What are things you ENJOY about Healers right now?

A post from user Post got me to thinking about this:

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Originally Posted by Post

I'm glad the OP responded with what they see the issues of SCH as being. I think it's fun to sometimes imagine specific toolkits or adjustments, but I prefer to focus on what we enjoy and what we don't enjoy with what's there when trying to give constructive dev feedback.

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While it's good to look at problems in order to come up with solutions, the flipside of that is also relevant and sometimes pretty useful - figuring out what things are good in order to expand or grow those things, which can even be instructive in coming up with solutions to said problems.

So with that in mind:

What do you LIKE about the Healer Jobs as they currently are?

What are things you enjoy about them, either mechanically or thematically or whatever?

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EDIT:

While I appreciate the sardonic attempts at humor via heavy sarcasm: This thread was meant to be serious. Apologies if I didn't make that clear. I was going to start a converse thread with what people dislike, but as people can't seem to resist injecting that here by way of sarcasm, there seems to be no point. <_<

When people say this place is salty, this is KINDA what they mean.

Can I get back to you on this?

Does the insta-queue for any content count? No? Well... uh...

Thematically, I think SCH is genius (I'm not a fan of its current aesthetic though, I liked it better when it had more Arcanist skills on it and less generic healer sparkly particle effect vomit) and I feel like SE has struck gold here when it comes to its lore and concepts. Making it a rudimentary summoner by having it stem from ACN in my opinion was a very nice way to give more depth and personality to a classic FF job that has otherwise been a direct upgrade to White Mage (outside of FFXI), without borrowing too much from the actual Summoner.

On top of this, I adore how the WoL as a SCH made you feel like that you were just an Arcanist that was turned into an improvised healer thanks to your new Faerie partner, and gave context for a lot of skills to exist in its kit like Shadowflare and Bio/Miasma. It was different from other healers.

For my part:

1) I enjoy the class fantasies. I think each of the Healers, both in their aesthetics and mechanics, nails their class fantasy pretty solidly. From even the minor differences - at least on male Lalafell, SCH's idle animation is to read his book while the otherwise similar SGE's is to put a hand to his chin and give the Namazu "gaze of enlightenment" (slightly narrowed eyes) while appraising the situation - to the more major ones, each has an immediately identifiable class fantasy and aesthetic. There's only one weird one out of the bunch there, largely due to some legacy issues and 1.X initially not having Jobs (CNJ into WHM is a bit of an odd transition from Druid to Holy Priest), but even in that case, the aesthetics and mechanics of powerful heals and the iconic spell Holy sell it. WHM is a powerful healer with Light element spells of blinding purity; SCH is a studious synergist and tactician working alongside their allies to protect and shield them, AST is a diviner and bender of Fate to their allies advantage, and SGE is a mix of wizened academic and Greek doctor, with 50% more Gundam than the leading competitor.

2) I enjoy the focus on healing rather than on complex or obtrusive damage rotations. The kits are designed to have tools for various situations (even if in some cases it largely amounts to "how big a hammer do you want?"), but the focus is largely where it should be, healing, shielding, and augmenting allies. While I do believe their damage rotations should be more distinct FROM EACH OTHER, the focus being on healing I see as a general plus for the Role as a whole and the Jobs within it. Even the focus of a lot of their Job quests reflects this, such as all the SCH Job quests focusing on healing and augmenting their allies, not on dealing damage or attacking the enemy outright.

3) With only a few exceptions, I like the spell effects a lot of the various Healer Jobs, and in particular, how DISTINCT they are. Succor and Eukrasia Prognosis do a similar thing, but don't look alike. Same with Adlo and Eu Diagnosis. The base nuke of each looks different, from SGE's lasers to WHM's light tendrils. They each also have a slightly different approach to how they use their spells, and each have several unique things they can do that others can't do or can't do as well to give them little niches, like SCH's distance healing and various tools and utility or AST's MP hyper-efficiency and ample oGCD suite to plan out entire fights like a BLM would. Even comparing similar ones like SGE and SCH, their spell effects are completely distinct, with SGE being mostly more "sterile" and cooler blues and purples vs SCH's warmer greens and yellows; and no one is going to confuse the animation of Deployment Tactics with that of Pepsis. Likewise, WHM and AST have rather different effects in a similar vein, and they from SCH and SGE. They just did a great job at making them all look and feel, in a tactile way, different. It does this with both the spell effects themselves and even the tooltip icons. I remember when I first played SGE how cold and clerical it felt compared to the warm and inviting SCH, and I still feel that way even having played SGE a lot at this point. SGE feels more like a doctor's office to me while SCH feels more like someone's home library/study with a cozy chair and scores of books. Probably a fireplace, too...

4) Individually, I like the mechanics of each of the four, although AST's card mini-game being entirely oGCD does make it less appealing to me in the heat of combat. WHM's Lily system, after a disaster of an introduction in SB, turned out to be really good in ShB and now in EW, a mere second expansion after that, is the core of the Job's normal gameplay and optimization. SCH's Aetherflow system feels good (other than Energy Drain drawing from it - hence my idea of moving that to Faerie Gauge), and it genuinely feels good to use your various mitigation and shielding tools as well as command Eos in battle, and when doing solo stuff like Deep Dungeons or solo plugging around in Eureka/Bozja/etc, it's kind of cool having a little partner to travel with and back you up. While SCH's anti-synergies need to be addressed, the core of a great Job is there, and it's generally fun to play and use. AST's Arcana oGCDs, as I said, can be kind of difficult to engage with in live combat, but it's very distinct and a lot of people like it, and it also has a lot of interesting oGCDs to find creative uses for in combat with a lot of the delayed and boosted effects like Horoscope and Earthly Star. SGE is neat to go do Deep Dungeons with and the like because you have your self-healing Kardia on attacks, and it has a lot of powerful and fun mitigation abilities to use with Addersgall, as well as some great oGCDs to use for general healing such as Holos or the Hamias.

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In short, each is fun in their own way, each plays in a unique way (especially if you're trying to optimize and/or be as efficient as possible), each has fun and interesting mechanics (even if you argue you don't often NEED them, they still are there in the cases you do), has a great focus on the role of healing, and each absolutely NAILS their respective class fantasy, even WHM if one allows for the Druid/Priest overlap.

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

Does the insta-queue for any content count? No? Well... uh...

Thematically, I think SCH is genius (I'm not a fan of its current aesthetic though, I liked it better when it had more Arcanist skills on it and less generic healer sparkly particle effect vomit) and I feel like SE has struck gold here when it comes to its lore and concepts. Making it a rudimentary summoner by having it stem from ACN in my opinion was a very nice way to give more depth and personality to a classic FF job that has otherwise been a direct upgrade to White Mage (outside of FFXI), without borrowing too much from the actual Summoner.

On top of this, I adore how the WoL as a SCH made you feel like that you were just an Arcanist that was turned into an improvised healer thanks to your new Faerie partner, and gave context for a lot of skills to exist in its kit like Shadowflare and Bio/Miasma. It was different from other healers.

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The SCH storyline is amazing because of how it breaks the healer mold. You're not just a healer; you're a tactician. You exist to strategize and lead your teammates to victory via helping them reposition with Expedience, anticipating enemy strategies with shields and damage mitigation, and spotting weaknesses with Chain Stratagem. Lore-wise all of the healers feel cool except for Sage because all of the healers are told to do damage which means this job literally has no reason to exist aside from being an easier Scholar.

As it stands, now, downtime mechanics are the best because I actually have an excuse to use my GCDs. Setting up a recited Spread-lo and letting the shield get eaten by a big attack while your team takes next to no damage is euphoria. Deadlifting groups who don't use cooldowns or don't know how to walk out of an AoE is also an ego boost. Just about anything that pulls me away from "1111111111111..." is what I like about the role. Once again that is the issue: We have absolutely nothing to do when shite isn't hitting the fan.

I like having the shared damage and healing resource that is aetherflow. The more familiar with a fight I get, the more I know I can allocate over to damage. It feels like the kind of optimisation that a job themed around tactics should have. The job quests are interesting, thanks in no small part to the tonberries. I also really like dots, it's satisfying being able to set up several 1 entire dot spreading them and watching the enemy/ies melt even while healing/shielding is required. Being able to kill the bleed on cursed echo in troja is pretty fun too. Sadly with the aggro changes I can't effectively emergency tank which was always a laugh.

For white mage, I like being able to gap close in and heal with the poor man's lost seraph strike -and mitigating to boot-, having purgation too feels pretty good, miracle of nature is pretty fun when someone tries to dash in. All in all pretty nice to play as. CC and burst also being a semi-prominent part of the PvE side feels quite good, again the link between healing and damage aspects rewarding resource management.

Astrologian I'm afraid I only really play to see the pretty animations, my hands hurt when I use it too frequently.

Warrior has a pretty satisfying damage loop, and being able to force crit heals with inner chaos/primal rend is a good bit of optimisation and flavour, even if less so than shadowbringers with inner release. It definitely fills the promised "heal through damaging" niche we were promised. I do think the heal + shield combo on shake it off is rather strong for what it is, but being able to sustain the whole party at once has its advantages. I appreciate why equilibrium and thrill aren't targetable, but it would be nice to grant an inflated hp pool to some of the squishier dps when rough raidwides come out - casters/phys ranged that haven't quite managed to get the hang of not dying there.

Blue mage has a pretty nice suite of healing options and flexibility to contribute meaningfully during downtime. It would be nice if some of the supportive options - libra in particular - benefitted from the healer mimic to better facilitate a more supportive build.

I love the style of Sage in concept. I also like the memories I have of playing SCH and AST.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

What are things you ENJOY about Healers right now?

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Whether SGE is cheated, the tank is stuff or not or a Dps takes aggro, it can survive the Tank Buster.

You can also pull in heal and survive while waiting for the tank to decide to take aggro again because it bothers him that I don't die.

I love that Heal no cast and its Gundam cannon that heals and does area damage. I feel like a Strike Freedom.

Aetherflow and Energy Drain are very fun to work around. I LOVE tools that give you a meaningful choice in how you use them. Things like Recitation that are multifunctional and can be used for multiple things, like forcing a critical Adlo shield or saving an Aetherflow by using it on Excog or Indom to save it for damage instead.
Healing kit wise, Scholar is pretty much everything I'd want in a job, which is why I practically exclusively play it and why I don't enjoy jobs like SGE, WHM or AST like I do SCH. SCH more than any other healing job feels like it wants you to operate in the same end that a job like Black Mage does; much like you can choose to use Triplecast or Xenoglossy on movement, damage, or to set up transpose lines that enable more damage, Energy Drain operates in the same way. Was that Soil/Indom/Excog you used a stack on necessary to prevent DPS loss by way of another party member dying? Then it was the correct choice. Could you have used one of your other tools? Then have a better plan for next time, in the same way of how BLM demands a level of competency from a Black Mage player; did you properly manage your resources? Good! If you didn't, have a better plan for next time.

Things like these are fundamentally why I do not want to ever remove Energy Drain as a cost from Aetherflow. I find oGCDs that exist only to do damage to be incredibly boring. Resourceless things you hit on CD are incredibly boring to me, especially if they exist only to do damage. What appeals to me about Scholar is that I have a choice, and I like having choices that ensure what I did was the best way to benefit the party.