Healing in FFXIV vs healing in other MMOs?

Vindictus has Evie who originally had a larger focus on her healing abilities (larger than when I quit, at least) but I found her quite boring because she was blatantly overpowered using a Staff. She had mana shields (regenerating health bar on top of normal health bar), 2nd highest range, arguably the highest damage, healing, a revive, and a powerful self defense skill with Mana amber (surrounds herself in solidified mana for a hefty, yet at the same time negligible stamina cost).

I'm trying out Tera and the Mystic class is the only thing I'm interested in (lol gender locked jailbait classes). Haven't really been supporting at all because the Avatar weapons are atrociously strong. In dungeons maybe health bars will take a hit once in a blue moon and I'll toss out a Vitae orb or a Titanic Favor. I'm still a fan of the Mystic role though, from what I can see in their kit they look to be extremely proactive. Summoning pets to assist in damage and defense is also very fun

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Originally Posted by Fevelle

My main MMOs were Grand Chase and Ragnarok Online. GC healing was nearly non-existent since you could dodge boss mechanics by animation-locking yourself out of it with abilities.

Ragnarok Online on the other hand was extremely hard to heal in every aspect. No aggro table whatsoever, only AI commands - wich means MVPs could suddenly lock target on you and screw your life. At least 8 buffs to keep track in a party of 12 people with no party UI whatsoever. PVP was even harder because no way in hell you could see clearly where your guild members were. The only downside in that game was the lack of healing options. A full support would spam Heal and put Sanctuary and keep track of buffs. They made it better with more options for healing with RO renewal, but I quit just before that.

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I don't mean to mix threads here, but reading your posts in one of the many "Healer DPS discussion" threads made me think you probably came from healing in RO. I'm kinda pleased to see that I was right. I don't mean to hijack this thread to start a discussion about the healer DPS meta in FFXIV or anything like that, but at least in here I can say that I agree with you that healing in RO was really fun. At least fun in the sense that you were always stressed out because everyone was one hit away from dying lmao.

I will say that despite us disagreeing on whether or not the current healing styles in FFXIV are cool or not, we can both agree that the healing style present in RO was very fun by its own right! I do sometimes miss being super stressed out because everything was constantly dying. And I do miss keeping track of all the million buffs we could put up too.

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Originally Posted by Venjamin

My favorite healer of all time was Bard in Perfect World. Essentially, certain spells added musical notes into a layout. (C, D, or E if I remember correctly. ) When you used 3 spells to create a chord ( think C-C-D ) you gained AOE buffs that lasted for x seconds or until you played a new chord. It added a great layer of competency and decision making to your healing, because even during times when you are facing 'down time' you are preparing your next chord or setting up a good heal that won't interrupt your chord progressions, etc.

It was wicked fun and I'm super disappointed our Bards aren't as cool. xD

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Good old times and I've to agree that features like this would bring more fun to the classes, but to be honest perfect world was designed for a other player base. There you had the possibility to play the way you wanted, 2 archers in a team didn't have to play the same songs or do the same rotations etc. People here can't even play foe or swift song, let's not talk about their ability of dealing any decent dmg, but that's a complete different story lol.

Edit: still think 5.0 sin was the best thing (solo play) ever or playing healers in Nirvana, archers or psychics in pvp so much fun. Now I wanna go back and play that again :(

Comparing healing with other mmo's:

Having come from outside the FF world, I'd say what we have are pretty standard to ones I've played in the past - WoW, Rift, Swtor, Aion, Tera (and others).

Rift and Tera have a couple of interesting classes with the Chloromancer and Mystic respectively. Chloro is priimarily a ranged heal as you deal class, aided by direct heals.
Tera's Mystic is a ranged healer, aided by totem like abilities - and you also drop mana and hp globes for group members to use. A wonderful mix of abilities.

Hopefully future healers in FFXIV will have a bit of the wild and wonderful about them :-)

I'm quite enjoying it, for reasons that some are saying are theirs for NOT enjoying it. I can heal, I can DPS, I can control - in short, there is plenty for me to do and a nice, versatile kit to do it, without being pidgeon-holed into being "HEAL ONLY BOT" like other games of old had done with Healers & Tanks.

Example, I spent almost a decade playing WoW, most of which as a Shadow Priest. My healer of choice (WHM) is essentially what happens if you had a Priest and removed the "Shadowform = You can't heal" mechanic, so I fit seamlessly into it (stance dancing as a damage/healing capable healer/damage dealer). It's not like anything is mandatory outside of fulfilling your role, it just helps and is rightly highly encouraged by most others, so I don't see why it's so off-putting for some people.

FFXI had no rigid system, if anything WHM was the only 'HEALER'.

White Mage had Cure I, II, II, IV, V, VI all with increasing potency and MP costs. Enmity was generated by amount of HP restored, so overhealing did not increase enmity, however Cures drew A LOT of enmity. HoT drew no enmity so it was good to have the on your tank. In addition to direct and potent heals (which were expensive..Cure VI healed 80-120% of your target's HP depending on gear but cost 227 MP (most healers had ~1200-1400 MP). MP did not auto-refresh in XI as it does in XIV so you required to wear equipment between casts that slowly replenished your MP (usually at a rate of 2-7MP/tick), and WHM subbed Red Mage to cast Refresh on themselves (+3mp/tick).

Red Mage was a secondary healer but primarily a buffer. They only had up to Cure IV which had a cap of about 700-800 (most players at i119 have 2500+) so their heals lacked.

Dancer could heal by expending TP (accrued from auto-attacks) on Waltzes which were similar in strength to Cure spells but were instant and had no cast time, but this reduced DNC's DPS. Originally DNC was implemented as a debuffer/healer/support DPS, but by now DNC is used as a strong DPS and their heals are now secondary for ohshi- buttons.

Scholar was a mix WHM and BLM and could 'stance dance' between Arts. SCH had most single target spells of both WHM and BLM but being in Dark Arts or Light Arts enhanced one school's magic while reducing another's. In Dark Arts, SCH's nukes were about 80% as potent as a BLM's, but could expend 'Stacks' which accrued automatically once every 45s to buff an aspect of your next spell (potency, MP cost, cast speed, turn into an AoE) so could expend a stack to make their next nuke deal 20% more damage and make it as strong or stronger than a BLM's nuke for example. Same for their heals. Native to SCH was they had the most potent DoTs and HoTs.
If a BLM nukes for 8k per spell for 300MP, a SCH could put up a DoT for 30 MP that deals 1.8k damage initially and then 1.8k every 10 seconds, for 120 seconds) so their DoTs were very efficient.

Thinking back after my first post, I realize how I've tanked more than I've healed in terms of MMORPGs. Did heal for a while in Allods Online as an Acid Summoner, back when hybrid builds there were viable - and given it's a guilty pleasure game of mine, I'll always be a bit biased in its favour. Currently play a Priest in Riders of Icarus (so-far the only healing class), and given they're probably the best for soloing content, they're relatively fun in that sense. In WoW I played all classes to 60+, but again, usually in counterpart roles (Shadow Priest, Prot Paladin, Feral Druid etc), but have healed on all said classes as well - none of which was as fun as FFXIV's healing as far as I'm concerned. TERA, was a tank (Lancer), so no input there. Neverwinter, tank again. Rift, tank again.

Without trying to run comparisons, all I can say is I'm thoroughly enjoying healing in FFXIV, moreso than tanking & damage at least.

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

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It surely was! I tried playing RO's "spiritual sucessor" but it wasn't near as fun as the original thing. I think we will never see another MMO like RO, despite its many flaws it was an awesome game. And I say the same for FFXIV.

Coming from DCUO, I think I'll wait several months before I start healing group content here since the amount of buttons needed to heal is massive compared to DCUO's 6 buttons.
In DCUO, you don't need to target your party members; some abilities automatically target the 3 players with the lowest HP, some target yourself and the player with the lowest HP, some target the entire party, others shield you and the 3 players with the lowest HP, etc.
Mana (Power in DC) wasn't an issue, since there's an extra role (called Controller) that works as a mana "replenisher" and enemy crowd control/debuffer.
I did like that kind of healing system, since I only needed to focus on HP bars, avoiding attacks and using my weapon in between casts to do some damage.

FFXIV is ridiculously better at pretty much everything compared to DCUO (Stability, design, music, sound effects, crafting, balance, etc). The only 2 things I kinda miss from DCUO are the combat system and the amount of voice acting.

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Originally Posted by Fevelle

It surely was! I tried playing RO's "spiritual sucessor" but it wasn't near as fun as the original thing. I think we will never see another MMO like RO, despite its many flaws it was an awesome game. And I say the same for FFXIV.

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Do you mean Tree of Saviour by its spiritual successor? I tried it too, and tbh I kinda hated it. The game looks real pretty and I really love the job levelling system with the circles, but the thing was SO buggy!! I also have mixed feelings about the healing squares on the ground. On the one hand I think it's kind of innovative, but on the other, the lack of a targeting system made the entire game super difficult to play, in my opinion. But not difficult in a way that it required you to be skilled. It was just difficult because the controls played like ass!