Healing in FFXIV vs healing in other MMOs?

The only other MMO where I found healing to be kind of fun was in FlyFF. You gained EXP for healing people. :D

The only other MMO I've healed in was ESO, with the whole untargetable/AoE healing only style. I still play it when I can; it's fun! But the instant I picked up XIV I felt that I had a much better idea of what my abilities did, when to use them, and how to play optimally. Or even that I should strive for optimisation to begin with.

Part of that is due to XIV having a much more rigid class design and a far more linear ability progression... the rest of it is me being a naive youngster when I picked up ESO.

The only other MMO I've healed a lot in is WoW, and I have to say I generally prefer healing here. Granted, Legion's taken steps almost seemingly to approach XIV's design. (I kid; it's not like it didn't have healer dps long before. I've been throwing out substantial damage on my Holy paladin, especially, since I made him in WotLK.)

I like being able to blend with the situation. I like having significant burst on hand, and I like heal nukes being costly to one's overall mana even compared to filling otherwise empty GCDs constantly with damage-dealing, or inversely that the efficient non-nukes truly are efficient. I like that our healers have an assemblage of DoTs to incentivize DPS at given intervals. I like also that our AoE filler sometimes outweighs the use of a DPS stance by our tanks, and that there are specific timings opportune for passing the torch between healer and tank.

If there's anything more I'd want it'd mostly be that certain offensive moves could have a bit more synergy, either in buffing the healer somehow (e.g. Air magics increasing WHM haste) or especially mitigation for others (see Smite's, a filler direct damage spell, reducing the next x damage dealt by the target, or Denounce's, another filler direct damage, negating enemy crit chance for a few seconds). This would especially be a concern for new jobs going forward, in order to differentiate them from the more straightforward, partitioned, and direct setups we have now.

TERA.
/AllIhaveToSay.

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

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!

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Yep, ToS. I thought it was fun-ish, but nothing compared to the fun I had on RO.

Just responding to the OP and not everyone else.

I have played and healed to varying degrees in many MMO games most of them were pretty unique experiences.

FFXI - I played mostly RDM and never got into endgame stuff. Casting heals and buffs and occasionally a debuff was ok. The hardest part of that job was trying to read the combat log to watch if your buff or debuff fell off.

WoW, Vanilla, BC, LK, Cata - I healed as a pally mostly in BC and LK and played as a tank in Cata. In that game you were always healing. There was hardly any time to do anything else like DPS and the class just didn't really have the tools to do anything but heal. I never felt like I was just standing around waiting for something to happen.

Warhammer Online - I played as a Warrior Priest up to endgame raiding. You had two options as a WP, you could use a 1 hander and book to regen your mana and just stand back and heal, or you can use a two hander and smash faces to regen your mana to heal with. I chose the two hander option as it felt like I was contributing more to the group that way. I was always doing something. I was either moving, dpsing, or healing. To me that felt like a proper melee healing class.

Eve Online - Yes there is healing in that game, its called Logistics. There were many different types of fighting in that game from the large standstill blobs that have everyone healing everything and then there were smaller engagements where you just have 1 or 2 healers for 10 or so people. That is probably the hardest healing I have ever seen. Not only do you have to worry about 3 dimensional positioning, speed, capacitor(mana), and debuffs on yourself, you still have to react to incoming damage on yourself and team mates. Granted this is all PVP so it is highly different from PVE healing.

FFXIV - I main as a Scholar and part time as a Paladin and I'm working on leveling my White Mage. This game has the easiest healing I have ever seen. If all you are doing is healing and cleansing debuffs you don't have a whole lot to do. Most people fill that downtime with DPSing which greatly raises the skill floor. Managing your stances, DPS, and Healing can be extremely taxing. It is similar to older WoW where you are always doing something.

The healing in this game can be very simple and relaxing with a low skill floor. It can also be very demanding and have a very high skill floor. It all depends on the player's preference. Healers in this game are DPS classes that can heal. There will have to be a big design change and probably a large re-balancing in order to make our healers actual healers and not DPS classes.

I am actually OK with how it is now. The DPS/Healer hybrid is not the norm and presents a different set of challenges for people that want to try it out, but I do wish we could force healers to actually contribute to DPS though. I really dislike seeing people do nothing while others are trying their best.

I played so many mmos that I lost track of all of them. My favourite healers are Aion Cleric and Aika Cleric. I enjoyed playing these two healers and I miss playing them. From my personal experience, Aika Cleric was the most challenging healer that I've played. I also like these two healers more than the healers in ffxiv because there were different builds, not every cleric was the same, and healing wasn't so easy. I can't forget about Prius' healer, the minstrel, which uses a lute as her weapon.

Although not a healer, I enjoyed the psychic class in allods online.

Imma reference Aura Kingdom though that game had some serious balance issues, the healer class had an interesting design.

The Healer in Aura Kingdom required you to DPS in order to generate the stacks (similar to Aetherflow) to use the single target heals. Basically how it worked was, every heal spell gave you a Damage stack up to 3 and every DPS spell gave you a heal stack (up to 3 and both are mutually exclusive, you can only have 3 stacks thus you are swinging between Green and Red all the time). Every Green stack increased healing potency by 10% and every Red stack increased damage output by 5%. Additionally, Consuming a Green stack granted AoE effects to the otherwise single target heals like Lustrate.

On top of that, the chief heal was an AoE MedicaII like skill that has a really short GCD (like 0.5 sec) and applies a HoT to the party. This HoT can be stacked 3 times and lasts 15 seconds. So you want to refresh this and keep 100% uptime wherever possible (there was no MP in AK) because dropping it requires a lengthy 3 GCDs to re-apply.

This meant that the rotation was based around keeping the Medica II going, ramping up DPS with the Stone III like skill to get the 3 damage stacks, apply the DoT, then time it so you bring the notes back to Green with the refresh and hit the Lustrate . It was extremely fiddly to get right, and therein lay the skill of the healer. Poor ones would only spam the Medica II and rely on the HoT to save the party while highly skilled ones will rotate the Lustrate like skill in while doing excellent DPS.

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Originally Posted by Windi

The only other MMO where I found healing to be kind of fun was in FlyFF. You gained EXP for healing people. :D

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Good 'ole Assist and Ringmaster

The only healer I truly enjoyed was the Mercenary Bounty Hunter in SWTOR. It was designed as a healer that needed to deal damage to heal efficiently. Their main heal had a lengthy cast time that was reduced by 20% for every time you used a specific attack, so you needed to use the attack 5 times to make that heal instant cast. You also needed to constantly shoot damaging bullets at enemies or healing bullets(!) at your allies to get a stacking buff that increased you healing potency. Later on you got abilities that consumed the buff, plus missiles that released healing vapors and such.