Healer Guide/Class Comparison

[Splorch]

I will post this in sections explaining the pro's and con's of the 2 classes and finally compare the 2 healer classes side by side. I don't have the time to finish this all at once so I will be posting it in sections/revising as time permits. Any good information will be appreciated/incorporated.

Overview for new players:

TICKS

First thing to understand is what a tick consists of. A tick in FFXIV is 3 seconds. Things to keep in mind are that most ticks meld together and synchronize, as in if you cast Aero I and Aero II on a mob, you will only see 1 damage number, but it is the total of the 2 dots. This does not, however, occur with things like the basic mana regeneration and shroud of saints, which remain separate. A standard mana tick is 2% of your maximum mana pool.

STATS

Mind is your primary stat. Gaining more mind is always more effective than gaining a secondary stat such as determination, spell speed, or crit. There is of course the exceptions like trading 20 determination for 1 mind or some such extremes. If people have a simple weight chart for healers I'd like to add it.

Determination affects both healing and damage spells. Though the gains are not considered to be huge, it is consistent.

Crit add's a small % chance to cause a +50% increase on a cast. It is especially important for SCH's and will be explained more in their section.

Spell Speed affects how fast you can cast a spell. It makes it easier to make swift recoveries, but it does not increase mana efficiency like CRIT or DET.

All healing spells have about a 3%+/- deviation, which means you don't always heal for the same amount. As you get higher level/more gear, the gap looks to be larger but it is simply because you're throwing out larger numbers.

WHM Overview

If the potency of something resembles say Medica II below, that is 200 potency + 50 Potency x10 ticks

HEALS

Spell Potency Cost Range
CURE I 400 @ 133 30y
CURE II 650 @ 266 30y
CURE III 550 @ 505 30y x 6y AoE
MEDICA I 300 @ 372 0y x 15y AoE
MEDICA II 200+50(10t)=700 @ 452 0y x 20y AoE
SS 18%(Target MaxHP) @ 266 30y
REGEN 150(7t)=1050 @ 186 30y
BENDICTION 100% @ 5min 30y

OFFENSIVE
STONE I 140 (20 second slow) @ 133 25y
STONE II 170 @ 159 25y
AERO I 50+25(6t)=200 @ 106 25y
AERO II 50+40(4t)=210 @ 139 25y
HOLY 200 (4 second stun) @ 532 0y x 8y AoE
FLUID AURA 150 (KB+Root 6s) @ 30sec 5y
REPOSE SLEEP 30sec @ 212 30y

BUFFS
PRESENCE OF MIND 2x SPELL SPEED for 10s @5 MINUTES
DIVINE SEAL 30% INCREASED Healing @1 MINUTE
SHROUD 212MP(5t) @2 MINUTES
PROTECT 15%ARMOR/MAGIC

PROS
Largest AoE heals in the game
Highest AoE damage(via Holy) in the game
Largest Single target pure heal
Easy dps rotation (ensure dots are on, spam stone II) is usually ~200dps with relic +1
Simple and easy to play. In early play it comes down to wack-a-mole. In later content it comes down to timing heals to land exactly after an enemy attacks.
Get Esuna early on for removing status effects
Enhanced Protect
Divine Seal

CONS
Mana Management A single ability on a 2 minute recast that restores a flat amount regardless of gear. Shroud restores 1060mp over 15 seconds. To add salt to this wound, you can also tack on that at lvl 48 WHM's get a trait that enhances Shroud of Saints. It does nothing.
Due to 2 of the class traits being 15% chances attached to Cure I and Cure II, it makes our management inconsistent. Some times you get so many free cure procs you never run out of mana. Other days you might get 2 procs over a 10 minute battle.

Aggro Issues When dealing with an under-geared/less experienced tank, WHM's tend to have aggro issues. With static groups or decently geared tanks this is a non issue, but healing a fresh 50 can end up being frustrating. The only deaggro we have is also tied into our only source of mana regen described above.

Damage Mitigation Stone Skin is based on your targets max hps. This means that as you gain more gear, the skill doesn't get better. If your target is seriously over geared then yes it helps, but if you have say a target that died once or twice, and you're attempting to protect them as much as possible they actually receive minimal gains from the skill, which means they can easily be 1 shot even with SS being active. While it is better than nothing, it still has minimal scaling outside of using it strictly on tanks.

Raid Utility Has 0 innate utility. Through the use of cross class abilities this is improved, but you get the weaker version of skills when they are cross classed.

Emergency Abilities The 2 emergency style abilities that WHM's get are Benediction and Presence of Mind. Both of these spells are on 5 minute recasts, which means that for most battles once they are used, they're gone until your succeed or you wipe, and even then they might still be down. There have been many discussions on Benediction and how most of the time when it is required or even planned for it still fails because of its 1.5 second animation cast. There have been many cases of target has 1400 hps, is healed for 6200 hps, takes 1500 damage, and still dies. Regardless if benediction succeeds or fails, it is always consumed upon starting the cast. Presence of Mind is only truly great if you build a spell speed gear set, which means that you decided to sacrifice the more mana efficient stats DET/CRIT.

I will be comparing the classes base on similar in purpose abilities. Some of them will come off as a stretch, but with some imagination and understanding of the game you should pick up on what I'm getting at.

COMPARISON WHM vs SCH
HEALING

Cure I vs Physick - These 2 ability are literally copy paste of each other. Cure I has an extra passive that gives a 15% chance for a free Cure II, but to give an example of how random it is during turn 4 today phases 1-4 I had 1 pull where I got 4 free Cure II's. That's 4 minutes of steady streaming of cure I. I also had 1 pull with 17 Free cure II's. Since the passive is completely random, it's not something you can rely on. It is sadly integral to WHM mana management.

Cure II vs Aldoquium - 650 potency heal vs 300 heal + 300 shield. Cure II has a small chance to proc a half cost cure III, which usual comes when you really don't need it. Effective use of Cure II to work with mana management relies heavily on Cure I procs(see above). Is great for recoveries especially if it crits or is used in conjunction with healing buffs(divine seal, convalescence, mantra, etc). Aldo can be used preemptively for shielding known incoming damage (death sentence, mountain buster, wicked wheels). It can also be used when a tank is knocked down heavily to buy time. Passive included on aldo is that crits double the effectiveness of the shield. IE if you were to heal for 100 shield would be 100. If you crit the heal would be 150 the shield is 300.

Cure III - This is a heavily costly heal, and is almost impossible to use outside of static grouping. Its group healing potential is outstanding and the scholar has no skill that matches it.

Regen vs Embrace - 150 potency heal every 3 seconds on the target that is was casted on vs 300 potency heal every 3 seconds that can be targeted on the fly or macroed to double up with other heals like physick or aldo. Regen costs mana, GCD, and to get consistent results has to be recasted on a target every 21 seconds. Eos can literally just decide to cast embrace for you, and effectively crushes any reason to ever want regen over embrace, yet I still see SCH's complaining about not having a regen ability. Regens can be double stacked and this has started some bad discussions about the double WHM combo vs double SCH. To that I would says if you both go Eos you are still technically double stacking, and doing it with a better ability.

Medica vs Succor - 300 potency heal vs 150 heal + 150 shield. Very much comparable to the description of Cure II vs Aldo except neither have a passive. Succor has the ability to be used preemptively, but lacks the recovery strength of Medica.

Granite Skin vs Stone Skin - 18% max life shield vs 10% - Neither of these skills are very mana efficient, and they both see their most use before a battle occurs. It allows players to take 1 free aoe for the most part. Helps with initial pulls, and early mana management. After that the WHM has to rely on granite skin to mitigate huge incoming damage abilities, whereas most SCH forget they have SS and just use Aldo.

Medica II vs Whispering(roused) *(iLvL 83)
DS + Medica II ticks for AVG 161 10x over 30 seconds = 1610 + 624 initial (2234 total) ~74hps / Costs 452 mana with a ~2.85 GCD/cast time can cause aggro issues(WHM death) depending on fight/tank
Rouse + whispering dawn does AVG 338 8x over 24 seconds = 2710 total ~112hps / Costs 0 mana, no GCD, fairy 1.9 second cast/may cause Eos a death depending on fight
Rouse + Fey Illumination + whispering dawn AVG 405 8x over 24 seconds = 3244 total ~135hps / Costs 0 mana, no GCD, Fairy has slight delay + 1.9 second cast//may cause Eos a death depending on fight

Simply put, the rouse + whispering dawn combo is better, because no fights currently require a consistent weak HoT. Medica II does have extra range, and is great for pug groups that have people that constantly stand at max range from everything. Medica II can also be double stacked like regen with the WHM/WHM combo. SCH/SCH combos that work together using communication and/or parser timers can however rotate the rouse + WD and can almost keep it up indefinitely at no cost to themselves.

Benediction VS Lustrate - 100% every 5 minutes vs "potentially" 25% 6x in the first minute and 3x every minute there after. These are emergency "instant cast" abilities that have 1.5 second cast animations. That means that they can both fail to save the tank, yet still be expended. If benediction was used early and then used again after 5 minutes it would heal 200%. If lustrate was used early, it could be potentially be used 21x = 425% in that same amount of time. Lustrate is a consistent emergency ability, and it is for most purposes much better than benediction. The exception is if the tank is about to take a massive hit next, lustrate might not be enough to save the day in those instances.

BUFFS AND UTILITY

Enhanced Protect vs Protect - WHM's give 15% magic resists over SCH.

(Eos)Fey Covenant - Gives party 20% magic resists castable every 2 minutes. Situational as almost all damage is physical, but the WHM doesn't genuinely have a matching skill. People will point to the skill above, but if you had a WHM buff your party with protect and then went into an instance with SCH/SCH anyways you could technically get the benefits of both worlds, while not using a WHM.

Divine Seal vs (Eos)Fey Illumination - 30% increased healing self buff 15 seconds every minute vs 20% group wide healing SPELL buff for 20 seconds every 2 minutes. Divine seal gives WHM's the ability to do amazing burst healing without actually using an emergency. It also helps greatly with mana management. Fey Illum assists both healers. as well as anyone else throwing an assisting heal, including the fairies. Running SCH/SCH and using communication can lead to using this to effectively give both SCH's the same effect as divine seal (once every minute).

(Selene)Fey Glow (spell speed) and Fey Light (skill speed) cannot be stacked together, but increase their respective stat by 30%. They last for 30 seconds and recast is 1 minute (selene normally just rotates back and forth between the 2). WHM's have nothing comparable.

(Selene)Silent dawn single target silence. instant cast, lasts 1 second, 40 second recast.

Virus vs Enhanced Virus - SCH's get -15% INT/MND over WHM. The benefits of the extra debuff is that you can bring down the damage of magic abilities.

Eye for an Eye vs Enhanced E4E - E4E is a great ability, that while not entirely consistent, is still incredibly helpful. The SCH can cast it every 2 minutes while WHM is every 3 minutes
(Erects a magicked barrier around a single party member or pet. Duration 30 seconds. 20% chance that when barrier is struck the striker will deal 10% less damage for 20 seconds.

Sacred Soil - A SCH only ability that creates a bubble that reduces the damage taken by group members to 90%. Has a 20% chance that the next succor will cost no MP. WHM has no comparable skill.

Shroud of Saints VS Aetherflow. 212MP x5(1060) over 15 seconds castable every 2 minutes vs 20%(At iLvL 83 thats ~880, at ilvl 90 its over 1000) every minute. SCH gets 1.5-2x the amount of mana a WHM receives. Aetherflow is instant, whereas SoS takes time to recover. Shroud contains a deaggro that is usually not required unless with an undergeared tank or at P6 of turn 4. Aetherflow grants 3 charges to the SCH to use their most powerful abilities. Those abilities, while limited, are free of MP cost/GCD.

Energy Drain - Requires the use of Aetherflow charges, can help recover mana when you don't have a bard. Usually not better to pick over lustrate, though if aetherflow comes back up and you have a remaining charge you can always just drain, then aetherflow and recover a massive amount of mana and fully prepared for the next phase of a battle. WHM has nothing comparable.

DAMAGE

[Raestloz]

Be sure to note that Benediction is literally one shot. If it doesn't heal the tank, it will heal you instead. There is no way to save Benediction, pun absolutely intended

[Splorch]

I'll work on the damage portion more when I get time, as well as clean up some of the more grammatical errors and whatnot.

[Sabeta]

I don't like to compare Eos' Embrace to Regen. Because of the way Eos is usually controlled (via Macro) it's more like a permanent supplement to your heals. She also targets whoever you target, or any ally below 60% health, so it's not just ticking away on one target like it does for Regen. With that in mind I consider Scholar's to be the better single target healers, but White Mages to be the better AoE healer. Sch/Sch is bad not because of regen stacking (Whispering Dawn can be stacked), but because galvanize does NOT. If two Scholars use Succor at the same time, the stronger shield will go through, while the other scholar only threw out a 150 potency heal.

[Splorch]

First off regen ticks away every 3 seconds, costs global cooldown, and costs mana. Embrace can be casted every 3 seconds and does not cost anything. If all you ever use embrace for is to supplement your heals then that is on you. Some people micro the hell out of Eos and have it casting embrace on almost everything that needs a spot heal, as well as supplementing their heals(which is what regen does). Both skills are supplements, but embrace is more cost/time/flexibility effective, making it better. Both skills are designed with the same purpose in mind, but I would trade regen any day for an embrace bot whle playing WHM.

Second of all, since everything in this game is on a timer you have 1 SCH preshield, other SCH uses succor after the aoe. while 1 SCH doesn't get the full effect(just the shield) the other SCH get the heal plus places the shield that buys time for embrace to tick and make up the difference. It requires planning. Something like Titan EX stomps, you can alternate who has to cast a second succor so as to not cause strain on any 1 healer, again calls for planning. True. without planning as WHM I can say screw it, pop Cure III at the cost of both of those succors and be done with it, but after 6-7 minutes of fighting Cure III is only an option if I'm rocking with a bard.

[Sebazy]

At the risk of offending, I'm inclined to think you have a rather jaded view of sch vs whm here, much more so than is actually warranted in game. Some of your counterpoints whilst theoretically sound, simply don't translate into the game itself. Instead your guide reads as a 1000 word essay that might as well just say 'whm sux sch rule'.

A few examples:

Raid Utility Has 0 innate utility. Through the use of cross class abilities this is improved, but you get the weaker version of skills when they are cross classed.

(Eos)Fey Covenant - Gives party 20% magic resists castable every 2 minutes. Situational as almost all damage is physical, but the WHM doesn't genuinely have a matching skill. People will point to the skill above, but if you had a WHM buff your party with protect and then went into an instance with SCH/SCH anyways you could technically get the benefits of both worlds, while not using a WHM.

If I joined any group be it my FC static, Duty roulette, Party finder or whatnot and suggested that we all drop and get a whm protect outside the duty, I'd get varying responses ranging from an ambulance round my house up to just plain getting booted. In a static doing highly trivial content then you have a fair point, but in a more typical situation (Party finder, statics progressing on content) where wipes are likely going to happen, that's just plain silly. It may not have the same impact but Pro/Shell is utility none the less. *edit* not to mention, but where it matters, whm virus is precisely the same as sch, and Eye for an Eye is only weaker in terms of cooldown.

Eos can literally just decide to cast embrace for you, and effectively crushes any reason to ever want regen over embrace

Embrace puts down significantly more healing on a single target but takes a little effort (namely macros and mouse over) to really get the most out of it, Embrace on autopilot isn't especially great frankly mainly because it'll never top anyone off. Regen costs both time and a little mp but is simple to use regardless of who and how many people need topping up. In short, they achieve a similar result through very different means and both have advantages over each other in line with each job's strengths.

Simply put, the rouse + whispering dawn combo is better, because no fights currently require a consistent weak HoT.

You make it sound like WD is all conquering, the problem is that it isn't. The combination of it's 60 second cooldown and the detail that it's centred around the fairy rather than the player makes it somewhat harder to use to it's fullest (although that also opens up the possibility of using it in the same manner as Cure III with some extra micromanagement). Not to mention that the more you hammer the fairy with embrace macros, the more erratic her other casts become. As before, the sch ability wins on raw potency and depth of use whilst the whm ability is more of a fire and forget ability (Particularly now with the throughput nerf of 2.1). Oh and as for fights with consistent weak AE damage: Turn 2 ADS and Ifrit EX nail phase spring immediately to mind as well as several other trivial 4 man bosses.

You also neglect to mention the fairly important detail that bar mid fight fairy switches, we have to choose between FG/FL and WD.

[Raestloz]

I wouldn't say I'll trade Regen for Embrace bot. Simply put, you can have multiple people under the effect of Regen, you can only choose one target to Embrace. In a frantic situation, say you need to heal both the DPS and the tank, you can put Regen on both and your heals will be supplemented on both

[Splorch]

To give you an understanding of how I see the WHM I think of it as a great class to learn things with. Through pure solid healing it can recover from errors, unprepared major hits, and goofs much better than the scholar though spam healing, I've recover battles that should have been lost. The cost is usually over 2000 mana, however, and as we both know that's not something that can be recovered easily by the WHM. Most of my issues stem from seeing the future of the class as part of static groups doing higher end content. Once you have the strategy down, everyone is dodging, tanks are on their cooldown rotation, guilds will begin to min/max their groups for efficiency, and SCHs bring more utility, can take care of a single target much better, and are still sufficient for almost all AoE healing requirements.

First point I agree with, no PuG group or casual guild will go find a WHM for a buff and shouldn't. Almost all fights in this game don't require min/max. I've been pugging for the last couple weeks due to the FC falling apart and I still get turns 1-4 down and have now started titan EX. Have I been in guilds in past MMO's that would do that? Yeah, sadly I have. They would stick someone like the WHM right outside the instance.

SCH virus can tone down certain magic damages, but I also mentioned that 99% of all damage taken is physical(see fey covenant). It's more useful, but I wouldn't give it too much more credit beyond that. I use virus all the same as WHM. Yes, E4E is on a shorter cooldown for SCH, which makes more uptime, still better in terms of usage, but doesn't stop me from using it.

Regen can be casted and forgotten. It has the benefit of not requiring a split mind or being distracted. When my healing is genuinely required, though, if regen wears off from say the offtank I can't always waste the cooldown to assist the other healer if we're doing split healing. Eos can be used either through ingame macros, or out of game keyboard macros to just sit on someone and spam away, effectively acting as a regen, only slightly stronger. When the target is healed and fine though, you can easily move Eos to another target, you don't just see half the spell tick away doing nothing. You don't have to burn another GCD or mana, you just switch her to another target and continue with what you're doing.

WD in direct comparison to Medica II is better. I also said that Cure III is the single strongest group heal, and SCH's have nothing to compare. With how high the cost/cast time of Medica II is its sad that it can be outdone by a pet. Medica II can be used more often, but how many WHM honestly want the aggro from it, or to spend 900 mana a minute, on top of still having to use Medica I or Cure III. With how small the HoT is it's no longer a reliable form of recovery. WD coupled with a succor, which is still cheaper effectively has its own synergy of a small bump plus shield to buy WD time to tick(it only needs 2 ticks to out heal medica I, which is what I use for 90% of all aoes that land as a WHM. By the third tick it has already surpassed Medica II with its initial bump. With SCH/SCH you can still use WD every time it's required, though without communication/familiarity with eachother, SCH's will stack it, and not have it available when they require it, which is when they spam succor and wish they were WHM's. When using cure III in most cases I cast it on myself, which mean I have to move myself to accommodate for everyone's positioning.

If people don't know that you can only have 1 fairy out at a time then I will adjust my post above. As I've stated I will make adjustments as they're needed. My last turn 4 group did use selene for the first 4 phases and then had a mid battle switch to eos. In the end the fairy combo still maintained over 300 hps with Selene at 70(mind you she wasn't healing the whole second half) and Eos at 240ish. since they each got half the battle that means that selene was near 140 hps while out, and Eos was pulling nearly 480 during the second half.

[Splorch]

I wouldn't say I'll trade Regen for Embrace bot. Simply put, you can have multiple people under the effect of Regen, you can only choose one target to Embrace. In a frantic situation, say you need to heal both the DPS and the tank, you can put Regen on both and your heals will be supplemented on both

Or you could send eos to spam on the dps and have 2 extra global cooldowns to top off the tank, which is more important...

[Abigs]

healing guide?

Seems like a WHM QQ post to me..

writing off cure 2 and 3 procs? writing off stoneskin utility? lol (used to predict damage before big hits)
writing off cure 3 outside statics? have you tried any EX primals?

severely downplaying medica II by comparing it with a roused combo..

basically its downplaying every WHM strength by using situational arguments (such as ilvl of gear. or situational combos that wont be available all the time) just to make scholars look a hell better

while i do agree that scholars are slightly better than WHM when played to extreme levels (microing the pet and ensuring both GCDs are used to optimal levels), they simply cannot compare with the overall AOE throughput of WHMs whatsoever


what i do see in this post is that your playstyle fits how a SCH plays (since you write off RNGs).. maybe you should just reroll =)