After months (and even years) of a healing grid Final Fantasy 14 complaining that Square EnixMMORPG on has simplified and depreciated work seems unsuccessful, aggrieved healers go one step further to voice their opinion: they go on strike.
The crackdown began on June 9 when Square Enix forum user Gemina (Scholar primary) posted a thread with the succinct title #FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE. The thread opens with a mission statement for the strike. Jemina writes:
I’d like to make this an official thread for those who support a healer strike as a collective voice to the dev team to express my displeasure with the continued direction the game has gone in terms of healer gameplay and what the consensus is, which is considered to be negligent of the role as well as the players playing it.
The strike requires that any participating player refrain from taking any healing tasks in any group content (dungeons, raids, trials).
Although this is not a new problem for FF14healing community, Dawntrail the previews were the tipping point that led to the strike. specifically, FF14 content creator Xenosys Vex preview video, showing a party of four defeating the first dungeon of the new expansion, Ihuykatumu, without a healer. Of course, Xenosys used some clever party makeup: The tank of the party was a Warrior, a class known for its self-healing abilities. The Warrior was then backed up by three DPS players, with one choosing a Red Mage to use the heal and revive spell without needing an actual healer. Still, it doesn’t look good Dawntrail and has left a sour taste in the mouths of many healers.
You might be thinking, based on the Xenosys preview, that a healer strike might go nowhere, as it proved how useless the role is even in Dawntrailthe main content. However, when completing party content for the first time in FF14, you are required to adhere to strict party makeup. The four-man content requires one healer, while the eight-man content requires two. So players can’t take the Xenosys approach of the above healers right away Dawntrail launches, and the strike should remind people that they are taken for granted.
The complaints listed by Gemina add up to a growing list of problems players have had with the healer role – problems that have only been exacerbated by the inevitable changes coming in the new expansion. The healing community, including me, has long complained that every change to how the expansion works continually reduces the usefulness of healers in anything but high-quality content, in addition to simplifying the actual game rotation. For example, a white mage’s average turn in an encounter is to spam the single target attack spell Glare while keeping the damage over time Dia spell constantly applied to the enemy. Healing is very rare.
This means you spend your time spamming two buttons, which is obviously boring compared to the DPS and Tank roles with their more complex and engaging rotations. To make it worse, Dawntrail looks to simplify Astrologian, perhaps the last semi-complex healer job in the game, along with the continued strengthening of self-healing abilities in tank classes.
As a healer, I understand the frustration that led to the strike. I hope that Square Enix is currently working on changes to address these long stated issues. There is even some hope Dawntrail can offer an olive branch to the healing community. Summoner loses the ability to revive players, meaning Red Mage will be the only non-healer role with the ability to revive. This gives the healers back a bit of purpose. Additionally, the Swiftcast ability gets a shorter cooldown, something that could signal more challenging content for healers. However, this can still only be reserved for high-end content, which doesn’t exactly solve the problem.
The #FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE thread currently has over 300 pages of comments adding their support. To give players time to finish each Endwalker content they need before the next expansion, Gemina suggests that the strike not officially begin Dawntrailout July 2nd.
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