How are healers fairing right now?

After a 3 month break i decided to come back. What i want to know is how are each healer job doing right now?

Side note: i noticed that some white mage spells casting speed is a tad slower then i last remembered, it could be just me.

WHM/SCH are about the same now as they were in the beginning of ShB, except SCH got energy drain back, and asylum is bigger for WHM. AST has been buffed out the WAZOO, had mimor arcana changed to need less steps, got a huge buff to combust, they're the strongest healer by far right now (and still the least played of the 3 according to FFLOGS)

Basically whm had a slightly bigger Asylum,
sch got energy drain and Seraph summoning got changed to 22 secs with 2 secs of inactivity,
Ast lost minor arcana animations for minor arcana to be a seperate play button but just for Lord/Lady, reduced mp on Aspected helios and Nocturnal aspected benefic mp was reduced to 900, Celestial opposition is buffed by a lot, Collective has sect differences again this time it is Diurnal- stay rooted for 10% mitigation with refreshing HoT, Nocturnal- stay rooted for regen with refreshing 10% mitigation.

Gameplay barely changed for any of the healers if at all, Duirnal stay far better than Nocturnal, same card system, and added more problems for controller players yay /s

Healers are the same they were at the beginning of ShB they're garbage. (coming from a whm main) Everyone said that whms were supposed to be better in this expansion but they're not and they're not even the worst healer currently. SE has nerfed healers into the ground and I'm not sure they'll fix it this expansion. I'm ditching this game while I still can and getting rid of my sub until they decide to fix healers so to answer your question, get WoW instead. I literally hate WoW but it's better than playing this game as a healer right now. I think pulling off my toenails slowly is better than playing healer currently. "But we're fixing healers and making them more fun to play", No your'e making people hate their lives and hate your game SE.

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Originally Posted by Cleovana

Healers are the same they were at the beginning of ShB they're garbage. (coming from a whm main) Everyone said that whms were supposed to be better in this expansion but they're not and they're not even the worst healer currently. SE has nerfed healers into the ground and I'm not sure they'll fix it this expansion. I'm ditching this game while I still can and getting rid of my sub until they decide to fix healers so to answer your question, get WoW instead. I literally hate WoW but it's better than playing this game as a healer right now. I think pulling off my toenails slowly is better than playing healer currently. "But we're fixing healers and making them more fun to play", No your'e making people hate their lives and hate your game SE.

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Question.

Do you feel this way because of the damage potential of the jobs, or the healing potential? As the latter is well balanced, and WHM in particular is seriously strong if not overpowered healer.

Er... Sch AoE , art of war, has been buff from 800 mana cost to 600, then potency increase from 140 to 160.
Also party list has pet name shown now (still cannot interact).

Then they took steps to ensure seraph consolation stays at 2 charges per seraph summon.

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Originally Posted by Magnedeus

After a 3 month break i decided to come back. What i want to know is how are each healer job doing right now?

Side note: i noticed that some white mage spells casting speed is a tad slower then i last remembered, it could be just me.

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WHM & SCH are still the most played for the moment, but AST is topping the damage charts of all tanks and healers so it will be interesting to see how many switch back to it for 5.2. Overall, healers are still very in demand on the raid scene and you can play any healer and find a group without that much trouble. You'll have an even easier time if you play SCH or AST though, as WHM ever rides the popularity of being one of the most iconic FF jobs.

WHM is still extremely boring with very little optimization involved but as a result the strongest on average because it's easy to do well with. Heal with OGCDs, land miseries inside buffs and you're set.
Scholar is a bit better but again, still boring because once shields are up all you do is apply biolysis and spam broil and ED.
Astrologian is gigabrain due to timings on playing cards (if you draw a card and immediately throw it you're doing it wrong btw) but literally impossible to optimize without breaking the rules because in order to bring more RDPS to the group than WHM and SCH (since let's face it, that's almost entirely what matters these days), you need to either be in a static that logs so you know who you're playing your cards on and when, or you need your own parser, to know who the best target for your cards are (awful design by the way). Yeah you can take the simple route of playing every melee card on a melee and every range card on a range, but then you're probably less effective in contribution than WHM or SCH overall. Because Astrologian healing is balanced on the Sect mechanic, and AST damage is based on RDPS contribution with the game automatically assuming your DPS are good enough to get full value out of cards and divination, it's simply easier to be strong by playing either of the other two; however on the basis that AST is fairly APM heavy and given how boring the other two options are, I'd still rather play AST.

All 3 are as welcome in any mixed healer comp and none are left out because they all provide something, whereas AST was literally unplayable start of 5.0.

I find the healing output/capacity of scholar to be a bit thin, at least when there are heavier/thicker healing requirements, or if the party takes a lot of extra damage. Maybe fine in dungeons, normal raids, trials, and the first two level 80 extremes, but in Hades extreme I really don't like how it performs with healing, so I normally only go as white mage. A scholar with cooldowns and aetherflow used can't do much with basic spammable healing spells. Things going wrong with a party in general, current expansion/patch I find those situations much more approachable/saveable as white mage. Times of saving/trying to save a wipe or covering for a disconnected co-healer include my favourite times in this game and as a healer

People still play healers, WHM mainly, if only for the lack of roulette queues. God knows why though as we spend most of our time being criticised for letting over zealous tanks die.

Still boring and ignored by the devs. I guess we also got some tweaked numbers.

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Originally Posted by Holymoly

People still play healers, WHM mainly, if only for the lack of roulette queues. God knows why though as we spend most of our time being criticised for letting over zealous tanks die.

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Yeah those roulette queues... all those people that said things would return to "tank in need" as it used to be 99% of the time...well it's not quite as bad as when 5.0 hit and it was healer 99% of the time, but it's definitely still healer a lot of the time.

No where near as bad as the forums make them out to be, especially after the buffs AST got and SCH getting Energy Drain back so they have some semblance of a gameplay loop (and an angle for optimizing)

SCH is boring, WHM is suppah fun.

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Originally Posted by Alistaire

Yeah those roulette queues... all those people that said things would return to "tank in need" as it used to be 99% of the time...well it's not quite as bad as when 5.0 hit and it was healer 99% of the time, but it's definitely still healer a lot of the time.

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Not sure which server you're on, but Ultros is firmly back to "laughs in tank" queues for most roulettes though.

I get instant on tank and have to wait 3-5 minutes when I try to go AST. Not a DPS queue certainly but not instant.

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Originally Posted by InfiniDragon

Not sure which server you're on, but Ultros is firmly back to "laughs in tank" queues for most roulettes though.

I get instant on tank and have to wait 3-5 minutes when I try to go AST. Not a DPS queue certainly but not instant.

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I have the opposite on Crystal. Even when it's tank in need,healer will pop instant while tanks have to wait 3-5 minutes.

you basically either start rooting for your party to suck so you can have some action or spam glare/malefic/broil the entire run.
MSQ/dungeons/trials/normal raid is all boring to do as a healer(especially MSQ solo duties which you have nothing to heal and nothing to do rather then press 1 all the time) unless your party eat every shit they run across so you can use your healing part of the kit.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

No where near as bad as the forums make them out to be, especially after the buffs AST got and SCH getting Energy Drain back so they have some semblance of a gameplay loop (and an angle for optimizing)

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oh the lies we tell ourselves to believe its all fine when everything goes in flames.

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Originally Posted by CrimsonGunner

you basically either start rooting for your party to suck so you can have some action or spam glare/malefic/broil the entire run.
MSQ/dungeons/trials/normal raid is all boring to do as a healer(especially MSQ solo duties which you have nothing to heal and nothing to do rather then press 1 all the time) unless your party eat every shit they run across so you can use your healing part of the kit.



oh the lies we tell ourselves to believe its all fine when everything goes in flames.

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I distinctly recall pressing more then two buttons when I did my roulettes yesterday. But that's just me. MB that's true with WHM, but SCH at least has energy Drain and ruin II to play with and AST has its cards. And before you say "but what about stuff before that level" I'll just have to point out that's not just a healer only problem.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

I distinctly recall pressing more then two buttons when I did my roulettes yesterday. But that's just me. MB that's true with WHM, but SCH at least has energy Drain and ruin II to play with and AST has its cards. And before you say "but what about stuff before that level" I'll just have to point out that's not just a healer only problem.

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yes AST has his "cards"...
then who else has only one button to press at your so much claim that its not a healer only problem a lower level?

Even with Energy Drain back, 70-80% of scholar actions in dungeons will be 4-5 buttons (I checked on FFlogs), and there are no interesting tricks to look forward to. It's much worse in trials. Fairly boring.

It's better if you mainly play savage *progression*.

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Originally Posted by CrimsonGunner

unless your party eat every shit they run across so you can use your healing part of the kit.

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..and you wipe in a blaze of glory because your highness cannot heal through the damage incurred from those waltzing around like little oompa loompas with their 6+ vulnerability stacks.

Meanwhile Willy Wonky is about to ban hammer you for stealing an everlasting gobstobber.

Tell me, as you clearly want more than '1' to press and dealing damage isn't enough for you, so what do you want?

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Originally Posted by Rasikko

..and you wipe in a blaze of glory because your highness cannot heal through the damage incurred from those waltzing around like little oompa loompas with their 6+ vulnerability stacks.

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Oh, the healing kit is good enough that you often can! It's just normally unjustified to use.

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Originally Posted by Rasikko

..and you wipe in a blaze of glory because your highness cannot heal through the damage incurred from those waltzing around like little oompa loompas with their 6+ vulnerability stacks.

Meanwhile Willy Wonky is about to ban hammer you for stealing an everlasting gobstobber.

Tell me, as you clearly want more than '1' to press and dealing damage isn't enough for you, so what do you want?

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more then 1 or even a good synargy of the kit skills maybe?

anything to be honest, dps/buffs/debuffs you know options,something that most classes have.so we could choose what to use then simply just glare,glare,glare/broil,broil,broil/malefic,malefic,malefic... and if that is so hard for SE to do maybe put some synergy to our kit. having them proc something that will help us like spamming glare speed the lily gauge/broil give a stack that increase healing for the next spell or grant a crit heal/malefic grant a stack that the next spell is instant or whatever even with the dots could have better synergy then cast every 30s.

you really think having 1 skill to spam is good.... that it actually good for a class to spam 1 skill most of its time.... and even more so a skill that have literally 0 synergy with anything in the kit,do you really find that interesting gameplay for a class?

you have dps with skills that actually interact with each other more then simply deal damage but actually buff other skills.
and if you compare tanks that have mitigation skills to healers with healing skills then just like we use healing when needed ,tanks use mitigation skills when needed but until they need them ,they actually do a skill rotation unlike us.
healers have barely something that break that 1 button spam every once in a while and we aren't even tackling the issues AST and SCH actually have with their own systems.

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Originally Posted by Magnedeus

After a 3 month break i decided to come back. What i want to know is how are each healer job doing right now?

Side note: i noticed that some white mage spells casting speed is a tad slower then i last remembered, it could be just me.

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Welcome back. Can't rightly tell you about raid presence or how well they parse. Scholar is the same as start of 5.0: Job still heals and mitigates everything I've been to without issues so far if you're looking to heal with it. Only change is Seraph got a 2 second built-in delay before performing any actions, that might feel a bit off at first.

If you were hoping for more Lily interactions on the pet healer job or getting more dev response to the 5.0 changes I'm afraid there have been nil. Our cornerstone skills still contradict each other, Lily's scaling potency with healing is lower than ever, pet hotbar still has holes in it, Selene's skills are still MIA, Lily/Seraphs skills still sometimes goes on cooldown without being actually used, Aetherflow still only usable incombat, Arcanist skills still missing, oGCD cooldowns still heal for massive amounts, all which unfortunatley leads to Broil III/Art of War still being the most used buttons on my Scholar, both in solo and group content.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

I have the opposite on Crystal. Even when it's tank in need,healer will pop instant while tanks have to wait 3-5 minutes.

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Either it fluxtuates too fast for the Duty Finder to register changes or someone is pulling wool over our eyes. For the last months I've been in party with couple friends and see "Tank in need" and sign up as tank. We wait at least five minutes, I withdraw, change to healer and it pops instantly on Chaos. Would put it down to coincidence, but this is happening regurarly.

Boring, bland, and bad.

It is no mystery that the healer population went straight down hill in this expansion. Let's not kid ourselves, unpopular healers are just as bad as unpopular tanks. People are begging for healers everywhere from DF to PF.

I will say this much: In pursuit of SS tier story writing, SE has gave up almost every other aspects of the game including job designing department. Combat system and story are my bread and butter of FFXIV. Now that bread is gone, I can only enjoy so much butter before I get sick of it.

Stormblood had C tier mediocre story writing, but things were never this bad. I was still leveling alts in 4.1X and having fun.

Now Shadowbringers for me is: Oh wow story sooooooooooooooo good. The end. Game pretty much went from MMORPG to single player JRPG to me because of how suck the expansion job designs are. I'm not sugar coating anymore.

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Originally Posted by Miziliti

Stormblood had C tier mediocre story writing, but things were never this bad. I was still leveling alts in 4.1X and having fun.

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They were for WHM. Maybe not for the other healers. But trying to main WHM was torture. Even when you found someone that would reluctantly take you, they'd push constantly for you to switch off to AST

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

I distinctly recall pressing more then two buttons when I did my roulettes yesterday. But that's just me. MB that's true with WHM, but SCH at least has energy Drain and ruin II to play with and AST has its cards. And before you say "but what about stuff before that level" I'll just have to point out that's not just a healer only problem.

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RDM, SMN, BLM, DNC, MCH, BRD, SAM, NIN, DRG, MNK, GNB and WAR have an equally (or more) complex damage kit at level 18 as a level 80 healer: roughly four or more damage skills.

And not a single one of them uses the same action 70% of their time.

Ain't that sad?

WHM: Job feels fine to me, I'd even go as far as to say I quite like how the job is now. Give me Aero III back though plz.

SCH: feels quite a bit worse than SB, it seems stripped of so much.

AST: I couldn't honestly say, I should really level it at least a bit at some point.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

I have the opposite on Crystal. Even when it's tank in need,healer will pop instant while tanks have to wait 3-5 minutes.

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Yeah this happens on Chaos (EU) all the time. "Tank in need" 3-5 minutes of waiting. Then I switch to Healer and I get an insta queue while forfeiting the bonus.

I am not about to scream conspiracy from SE but... There is certainly some inacuracy regarding what role is in actual demand.

Pretty much have gone full time DNC now. Will only heal for friends/FC mates. Shorter queue is not even worth it to me. Also, on Behemoth, most DF roulettes are usually “Healer in Need.” So there’s that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They're bland and bad. I could not in my right mind recommend healing in this game to anyone.

I really don't understand all the negativity everyone has for Healers this expansion.

I never really felt that watching my DoT timers was engaging, it was just something I did to speed up a run; It didn't matter to me if it was one button or 5 buttons that speed things up. What I do miss, however, are the bits from Healer toolkits that have been removed that actually helped flush out the healer role as a support oriented job. Things like the Stun on Celestial Oppression, Disable, Virus, Eye for an Eye, etc. all felt like things that didn't need to be removed because they helped flush out the healing role more and I honestly wish SE would just give them back and to get off the whole "WHM are pure Healers" mentality to give them some actual utility other than reskinned Divine Seal v3.0.

In all seriousness, I want more to do with my Lilies/Aetherflow/Cards+Seals. Right now, Lilies are free heals that build up to a nuke and that's it. While I applaud SE for making the Lily system more worthwhile overall, I won't lie and say that a part of me misses when lilies actually interacted with my oGCD CD timers because it meant that I was getting some cross interaction between my healing kit. Cure gave lilies that I spent on my oGCDs to have them up quicker. A simple interaction sure but I miss it. While I know that the return of Lily interaction with oGCD timers may never return, if I got some skills like Faith/Brave/Haste to use my Lilies on, I'd be completely fine with that. For SCH, I want the Fae Gauge to actually be something more than a buffed up regen or AoE heal dispenser. Have Fey Wind return and cost Gauge so that I can actually do something when I'm sitting at 100 gauge and the amount of damage the Tank is taking is so minimal it can't even proc Excog. IDGAF about AST but I'm sure SE could do something for them too.

That's all I really want for Healers at this point.

Same i like healer in this expac more than before (mainly because of hades fight, tank and dps is zo boring in that fight), and in my server theres a healer overload against extreme 10 mi++ as healer while spd 5 min tank is instant...

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

I have the opposite on Crystal. Even when it's tank in need,healer will pop instant while tanks have to wait 3-5 minutes.

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Originally Posted by Sloprano

Either it fluxtuates too fast for the Duty Finder to register changes or someone is pulling wool over our eyes. For the last months I've been in party with couple friends and see "Tank in need" and sign up as tank. We wait at least five minutes, I withdraw, change to healer and it pops instantly on Chaos. Would put it down to coincidence, but this is happening regurarly.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Yeah this happens on Chaos (EU) all the time. "Tank in need" 3-5 minutes of waiting. Then I switch to Healer and I get an insta queue while forfeiting the bonus.

I am not about to scream conspiracy from SE but... There is certainly some inacuracy regarding what role is in actual demand.

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This has been happening long-term, and I think it's because when it says [role] in need, it's not about the length of the roulette queues but because it's trying to match up party members for specific dungeons, and can only look at one thing at a time.

If it needs a Lv79 tank, tank will be in need until it gets one of those - no matter how many lower-level tanks join the queue in the meanwhile. So all those go into the roulette and have to wait for a healer to complete the party, even though the system doesn't see (and isn't looking for) that need.

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Originally Posted by DiznypKC

Pretty much have gone full time DNC now. Will only heal for friends/FC mates. Shorter queue is not even worth it to me. Also, on Behemoth, most DF roulettes are usually “Healer in Need.” So there’s that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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And even when it says "tank in need" I queue as a tank and don't get an instant pop, swap to healer DING!

The in need criteria isn't always accurate.

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Originally Posted by Rasikko

..and you wipe in a blaze of glory because your highness cannot heal through the damage incurred from those waltzing around like little oompa loompas with their 6+ vulnerability stacks.

Meanwhile Willy Wonky is about to ban hammer you for stealing an everlasting gobstobber.

Tell me, as you clearly want more than '1' to press and dealing damage isn't enough for you, so what do you want?

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Had this happen yesterday in the new dungeon on the broom boss. Tank had 4 vuln stacks on him and I had to simply say, "you take another and I'm simply not going to be able to heal you on the next tank buster. It WILL kill you." Luckily we killed the boss before the next tank buster (and yes they got another vuln stack.)

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Originally Posted by Lodi

RDM, SMN, BLM, DNC, MCH, BRD, SAM, NIN, DRG, MNK, GNB and WAR have an equally (or more) complex damage kit at level 18 as a level 80 healer: roughly four or more damage skills.

And not a single one of them uses the same action 70% of their time.

Ain't that sad?

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What you don't like essentially 2 damage options from lvl 4 to lvl 80? One of those being a 30s timer? (heavy /s)

I like healing. I think it's fun. It should also speak volumes that most of the people trashing healers right now have healers listed as their main roles in the forum.

WHM is in the best place it's been since SCH launched.

Most of the SCH complains are QoL, that, if you haven't played previous iterations religiously, you won't notice.

AST cards are pretty meek, but overall, the card system flows much more easily, and healing has some cool mechanics.

Basically, if you don't care that you'll have to spam one spell during downtime, you're fine.

The way the rest of this thread will go is that people will argue over Healer in Need, how if everyone in your party does mechanics perfectly you don't need to heal, and not having enough buttons to press.

In all honesty, if you're looking for a real idea of how it works now, the Healer forum isn't the place to post anything anymore, absolutely anything, no matter what you post, will devolve into "healers are trash now."

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Originally Posted by Cyrocco

It should also speak volumes that most of the people trashing healers right now have healers listed as their main roles in the forum.

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I don't get what you're implying with that. Do you mean to say despite the complaints people still play them? Hence we are being hypocritical? Or do you mean that since we're healer mains we're the best informed about the situation and evolution of the healer classes in this game?

You are citing issues like they are no big deal and this is no place to form an objective opinion (Which granted, it may not be) Yet you haven't provided a more trustworthy alternative in your opinion.

As far as what I can say about Astrologian... Square Enix seems to think that buffing our heals/OGCD's will help us overlook our MP problems and depressing card system. That won't change my mind about it. I want my arrow, spear, bole and MP cards back. Every card is just a "Balance" card.. I always carry Super ethers on me because god help me if I didn't have some emergency way of getting some of my MP back like WHM and SCH have.

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Originally Posted by Cyrocco

It should also speak volumes that most of the people trashing healers right now have healers listed as their main roles in the forum.

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What DOES this mean, because as I read it—it sounds like you're calling people hypocrites. That just doesn't make sense. Yes I am a healer main and yes I'm upset with the way things are right now. Should I go play DPS? Tank? Nah, because I don't like those roles, dude! And I like playing this game with my friends enough to just not want to quit because I don't like the healer changes. I also have the unpopular opinion that AST is fine, but on the whole healers are looking pretty BLEH. White mage is boring Glare spam and pretty much has always been pretty meh, while Scholar is boring Broil spam. When 2/3 apples go bad, the bunch is spoiled in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Cyrocco

In all honesty, if you're looking for a real idea of how it works now, the Healer forum isn't the place to post anything anymore, absolutely anything, no matter what you post, will devolve into "healers are trash now."

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In all honesty, I'm tired of people saying to disregard folks on the forum who are upset about healer changes. I'm really just tired of spamming 1 over and over, hoping my team eats mechanics. Yeah people are mad, and yes...there's a reason for it. I've never seen healers in a game this mad before, and I think that really speaks volumes.