It's Time.

Maintenance has begun. Tomorrow we see what Stormblood is going to be. So- what did everyone love about healing in Heavensward?

Do keep in mind that this topic will not be going over balance, changes, nerfs, whether or not healers should DPS, and the usual controversial topics. Just what you guys loved about Heavensward. Snarkiness won't be well received either.

In general, I absolutely loved the addition of AST, and it felt like the first healer I really sync'ed up with in a long time, and learning the cards was hard at first, but I wish I could do it all over again.

I loved that I got Legacy Warrior and Wild Rose armor for glamour that wasn't just a robe.

I loved that Scholar achieved perfection in terms of game design and depth in Heavensward.

Many changes to the healer role in general (particularly the death of Cleric Stance and the compression of DoTs) have pushed me to drop it in favor of Paladin, but it's all personal opinions. I think that the overall changes are mostly good in the broader scheme of things, for they will help new healers feel more comfortable with their entire toolkits. Except for Bane :')

I will forever miss the beautiful and perfectly well-rounded design of HW Scholar, even if it involved 48 hotbar buttons, lmao. I am quite saddened to see many of the elements I loved about it go away for good, but I'm really excited to play Paladin again -it was my first main after all, and it's finally looking interesting and well-designed. An Eye for an Eye, I suppose~

SCH was pretty great to play, very satisfying and adaptable.

I loved the GARO bump to PVP, because I finally got to clock up some decent Frontline queue times and really enjoy Seal Rock in particular as a healer. Shatter not so much due to the Cleric Stance lockout, but with the right teams that's been a blast too.

My favourite thing of all has been the addition of Undersized mode so my FC can work on lowman solo healer clears. I wish it was available for current content (without the unsynced, that part should be a separate option). Solo healing challenging content has really helped me improve my reaction time and planning speed, and it's so satisfying when everything comes together. Before HW I wasn't being pushed enough and I wasn't using some of my toolkit as efficiently as I could; Undersized has pushed me to broaden my understanding of the role.

i actually hated healing in heavensward so after being a WHM for 3 years i changed my main to tank.

it was fun with all the new instant heals, but in the end i was more dpsing than healing ^^ so i stopped :O

I actually really enjoyed stance dancing. It made healing in this game feel active with a conscious decision to DPS. I'll have to get hands on tomorrow night but while the lily system looks massively underwhelming it's Cleric I'm concerned about.

I loved the addition of Astrologian, i actually prefer Astrologian how it used to be, it felt more technical, now it feels a bit easy and like you're healing on auto pilot. The MP management in the beginning really made you think about how to careful use your heals.

I loved the additions to Scholar and White Mage.

Overall i loved healing in HW.

Probably one of the highlights was the Vault, it was the first dungeon that felt like it was designed to test healers to their limits, of course its a cake walk now but back then it was tough.

Whilst I think ARR was more consistent with the quality of it's content. But when SE did get it right they got it really right.

The primals were consistently enjoyable across the board and HW's raid tiers threw up a healthy number of encounters that'll go down as all time greats.

As noted above, HW brought a lot of systems to the table that helped more people use existing content in a wider variety of ways as well. Min iLvl, undersized party, cross world PF etc are godsends.

I kept forcing Solo heal runs so I'd have something to heal lol.

Healing Sephirot Ex solo back when it was new, now that was a blast. So much raid AoE damage. Hnnnghhhhh yessssss
Hadn't had that much fun since solo healing Levi Ex back in the days. I wonder what Stormblood has to offer. I wonder if healers will get to actually heal when going with two healers now. Nonetheless, I'll still keep solohealing.

I love the idea and theme of AST, what most of its spells look like, and the hat. I didn't exactly like it as much as I hoped, but I still enjoy it from time to time. If not more for my glamour than anything.