47 thoughts on “FFXIV Healers Aren't Joining PF, Now What?”
Yeah regarding dpsers having to use personal mitigation – the second boss of this tier's basic bitch raid aoe will 1shot you if you don't already have a healer shield or your own shield on. I don't know if raid damage was this high before but its always funny to see a BLM get exploded cuz they aren't standing in the shield bubble and didn't use their own shield. I started healing for my group when we can't find a healer in PF (not a full static) and one thing that disappoints me with healers is spamming 1-1-1-1-1-1 with a 2 thrown in every 30 seconds to refresh your dot. From what I hear this wasn't always the case but it got simplified sometime around shadowbringers launch?
Really looking forward to see how SE will handle this. Seeing Content Creators that are Healer Mains being actually excited and happy for once was extremely surprising and I do not want it to end already
Its a learning period for the playerbase. I don't think SE needs to particularly do anything about this. Tanks are used to just using invulns to get through tankbusters, healers could get through mechanics with one or two ogcd heals. Now it takes more than that. As a tank main, I really enjoy that I have to be a lot more proactive with my mitigation.
I know its rough out there in party finder but I've been seeing people get better and rise to the challenge. Asking players to meet a challenge isn't a problem that needs fixing, and SE doubled down on mitigation and healing requirements this tier, so I think they'll stay the course.
I think perhaps they need to look into how they could encourage being more proactive with mitigation. Samurai has a personal mitigation that gives it a bit of kenki gauge, meaning its a dps gain to use it. Party mitigation that can give you additional resources or some offensive benefit could be great for encouraging players to use it as often as they can.
As a whm main in raiding and PFing since 2.0 , i really appreciate you making this video, please kindly share this video to more people. I would like to add something on top of this. People only blame healer whenever their HP bar is empty. They never think about mits, positioning, conditions, cohealer, etc etc. All these factor will take into account on how healer heals. In this tier, as most of "real" main healer said, I DO have a lot of fun. But, on the other hand, I do have really big pressure, since I need to worry if tank or dps use mits and get heal or not, and eventually yelling at healer. Another horrible mind set people have is a lot of people think SE didnt teach people how to use their skill. As non-casual content, you are supposed to know all your kits. A lot of people still think savage is causal and didnt change their mind set. And, people are not willing to listen. I personally got kicked out from Ultros novice network to kindly ask people to use mits when they said they keep dying with ilvl 619. Healing and raiding is group task. It is not just about you personally, it is about the whole team. I strongly believe the bad raiding culture on PF is another reason why healer do not want to join PF.
tbh as healer main I get frustrated that party finders for the high-end content I want to do seem to always need tanks. I can't do high-end content on my WHM because PF always needs tanks. I've only briefly stepped into the current savage raid tier for lack of time/interest, I've been wanting to get the Windswept weapons for all three of my 90 jobs and Aether being "the raiding DC" doesn't mean PFs are better at clearing content, mainly because people can't agree on strat and markers which throws off people's muscle memory. Plus some other issues I'm not gonna get into.
It's ironic there's that discussion about how healing is just not fun because there's not enough damage going out to heal… But then we get more damage to heal and mitigate through and everybody quits healing because it's too hard. I agree with your assessment that this will work itself out though. Healers will stop blaming themselves and avoiding random groups for fear of being blamed once it's widely known everyone needs to help with the mitigations **or else**.
I have zero experience with PF, I have my own static, but I can imagine that many players, and healers, still have the mindset of "healer = green dps". Maybe we should remind ourselves that healers are support jobs: they keep everyone alive, step up when you f**k up, and throw in some dps *if time allows*. I can imagine healers dont want to put up with groups calling them names when they dare to use a cd-heal or, God forfend, two. Just… guys, let healers be healers. There's a reason these people picked the role in first place, and there's a reason why we have a "holy trinity" in this game – or maybe not a reason but its there so deal with it. I think the current discussion is more people whining that they have to actually need healers, and tanks, now, and not, as is some previous tiers, one healer who could carry the team.
I can only speak for myself, but I dropped my healers because I dislike the focus on dps. Healing trash in dungeons is more exciting than savage raid bosses. =/
Healing feels secondary to dps output, I can respect some people like this style of play but it is the sole reason for me dropping my healers.
Average static shield healer here. This tier is extremely heavy on healers with tons of constant or double raid wides and tank busters with bleed (an absolute nightmare with no mitigation). When you join PF, you have to coordinate with EVERY co-healer and people with mitigations, EVERYTIME. It is doable, but it does require a lot of pre-planning and coordination.
I did proc P7S with PF and fortunate to have people who eager to work together. It is fun when your PF party coordinates, but it is taxing because you have to do it everytime, or when they do not want to be a team.
From my experience in this raid tier, it is mostly the Healer MAINS that are struggling for this tier. I'm referring to those raiders that have done healing for the past X number of raid tiers. In the past, there was few (if any) bleed mechanics, which meant that healers only did the bare minimum using OGCDs, then throw in a AOE regen to slowly top the party up over time, then go back to doing DPS. Many healers have tried this same technique this tier, and ended up griefing the raid, and then laying the blame squarely on the tanks not using mitigation.
I mean, sure, there are black sheeps in every job (tanks, healers and dps alike), so I'm not saying there are no irresponsible tanks that do not mitigate. But when you look at majority of the healers' HEALING parse (especially those that complain a lot), you will start to notice a trend of healers NOT HEALING and not using mitigation. And in P8S P2 this becomes extremely apparent and unforgivable, when the boss is totally untargetable but the healers are STILL NOT HEALING.
People need not be in the top percentile to enjoy healing for this tier. They just need to actually like playing the healer and like healing people. If their aim is to just Glare all day long and get big dps numbers, I would much rather they buzz off from pf and continue with this "healer drought", because these are the very same people that is on every pugger's blacklist this tier.
I don't think the healing requirements are too high. I think the main problem is actually the rest of the party not pulling their weight with mitigation. Party mitigation shouldn't be a healer only thing. I also think that there has been an increase in bad healers too. I've seen quite a few that just don't seem to ever want to cast GCD heals at all. E.G.: White Mages that never cast Medica II and healers even dying in mechanics like High Concept where you can't even attack the boss because they can't heal themselves.
Xeno has covered this before (however he has not explained it well) but tanks should not be using their cooldowns for just tank busters. Especially their short cooldown (Bloodwhetting, Heart of Corundum, etc). During prog, you don't know when tank busters will happen so you may hold on to them, sure but when you get to know it, you should be using them for auto-attacks too.
For example, in P7s, there are no tank busters after the towers/birds so there is literally no reason for tanks to not cycle their cooldowns. I see way too many not use any cooldowns which cause the healers have to work more, even if it is just an extra heal or two every now and then.
Healers have 3 issue: 1) boss are too big – your skills just cant reach players, 2) dps and tanks dont use ther mitigation, 3) dps are calculated badly – helaers need dps almost 99% of time or ther will be enrage, so there is no room for healing.
As someone that heal'd all of p8s as a crafted gear healer, (main tank) its definitely healers not being comfortable healing with gcds, or pre shielding aoes. Granted there still are mits being misplaced or not used but as sage healer i felt like i had control over my death during the fight. I hope they continue with these kind of checks, even a little more wouldn't hurt. Cause ff14 can definitely use a tone shift from the "green dps" brain.
I am healer main(4classes), all things that you say are correct. I'd like to mention the healer blaming situation that has been passing along for 2expansions now. It's the preceptive of tanks and dps they legit think that healers have it easy because healers don't have rotation and only 1 attack skill button. those who aren't main healers they legit think that healers have infinite heals if healers just do the healing. DPS don't want to press extra 1 oGCD for mitigates so do the healers don't like to press 1 extra GCD for heals. if you DPS are lazy to learn to mitigate properly, don't blame healers for not using GCD heals. What are healers to you guys? slave?
I'm a white mage main, and when it comes to trying to do this newer content and learn it, I always get pressured into feeling like I should know everything about the fight when I state at the beginning that completely brand new to it… then it gets hugely discouraging to keep trying to learn the newest content.. so once I've cleared it once I tend to avoid it if only going to be made to feel shit about it and like you said don't have fun healing :/
Nice high video quality and interesting topic of discussion. Hoping your channel blows up with the content you've been putting out, and looking forward to more videos like this in the future!
I did the last tier and am doing this tier as a WAR, I have died a lot more to tankbusters and not being healed in like the first two weeks of PF then all the last tier combined xD
My perception as a healer is that everything that is missing from my party is what takes the longest to look for. I love this game, but at the same time, i'm kinda of fucking tired because up until mid p8s in pf i have seriously more time spent looking for groups than actually playing the damn game. Hell it's like we wait so long with 7/8 people that we just make a campment and start socializing with each other… What the actual fuck?
The truth is, healing doesn't have a high healing problem, it has a incentive problem. There are great and "competitive" level healers, but they are few because healing is fucking boring. Its 3 rows of a bunch of oGCDs that all have the same dam goal, and 1~3 damage buttons.
i usually always MT in PF whenever possible.. the amount of ST just relaxing and doesnt mitigate at all is appalling.. AND there will always be that 1 DPS that keep dying or have sucky DPS
Are you telling me these spoiled brats asked for something hard, SE gave it to them and now they cry tit is too hard? You have to be kidding me. I am done with all these whinny 1% raiders. SE is bending over backwards for these guys and they cry cry cry. It is skip soar or disband all over again. I want to main haler in raiding but I cannot deal with these babies. My FC is full of savage raiders so I hear the stories, we even cleared savage raids as a FC and it was fun. Hey 1% make mitigation, food, pots, feint, all part of your normal dungeon, trial rotation and then ask for hard content. Can't even get all their tools done right and they cry the fights are too hard, when they cried last set was too easy.
Tanks an dps have always had to use their mits in savage…. I don’t what’s going on with people. People want 1 button combos and everything to be super easy. I for one don’t want this dumbing down of everything. I know in the end these people that want that will win so I’m just trying to enjoy the game b4 it becomes a dumbed down homogenized pile of sterile moogle poop.
I main a white mage and for some reason I always get a wait time of at least 25 minutes when I queue for endgame content. Could just be my server though.
Ive been healing with all healers this tier and all my frustrations have solely come from my co healers effectively throwing and not healing at all. It is extremely tilting having to play with someone who is okay with letting the raid wipe because they have to press gcd heal to prevent it. I dont mind solo healing an instance its really fun but if i do it id rather have an extra dps player rather than deadweight co healer.
My last savage tier as a healer was the second tier of Stormblood. I got tired of being blamed for hitting enrage at 1% because "I was not doing enough DPS" even though I was still having to raise 3-4 people for failing mechanics (the actual source of the DPS loss). You are first to get the blame as a healer and though overall the game is pretty nice, there's still a good amount of salt at the very top.
Such a good video straight to the point. As a healer main I really like healing this tier its fantastic to actually have to utilize your tools effectively together with your co-healer. The dots in perticular are a nice twist to tank busters since previously tank busters were more of a deal with it and forget about it type of thing. So in a static environment the healing experience is really good. I can understand the views from healing in pf since I try from time to time to help people out to clear. Its really frustrating when you see lack of mitigations and either people straight out die or you have to use a lot of your tools way early which you were wanting to use further into the fight. Ontop of that being blamed and flamed upon for not keeping the party alive despite evident lack of mitigation is not a fun experience. I've personally being called toxic and bad at the game simply because I asked nicely to please use mitigation tools to make my job easier which ultimately helps the party out since then we as healers have more options to deal with mistakes and also can do more dps which in the end will result in clearing the fight faster. Another note that adds to the healer burden is that I get the feeling of that we need to know the fight better than dps for example because when it comes to light party stacking people tend to just follow the healer marked 1 or 2 thus healer mistakes are less tolerated overall. There are of course exceptions. But all of this adds up to me not wanting to heal in pf.
I think a big issue with healing after a few weeks of PF-ing P5S to P7S, DPS are just bad at using their mitigations. Addle, Feint, Physical Range mitigations, the buttons are there, use it during a raid wide, it isn't difficult. This is coming form a DPS healing on the side. The pressure on healers with miti is so much lesser with a proper mitigation cycle.
To the point of the video, I feel like this tier really just exposes the bad players, especially tanks and healers. So the healers who are decent (average skill or better) will enjoy it, but bad healers are weeding themselves out of PF. Have played with quite a few, healers who refuse to gcd heal or top people off because w/e reason, even though some of the mechanics this tier really do ask for it (p5s tank buster, diamond lc in p6s, etc). P5S in particular, while you shouldn't have to gcd heal much, even with some party mits like reprisal ruby glow can hit people for 90%+ of their hp, so topping off becomes super important.
Couple that with, like you said, tanks who can't mitigate (p5s tank buster really shows bad tanks), dps who don't use personals (I've really come to love manaward this tier), dps who don't use feint or addle. In short, all the terrible play adds up to dump excess stress on healers this tier, which nudges out the bad ones leaving a smaller pool for PF to pull from
I think they should keep the difficulty, bit maybe add some QoL changes for healers. Example would be greater range on their aoe heals. Nothing worse than that one dps who you couldn't reach with an aoe heal, either because they had bad positioning or because a mechanic put them far away from both healers
Healing this tier is fun. Hell, I wanted to see if I could solo heal p7s on White Mage, and we cleared it. That was with my static tho. The issue comes in with PF. The average Tank isn't using their raidwide MIT, or worse capping Reprisals. The DPS don't Feint or Addle, or even use Second Wind or other solo heals or mits. As a general rule if you're trying to figure out what an issue is: If the Caster is the only one that died, it's probably a MIT issue. If multiple people die, it's a heal issue. (Not always, but generally)
Also: Healing is freaking boring. Spamming the same button for DPS and occasionally using a DoT is about as stimulating as a lobotomy.Right now, healing is spamming Glare/Melefic/Broil/Dosis until you break whatever keybind you have it assigned to. If any damage comes out, jsut use one of the 20 or so oGCD's you have. If they want us to just heal, they need to make fights that throw a healthy amount of DMG out and stop balancing around healers doing dmg. If they want us to DPS, they need to give us something to do other than press one GCD. Healers are just in a crap spot and I don't blame people for not wanting to play them. I've been doing it for like 4 tiers now, and I've honestly had enough of it. I only heal with my static. Every where else I DPS.
This is the second video i have seen on this "issue". This is the second time I am going to say this. I made the decision to main healer in EW. My experience in last tier and this tier. HEALERS ARE EVERYWHERE!! I can't join a party to save my life! Every party, every day is healers and dps. I strongly consider just tanking like I always do just to get in to get prog/clears. Especially the regen healers they are in all the pf groups both in ex AND savage. Like wtf is everyone talking about??
I main healing and have a permanent cohealer. We prog everything in PF and have cleared P8S in PF, so I can perhaps provide some additional insight.
For all of the fights in this tier, there is a lot of single-target micromanaging for things like tank busters, and for mechanics such as natural alignment in P8S. Most tank busters apply bleeds that both tanks and healers need to mitigate and properly coordinate. Typical raid-wide AoEs hit either very hard (P5S and P6S), or they apply bleeds to the entire party (P7S and P8S). As you mentioned, tanks and DPS are required to assist with the mitigations for all of this incoming damage. It's definitely frustrating as a healer when attacks aren't mitigated and healers have to pick up the slack.
P8S is particularly troublesome however. P8S is very difficult in general because it requires outstandingly precise gameplay, movement, and of course healing. In part 1, the boss's mechanics can be randomized which leads to awkward timing for mitigations in some instances. Essentially you need to have two different mitigation plans based on which mechanic is used first by the boss. Additionally, most mechanics will fail if the entire team does not survive. There are instances where healers can affect the course of the fight by reviving players, but you often fail the fight regardless because of the tight DPS checks. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can still lead to frustrations and resentment towards your party for failing mechanics when you personally feel that you have earned your clear. Though to be honest this could be applied to any class, which is why PF parties are often disbanded.
P8S part 2 is where the true healing frustrations settled in though. For reference, all of the healing requirements for P5-7S and P8S part 1 are around 6-9k HPS per healer based on how well people mitigate. For part 2 however, the healing requirement is around 15-19k per healer which effectively is double the healing requirement and triple in some cases. On top of this, you are expected to still deal enough damage to meet the relatively tight DPS check. To add insult to injury, during the toughest mechanics (high concept 1 and 2) healers are expected to heal quite a lot while doing the mechanic. DPS and tanks ONLY have to do the mechanic because the boss becomes untargetable. This additional responsibility leads to immense resentment when tanks/DPS inevitably fail the mechanic. During high concept, players are expected to spread to the four corners of the map and take massive damage which has to be healed before the inevitable next hit of massive damage. Players are expected to gather around for healing, but you will often get players who do not take personal responsibility for receiving heals (i.e. standing out of AoE healing range). You will often see healers blamed for a single person dying to damage when it was likely the person's fault for greeding an additional cast or GCD outside of the healer's healing range, or for not understanding a mechanic and dying. Dominion is another point of frustration for healers in the fight. Dominion is an objectively easy mechanic at the end of the fight where players take turns soaking towers. There is a bit of flexing, so it's not a completely braindead mechanic, but I cannot describe how unbelievably frustrating it is to heal 15-19k HPS for tens or even hundreds of pulls just to get wiped by a tank/DPS failing a simple mechanic.
Don't get me wrong. Healing this tier is extremely fun, but other players make healing a frustrating experience. I imagine that healing with a random healer would make this experience exponentially more frustrating if you get a healer who either ignores GCD healing, or fails to communicate their intentions. If I didn't have a permanent cohealer, I probably would have quit healing this tier as well.
I think the situation is far less worse in Mana… Sure we have to wait for a bit, but probably not long enough to be considered as healer shortage in PF. I think on average we spend more time waiting for a PHY range instead.
I've seen a lot of new lower lvl healers, not sprouts, and I think they're leveling up maybe due to the shortage. I'll be honest though, they are too focused on dps and I've experienced more wipes than I'd like to. As a healer main, I feel most people don't like healing is because as of now its literally the most boring role, even I've gotten bored and started leveling a Machinist and having a blast regardless of it being low on the dps logs or so people keep saying.
Another thing SE could do is remove mitigations, namely feint and addle, from DPS classes, excepting specific support like Magick barrier and shield samba. And then lower the damage of bosses by a proportional amount to compensate for the loss without lowering difficulty.
Relying on non-supportive DPS randos to throw out feints and addles is just not realistic most of the time with the direction they've pushed the game in, I think.
Healing in FF is on the weak end of the fun spectrum. I have done it for 2 expansions now and it doesn't have the slam factor of big or lots of green numbers WoW retail and classic have or dpsing helping you heal in a fun way like Lost Ark. They need to pump so much more life into healers.
I won't join PF either but it's been longer then 2 weeks fo rme I main WHM I play Sage like them both a lot but people love to scream at us for their mistakes. Tanks refuse to listen to us so fuck them I can do things with my friends and only my friends plus PF rewards are pretty shitty also
As a main tank, what I see more common in pf, is the healer that doesnt heal or mitigate. Sure there is bad players on the tank and dps side,but the worst was a SCH that never casted succor or any mitigation during the clear, he only casted broil iv, the astro had to heal us alone while all tanks and dps were doing their part. If go to logs you are gonna see alot of griefing healer too. So maybe good healers are bother by this, "Im gonna heal this shit alone again? While this mf spams dps gcds?", as WAR I even use nf to easy the burden on healers so they dont need to heal after a tank swap. This tier have to many raid wide with dots, tb with dots so it must be annoying to them.
There's just so many bad tanks around I'd rather just not raid than have to heal Jimmy who doesn't press his cooldowns during a buster into a bleed into an auto attack
Yeah regarding dpsers having to use personal mitigation – the second boss of this tier's basic bitch raid aoe will 1shot you if you don't already have a healer shield or your own shield on. I don't know if raid damage was this high before but its always funny to see a BLM get exploded cuz they aren't standing in the shield bubble and didn't use their own shield. I started healing for my group when we can't find a healer in PF (not a full static) and one thing that disappoints me with healers is spamming 1-1-1-1-1-1 with a 2 thrown in every 30 seconds to refresh your dot. From what I hear this wasn't always the case but it got simplified sometime around shadowbringers launch?
Really looking forward to see how SE will handle this. Seeing Content Creators that are Healer Mains being actually excited and happy for once was extremely surprising and I do not want it to end already
Healers don't want to join party finders because most tanks are really bad.
There is always a shortage of Healers and Tanks in every mmo thats why they always got fast queues
Its a learning period for the playerbase. I don't think SE needs to particularly do anything about this. Tanks are used to just using invulns to get through tankbusters, healers could get through mechanics with one or two ogcd heals. Now it takes more than that. As a tank main, I really enjoy that I have to be a lot more proactive with my mitigation.
I know its rough out there in party finder but I've been seeing people get better and rise to the challenge. Asking players to meet a challenge isn't a problem that needs fixing, and SE doubled down on mitigation and healing requirements this tier, so I think they'll stay the course.
I think perhaps they need to look into how they could encourage being more proactive with mitigation. Samurai has a personal mitigation that gives it a bit of kenki gauge, meaning its a dps gain to use it. Party mitigation that can give you additional resources or some offensive benefit could be great for encouraging players to use it as often as they can.
As a whm main in raiding and PFing since 2.0 , i really appreciate you making this video, please kindly share this video to more people.
I would like to add something on top of this.
People only blame healer whenever their HP bar is empty. They never think about mits, positioning, conditions, cohealer, etc etc. All these factor will take into account on how healer heals. In this tier, as most of "real" main healer said, I DO have a lot of fun. But, on the other hand, I do have really big pressure, since I need to worry if tank or dps use mits and get heal or not, and eventually yelling at healer.
Another horrible mind set people have is a lot of people think SE didnt teach people how to use their skill. As non-casual content, you are supposed to know all your kits. A lot of people still think savage is causal and didnt change their mind set. And, people are not willing to listen. I personally got kicked out from Ultros novice network to kindly ask people to use mits when they said they keep dying with ilvl 619.
Healing and raiding is group task. It is not just about you personally, it is about the whole team. I strongly believe the bad raiding culture on PF is another reason why healer do not want to join PF.
tbh as healer main I get frustrated that party finders for the high-end content I want to do seem to always need tanks. I can't do high-end content on my WHM because PF always needs tanks. I've only briefly stepped into the current savage raid tier for lack of time/interest, I've been wanting to get the Windswept weapons for all three of my 90 jobs and Aether being "the raiding DC" doesn't mean PFs are better at clearing content, mainly because people can't agree on strat and markers which throws off people's muscle memory. Plus some other issues I'm not gonna get into.
It's ironic there's that discussion about how healing is just not fun because there's not enough damage going out to heal… But then we get more damage to heal and mitigate through and everybody quits healing because it's too hard. I agree with your assessment that this will work itself out though. Healers will stop blaming themselves and avoiding random groups for fear of being blamed once it's widely known everyone needs to help with the mitigations **or else**.
I have zero experience with PF, I have my own static, but I can imagine that many players, and healers, still have the mindset of "healer = green dps". Maybe we should remind ourselves that healers are support jobs: they keep everyone alive, step up when you f**k up, and throw in some dps *if time allows*. I can imagine healers dont want to put up with groups calling them names when they dare to use a cd-heal or, God forfend, two. Just… guys, let healers be healers. There's a reason these people picked the role in first place, and there's a reason why we have a "holy trinity" in this game – or maybe not a reason but its there so deal with it. I think the current discussion is more people whining that they have to actually need healers, and tanks, now, and not, as is some previous tiers, one healer who could carry the team.
I can only speak for myself, but I dropped my healers because I dislike the focus on dps. Healing trash in dungeons is more exciting than savage raid bosses. =/
Healing feels secondary to dps output, I can respect some people like this style of play but it is the sole reason for me dropping my healers.
Average static shield healer here. This tier is extremely heavy on healers with tons of constant or double raid wides and tank busters with bleed (an absolute nightmare with no mitigation). When you join PF, you have to coordinate with EVERY co-healer and people with mitigations, EVERYTIME. It is doable, but it does require a lot of pre-planning and coordination.
I did proc P7S with PF and fortunate to have people who eager to work together. It is fun when your PF party coordinates, but it is taxing because you have to do it everytime, or when they do not want to be a team.
From my experience in this raid tier, it is mostly the Healer MAINS that are struggling for this tier. I'm referring to those raiders that have done healing for the past X number of raid tiers. In the past, there was few (if any) bleed mechanics, which meant that healers only did the bare minimum using OGCDs, then throw in a AOE regen to slowly top the party up over time, then go back to doing DPS. Many healers have tried this same technique this tier, and ended up griefing the raid, and then laying the blame squarely on the tanks not using mitigation.
I mean, sure, there are black sheeps in every job (tanks, healers and dps alike), so I'm not saying there are no irresponsible tanks that do not mitigate. But when you look at majority of the healers' HEALING parse (especially those that complain a lot), you will start to notice a trend of healers NOT HEALING and not using mitigation. And in P8S P2 this becomes extremely apparent and unforgivable, when the boss is totally untargetable but the healers are STILL NOT HEALING.
People need not be in the top percentile to enjoy healing for this tier. They just need to actually like playing the healer and like healing people. If their aim is to just Glare all day long and get big dps numbers, I would much rather they buzz off from pf and continue with this "healer drought", because these are the very same people that is on every pugger's blacklist this tier.
I don't think the healing requirements are too high. I think the main problem is actually the rest of the party not pulling their weight with mitigation. Party mitigation shouldn't be a healer only thing. I also think that there has been an increase in bad healers too. I've seen quite a few that just don't seem to ever want to cast GCD heals at all. E.G.: White Mages that never cast Medica II and healers even dying in mechanics like High Concept where you can't even attack the boss because they can't heal themselves.
Xeno has covered this before (however he has not explained it well) but tanks should not be using their cooldowns for just tank busters. Especially their short cooldown (Bloodwhetting, Heart of Corundum, etc). During prog, you don't know when tank busters will happen so you may hold on to them, sure but when you get to know it, you should be using them for auto-attacks too.
For example, in P7s, there are no tank busters after the towers/birds so there is literally no reason for tanks to not cycle their cooldowns. I see way too many not use any cooldowns which cause the healers have to work more, even if it is just an extra heal or two every now and then.
Healers have 3 issue: 1) boss are too big – your skills just cant reach players, 2) dps and tanks dont use ther mitigation, 3) dps are calculated badly – helaers need dps almost 99% of time or ther will be enrage, so there is no room for healing.
As someone that heal'd all of p8s as a crafted gear healer, (main tank) its definitely healers not being comfortable healing with gcds, or pre shielding aoes. Granted there still are mits being misplaced or not used but as sage healer i felt like i had control over my death during the fight. I hope they continue with these kind of checks, even a little more wouldn't hurt. Cause ff14 can definitely use a tone shift from the "green dps" brain.
All the healers moved to tank so my tank queues on roulette have been painful past couple weeks lol
I am healer main(4classes), all things that you say are correct. I'd like to mention the healer blaming situation that has been passing along for 2expansions now. It's the preceptive of tanks and dps they legit think that healers have it easy because healers don't have rotation and only 1 attack skill button. those who aren't main healers they legit think that healers have infinite heals if healers just do the healing.
DPS don't want to press extra 1 oGCD for mitigates so do the healers don't like to press 1 extra GCD for heals.
if you DPS are lazy to learn to mitigate properly, don't blame healers for not using GCD heals.
What are healers to you guys? slave?
I'm a white mage main, and when it comes to trying to do this newer content and learn it, I always get pressured into feeling like I should know everything about the fight when I state at the beginning that completely brand new to it… then it gets hugely discouraging to keep trying to learn the newest content.. so once I've cleared it once I tend to avoid it if only going to be made to feel shit about it and like you said don't have fun healing :/
Nice high video quality and interesting topic of discussion. Hoping your channel blows up with the content you've been putting out, and looking forward to more videos like this in the future!
I did the last tier and am doing this tier as a WAR, I have died a lot more to tankbusters and not being healed in like the first two weeks of PF then all the last tier combined xD
My perception as a healer is that everything that is missing from my party is what takes the longest to look for. I love this game, but at the same time, i'm kinda of fucking tired because up until mid p8s in pf i have seriously more time spent looking for groups than actually playing the damn game. Hell it's like we wait so long with 7/8 people that we just make a campment and start socializing with each other… What the actual fuck?
The truth is, healing doesn't have a high healing problem, it has a incentive problem. There are great and "competitive" level healers, but they are few because healing is fucking boring. Its 3 rows of a bunch of oGCDs that all have the same dam goal, and 1~3 damage buttons.
i usually always MT in PF whenever possible.. the amount of ST just relaxing and doesnt mitigate at all is appalling.. AND there will always be that 1 DPS that keep dying or have sucky DPS
Are you telling me these spoiled brats asked for something hard, SE gave it to them and now they cry tit is too hard? You have to be kidding me. I am done with all these whinny 1% raiders. SE is bending over backwards for these guys and they cry cry cry. It is skip soar or disband all over again. I want to main haler in raiding but I cannot deal with these babies. My FC is full of savage raiders so I hear the stories, we even cleared savage raids as a FC and it was fun. Hey 1% make mitigation, food, pots, feint, all part of your normal dungeon, trial rotation and then ask for hard content. Can't even get all their tools done right and they cry the fights are too hard, when they cried last set was too easy.
Tanks an dps have always had to use their mits in savage…. I don’t what’s going on with people. People want 1 button combos and everything to be super easy. I for one don’t want this dumbing down of everything. I know in the end these people that want that will win so I’m just trying to enjoy the game b4 it becomes a dumbed down homogenized pile of sterile moogle poop.
I main a white mage and for some reason I always get a wait time of at least 25 minutes when I queue for endgame content. Could just be my server though.
Ive been healing with all healers this tier and all my frustrations have solely come from my co healers effectively throwing and not healing at all.
It is extremely tilting having to play with someone who is okay with letting the raid wipe because they have to press gcd heal to prevent it.
I dont mind solo healing an instance its really fun but if i do it id rather have an extra dps player rather than deadweight co healer.
My girlfriend wants that glamour from the thumb nail.
My last savage tier as a healer was the second tier of Stormblood. I got tired of being blamed for hitting enrage at 1% because "I was not doing enough DPS" even though I was still having to raise 3-4 people for failing mechanics (the actual source of the DPS loss). You are first to get the blame as a healer and though overall the game is pretty nice, there's still a good amount of salt at the very top.
Pretty sure 75% of dps don't know what Feint or Addle is lol.
Such a good video straight to the point. As a healer main I really like healing this tier its fantastic to actually have to utilize your tools effectively together with your co-healer. The dots in perticular are a nice twist to tank busters since previously tank busters were more of a deal with it and forget about it type of thing. So in a static environment the healing experience is really good. I can understand the views from healing in pf since I try from time to time to help people out to clear. Its really frustrating when you see lack of mitigations and either people straight out die or you have to use a lot of your tools way early which you were wanting to use further into the fight. Ontop of that being blamed and flamed upon for not keeping the party alive despite evident lack of mitigation is not a fun experience. I've personally being called toxic and bad at the game simply because I asked nicely to please use mitigation tools to make my job easier which ultimately helps the party out since then we as healers have more options to deal with mistakes and also can do more dps which in the end will result in clearing the fight faster. Another note that adds to the healer burden is that I get the feeling of that we need to know the fight better than dps for example because when it comes to light party stacking people tend to just follow the healer marked 1 or 2 thus healer mistakes are less tolerated overall. There are of course exceptions. But all of this adds up to me not wanting to heal in pf.
I think a big issue with healing after a few weeks of PF-ing P5S to P7S, DPS are just bad at using their mitigations. Addle, Feint, Physical Range mitigations, the buttons are there, use it during a raid wide, it isn't difficult. This is coming form a DPS healing on the side. The pressure on healers with miti is so much lesser with a proper mitigation cycle.
"I am a black mage main"
Same and subscribed 🤣
To the point of the video, I feel like this tier really just exposes the bad players, especially tanks and healers. So the healers who are decent (average skill or better) will enjoy it, but bad healers are weeding themselves out of PF. Have played with quite a few, healers who refuse to gcd heal or top people off because w/e reason, even though some of the mechanics this tier really do ask for it (p5s tank buster, diamond lc in p6s, etc). P5S in particular, while you shouldn't have to gcd heal much, even with some party mits like reprisal ruby glow can hit people for 90%+ of their hp, so topping off becomes super important.
Couple that with, like you said, tanks who can't mitigate (p5s tank buster really shows bad tanks), dps who don't use personals (I've really come to love manaward this tier), dps who don't use feint or addle. In short, all the terrible play adds up to dump excess stress on healers this tier, which nudges out the bad ones leaving a smaller pool for PF to pull from
I think they should keep the difficulty, bit maybe add some QoL changes for healers. Example would be greater range on their aoe heals. Nothing worse than that one dps who you couldn't reach with an aoe heal, either because they had bad positioning or because a mechanic put them far away from both healers
Healing this tier is fun. Hell, I wanted to see if I could solo heal p7s on White Mage, and we cleared it. That was with my static tho.
The issue comes in with PF. The average Tank isn't using their raidwide MIT, or worse capping Reprisals. The DPS don't Feint or Addle, or even use Second Wind or other solo heals or mits.
As a general rule if you're trying to figure out what an issue is: If the Caster is the only one that died, it's probably a MIT issue. If multiple people die, it's a heal issue. (Not always, but generally)
Also: Healing is freaking boring. Spamming the same button for DPS and occasionally using a DoT is about as stimulating as a lobotomy.Right now, healing is spamming Glare/Melefic/Broil/Dosis until you break whatever keybind you have it assigned to. If any damage comes out, jsut use one of the 20 or so oGCD's you have. If they want us to just heal, they need to make fights that throw a healthy amount of DMG out and stop balancing around healers doing dmg. If they want us to DPS, they need to give us something to do other than press one GCD. Healers are just in a crap spot and I don't blame people for not wanting to play them. I've been doing it for like 4 tiers now, and I've honestly had enough of it. I only heal with my static. Every where else I DPS.
When you feint the raidwide but than you faint
This is the second video i have seen on this "issue". This is the second time I am going to say this. I made the decision to main healer in EW. My experience in last tier and this tier. HEALERS ARE EVERYWHERE!! I can't join a party to save my life! Every party, every day is healers and dps. I strongly consider just tanking like I always do just to get in to get prog/clears. Especially the regen healers they are in all the pf groups both in ex AND savage. Like wtf is everyone talking about??
I main healing and have a permanent cohealer. We prog everything in PF and have cleared P8S in PF, so I can perhaps provide some additional insight.
For all of the fights in this tier, there is a lot of single-target micromanaging for things like tank busters, and for mechanics such as natural alignment in P8S. Most tank busters apply bleeds that both tanks and healers need to mitigate and properly coordinate. Typical raid-wide AoEs hit either very hard (P5S and P6S), or they apply bleeds to the entire party (P7S and P8S). As you mentioned, tanks and DPS are required to assist with the mitigations for all of this incoming damage. It's definitely frustrating as a healer when attacks aren't mitigated and healers have to pick up the slack.
P8S is particularly troublesome however. P8S is very difficult in general because it requires outstandingly precise gameplay, movement, and of course healing. In part 1, the boss's mechanics can be randomized which leads to awkward timing for mitigations in some instances. Essentially you need to have two different mitigation plans based on which mechanic is used first by the boss. Additionally, most mechanics will fail if the entire team does not survive. There are instances where healers can affect the course of the fight by reviving players, but you often fail the fight regardless because of the tight DPS checks. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can still lead to frustrations and resentment towards your party for failing mechanics when you personally feel that you have earned your clear. Though to be honest this could be applied to any class, which is why PF parties are often disbanded.
P8S part 2 is where the true healing frustrations settled in though. For reference, all of the healing requirements for P5-7S and P8S part 1 are around 6-9k HPS per healer based on how well people mitigate. For part 2 however, the healing requirement is around 15-19k per healer which effectively is double the healing requirement and triple in some cases. On top of this, you are expected to still deal enough damage to meet the relatively tight DPS check. To add insult to injury, during the toughest mechanics (high concept 1 and 2) healers are expected to heal quite a lot while doing the mechanic. DPS and tanks ONLY have to do the mechanic because the boss becomes untargetable. This additional responsibility leads to immense resentment when tanks/DPS inevitably fail the mechanic. During high concept, players are expected to spread to the four corners of the map and take massive damage which has to be healed before the inevitable next hit of massive damage. Players are expected to gather around for healing, but you will often get players who do not take personal responsibility for receiving heals (i.e. standing out of AoE healing range). You will often see healers blamed for a single person dying to damage when it was likely the person's fault for greeding an additional cast or GCD outside of the healer's healing range, or for not understanding a mechanic and dying. Dominion is another point of frustration for healers in the fight. Dominion is an objectively easy mechanic at the end of the fight where players take turns soaking towers. There is a bit of flexing, so it's not a completely braindead mechanic, but I cannot describe how unbelievably frustrating it is to heal 15-19k HPS for tens or even hundreds of pulls just to get wiped by a tank/DPS failing a simple mechanic.
Don't get me wrong. Healing this tier is extremely fun, but other players make healing a frustrating experience. I imagine that healing with a random healer would make this experience exponentially more frustrating if you get a healer who either ignores GCD healing, or fails to communicate their intentions. If I didn't have a permanent cohealer, I probably would have quit healing this tier as well.
Been a rdm main for a hot minute, current gearing healer and swapping. Can't find a healer? Fine I'll do it myself.
I think the situation is far less worse in Mana… Sure we have to wait for a bit, but probably not long enough to be considered as healer shortage in PF. I think on average we spend more time waiting for a PHY range instead.
I play in Japanese server, no problem at all, we love healing
I've seen a lot of new lower lvl healers, not sprouts, and I think they're leveling up maybe due to the shortage. I'll be honest though, they are too focused on dps and I've experienced more wipes than I'd like to. As a healer main, I feel most people don't like healing is because as of now its literally the most boring role, even I've gotten bored and started leveling a Machinist and having a blast regardless of it being low on the dps logs or so people keep saying.
New white mage here and it’s fucking hard
Another thing SE could do is remove mitigations, namely feint and addle, from DPS classes, excepting specific support like Magick barrier and shield samba. And then lower the damage of bosses by a proportional amount to compensate for the loss without lowering difficulty.
Relying on non-supportive DPS randos to throw out feints and addles is just not realistic most of the time with the direction they've pushed the game in, I think.
Healing in FF is on the weak end of the fun spectrum. I have done it for 2 expansions now and it doesn't have the slam factor of big or lots of green numbers WoW retail and classic have or dpsing helping you heal in a fun way like Lost Ark. They need to pump so much more life into healers.
it's the lack of people who use proper defences alongside the healers in pf
I won't join PF either but it's been longer then 2 weeks fo rme I main WHM I play Sage like them both a lot but people love to scream at us for their mistakes. Tanks refuse to listen to us so fuck them I can do things with my friends and only my friends plus PF rewards are pretty shitty also
As a main tank, what I see more common in pf, is the healer that doesnt heal or mitigate. Sure there is bad players on the tank and dps side,but the worst was a SCH that never casted succor or any mitigation during the clear, he only casted broil iv, the astro had to heal us alone while all tanks and dps were doing their part. If go to logs you are gonna see alot of griefing healer too. So maybe good healers are bother by this, "Im gonna heal this shit alone again? While this mf spams dps gcds?", as WAR I even use nf to easy the burden on healers so they dont need to heal after a tank swap. This tier have to many raid wide with dots, tb with dots so it must be annoying to them.
There's just so many bad tanks around I'd rather just not raid than have to heal Jimmy who doesn't press his cooldowns during a buster into a bleed into an auto attack