To other Healer Mains: What keeps you around?

I've always played healers in every game I'm able to. Just as DPS players like to see big damage numbers and deplete HP bars, I get the same satisfaction out of restoring them. I like the aesthetic of healers in this game in particular because the spell and casting animations are so beautiful and elegant, yet feel powerful.

But most of all, the majority of my friends despise playing healers and I like being needed. I like the notion that my presence brings them comfort because they know they can rely on me. There's nothing quite like hearing the squirms of panic over Discord when someone fumbles and then the sigh of relief that follows because I was able to cast off a life-saving heal.

A mixture of spite and determination. I simply do not trust other people with healing, or tanking, for the matter - but you can only do one at a time. Usually.

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Originally Posted by Laphicet

Tanks also get much more varied glamour and don't always get stuck with another set of white robes, cuz "healers should get nothing but white baggy robes cuz muh class fantasy lol", something some dev said somewhere, probably.

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Truth. Glams are why I tried tanking to begin with.

Next set of healer glams: Bare thighs, wrist area will have triangles / pizza wedge shape, the robe will be a butt cape and the boots will be long but won't cover the thighs. Oh, and it'll all be an off white but not pure white because it must justify the purchase of pure white dyes even though we'll be lucky if it's dyable. You'll most likely need to do an extreme for a dyable version.

My only uncertainty are what the shoulders are going to look like. Will it have dangling golden Napoleon-esque cords on the shoulders because we're going into Garlemald for 6.0? Because if so then the top will have an area that's even more off white than the rest of the outfit so that the gold stands out and it may even have square-ish shoulder pads and man, the forums will go wild at such a unique healer robe. /s

I actually just went back to healer (which I had mained since ARR) after maining DNC when ShB released. I love playing DNC (I love the RNG procs, the buffs, and that its rotation isn't so hardset like other DPSs') but between the DPS queues, queuing into parties with multiple other DNCs fairly often, and noticing other healers just being healbots, I switched back. >x>
I was playing a WHM but switched to AST (which I mained through HS and SB) when 5.3 dropped.
I had also leveled PLD but tanking just didn't feel as fun to me.
I always liked that XIV's healers are more green DPS/combat-medics then just pure-healers. I prefer spending more of my time DPSing or buffing other while using oGCDs to heal vs hard-casting heals.

The only things I can say I dislike about healers are:
-The Dev Team gutting all the healers' DPS kits. Granted, AST at least has cards to fill that hole, SCH and WHM didn't really get anything.
-The feeling I have to sometimes babysit level 80 players, even through basic fight/game mechanics (ex: Tanks not using mitigation tools during big pulls).
-Lack of glamour variety (It's shallow, I know >w> ).
-The lack of any new healers to try and play with since HW.

I am, personally, the type of player who is likely to ask other people what they want to play and filling in with remaining stuff after everyone else has had their pick. I heard healers, especially scholars were in short asking during my leveling in 2.0 and gravitated towards that. I had already played (a little) shaman as a healer in WoW/TBC before XIV, though XIV would prove to be my first "real" experience when it came to raid content, voice chatting with a group etc.

These days I am just doing it because of the same thing. I like my queues I like to do the thing everyone else would rather not. I can be silly I can post memetic sentences to alliance chat roll into 24 man as CNJ.... OK that was a 2.1 or 2.2 thing but still..!


It mostly is still that most people rather not heal, even though tanking is that now, but if I am absolutely unwilling to do something it is learning something people won't let me fail at first, that is the reason I did not level my paladin to max, just mean max lvl players complaining about your poor aggro retention, so eff it, iffy DPS players, I can play with big SCHlong energy and you'll thank me for that even if I go to corner to take a break and come back after the call, with commendations.

That is not what I do, people just never complain about my healing so it shall stay.

Critting Clemency under Requiescat.

Unless you meant a healer class, in which case the answer is nothing.

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Originally Posted by Corbeau

Critting Clemency under Requiescat.

Unless you meant a healer class, in which case the answer is nothing.

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Tenacity / Det Tank healing. ><

I like knowing I made a difference, in ShB that feeling is less so. Especially on SCH which just feels so compromised. I love Art of War though oddly enough, the sound design for the move should be a bit more... "oomph" to it. But I'm still sticking around mostly on AST cuz I at least have things to do aside from spamming my nuke skill. SCH wold probably feel less compromised (in terms of game feel) if they actually.... ya know... built upon their actions the way ASt and WHM do, the way a tactician would, but alas no cuz reasons. Which is funny cuz it would homogenize the role even more but homogeneity isn't an issue to me if it feels good to play

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

I actually just went back to healer (which I had mained since ARR) after maining DNC when ShB released. I love playing DNC (I love the RNG procs, the buffs, and that its rotation isn't so hardset like other DPSs') but between the DPS queues, queuing into parties with multiple other DNCs fairly often, and noticing other healers just being healbots, I switched back. >x>

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That was pretty much my reason. After 5.0, I switched to RDM as main, hoping Squeenix would hear the outcry and restore at least some of what was ripped from AST.. but after several months of waiting, and patches that merely buffed the existing aspects of AST, I was seeing a shortage of real healers in groups. Astro wasn't nearly as enjoyable as it was in the past, but at least it was playable, with heals that were more than sufficient.

I suspect that you and I aren't the only ones who are filling the heal role *not* because it's anywhere near as fun or complex as it was before, but because the game is sorely lacking healers for content. All three of the heal jobs are technically more than sufficient for the game's missions/raids/etc past and present... the only requirement is tolerating more simplistic damage kits than any job has had in the history of the game. If that doesn't change, at least by 6.0, I'll likely move on.

I used to main healer, but gave up in this savage tier in PF because now it seems to be a double lottery - one that your PF party has a chance of clearing and two, that your healer partner isn’t a malefic/broil/glare spamming DPS wannabe who ignores all damage and leaves it to their partner to handle. Then after repeated wipes the party starts blaming the healing and it doesn’t matter if I’m pretty much solo healing the fight, we just get tarred with the same brush.

Also, due to the healer changes in shadowbringers to me, healers have lost something which doesn’t make them much fun to play anymore, so apart from fast queues I don’t feel the role brings much benefits. They’re still OK in normal content, but anything else, no thanks. :)

Maybe all the good healers are in statics or changed jobs, or left the game.