Never healed before in my life in a game until now and I gotta say....

[Corbeau]

Reading the OP, they've sensed something important missing. Every compelling MMO class has a Crowning Moment of Awesome, but healers largely don't in XIV. DPS can, at times, but healers? Not so much. Let me tell you a story about how a healing class stumbled into being great in another MMO.

First, imagine a kit whose cooldowns all synergize with each other - and it has roughly five of them. These include a ground-bubble that boosts healing within it, a fat ground-targeted AoE heal that copies itself a few seconds after it's placed, an ability that starts copying a % of healing done when pressed and then releases all the stored healing after 15 seconds (or when pressed again), and then two bog-standard large percentage increases in healing (akin to WHM's two % healing boosts). Every single one of these abilities had a different cooldown, from 30 seconds and 45 seconds to two and three minutes.

As with tanking, most of the time you'd only want to use one or two at once in order to survive - anything else would be wasteful overhealing, after all. That's not unlike current XIV healing. But every so often, a fight would have a section or two designed to test the healing team. And then, because you've planned and saved your cooldowns, setting them up in advance to be properly layered... you blast out an order of magnitude more healing than your baseline standard. Quite literally, up to an order of magnitude when executed correctly.

Those moment feel incredible, but there is nothing like it in XIV healing because the kits are almost entirely linear rather than multiplicative. There isn't anything like jamming Resto Shaman cooldowns into Aggramar's DoT phase because only WHM could get even close to meeting such a challenge. That leaves the experience feeling... flat. Without peaks. The closest I've gotten is the satisfaction of setting up layered shields as SCH at just the right time during early progression.

[Valic]

Reading the OP, they've sensed something important missing. Every compelling MMO class has a Crowning Moment of Awesome, but healers largely don't in XIV. DPS can, at times, but healers? Not so much. Let me tell you a story about how a healing class stumbled into being great in another MMO.

First, imagine a kit whose cooldowns all synergize with each other - and it has roughly five of them. These include a ground-bubble that boosts healing within it, a fat ground-targeted AoE heal that copies itself a few seconds after it's placed, an ability that starts copying a % of healing done when pressed and then releases all the stored healing after 15 seconds (or when pressed again), and then two bog-standard large percentage increases in healing (akin to WHM's two % healing boosts). Every single one of these abilities had a different cooldown, from 30 seconds and 45 seconds to two and three minutes.

As with tanking, most of the time you'd only want to use one or two at once in order to survive - anything else would be wasteful overhealing, after all. That's not unlike current XIV healing. But every so often, a fight would have a section or two designed to test the healing team. And then, because you've planned and saved your cooldowns, setting them up in advance to be properly layered... you blast out an order of magnitude more healing than your baseline standard. Quite literally, up to an order of magnitude when executed correctly.

Those moment feel incredible, but there is nothing like it in XIV healing because the kits are almost entirely linear rather than multiplicative. There isn't anything like jamming Resto Shaman cooldowns into Aggramar's DoT phase because only WHM could get even close to meeting such a challenge. That leaves the experience feeling... flat. Without peaks. The closest I've gotten is the satisfaction of setting up layered shields as SCH at just the right time during early progression.

I want to say this sounds right but I feel as though FFXIV wasn't always like this. Specifically AST at least I know wasn't since the setup to feel good for them was in holding just the right card/buff for the right moment. It's kinda like having TBN on DRK. you could use it for anything really but there's genuine moments you can use it and it absolutely saves someone and it feels like the most rewarding feeling. Even when used casually, the shield shatters, a sound is played to signify it broke and g ranted you a reward in return... It just "feels" good to do. AST I feel... almost underrated in what I do. I feel cards go unnoticed just as divination kinda does.

[Sloprano]

Reading the OP, they've sensed something important missing. Every compelling MMO class has a Crowning Moment of Awesome, but healers largely don't in XIV. DPS can, at times, but healers? Not so much. Let me tell you a story about how a healing class stumbled into being great in another MMO.

Those moment feel incredible, but there is nothing like it in XIV healing because the kits are almost entirely linear rather than multiplicative. There isn't anything like jamming Resto Shaman cooldowns into Aggramar's DoT phase because only WHM could get even close to meeting such a challenge. That leaves the experience feeling... flat. Without peaks. The closest I've gotten is the satisfaction of setting up layered shields as SCH at just the right time during early progression.

That crowning moment of awesome you're talking about for me was whenever any raid boss in 3.0 did they ultimate charging and I'd rush to get out Sacred Soil, Fey Covenant, Fey Illumination, Rouse, Whispering Dawn, Virus, find the most central party member or Eos in my huddled group, cast adlo, hope for crit, don't get it, cast adlo again, ultimate attack almost finished casting, see the wonderfully large number after an adlo crit, wait that precarious second where the server finally realizes the shield has been applied and hit Deployment Tactics. Hear the wonderful deploy sound, see the technicolor spectacle explode the arena and everyone in the party take 0! damage.

Another one was succesfully putting up all the dots with cleric stance on in a large group who seemed to never stop putting red circles on the ground, finally finding a free moment, putting the last one up, hitting Bane, seeing the purple puff of smoke as numbers started ticking over each and everyone of them. Scholar was mostly about tons of little crowning moments, manual Embrace, Virus, E4E, Rouse etc., but those two are those I know I instinctivly reach for as my phantom skills. I want to press them, but they aren't there.

It was my version of a an ever increasing Fire IV supercrit my BLM friends keep talking about and I never got tired of it. Most of the time chance was against me and crit never came, but it was for those moments, and several other little things that made scholar special. Letting it sit on the shoulders of Arcanist, a fully formed dps class, letting it stand tall and shine all the more for it in the sun. SE taking an axe to Arcanist meant Scholar had to stand on it's own legs in everything, but turns out they were made of paper-mache and crumbled under the weight of healing Abilites on the oGCD.

I know classes that also got lumped in as "healer" in other mmos, the warden in Rift, Druid in WoW, Imperial Agent in SW:TOR. All these had healing abilities, but also had a steady stream of damaging abilities making you feel that healing is just part of the job instead of all there is to it. SW:TOR is almost as story heavy as FFXIV and Im reminded thats where the IA gets to use stealth and a several offence abilities.

[Valic]

I did several level 70 dungeons this morning after finally hitting 70... I felt like I never healed at all. they did large pulls, mechanics correctly... I used essential dignity, celestial opposition, and aspected helios whenever there was unavoidable raidwide damage. While I'm glad our groups did so well, I had never been so bored with a job spamming the 1 key in the entirety of this game. As a dps or tank in any of these, I know there are areas I could mitigate or needed to focus damage on or things I needed to position for but as a healer in these... Idk, I felt like I was an add-on just distributing buffs RNG style. I know it's probably a gear thing for the most part but I almost feel as though this isn't going to change even when I hit current end game dungeons.

[Mesarthim]

That's because it doesn't.

Wall pull -> AoE down -> Wall pull -> Aoe Down -> Kill boss -> Repeat two more times

Dungeons never change other than for visuals and the outdated gear (playability wise) they come with. You'll get more scenery changes for your hallway simulator.

[Ardox]

That crowning moment of awesome you're talking about for me was whenever any raid boss in 3.0 did they ultimate charging and I'd rush to get out Sacred Soil, Fey Covenant, Fey Illumination, Rouse, Whispering Dawn, Virus, find the most central party member or Eos in my huddled group, cast adlo, hope for crit, don't get it, cast adlo again, ultimate attack almost finished casting, see the wonderfully large number after an adlo crit, wait that precarious second where the server finally realizes the shield has been applied and hit Deployment Tactics. Hear the wonderful deploy sound, see the technicolor spectacle explode the arena and everyone in the party take 0! damage.

Another one was succesfully putting up all the dots with cleric stance on in a large group who seemed to never stop putting red circles on the ground, finally finding a free moment, putting the last one up, hitting Bane, seeing the purple puff of smoke as numbers started ticking over each and everyone of them. Scholar was mostly about tons of little crowning moments, manual Embrace, Virus, E4E, Rouse etc., but those two are those I know I instinctivly reach for as my phantom skills. I want to press them, but they aren't there.

It was my version of a an ever increasing Fire IV supercrit my BLM friends keep talking about and I never got tired of it. Most of the time chance was against me and crit never came, but it was for those moments, and several other little things that made scholar special. Letting it sit on the shoulders of Arcanist, a fully formed dps class, letting it stand tall and shine all the more for it in the sun. SE taking an axe to Arcanist meant Scholar had to stand on it's own legs in everything, but turns out they were made of paper-mache and crumbled under the weight of healing Abilites on the oGCD.

I know classes that also got lumped in as "healer" in other mmos, the warden in Rift, Druid in WoW, Imperial Agent in SW:TOR. All these had healing abilities, but also had a steady stream of damaging abilities making you feel that healing is just part of the job instead of all there is to it. SW:TOR is almost as story heavy as FFXIV and Im reminded thats where the IA gets to use stealth and a several offence abilities.

Oooh man.. the feels...

Someone should start a thread collecting those good memories from the old healer implementation

[Valic]

That's because it doesn't.

Wall pull -> AoE down -> Wall pull -> Aoe Down -> Kill boss -> Repeat two more times

Dungeons never change other than for visuals and the outdated gear (playability wise) they come with. You'll get more scenery changes for your hallway simulator.

Not even that, I mean I just don't have to heal anything between any of that lol. I don't mind the setup of dungeons that much, but if I'm not able to do my job, it's kinda boring.

[Shurrikhan]

I guess what I mean to ask here is... Is this how AST is supposed to feel right now or am I missing something? Where do healers get their "high" from in playing the healer role in this game?

"In playing healers" should probably be "despite playing healers". Apart from a perfect Divination + MAs for each DPS, spread auto-crit-Adlos, and Afflatus Misery, there's not much to go off of.

As for where the high does come from... presumably out of game, or at least things mostly unrelated to healer gameplay.

[icy_]

haven't totally completed healers, but did get them all past the 70 mark. Highs for me:
- wrecking face as WHM in dungeons while successfully keeping tank 75%+
- any sort of decent mitgation for a big attack, or a quick re-up when reactive. Can kinda pat yourself on the back if you finesse some of the timings nicely.
- casting Holy at weddings
- casting limit break 3 after nearly everyone across all alliances is dead. Did that at one of our FC minimum ilvl "sync-it" events.
- instant queue.