Advice on choosing a healer

Hello! I'm a fairly new player, I played for a few months earlier in the year, my friend boosted an AST for me because they looked fun and we needed a healer. I really enjoyed the utility variety with the cards, but the new system feels extremely dull by comparison.

Do any of the healers have interesting kits in 5.0? With AST at least, the healing is really basic. I'm coming from WoW for reference, where I was playing a resto shaman with things like healing rain, spirit link totem, bloodlust, interesting interactions between the basic heals, etc.

I love the game, but worried that I'm not going to find a healer that engages me again. What makes SCH and WHM engaging to you?

Just go WHM. They're the top dog this expac.

If you're not engaged by AST, which arguably has the most to do outside of healing, neither WHM nor SCH are going to cut it for you.

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Originally Posted by fantasticm

If you're not engaged by AST, which arguably has the most to do outside of healing, neither WHM nor SCH are going to cut it for you.

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What about the healing spells specifically, are they all essentially the same? Heal, big heal, aoe, big aoe, etc.

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Originally Posted by Mandeville

What about the healing spells specifically, are they all essentially the same? Heal, big heal, aoe, big aoe, etc.

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You have the gist of it, yes. There are some differences of course, but the core of what you're doing isn't going to change - especially thanks to Shadowbringers.

White mage is for beginners and is the best healer right now. SCH was gutted and is very bad right now. And i don't know too much about AST so i can't say anything about them.

Sadly you've come at a time where there is salt with healers and where overall people aren't happy with where they are. That is to say it doesn't mean you can't find enjoyment in them because for you they'll be new and fresh and you'll have a different perspective to old timers (and there is a share of people who are happy, so don't let us moaning on forums deter you). Hey, I never really played AST much until now, so in a way, that's what I'm going through with that job at the moment.

In terms of "healing" spells, AST perhaps has fewer if you view them in terms of them picking a stance, but out of the 3 healers they have the most to do & variety. Once you are confident at healing you'll find you will have downtime in healing and this was typically filled by DPSing, which has gotten a little dry with the recent changes. However, AST still at least has cards to make their downtime a little more interesting. However, their healing from what I understand is the weakest of the three at the moment. As a result AST is going to be the most difficult of the three to play. WHM as Magnedeus says will be the easiest to heal with.

I was always a SCH healer. What drew me to it was the fact it's a healer who is more focused on damage mitigation, nowadays just through shields, to aid their healing. Since 3.0 their pure healing ability has been pretty good, so you can rely less on a shield focus than when I started and the have a couple of things now that help more with the pure healing side of things to get people's health up quicker than they were doing. However, I've always found the idea of a shield healer to be interesting, because it can create a different dynamic to the healing experience, where you can prevent people from taking damage to avoid the need for stronger heals.

White Mage is much more in tune of the idea of pure heals and Regens and therefore get the big heal numbers. And of course AST is meant to be the balance of both approaches. However, ultimately in practice, due to how well weaknesses are patched between jobs, they end up feeling very similar to heal with because you handle each situation in more or less the same way. If there's a spell you like on AST, there's a very good chance you'll find a SCH or WHM equivalent. The differences are more in the flavour and less in how they are used. That said, I cannot say from experience of higher level Shadowbringers content as I expect it utilising the tools available more, but of course, you've got to get there first. That's my main gripe with it, they could make the content in Shadowbringers well tuned to the changes of the job, it's the rest of the content I feel it can suffer.

Nowadays, they all have some form of mitigation, a heal, a big heal, an AoE heal, a big AoE heal, an oh-shi AoE heal, more than 1 oh-shi heal, Regens and big dome healer thingy. The way it was back when ARR was released, was that there was plenty different to how you played SCH and how you played WHM. Whilst some of their original identities exist, I feel much of it has been patched up to be less important/significant than what it was in favour of maintaining balance. So I think by the point, your choice on 'healing' could be more on what flavours you prefer and level of difficulty as opposed to mechanics differences and each job will still flow differently regardless.

Scholar offers an advantage in that it is tied to Summoner and they share EXP, which means when you're levelling you can swap to a DPS job, because SCH has very little to their DPS and if you're soloing stuff or working on story, SCH's damage tool kit is minimalist and SMN has so much more. White Mage however, offer the most DPS of any healers, which may be a consideration if the idea of playing/gearing 2 jobs in unattractive.

SCH has a little more variety, but if you're playing daily roulettes, there's a ceiling to how complex anything's going to get (although, your party might change that!).

I'm still in the process of leveling it myself, but it has some interesting abilities in Shadowbringers through the new pet, Seraph, which includes shields. There's still several interesting mitigation abilities. My complaints are that you have too many stacks of Aetherflow for much of the content now that they're only for healing, and the DPS rotation has been trimmed.

Just play White Mage for now, not only is it the easiest of the three, but it's also now the best by a pretty noticeable degree.

The initial reason I went SCH is because SCH and SMN are joined, so leveling one levels the other. While the SCH class quests are pretty blah, the SMN questline is epic and well worth playing for its neat event bosses, and options are always nice.

On the most basic level, Whm should almost always have the best raw healing power, Sch should almost always have the best shields, and Ast should be between the two as it can stance swap between the two. Sch also does have the benefit of having its level tied to SMN.

I play Sch myself. I rather enjoy it as in order to do well and not burn off my mp overly fast I do have to be very proactive. I try and apply my shielding heals just before they are needed to have the shields absorb the damage. So for example, I'll have the boss set as my focus target, and when I see it charging up its tank buster I will try and time it to get and Adlo to go off on the tank just before the tank buster goes off, and follow with a secondary heal depending on how things stand after.

Some of Sch big tools are:
Exocog, a premptive heal that goes off when target hits 50% health, or timer runs out.
Adlo. Decent heal with a shield that doubles on a crit.
Sacred Soil. 10% dmg reduction zone, that just picked up a sweet regen effect this expansion.
The fairy, a pet that helps out with the minor healing.
Lustrate, a large single target instant cast heal and no cool down, with a charge system.
Indomitabilty, Strong Instant cast AoE heal.
Chain Stratagem, Raid crit rate buff on single mob.

It takes a little bit to get used to Sch's aetherflow charges, used for Exocog, Lustrate, Indomitability, and Sacred Soil, but with as strong as each ability is, it does make sense to have some limits on them.

Thank you very much for the input, all!

Hopefully they consider diversifying rather than homogenizing next time, makes me a little sad as I usually love healing. I'll try out SCH once I'm caught up on old MSQ, and if nothing else I adore all of the ranged physical classes! =)

The tldr is:

All healers are more or less the same. AST has the card system, SCH has a bit of a different spread in it's healing toolkit, WHM surprisingly have the more engaging damage dealing currently and are overall the best healer so far this expansion.

Of course these next couple of patches might change things up so you'll have to see.

AST is not in good spot right now, but they still can get the job done it just WHM can do it while having easier time than AST

on the other hand iam sure AST is going to get "fix" so it could end up same as WHM or even better, so nothing wrong with levelling AST too. i just plan to level it to 80 and leave it there until they fix the class.

Until AST gets buffed or the Cards get reverted back/reworked to actually be useful or at bare minimum engaging avoid it. Everything it can do is done better, easier, or made up for by the raw power of the other healers.

OP, all 3 healers are still capable of running content.

AST is currently underfunded in its dps and ogcd healing but it's still more then capable of handling the current content. And hopefully with the eden and eden savage patches they'll at the minimum adjust ast potencies so they arent to far behind.

SCH heals very well but people are too used to the "complexity" the past expansions had for it, at its core level it's still the ogcd/shield healer, it's just that its dps toolkit is more streamlined. It needs some work still but it's still extremely good.

WHM is in it's best spot it has in years,especially once you unlock the Afflatus spells which will significantly smooth out the experience. However, it's also the most straightforward and has no way to increase its party's damage past it's own party damage.

White mage and Scholar are fine as a starting point

White mage basic somewhat engaging with its strong DPS and strong heals
while Scholar has the fairy helping you out in low levels till your more use to the kit and more so Plan OGCD skllls

Leveling AST it has never been enjoyable till max level for me

All healers will always be viable for any content. Besides, you'll probably end up wanting to play two, maybe all three healers actively.

Once you've seen all at 70+ you'll find your own favorite - so play the one that you want.

My own bias is telling me to suggest SCH, because you also get the benefit of having level 80 SMN.

You can level them all and find out what suits you the best. At the moment, there is some serious issue with healer balance. But that will most likely to be adjusted with the next patch. So just try them all and see how you feel.

Present state, I would choose either WHM or SCH. AST feels very rough at the moment.

Honestly at this stage OP I’d wait and see if any changes come with the raid patches for healers. If the feedback is anything to go by we’re going to see even more extremely high power healing oGCDs through super buffs to all of them, buffs to all healing spells, buffs to DPS, addition of lost DPS spells, Lucid Dreaming buff, Aetherflow buff, probably Cleric Stance back in role skills.

Basically don’t go into the role expecting to be a traditional healer that heals and supports the party, because the reality is that you’re a damage dealer with healing oGCDs, and the vast majority of players only want that identity to be reinforced

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Originally Posted by Connor

Honestly at this stage OP I’d wait and see if any changes come with the raid patches for healers. If the feedback is anything to go by we’re going to see even more extremely high power healing oGCDs through super buffs to all of them, buffs to all healing spells, buffs to DPS, addition of lost DPS spells, Lucid Dreaming buff, Aetherflow buff, probably Cleric Stance back in role skills.

Basically don’t go into the role expecting to be a traditional healer that heals and supports the party, because the reality is that you’re a damage dealer with healing oGCDs, and the vast majority of players only want that identity to be reinforced

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I hope not. What you are saying would be overkill.

SCH just needs a DPS aetherflow spender.
WHM doesn't need much of anything.
AST.... i dont even know where to start.... its a mess. Divination is far too long of a CD for a core mechanic, and healing potency for skills aside from the main heals are far too low for the long CDs

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Originally Posted by Connor

Honestly at this stage OP I’d wait and see if any changes come with the raid patches for healers. If the feedback is anything to go by we’re going to see even more extremely high power healing oGCDs through super buffs to all of them, buffs to all healing spells, buffs to DPS, addition of lost DPS spells, Lucid Dreaming buff, Aetherflow buff, probably Cleric Stance back in role skills.

Basically don’t go into the role expecting to be a traditional healer that heals and supports the party, because the reality is that you’re a damage dealer with healing oGCDs, and the vast majority of players only want that identity to be reinforced

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Cleric stance... that would be glorious. As an actual stance, as it was in Heavensward. I’d be fine with no healing or damage potency buffs (for whm and sch at least, ast may need some buffing) and having the damage potencies cut so they’re only where they are now with cleric stance. What we’re complaining about is a lack of complexity and decision-making, and cleric stance was amazing! It made you think about whether you could afford to pop cleric stance! Stance dancing was an art and the role suffered when it was removed.

SCH and AST were basically deleted this expansion. Go with WHM. It can outheal the other two healers while having an easier time.

First off, complaints I may have about SCH aside: every healer is capable of all content in the game. Every single one.

If you try out AST, you get the benefit of starting at a higher level, and the card system, while very changed from what it was previously, is still somewhat neat. There is a numbers problem, however, and AST needs some help there. This will probably be fixed by 5.1, however.

If you try out SCH, you get the benefit of sharing levels with SMN, and the heals are technically more capable than they were in Stormblood (very slightly, IMO, due to the fairy nerfs)...but DPS has been turned into basically a more mana-intensive WHM without the stuns, there's some clunkiness issues with Aetherflow, a bad tank that you might be able to salvage as WHM will probably mean a wipe, etc. That's 5.0, though, and SCH was in a (similarly, but not quite as bad) bad spot in 4.0, and that was fixed by early 4.1...so I'd expect a fix by 5.1.

WHM is basically a cheat code to healing right now. You get about 20-30% more DPS power than the other healers, coupled with about 10-15% more healing capability, plus extremely easy MP management (I've never gone below 75%), and everything flows quite smoothly. It's in the best spot it's been, IMO...in the entire game. Currently WHM can outheal both other healers combined while also outDPS'ing any tank (no other healer can outDPS ANY tank of similar skill). (In fact, the bulk of the issues I have with healing atm are that WHM pDPS and pHeal is so powerful as to basically make any raid utility a SCH or AST might provide basically worthless, up to the extent that if WHM had more shields than Divine Benison the meta would probably be WHM/WHM or WHM/extraDPS).

I understand balance is the biggest concern for most people visiting this forum right now, but I am only concerned about what is fun (subjective I know). AST was really fun for me before, though I've only dabbled in dungeons with friends as far as the MSQ allowed me to.

I do not like it now though. The healing kit was pretty basic before, but the varied card buffs gave me something fun to react to, to change up the situation. Now the cards don't do that, it's become more of a rotation, the buff is static, and the healing kit is still super basic.

My understanding now is that the basic kit for all of the healers is about the same. That was my main question, thank you so much for the input here.

White Mage is the ok only one in a good place atm

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Originally Posted by Mandeville

I understand balance is the biggest concern for most people visiting this forum right now, but I am only concerned about what is fun (subjective I know). AST was really fun for me before, though I've only dabbled in dungeons with friends as far as the MSQ allowed me to.

I do not like it now though. The healing kit was pretty basic before, but the varied card buffs gave me something fun to react to, to change up the situation. Now the cards don't do that, it's become more of a rotation, the buff is static, and the healing kit is still super basic.

My understanding now is that the basic kit for all of the healers is about the same. That was my main question, thank you so much for the input here.

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In that case, the basic kit for healers is extremely similar. On a 'how it feels' perspective:

Toying with AST a bit, the new card system is...less interesting than it was before, but still interesting. It does feel kinda cool to build up to a bigger party buff. I also wish they'd merge Play back into Draw, but I understand why they separated it with certain other changes.

Playing with WHM some, honestly it feels good. Simple, but good. Afflatus Rapture (I think that's the AoE one?) feels like Indom, but without needing to specifically charge Aetherflow first. Afflatus Solace (I think that's the single target one?) feels like Lustrate, again with the same lack of limitation. Holy feels as good as it ever did (it's fun to charge into a pack and HOLY HOLY HOLY everything to smithereens). Mana feels like it's infinite (seriously, why does WHM even have a MP bar?), and everything is basically a better version of what WHM has always been.

Playing with SCH more than the other two (it is my main, after all, for better or worse)...and most of the issues I have are that certain things are underwhelming (Seraph, I'm looking at you). Don't get me wrong though, it's COOL. I love watching Selene or Eos turn blue and even though it's not as effective as it probably should be for a capstone ability, it is fun. The biggest playstyle issues are largely with Aetherflow, which feels weird to not be able to charge out of combat, feels incredibly feast or famine with an awkward 15s longer CD and nothing to burn it on other than healing, and certain abilities that should be fun just feel ineffective (looking at you, Fey Blessing).

I haven't done any dungeons since the patch came out today (spent all my time this morning clearing Eden), so I can't speak to the Art of War changes, but I think that will alleviate some of the issues there (they reduced MP cost to 600, so now it's an instant-cast non-stunning holy rather than an instant-cast-non-stunning-more-expensive holy).

I'd give all of them a try in some slightly older content if you're unsure, to be honest (maybe lv60 or 70 normal raids?)...because at low levels they're all the same anyhow.

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Originally Posted by Mandeville

Hello! I'm a fairly new player, I played for a few months earlier in the year, my friend boosted an AST for me because they looked fun and we needed a healer. I really enjoyed the utility variety with the cards, but the new system feels extremely dull by comparison.

Do any of the healers have interesting kits in 5.0? With AST at least, the healing is really basic. I'm coming from WoW for reference, where I was playing a resto shaman with things like healing rain, spirit link totem, bloodlust, interesting interactions between the basic heals, etc.

I love the game, but worried that I'm not going to find a healer that engages me again. What makes SCH and WHM engaging to you?

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You could try SCH, the healing kit is a bit different. But to be honest, if you think AST has a dull kit you won't be happy with the other two.

However it gets more interesting at 80 in general. So you can also try to stick with it.