Why you should play a healer!

[MoroMurasaki]

Makes sense. Although, last night I got a trial roulette Susano where one healer died five times and the other was going OOM because for some reason he was taking forever to die.

I was on RDM. I was very, very busy. Wasn't exactly the relaxing time one hopes to get while on a DPS break.

To be fair I was going OOM because he was taking forever to die and people were eating avoidable damage like potato chips. The manashifts were much appreciated though <3

I heal because I'm a control freak and healers tend to have the most control over an encounter. Don't get me wrong, in a great group every player is quite important. In a weak group though? No one can carry like a healer.

I feel like this is the reason I never understood everyone's Shinryu frustration back when 4.0 launched. Yeah, I saw a couple wipes, but virtually no disbands. You can make up more ground than any other role by far as a healer. People failing mechanics? Get out those raises and AoE heals. Tanks not tanking? Throw up shields and/or regens on top threat target. DPS not tanking too? Throw up regens/shields on yourself and hope you don't get tankbusted. DPS not meeting a check? Do more DPS.

I'm all about utility roles (love having RDM/BRD/SMN/PLD in my group) but to me healers are just pure utility. The multitude of directions we can go makes it always exciting and, as I said, you can be a world first progression raiding SAM but you still can't carry like my mediocre WHM butt.

[Tridus]

To be fair I was going OOM because he was taking forever to die and people were eating avoidable damage like potato chips. The manashifts were much appreciated though <3

Wasn't criticising. When the other healer dies five times and he is just not dying very fast, it's going to be a thing.

[Clouse_Cleyra]

I still dont understand why people get stressed about healing, whats so hard about it? Cast cure, repeat. If its a big pull, cast cure, some OGCD, repeat.
If people dies well too bad, next pull I bet it wont be big and dungeon will go as normal, if someone tells you get good, why do u even care of what a internet guys says about you >.<

Relax, its a game!

Well to stay on the post

I start the game as a SMN and did the scholar quests so I could have both, back on the old days when the game just started. I got bored of quees and went as sch on my first dungeon "Stone Vigil" nothing special, even boring (dungeons as healers I dont feel any pleasure) but the quees was making me keep doing it.
Then I had to grind darklight armor (i think this was the name, ilvl 70), so again quees where a lot better to spam wanderes palace.

Then something came that change my world, Ifrit, Garuda ad specially Titan HM, omg raiding as a healer is SO MUCH FUN! You have a lot of control on the party, i remember everybody dying on titan hm and me healing it alone, was so much fun and challenging.
After that first coil appeared and was the same feeling.

I just love raiding as a healer! and thats my motive.

The sad thing is that doing dungeons is very boring so I just try to go on as dps or tank.

[NoahG]

The problem isn't the difficulty of healing, healing in dungeons is easy enough, the problem is people's expectation from a healer... You're not just supposed to heal you have to DPS as well which is perfectly fine except when the tank is undergeared/doesn't use CDs/Stays in offensive stance/Eats every AoE and pulls the whole dungeon... That's where things get messy and when the tank dies because of any combination of the above reasons it's the healer who is a scrub and responsible for it all.

Though even when that happens if you are SCH it's still generally easy to do huge pulls with Fey Union/Excog/Adlo.

But yes unless your party is incompetent healing is pretty easy until you get to Raids/Ex Primals which is where the real fun/stress begins.

[MoroMurasaki]

Wasn't criticising. When the other healer dies five times and he is just not dying very fast, it's going to be a thing.

Oh I didn't take it that way, just taking advantage of the opportunity to complain! Lol

[Tzain]

Some basic tips from me on de-stressing the healing role.
1. Use White Mage: Nothing against the other healers, but AST and SCH have additional complexity in the form of Pets and Stances and Cards, etc. Complexity leads to stress while you are getting comfortable.
2. Let the tank know you are really not comfortable with big pulls. If they want to go 'diva' and kick you its not your fault, it's them being impatient and you can just requeue. No big loss. It's not your fault you're new. Take a deep breath. To be honest, if a player is acting like that, they were really not worth your time to begin with. (harsh but true, being on a computer game doesn't give you the right to forget to be a human)
3. Use your cast times to plan your next move: When casting a Cure spell on the Tank you have 2 seconds to think about what your next move is going to be. Does the DPS need a cure? Does someone need Esuna? Are you standing is something yellow and bad looking? Once you decide what your next immediate move is going to be it's just a matter of doing it. Knowing what you have to do next will immediately reduce your stress and increase the comfort level of the job. Over time you'll get faster with your decision making, you'll move UI elements around so that you can see what you need to know quicker. Eventually you'll start knowing, almost instinctively, when something is going to happen. Which leads me to number 4.
4. Read the flow: This is a hard one to describe if you haven't yet experienced it, but all encounters have a 'pace', I call it 'the flow'. The tanks HP will drop at a fairly predictable rate, some spikes up or down but overall it's a noticeable pace. Your heals act like a drum beat to this pace. If the pace/flow is fast, then your drum beat is going to be quick. if the pace is slow your drum beat is going to be slow. Once you find the beat, you'll be able to easily control the encounter.

Now, let's pull it all together with a simple example of a Tank, an enemy, Cure and Stone.
The tank gets hit.
You start to cast Cure. Now you make a decision of your next move(#3). Is the tank going to need another heal immediately after this based on how much damage they were taking?(#4)
You decide, no, they wont need another heal immediately after this one.
You change your target to the enemy
The Cure casts on the tank healing them to full.
You cast Stone on the enemy. Now you make a decision of your next move(#3). Is the tank going to need another heal immediately after this based on how much damage they were taking?(#4)
you decide yes, they will need another heal.
Stone hits the enemy.
You cast Cure on the tank.

Congratulations. You just DPSed as a healer. It's all about #3 and #4, planning and reading the flow. Once you get that down it's just a matter of learning when to throw your other skills around and you'll wonder what you ever stressed about to begin with.

One last tip. Don't jump into the deep end. Do the Dungeon or Content that you are ready for as a player, not the highest one you can based on level. Start with the easy ones and use the DF/PF directly instead of the roulette. Don't be surprised if it takes 5 runs in a dungeon before you start to feel like your getting it. Just collect gear for glamouring later =)

[Littlegreen]

I avoid healing due to the stress lol. It's a game, so I want to have fun and relax. There is nothing relaxing to me about healing, especially when an overgeared tank pulls adds wall to wall and I'm still lvling up. I'm just not ready for that sort of thing. A lot of the time when I say that, the tank ignores me and does it anyway, telling me to 'git gud'. You still have like 200+ more of an ilvl than I do, it isn't a matter of skill at this point. >_>

I've finished certain dungeon runs and am left shaking. I know it sounds so stupid and pathetic, maybe I am haha. But...well, it is what it is. It gave me an appreciation for healers though so I commend them more often than I once did. Maybe I need more practice, maybe it will never be for me. I used to be very nervous about tanking as well, but that went infinitely better for me than healing. Guess I just can't handle it =p

I remember feeling very stressed starting out this game as a healer. Normally I play rogue/thief characters but wasn't aware of NIN, so I picked up CNJ on a whim. I felt SO MUCH PRESSURE going into every single new dungeon/trial all the way through the 1-50 msq. I made all the new healer mistakes: casting cure for every tick of damage the tank gets, trying to dps back when stance dancing was a thing and not switching back to heal the tank before he died, pre-pull regen, all that stuff. I remember shaking my first time going up against Ifrit. Never been so nervous in my life.

Now? I raid with SCH and do roulettes as WHM when I feel like being lazy. I feel so good throwing in tetras between my holy spam to keep the tank alive and spreading a CritAdlo on every Maniacle Probe in V2S and being the key figure to the party, throwing out my own dps between heal checks and using my resources effectively to not go OOM. It's still stressful sometimes, but in the way that I go "damn, should have saved Deployment tactics for THIS raid damage to keep everyone topped off for the next attack" or "shoot popped Indom way too early" rather than "wait, you DON'T want me using Fluid Aura?" or "idk what I'm doing so I am now a heal turret"

Meanwhile, I got my DRK to 60 and can now use him for cracked clusters and I STILL hesitate clicking on the lvl roulette because at best I am an adequate tank (meaning I can hold hate and sometimes deal proper dps)

[Sinquleur]

I agree with everyone who's said they love the control it gives them. I absolutely enjoy being such a key member to the group. Even though Tanks are just as important they don't really fit my favored caster playstyle. Which brings me to another point; this game does a fantastic job of giving you more to do than simply heal. SCH get to micromanage their pets and have a ton of super fun and interesting skills, WHM DPS spells are all super satisfying and make me feel like the damage I do is actually making a difference, AST buffs during DPS checks are so sooo satisfying.

At first I had issues with targeting since I play on PS4 but my god just setting macros on your DPS abilities so they target the enemy of the person you're currently targeting has taken all that awkwardness and made it sooo much smoother.

This game has done such a great job at making the healer role more intriguing than almost any other game I've played its amazing and I sincerely love it.

[Clouse_Cleyra]

At first I had issues with targeting since I play on PS4 but my god just setting macros on your DPS abilities so they target the enemy of the person you're currently targeting has taken all that awkwardness and made it sooo much smoother.

This game has done such a great job at making the healer role more intriguing than almost any other game I've played its amazing and I sincerely love it.

Fun thing, I also play on PS4 and never in my life I have used a macro.
I think the game does an awesome job making the controller super easy using.

[Kabzy]

I avoid healing due to the stress lol. It's a game, so I want to have fun and relax. There is nothing relaxing to me about healing...

I don't know if it's because I'm used to it from playing SCH since I started but I find playing an actual DPS a lot more stressful. If I'm ever playing a DPS and running questionable software which we will not talk about, I'm always finding myself comparing my DPS to others. And when that is all your job does, I find it more stressful if I'm lagging behind while technically hitting everything I should be.

At least on SCH if my DPS is lower than normal I usually have an excuse. "I had to ress" or "I had to heal through this" blah blah blah. You still need to optimise, and at the highest level healing is definitely a lot harder. But the actual healing requirements, outside of things like V4S, really aren't that difficult in the first place.