The Healer's Burden: Why Nobody Likes Playing Healers [Game Designer Explains] 

I love playing healer. I just hate how others constantly tell me I'm worse at the game than them because I do.

the "healers are bottoms" stereotype is funny because they're the backbone of the entire team. most Top position you can be in

"I don't heal, I control whether you live or DIE"

One big thing that makes healers feel unfun is the tendency for designers to make a healing specialist who is ONLY capable of healing, and is terrible at everything else. If your healer can also do some damage, throw up mitigation like shields, and apply some status effects they will be much more interesting and fun than 'spam heal move forever' healers could be.

Healers usually: "Stop running away and let m-... Every freaking time." Meanwhile, Hunting Horn users: "Bow before me mortals!" * Whacks fire-breathing dinosaur on the head with bagpipes *

In some games, when one character heals or revives another, they say thank you. I know it's just common decency but it's so heartwarming.💖

As Dr. Ludwig himself once said... Ze healing is not awarding as ze hurting.

I often enjoy playing healer characters because I know they're less played/appreciated. People are usually in demand of a healer so it feels nice to be wanted. I enjoy the feeling of helping my teammates be the MVP of the game. Watching others succeed is fun to me, as I don't mind being a more background presence. Really, the only negative experiences I've had being a healer is the perception some players have that healer players are inherently less skilled at the game. I've even heard it called "The Girlfriend Role" (which has its own set of extremely negative stereotypes). So sometimes, I've been accused in lobbies for picking a healer because I'm "bad at the game" and can't play a "real character". But those have been few and far between, and overall I find being a healer to be a mostly positive experience both from the game and the player communities

The concept of overheal is a good marriage of shielding and healing. You are given an incentive to use your healing skills even when the party is in good shape, and it's the same defensive benefit of mitigating incoming damage. I recall unlocking an overheal passive for a healer class in Etrian Odyssey 5 and it changed the way that healer class was performing.

As a jrpg enthusiast I vastly prefer having a good healer, I am a slow methodical player rather than being the best at making plays that dish out damage and a good healer is essential for my playstyle. I remember basically getting to a stalemate with the final boss in Bravely Default 2 because i had a hard time doing damage but i outhealed her constantly and suddeny i get the message that the boss si out of mp for their attacks and I was like "Did I just stall out the final boss??"

I think the best approach to a healer is not just making them only healers, but also giving them their own way to dish out damage or do other useful things like dish out buffs. That way when healing is not needed a healer can do other things. I've played some games where the best choice for a healer can also turn around and hurl out devastating debuffs and has their own kind of limited bag of "I came to heal but I am all out of bubblegum" nukes to drop when push comes to shove.

"Go forth my minion! Unleash death upon this realm and bring me blood for my mercy!" Me, every time I heal, in any game.

Hello. Healer main here. I’m not much for online team competition games, but I have played a few. When I played overwatch, I started with playing Hanzo and Reaper, but the main I settled on was Lucio. In Pokémon Unite, I was an Eldegoss and Blissey main. Ultimately, I like being the back line support. I don’t find it as stressful. UNTIL my teammates are complete ass. Occasionally in Overwatch and too many bloody times in Unite, I had the highest K:D. The fucking CLERIC had the highest K:D. It was the most tilting thing ever that I just stopped playing both games. In Dragalia Lost, I also liked playing Clerics in multiplayer lobbies. Again I found it more relaxing and that was actually successful for awhile……. Until the meta became blitzing offense and tossing clerics to the wayside. I then became good at ranged dps instead.

Strangely enough, Honkai Star Rail has some of the most creative designs for healers. You got healers whose powers scale off ATTACK stats, healers with AoE attack, healers that tanks damages, healers that raises your crit rate, and so on and so forth. And I think that's what the other games are missing: healers who can do more than just heal.

getting that "nice heal bro" in games is what makes me play as healers

I've really enjoyed the moments in TF2 when I've been able to heal many as Medic. To me, being able to tell my self, "I did a good job helping the others stay alive in the match today." is satisfying and at least can hold me over until I actually get proper thanks from teammates.

21:40 "sorry, forgot about Baizhu" Mika found dead in a ditch 💀. Kaveh, Gaming, Wriothesley and Neuvillette also heal, but only themselves (and every catalyst can heal the party with proto amber, but it's only really viable for Neuvi)

Ok so I really REALLY agreed with the part about healers (and other supports more generally) being insulted by extremely toxic players being a reason for people to quit the game. For context, I used to play League of Legends. My sister and I started playing at the same time, and often together, so we kind of gravitated towards bot lane where we could have fun together and coordinate a little easier than if we were on opposite sides of the map. I will admit, she was a better support than me (I generally had little to no situational awareness so naturally I was the perfect low elo ADC player). She perfected healing me and/or the entire team, throwing out any snares or immobility moves, she was really better at support than I was at trying to DPS anything. The number of times the toplaner would take a bad fight, die, and then immediately show up in chat to talk about how shit the Soraka was because he died (HER BURST ISN'T UP ALL THE TIME) was just ridiculous. To be entirely honest, the few times I got to be the carry, I would not have been able to achieve it at all without the Soraka or Lux or Leona or whoever she chose to play at the time. She was really probably only in a lower elo because of me tbh. In our last couple of months playing League, we switched roles so now I bore the brunt of the insults. Now I will admit, I was not the best support, so I did mess up quite a lot, but the amount of flak I would catch for something that was not even remotely my fault sometimes was just amazing. We both quit a couple of months later, because having a 0/15 Yasuo in chat type to the other team about how you don't even have a braincell is not something either of us enjoyed.

Ur definitely right when it comes to active and passiveness towards the role. If I'm playing healer, I want to be able to do something the entire game rather than react with my abilities. And as much as I love playing some healers in multiplayer games, sometimes I know that I am way better as than the current person playing tank or dps. Supporting a bad teammate means you have 2 useless people in a battle rather than just 1. It's often the most unappreciated, most important, and least rewarding role to play.

Being a healer in MMOs is the worst. You are literally useless if you don't have at least 2 party members. If you fail to heal your team, they will instantly ditch you and avoid you like the plague. If you are really good, they will literally stick to you like they have a crippling addiction and your heals are like drugs and you unknowingly became a dealer, and they will rely on you so much that they will always assign you party leader and eventually push you to become a guild leader and now you have more things to do aside from healing to the point that it's not fun anymore and super stressful that you just want to quit. Yes, I've been on that cycle for how many times already.

I used to hate healer class bc men would always assume that was what I mained as a girl. But now I know it isn’t an “easy” role, it’s essential for most team comps and a good healer can carry a team through raids and other challenges. Plus I love the kitten ears on some of the white mage robes.

An interesting contrast for me is the healer vs the support. Supports are actually useful proactively, increasing damage, reducing damage taken or doing the opposite to enemies, supports are generally the busiest member of the team since "supporting harder" isn't really a thing generally so they support more by doing more things and getting better role compression so everyone else can work at their best. Generally, healers are the first thing to be cut from a team as the players get better since you can't heal harder than people are taking damage while supports are generally the first thing to be put in and then the team is built around them so they can support as well as possible, reducing overlap in areas covered and making sure that everyone can make use of their buffs and debuffs.

You know what I personally love myself? Healers that can just get in there and beat up the enemy themselves. They're an independent man/woman and ain't needing anyone to cover for them, but being in a party is still appreciated for both themselves and the rest of the group due to the supportive capabilities they bring that enhances group perfomance as a whole... and often things go more efficiently even if they can take care of themselves if there's teammates.

In D&D the major problem I have with healers (and healing in general) is that even the 'Dedicated Healers' are better off just killing the enemy rather than healing. However, in the Epic Battle Fantasy series I can certainly say healing is vital; although the main Healer's role as the Dedicated healer is a bit less pronounced in the later games when certain skills become equipped skill usable by a few member as opposed to the first games when they were all pre-set. Heck the White Mage from Final Fantasy 1 can learn buff spells as early as level 1 which makes me think that said effects should be more prominent on the healers, healing and buffs are kinda cut from the same cloth in my opinion; positive consequences to ally members to help them do their job more consistently and sometimes outright better than normal.

In party based RPGs I think one of the issues I had was definitely the opportunity cost problem only in reverse. Basically in games like Tales of Symphonia, Chrono Trigger, or Skies of Arcadia, you only have a limited party but you also get a steady stream of new characters you want to use with potential new synergies. But I always had to have an active team slot for the dedicated healer, reducing my options for fun experimentation because It’s more cost effective to have a Raine, Marle, and Fina on at all times with their greater suite of healing spells than to have one of the other characters that are more utility/offensive with less healing spells that are also usually less effective. So you don’t really have a party of 3/4 you can customize and play with, in reality you have 2/3 to work with unless you want to completely rely on healing items and that may be tenable in Pokémon but that’s slightly less so in the other games I mentioned.

I think one thing some games do to allow healers stuff to do is by making the Support class not just about healing, but applying buffs to teammates/debuffs to enemies so that there's always something.

I liked the explanation used in Log Horizon anime. One of the "healing" class characters is actually preventative. The other thing I always remember is the healing class video for FF14 frim Jocat. Damage prevented, damage done to enemies between heals, acts as pre-healing.

One thing you failed to mention is when healers are TOO needed. When the skill of the healer can be solely responsible for a team losing, it is very daunting to try out playing a new role. You are not allowed to be bad at your role and that is always a detriment when trying to learn something new. Non-healers need to be at least a little bit self sufficent in their survivability and be able to compensate the healer's lack of skill, however this has the danger of healers becoming unnecessary. It's a tough balance to strike, especially if you do this by creating entire game mechanics like alternative healing sources.

Meanwhile I have that one friend who loves healer and support, he's actually sad if there's no dedicated role/class like that And I have to say, he's really good at doing his job, in co-op games we simply perform so much better with his support. He's so good I never want to play co-op games with healer/support roles without him haha

I have fond memories of being the group healer in a team way higher level then me, allowing me to still play with friends and still be an important contributing member of the team. I think that's where my enjoyment of player healers started from, as it felt good getting thanked even though it felt like I wasn't doing as much as others at first!

I feel like Genshin recently managed to break this curse with some fun design choices. It feels good seeing Kuki trigger a bunch of hyperblooms, and it feels good to use Jean’s burst knowing that it is fulfilling furina’s ult instantly and you are getting a bunch of damage out of it.

i love playing healer. i hate being swarmed by the enemy because my team let their guard down for like one millisecond. your team may overlook you and take you for granted but at least the enemy seems to think you're important

I like that Gallagher’s in the thumbnail. He’s one of my favorite examples of a healer character, who essentially says to his teammates “Look, I CAN heal you, but you’re gonna have to attack the enemy if you want it. Don’t even bother building me with the usual healer stats, I’m just gonna keep attacking until they’re weakness broken.”

Your point about how a healer becomes less useful the more you have ways to mitigate or avoid damage was definitely one of the first things I thought of. Turn-based games usually make taking damage inevitable for several reasons, whereas more action-based games have scarcer healing sources and tend towards making healing effectively a punishment for not dodging/blocking properly. I'll bring up Etrian Odyssey again, because parts of the community have a bit of a stigma against using the dedicated healer and tank classes. I don't mind using them, myself, and they can be built to have a fair bit of flavor, depending on the game. But I can see why some prefer not to use them, since having a tank do nothing but throw up shields and a healer do nothing but heal isn't engaging and can even feel like a waste of party slots. In EO's case specifically, teams without healers or tanks can be viable if one focuses on lockdown through binds/ailments or just does big damage, though that requires substantial knowledge of the game to be effective and usually takes up limited item slots on healing/revival items, so it's considered a more advanced playstyle that opens up team compositions. EO's dedicated healers typically have several advantages over other healing sources, depending on the game: their skills can heal more effectively than the competition's, they usually have the best or only revival skills, they save money and inventory space over buying items, they sometimes have overheals, etc. They also have amusing quirks of their own: EO1's Medic has abnormally high ATK scaling to pair with a melee move that can stun, as well as a buff that significantly reduces most damage to the party; EO3's Monk can specialize as a bare-fisted fighter to save money on weapons in the early game, even if it doesn't scale the best; EO5's Herbalist can take the Graced Poisoner tree and throw around debuffs, ailments, and magic damage when not healing, though this works best with a Celestrian instead of the default Brouni. But even then, many players prefer classes with less-conventional healing, with EO3's Sovereign being a prime example that heals those they buff and provide party-wide regen if they're unharmed.

I'm not sure how or why but playing Xenoblade was probably the first time I ever had fun playing as a healer. Even though Sharla quickly gets outmoded, something about her role was just fun for me

As a SMT masochist i actually love healers, is just another part of the resource management gameplay, especially when your healer doubles as a buffer or debuffer. My funniest experience with a healer had to be in Fire emblem 3Houses Maddening, with my Mercedes never missing a magic level up. By the midgame she was dealing more damage than my dedicated magic damage dealer (Lysithea)

13:43 wish and aromatherapy are quite literally THE healing support moves in Pokémon, but it's more applicable in competitive than in single player for reasons you mentioned (they are quite good actually, just a bit uncommon).

Healers require replacing a team member with someone dedicated solely to making up for mistakes(aka losing health), when often people would prefer to prevent the damage from happening, either by increasing defensiveness, increasing skill to avoid damage, or increasing damage to kill the enemies before they can kill you.

Before Pokémon Unite banned me for literally 100 years, I loved playing as Eldegoss because she was the first support I got and she could do a good bit of damage as well. In some ways I can see what you said was good about medic, in so far as being fast and able to do good damage so you're simply helpless in a fight. In fact, I ran a mostly offensive eldegoss, stacking sp. atk and atk spd to debuff foes' movement and hunt them down if I felt I was able to do so. I was honestly too aggressive sometimes, but being able to chase down squishies running away or flee myself when it started looking rough, it was very fun to be moving and grooving. The linchpin was how my heal worked. I toss out a ball, it attaches to someone, and after a few seconds, it explodes, either healing or going damage depending on whether foes or allies were in the radius. This meant I could just toss that thing out and then focus on attacking while it cools down, meaning I got a lot more fighting than other healers. If this isn't really a dedicated healer build, then understandable, but this is the most recent multi-player game healer I've played and I've got a lot of good memories as playing as that puffball because I could scratch my itch to be supportive of my team AND the itch to take names if I get the chance. I felt I could take initiative or stay reactive and I loved it.

Xenoblade 2 is a fun case where healers are a semi-necessary class to have for much of the early game, but when you approach endgame and postgame content healers fall off hard, with Advant Guard medals (heal whenever you crit) plus high crit items, you can keep yourself topped up. And then comes the DLC that introduces two healer characters, Fiora and Crossette who are better known for their massive damage potential. Fiora is crits for days while crossette stacks potions collected to deal massive damage and is the crux of speedruns (until endgame HP totals balloon). Two of the higher tier DPS characters, a NG+ earth blade and Dagas (base game), are better known for their support capabilities because one buffs damage to enemies weakness while the other grants a party wide damage buff. And then there is Corvin, another DLC character who is supposed to be a tank, but has really good specials that heal the party. Power creep really confused the power dynamic.

I really like playing healers, so much that i actively try to create healing classes sometimes, one of my favorites experiences was as using a support Sword and shield in monster hunter world and entering SOS missions to help other players.

One of my favourite Genshin Impact characters to play is Yaoyao :) She's a great healer and she can deal a bit of damage too. Whenever I had trouble beating a boss in the early game due to skill issues I'd make a team with both her and Barbara, which left me with more healing than the bosses could cause me, and with no one to heal Yaoyao damages enemies and I'd just run and dodge with Barbie's ring while Yaoyao's skill + burst did their thing :)

I used to avoid playing healer because it seemed too hard. You have to be watching everyone's hp and in the right position to help them without getting killed yourself. I hardly ever developed that kind of game sense so I usually don't play healers. There are times that I have wanted to though because I think its fun to prevent a teammate from dying. The few games I can somewhat play them, its really fun. Also some healers have really interesting mechanics and that makes them appealing to me, almost none of which were touched in this video though but oh well. Also, grass type pokemon had been considered the cleric type for a long time, idk if it still is though.

i remmember when i first started playing Healer in FNF14. it took abaut a week of playing for me to go from "i wane help:)" to "im the thing keeping you alive dont test me" a quite normal Healer exspirience lol

As a genshin player, i just like healing more than shields. They are just weird to use, hard to build to be strong, and doging is hard as a mobile player.

I love being a healer in games where healing is a role that actually makes a difference. I also enjoy when someone is being toxic towards the healer, and the people who want the healer eject that toxic butthole.

I don’t remember completely, but I think I enjoyed playing a healer in the mobile game Dragalia Lost. While it’s easy to always choose the cool and fast DPS, as you said, healers are often pretty accepted and mistakes aren’t as critical (though when needed, it does become important). In that game, you still would need to learn boss attack patterns and you still have to survive (healers could heal themselves but weren’t necessarily way more tanky or less). It was a nice way to contribute to the team in a meaningful way and (at higher levels, and once you’re more experienced) could provide a challenge too. Of course there were teams that insisted to go without healers, but when things didn’t go *perfectly* you could tell people were getting frustrated (even though running a healer just meant a slower clear time but still a clear).

I main Field Medic in Killing Floor 2, which is the only game I play healer in so here are my thoughts 1) Medics have insane buffs that the medic can use on himself 2) Anything that potentially heals also becomes poisonous to enemies so no tool is useless when there are no allies 3) Medics have medic versions of all weapons so there is variety My only real suggestion for KF3 is that they add critical healing (more healing for headshots) or over heal

Expanding on Point 4, Wanting to Stay At Low HP, Final Fantasy 8 (and to a _much_ lesser extent 6) is a unique edge case where there actually _is_ a system wide mechanic that wants you to be at low health. In that game, Limit Breaks are almost always accessible at low health. Because of that, the dominant strategy is to have one character at the lowest sustainable health value for where you are in order to spam limit breaks. Often this is either Squall for his perfect accuracy and ability to hit multiple times per turn with Renzukoken, or Quistis for her utility blue magic (including an instant death spell). However, Zell can take advantage of this decently well with his build a combo limit break, and there is an entire category of items specifically for Irving's limit break. When combined with how the game passively punishes grinding and how you can take advantage of the card mini game to create powerful items and spells early on, this is one of many mechanics that leads to 8 being considered a broken game by many, and inherently kinda fun to speedrun despite being a multi disc PSX RPG. And while 6 has a prototype limit break in Desperation Attacks that can be randomly accessed at low health, it is far more random and less reliable than 8. Not that it matters since 6 lacks a dedicated healer, or the ability to spec someone into one, anyway.

I enjoy playing as the Healer. Having a passive role in combat fits my slowness I have to react to the fast-paced actions. It's even better in games that have NPC controlling the rest of the party, like in, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch.

Not really on the same levels as MMOs and such, but I really liked how Battlefield Bad Company 2 made the healer the only class able to use machine guns. You became a solid support class that both healed your team and laid down heavy suppressive fire.

Oh yes, I remember Genshin 2.4 when people were crying that shielders got nerfed because they introduced mobs that lowered your health based on your energy recharge instead, I remember people complaining about the mobs that ignore shields and apply bleed. I remember that some bosses have a perma bleed unless you cleanse yourself and I for sure remember people complaining that not even full HP Zhongli can't tank Fontaine's local legends and Natlan's call of war. Nah, Healers have their place, most people just don't know how to build them and dodge attacks, I'm surprised they know how to i-frame. On HSR, I main Aventurine and I can tell that if the boss is sufficiently strong (SU) in the DOT and CC department, I'd bring Lynx along. Just for that full team cleanse.

Resistance 2’s medic was an amazing healing class imo. You had a beam weapon that linked to enemies which charges a healing secondary blast. And then, you still had sub weapons with a more specialized use case so you could contribute to damage when healing wasn’t needed. The beam still did respectable damage too since it hit every enemy in a horde.

Back in college the TF2 Medic was the most fun I could have playing a game while drunk

The one game where healers are absolutely fun to play is PGR, where premium healers are on field dps, buffers and sustain all in one while also their visuals are not designed to look like gentle supports but instead range from "Laser brush blade artist" to "Feral lightning wolf girl" and "Angel of mercy with the heat of a sun at her disposal"

Tales of xillia has Jude the mc as a healer and he's incredible. He can aoe heal in later parts of the game without slowing down his combat. Probably the best healer I've played Fire emblem the later games are trying but healers are still very prone to exploding on touch. Lissa Axe in the fates dlc would have made her great in awakening. But yeah healing makes you feel like you aren't doing anything just spamming a single thing

Fun video! As an ex edgy dps main turned dedicated supporter I loved hearing about the game design angle. I just want my friends to have as much fun as possible so I heal whenever it's needed and the joy of being there for others completely offsets any downsides.

A well-designed healer character lets you act as a force multiplier for your team. Providing extra longevity for your offensive members, especially those who might have a strong output but low hardiness. I suppose I didn’t immediately think of Mercy or the Medic when thinking about contemporary heal-focused characters in games - my experience has had more well-rounded healers who might be better described as supporters anyhow. Restorative healing, preventative healing (shielding), de/buffing (lower incoming attack efficacy, increase ally defenses, etc) are tools I see packaged together more often for engaging healer characters. Heck, some can offer good damage in their own right! My to-date most fun healer character experience has been playing a Warriorpriest in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. An active, front- or mid-line healer who waded into battle with hammers (and occasionally tomes). The ability to rock up to enemies with a sledge and wail on them while *simultaneously* healing yourself per hit, and thus go toe to toe with hardier or glass cannon careers was excellent. Moreso, running alongside a friendly heavy character and healing them up with your hammer blows, shoulder to shoulder. AoR placed more emphasis on direct+gradual heals, so laying down HoT’s on your party during a PVP scenario or a Public Quest made keeping others up more manageable. Playing a tank’s pocket-healer was grand though, even from more of a distance. Shout-out to Dungeons and Dragons Fourth Edition “Leader” classes as well! For people who hated/resented playing Clerics in prior editions of D&D, being relegated to pure heal-bots who didn’t get to contribute directly to victory? 4e heard you loud and clear, and Leader classes were all competent in combat and each had their own support-niche they focused on in addition to a relatively standard healing progression package. Clerics laid on extra HP when healing; Artificers dished out temp HP (shielding) and bonuses to hit & damage; Warlords granted bonuses and additional attacks; Bards could slide allies to reposition them and save allies the action economy + opportunity attack provocations; etc. Leaders were a grand way to have one of four class roles dedicated to healing, while still making them engaging to play and giving them each some niche protection. I think the idea of a “dedicated healer” whose sole, or overall purpose is restoring lost HP, is perhaps outdated - or at least, it doesn’t fit the gameplay goals of a lot of modern combat-focused games. Undoing damage alone won’t be enough of a purpose/toolkit for a lot of players, especially in multiplayer scenes where healers & supports are taken for granted. Healers with a more diversified kit strike me as a productive adaptation to the archetype, even if their healing/supporting role remains their primary tool.

Yeah, the teammates are the biggest reason behind why people don't play healers (To me). I always tell people that playing a healer is as if you could save your teammates from dying, but you make your teammates act like theyre invisible, run alone into the enemy team, and then blaming the healer.

I love being a support player, but I admit sometimes I wish healers had more going on than just heal. I remember going to Paladins and finding my place with Furia. A character that could both heal and still be a decent DPS, and recently in Marvel Rivals, I loved playing Loki with his mix of both healing and misdirection. I think giving a player the feeling of contributing more to combat outside of pure healing is the key to making a healer fun to play. Also, Gallagher is the peak rpg healer. I will not elaborate.

When I played Xenoblade 3, I actually controlled Taion since I didn't trust the AI to do the healing effectively. I was also able to do some offensive stuff with him so that was a bonus. More offensive healers are definitely needed.

Not many people play PlanetSide 2 or will see this, but Imma say it anyways. The Combat Medic in PlanetSide 2 gets a decent amount of firepower, the ability to restore people's HP and shields, and a tool that resurrects people. The strongest tool the Combat Medic has is a grenade that mass res people in a small area, which is heavily used by players doing a coordinated push/breakout where casualties mount at an astonishingly high rate. A single medic can bring back a team and a handful of well placed medics can sometimes turn the tables in a battle by resurrecting a massive push. The Engineer is more of a healer for mechanical things, they get a tool that heals exosuits (which is used like the infantry being on foot), they can obvious heal vehicles and emplacements. Best of all, they get grenades that heal a bunch of mechanical things in a group, that grenade is sometimes used when there is a mass breakout/push where exosuits take heavy damage (but to resurrect one you still need a medic). Honestly, PlanetSide 2 is the few I actively enjoy playing healers. I get a set of weapons kit that allow me to defeat non vehicle/exosuit enemies and take objectives decently well, I get kit that supports my job well, and the game actively encourages the use of medics to ensure that casualties can get up and fighting again.

Back in the day, when the game was _current_ (mid-00s), Final Fantasy XI was the first game where I took on the healer role, playing both White Mage and Red Mage. Depending on the situation, it could be either an exciting game of whack-a-mole to keep people's HP up or about keeping buff effects where they needed to be and occasionally casting offensive magic (which tended to be severely under-leveled from disuse). Then Star Wars: The Old Republic released, and I played a Samus Aran-inspired Bounty Hunter because I love Metroid. Tank spec because it seemed more useful than DPS. When I moved on to Final Fantasy XIV (2013), I think I just ended up going Paladin because I'd already been focused on playing as a tank. It took until this summer of 2014 before I actually gave a healer job an actual shot, and I swiftly played White Mage/Conjurer from level 16 to level 94 before I decided I should take a break and actually get *other* things done. Non-FFXIV things. Both Tank and Healer roles have their own weights of responsibility that you have to get used to, but they're also both fun and fulfilling.

In TF2 Nothing is more satisfying to me than out healing a teams top 4 or 5 damage dealers, negating that damage damage done. I have helped hold points while greatly out numbered from good heals. People do appreciate great heals and will for sure give you props for doing your part. Well timed ubers are just a thing of beauty. I typically play any class that the team needs most, but medic is my goto.

Healers have always had an interesting history. That being I've always wanted to try be a healer, but almost never play any team based games. So I never really got the opportunity to be one. The closest experience I can think of is prefering white mages and defensive characters in RPGs, but that doesn't quite feel the same. Funny enough, I recall hearing things in late Overwatch 1 of them completely reworking Mercy to have more offensive options. A part of me always thought that was strange. But the way you broke down the medic in this video helped me realize why being able to do more than just heal really good can be a good thing.

This popped up in my feed... but I LIKE playing a healer. I HAVE pulled for Genshin healers! I pulled for Kokomi on her first banner because pink mermaid girl! I waited SO LONG for my sea slug bunny girl, and I LOVE HER!!! BUBBLES!!!

my proudest moment was clearing as solo healer in baldesion arsenal with no deaths in final fantasy 14

I recently played ff13 and I love how classes work in that game. Instead of having dedicated healers, multiple characters can switch to the healer role on demand if needed.

I like playing support because I like winning games, and if I have to be the guy that plays the character no one else wants to, so be it, but I never understood why healers specifically are so maligned. To me it's a matter of perspective: my job isn't to shoot the enemies until their HP hits zero, it's to "shoot" my team until their health bar hits full

I love healing, but I can't stand to play the generic soulless healing class with its doctor motifs and angelic vibes and straight-up making numbers go up gameplay with no nuance. Which is to say, I never thought I'd be a healer until I became a Scourge in Guild Wars 2, and then suddenly that was some of the most fun I've ever had in a video game. Scourges are a subset of Necromancer who animate sand instead of corpses, and their healing tech all revolves around using that sand to protect and shepherd the party. You can give them sand armor, sink through the sand and reappear somewhere else for better positioning, or even drag the wounded body of an ally toward you on a blanket of it so that they'll be right under your next heal. The sandabilities are endless! ⛱️ It also, of course, gives you a +1000 stat boost against Anakin Skywalker.

Suggestion for making healers better: reverse healing or poison. In one, the character uses their powers to take health points away from the enemy and give to the team. In the other, well, the character's an apothacary or something and they can poison enemies or something.

An example in Honkai Star Rail is why some healers are better and preferred over others: At the game's launch Bailu and Natasha were the only options for healing. They were quickly overshadowed by later additions like Luocha and Lynx since these newer characters aside from providing healing also could cleanse any debuffs that were applied to your team, something that Bailu lacked entirely and Natasha could only apply one at a time. Then Huo Huo began to stray beyond just healing/sustain and could buff the team and provide energy to the entire team to be able to deal more damage. And Gallagher enabled a gameplay style that worked really well for a what was once underutilized mechanic, but also provided debuff cleanse and also could decrease the attack power of an enemy unit. This is of course the dilemma of healer/sustain units that had to justify their place in the limited slots of a team that would otherwise be occupied by a different role, especially if there were no other mechanics that could be utilized or exploited for the team to avoid taking too much damage during a battle.

Final Fantasy XIII's paradigm shift system offered an interesting perspective on healing, in that Healer (and the other support-oriented roles) were all part-time tasks that you switch to when needed. It allowed for various strategies like having a tank setup to switch to with a classic healer and tank setup, or a high-paced constant DPS setup mixing healers with one of the damage classes, or even a full healer paradigm for burst healing in a crisis situation.

Both MMORPG and RPG games I always pick the most valuable Job "Healer". Without those job all player can't do the hardest content in game.

Uh... in the context of FF14, healers are INCREDIBLY popular because encounters are designed to have the healer ALWAYS be active. If you aren't healing you are DPSing. Also, since you showed the D&D Cleric in your intro: Clerics can be built into absolute forces of destruction that can do LITERALLY everything in D&D 5e. You can wear plate armor, heal, buff, debuff, attack in melee (including improved attacks at higher levels that deal magic damage), attack at range, nuke, resurrect, summon celestials and infernals... The only class with more tools in its kit is Wizard. If you play Baldur's Gate 3, your VERY FIRST COMPANION after leaving the tutorial is a Cleric: Shadowheart. Spoiler alert: she's an absolute badass from level 1.

In pokemon there are ways heal in combat without items through the move called wish, where it staggers the healing by one turn in which you can switch in a pokemon that needs the healing

I remember licking to play as a engineer in Planetside 2. That game had a medic class, but the engineer could heal the max class (power armor class that is more heavily armored and armed then a normal class) and vehicles. It was kind of fun jumping around. Making sure i was not in the way of my team mate in the tank (vehicles could run you over). It was fun being small and important.

Would love to play a rpg where the mc is weaker than his party and has boost and heal abilities for the early game if it's on the switch. Yeah healers and boosters aren't one anyone wants to play. They are great in party and you can feel the effects when they are gone but not getting the appreciation in long battles. It's probably why "I got kicked out of the hero's party" manga exist where the booster healer leaves and the hero's party immediately collapses in a sense. Bur yeah i feel to fix this problem. Make the healer have Mutiple effects in one power like heal team boost attack or attack enemy heal ally all in one powers. That way if you play them and rather do stragety you can make a party keep attacking

One thing that Battlefield constantly gets it right are how they approach the Medic/Healer class and makes it geniuinely fun to play and gives new players the necessary ropes to work together with your teammates. Basically just give them decent (or in some cases outright disgusting firepower like BF4 assault medics with AEKs but every class in BF4 is disgustingly OP if you play your cards right) attacking power necessary to push forward/hold back against enemies and rewards aggresive healing/revive playstyle to help your team push to capture objectives

I remember Healer was important on Ragnarok Online. They sought after by people. Like you're a healer, people will flock around you. Also, you can build it as a solo fighter because it has self sustain. There was a time, giving people heal or teleporting, or reviving will earn you money in RO. Like everybody always has a healer on his/her account. That, or a merchant. By i mean healer, it includes Priest, Monk, Crusader, and Soul linker. And to some extent Alchemist.

One of the games I loved healing in and I've seen many people praise is TERA (RIP), it was an action-combat MMORPG in which only 2 out of 13 classes could heal in a team-wide scale: Priest and Mystic. Priest was more of your average healer in an MMORPG but the TERA Combat mechanics made Healers extremely important and severely skill reliant on an individual bases. A good healer that could dodge and maintain their buffs up would theoretically keep fighting forever, and a lot of boss mechanics revolved around the Healer being able to disable major buffs enemies would receive. Priests had the unique ability to pull allies at a range to avoid danger and had mostly low cooldowns, which made them cycle through their skills quite often and have them at any situation as long as the player knew how to handle them. Mystic was this summoner class that could compete with DPS's when handled correctly and used Auras instead of buffs. Buffs had to be reapplied anytime an ally died but as long as a Mystic lived, their auras would remain active. Their thralls (summons) were extremely powerful in both supportive and damage based ways and the mystic had to choose which thralls to pull out to buff the team's dps at any given time or lay low and focus on healing. Mystics could also drop motes of both mana regen and health regen to promote active healing from your allies while not being limited from just directly healing allies themselves. For this same reason, Mystic was harder to play more efficiently, because Players had to constantly think in ways to efficiently heal (as they couldn't do so as widely and often as a Priest) while trying to provide as much DPS as possible. When played right, Mystics would be better than Priests in many cases and an extremely great boon to any team, while Priests weren't left behind and were seen as a competent, safer option for less skilled teams or first runs through dungeons. This combined with a game that had fast leveling and heavily promoted alt creation and usage, a competent healer main would comfortably have fun with both classes, and that is what made TERA special for me. Too much yapping but ty if you read through it all ❤

I love playing healer. I get to decide who gets to live~

I love playing as the healer. It helps me keeping my team alive and well. Healer has always been the role I mainly choose. The role is simple, easy to understand and fun. I really hate those who keep trash talking on the healer role. Like fine, if you think you can survive on your own, then don't come crawling back and crying when your HP is low and you're on the verge of death.

In most Asian MMORPG (at least those I played), the most Pay-to-Win feature is building DPS role lol. Healer and Support are pretty much how F2P willing to continue the game plus why newbies should choose classes with heal/Support role yet they can still build sub-DPS for early and midgame contents.

Just wanted to say that preview image is glorious, love it

I think Sharla's other issue in Xenoblade Chronicles is the fact that most of her arts are very poor in chain attacks and don't synergize well with the other party members.

The best moment with being a healer I had was in Battlefield 1. Monte Grappa, team deathmatch. 20+ revives in one life, a ton of healing and some kills in between poking people with syringe.

"Why heal when we can kill em all fast?" It's tricky and developers need to "trick" Players to use healer. Maybe like make enemies hit hard to make player consider adding sustain role or make heal also do buff. We gamers like doing big pp dmg numbers so i like the latter option. That's why i really like Furina from Genshin.

I wish that one multiplayer game would let us experience the sadistic healer trope. It should be fun deciding who lives and who dies and make a mess of enemies...

One of my recent experiences with healing has been in 7-Stars Tera Raids in Pokemon Scarlet/Violet. The thing is, most of these raids are hard enough that if your team is bad (read that as, 80% of the time when you play with random players), no amount of healing will be enough to save the party, they will just die too fast. But on the opposite side, if you play with people who all bring Level 100 Pokemon and know what they're doing, then you end up not needing dedicated healing, only a cheer here and there, and you spend more time spamming Helping Hand than your heal moves. Raid bosses very rarely reach a level of damage consistent enough to warrant constant healing. Healing moves are also a rather scarce ressource in Pokemon, with a lot of mons being either good at healing themselves OR their allies but rarely both (Life Dew heals everyone but in small quantities so it won't save near-death allies), and attackers in raids have an easier time recovering HP by hitting aggressively with a Shell Bell. I think good healers need something more than just healing to become fun and/or important. They need other support moves and flexibility on what they can accomplish. I don't believe in making games so hard that you cannot succeed without a 24/24 healer on the party.

2:30 We definitely need a followup video concerning dedicated healer mains, there is a lot to say on the subject In final fantasy 14, I mostly play healers. My reasons are a bit narcissistic - I feel healer is the most important role for deciding whether a group succeeds or fails. A good healer can really carry a group to victory, in a way a DPS can't (not at that level myself yet but aspiring to be). It's just a lot of fun. Preemptively shielding a hard mechanic, seeing a few people fail but survive thanks to my shields and knowing my action possibly just prevented a wipe feels great. And in normal difficulty content I love the hectic moments when half the party dies and I need to insta revive a tank, heal everyone, get the tanks to full HP+shields, then spend 8 seconds hard-casting a revive on the other healer to bring the party up.

Idk healers in ffxiv gives me pure serotonin. Doubling a tank’s hp with barriers, timing perfect heals to optimize life, etc. I find FFXIV makes healing feel more impactful than doing damage due to the amount of hp to damage through, while you can watch a party’s hp skyrocket when a healer pops a big CD. If ffxiv gave healers a more complex rotation, I feel like their popularity would skyrocket.

In the early days of LoL, I mained Soraka because being in the back lines as a healer meant that I did not have to deal with much of the craziness of the front lines...or worse, having the responsibility of being a jungler. Since I am a more analytical person, holding back allowed me to take a more wide-angle view of the situation and move to where I was needed.

I think monster hunter has a really interesting take on "playing healer" the game is primarily designed just assuming you'll use potions to maintian your own hp, but the game still offers a few options to allow players who actively want to watch each other's health bars the ability to save each other, such as lifepowders that heal the entire party, or armour skills like wide-range that allow the player to opt into being able to use their own healing potion stash to heal the party, if someone is worried their allies will be too reckless and wants to ensure they stay alive, they have the option to have that peace of mind, but the game never assumes you will play this way and even if you have these tools, the majority of the gameplay is still very normal unless people get themselves into danger.

I remember playing few games where there wasn't the "dedicated healer" archetype in a meaningful way. I will use League of Legends as the main example of a additional scenario "when the healer is not needed". In other words, the dps has self sustain. In League this is a situation where, yes healers are really useful to keep everyone alive with their shields n' heals, but the self sustain of most modern characters is enough where, another damage dealer or a crowd control machine is better than a dedicated healer for that team comp overall. In other games that I played like Persona 3 Fes, where most characters in endgame have Diarahan (fully recover the targets HP) and in Shovel Knight where you can drink a healing chalice in clutch moments once per level but as you get better you don't need them.

i feel like overwatch tried to fix this problem by giving healers like moira more attack prowess, but as a result we now have a large subsection of “battle healers” who refuse to actually heal their teammates and instead just act like a 3rd dps

I like how this role kind of becomes a main piece for multiplayer fights in EVE Online as an exception to the rule. In a game where loosing your ship is a financial loss to your character's wallet, you would expect the name of the game is playing a bunch of high damage ships and blast everyone else into pieces before you explode. it's more than that, you actually need people to hold tackle of enemy ships, people playing disruption roles and then logistics which are basically the healer spaceships. "Logi" is such an important role in the battlefield you see it from the smallest gang to the largest fleet battles that make it to the news.

I used to be a healer back in the mmorpg days and another big thing is that blaming the healer is far easier than blaming anyone else because out of all mistakes, "my hp went down to 0" is the easiest to point out. It could be the fault of someone else including the now dead one but in almost all scenarios, noticing those issues is muvh harder than noticing the healer not outhealing the damage. In a lot of cases, even you might not realise that the issue isn't on your end.

SMITE's Chang'e and Hel (and to a lesser extent, Aprodite) made me genuinely enjoy playing a healer -- though I think in huge part of what made them fun to play was how stat efficient the items in the item shop were. Sure these were made very squishy to compensate their ability to sustain themselves and their team, but not only did tank-centric items way cheaper (aka more accessible) than their damage-centric ones, they almost always came with incredible utility stats. When I played for example, an item called "Shield of Regrowth" not only gave you tons of HP but also had 10% cooldown reduction (a stat that caps at 40%) and a passive that makes you 10% faster whenever you heal yourself. Oh and it costs a mere 2k gold (items on average are around 2.2k, most crit items are at 2.7k). So basically play right and you're like a fast unkillable tank and sure you might not be able to kill your enemies, but they can never kill you so

Funnily enough, the most time i had fun as a "dedicated" healer is when i switched to a support build in Isonzo an immersive ww1 shooter. Essentially get the class that gives ammo and faster healing and you are good to go. Its funny because since everyone has bolt action rifles, most people die in 1-2 hits. Its because grenades and arty are a little bit undertuned that lets a healer have enough time and space to get to work. Since its a ww1 game, everyone gets a weapon that can drop people in 1-2 hits so your initiative and offensive capability doesnt go down. It does have to mention that I generally play such a build after several matches of going for my usual offensive minded playstyle so for me it served more as a palatte cleanser rather than i like being a healer. Generally i play crazy assault charging the front line. I think a game like Foxhole which is a MMO appreciate healers because individual contributions are so small and its such a large team game that having a good medic corp can turn the battle. Also its funny in genshin you mention statue of the 7 or food but since i have an inventory hoarding problem, I tend to stockpile consumables so i generally put in barbara in my party. This helps especially on long exploration sections especially in new maps since i want to avoid heading back to statue of 7 since it could be out of the way. I actually prefer barbara in my exploration or farming party because of her C6 ability to revive so i can turn my brain off even more. Since its not endgame content, the three other slots can all help with dps, plus everything folds quite easily in the overworld with endgame builds. Though i haven't gotten around Natlan too deep yet and i hear the local legends are quite strong this time. Something about barbara having effectively an undo button quite nice and convenient because if i play really poorly with other characters, no matter how slim, if i fk up then a key party member and i actually have to think and pay more attention to the combat once i use a revive item.