Printable View
I'm mostly interested in soloing content. When I get the urge for group stuff, healing is what I like to do. My concern is that leveling a summoner (a good solo class from what I've read) will make it harder to get into groups because it is a DPS, and leveling a healer will mean not being able to solo stuff.
I love healing and I love soloing. Where should I start in terms of leveling? Also, which healer is more slap-noob friendly? Sorry if this sounds scattered.
Both healers can solo quite well, using cleric's stance and their damaging spells.
Scholar is a really good soloer. Your fairy can heal you through alot, so you can focus on DPS. Plus if you like summoner you can switch between the two quite easily.
SCH, in my opinion, is a lot more forgiving for healing. With the fairy's backup healing and ACN's Aetherflow ability, you can learn to manage your mana so well, you will almost never run out. It presents its own challenges, of course, but if you're concerned for DPS queues, remember that both SCH and SMN levels are linked to one class - ACN. You just swap out the soul crystal to change from one to the other. So you can solo stuff as a SMN, then swap out soul crystal for SCH and queue for duty finder as a healer to have a short wait time.
If you're set on WHM, it is my experience that ALL classes can solo story and hunting log content. Some do so better than others, but ALL can do it.
Scholar sounds like it might be a good fit. There's an initial learning curve to control the pet, which the White Mage doesn't have to handle. However, it really is a minor thing and you can do very well without micro-managing your fairy.
As mentioned before, scholar and summoner share a base class, arcanist, so levels in one translates to levels in the other. You will literally leveling both at the same time.
You'll want to level thaumaturge to 26 and conjurer to 32 for cross-class skills regardless, so it should be enough to give you a good idea of which healer class to focus on.
White Mages can also output a lot of healing and damage for any solo work you want to do. Holy is a very powerful skill, dealing damage and stunning in a wide area. High level white mages can literally run around the map, dot an enemy up, and kite it until its dead. Applying Hots to themselves only lets them shrug off any attack you're likely to come across. You will be slower to kill FATE bosses by yourself, but you definitely won't die except against the big ones like Odin and Behemoth if you're alone.
Thanks so much, everyone! More good advice than I expected.