devs to over buff them because of low popularity?
Check.

WHM being left untouched and left to rot because the devs see high popularity and force the classic healing job into the box of being the beginner healer?
Check.

Devs not admitting that healers in the game don't just heal and actually contribute to doing damage but giving redundant healing abilities while not adding anything else meaningful to healer dps rotation?
Check.

People who don't play the role or healbot purists dying on the hill that healers should just heal instead of doing damage when said healing is so boring and easily dealt with and smashing the dps spam (and dot every 30s) 80% of the fight?
Double check.

I don't completely agree with the strike but I definitely understand the frustration over being ignored for several expansions.

Another double standard is that people complain about dps queues being too long because tanks and healers dropping their roles to be dps because things are more interesting on that side. The devs put zero effort in job changes as it is and the fact they have gone on record to say that making a new healer or tank is so difficult when dps jobs are starting to see the effects of homogenization that tanks and healers have been subjected to since Stormblood.

SGE is fine for now since it released last expansion. Give it some time and I imagine the devs will find a way to ruin it somehow.

[Jeeqbit]

The strike was really just something that had been happening on these forums for years and got a lot of attention somehow. Healers have actually been complaining about these things for an extremely long time.

I disagree about SGE being all that unique when I got my SCH hotbar and just copied SGE's version of the same abilities onto it. People who don't play SCH may not be aware that there is a very big overlap though.

Dungeon bosses have long been soloable by tanks sometimes, but it used to be a lot more challenging than it became in Endwalker. Trash packs that aren't threatening today were a lot more threatening without a healer before, due to battle system changes over the years. It was often possible to, say, do a dungeon with 4 DPS, but some of them would die to the bosses before beating them.

What brought this to a head was that a meme developed in Endwalker to just take a Warrior and 3 DPS into dungeons and you'd see it talked about in the game a lot. It's not that you couldn't sorta do it before that, it just gained more traction due to it becoming increasingly easier to pull off. Streamers embrace memes, so this was done in a media tour video of the new expansion, proving immediately that it had not been addressed in the expansion, so a "strike" post was made that gained the attention of non-forum regular and content creators.

[Isala]

SGE is fine for now since it released last expansion. Give it some time and I imagine the devs will find a way to ruin it somehow.

They already did, literally right after the Media tour. The AoE DoT used to stack with the Single Target. And now it doesn't. Because #skillissue.

[Kes13a]

So I had a couple of questions revolving around the FFXIV Healer Strike thing I saw, what was it all about? What do healers really want?

I mean I mained SGE through EW and ended up really liking it but admittedly it is a unique healer from what I have seen, is there something wrong with the other healers I am missing?

something wrong with them? not sure.... but perhaps you can figure out why Warrior and Monk need an AOE heal with a regen... because for the life of me... I cannot.

[LaylaTsarra]

So I had a couple of questions revolving around the FFXIV Healer Strike thing I saw, what was it all about? What do healers really want?

I mean I mained SGE through EW and ended up really liking it but admittedly it is a unique healer from what I have seen, is there something wrong with the other healers I am missing?

Lot of us enjoy healing. There is a certain demographic that wants more dps specific content and bigger differences between healers. Personally I enjoy my
WHM and find is just fine. I do not want a dps rotation but the addition of glare 4 was nice although I'd love to see it attached to something else besides presence of mind with a shorter cool down time.

Seems to me they also bumped up the healing requirements with what I perceive to be added damage by mods and bosses.

[Raven2014]

Eh I like playing healer just fine, and I've been healing since 2.0 and main healer every patches. Is there room for improvement? Sure. The strike ... well, idk how big that is, I can tell virtually I can see no impact in game in term of healer participation. I always said I wish the healer strike is real because it means I'll have more "Adventure in need", but I'm not seeing that.

If you want a two words summary: Green DPS. That's what they want.

[Naychan]

something wrong with them? not sure.... but perhaps you can figure out why Warrior and Monk need an AOE heal with a regen... because for the life of me... I cannot.

To replace healers would be my guess. Once all dps have a AOE heal with regen, SE can fulfill their life long dream of balancing healers. Don't need healer balance if you don't need healers.