PvP and Healing

How are you guys managing?

I will admit... I hate PvP in games. But I always give it a shot in each and hope that it will click. I'm running WHM and... yeah, yeah. I've heard all the talk about broken LB and lots of damage. But I kinda want to heal more. I feel awful having to cast literally anything in PvP because almost all the time it ends in CC, fatal mistake from tunnel vision, and interrupts galore.

I'm just struggling to understand the identity I'm supposed to have as a healer now. SGE has no healing outside of Kardion, AST is stuffed full of support tools, I don't know about SCH. WHM feels all over the place. I have lots of high-potency damage spells. More mitigation than healing. I don't know when to use my two Cure II charges. Feel like I'm playing way too messily and my team is probably suffering for it.

Don't know what to do. Thought I'd post this here as a final resort before I drop it for good.

If you want to heal more, PvP is not for you. PvP greatly moved away from the trinity and every role has enough self-healing. Healer have a bit of healing they can use on others and support tools.

That being said you still have healing tools, they are just limited and requires some planning to use efficiently. WHM is the closest thing you get to a "healer", but most of the healing you do is incidental/secondary (Cure III, Afflatus Purgation). Cure II is best used to heal yourself when no other option is available or when your party members are low on MP (which means they can't heal much or at all).

Realistically, "Healer" is kind of a misleading label for us in FFXIV as we are more accurately a "Support" role. Or if we were willing to go with a more unorthodox naming convention, "Combat Medic." We are the only jobs with access to sustained party healing but are designed foundationally to emphasize DPS and dedicate most if not all of our GCD casting to DPS while healing inbetween. WHM is the exception who can now comfortably switch to GCD healing when lilies are present and maintain their DPS output, but offense is still their biggest focus.

With the new PVP changes, this has been exacerbated in PVP where "Healer" is entirely an incorrect label. We are now largely a utility role that focuses on buffing/debuffing and a level of sustain that is more akin to what you'd see in something like League of Legends where recovery is not designed to keep your team alive indefinitely but rather help elongate your party's lifespan enough to outlast the opponent. Having played a fair amount of PVP before 6.1, I can understand why they've taken this direction. Before, healers did have access to sustained healing and could actually prioritize recovery over all else, but that created some really obnoxious interactions. For starters, you were always jumped on as quickly as possible because your ability to keep the party alive is too great a threat to ignore, which could get really frustrating against skilled players, but it also meant you couldn't take out a healer on your own. It would take several players working together to burn down a single healer because their ability to heal themselves made them unkillable without being swarmed.

So I think the changes make a lot of sense for a more well-rounded and balanced PVP experience.

I'm having fun with scholar. It's basically everything I like about SCH in a compacted space.

I understand where you're coming from about wanting to heal more with healing being now a scarce resource. The PvP changes might not be for everyone, especially since the point was to make it so healers aren't needed for survivability as much.

I've had to tell countless friends and other people - Do not think of healers in PVP as healers. They're DPS with some support tools and CC. Do not give critical priority to killing them (Maybe to white mage sometimes, but it's because of its stun limit break and polymorph CC) - but really you should kill opportunistically. Still, a lot of people act like healer's are as important as they once were and throw matches focusing them at all costs, when really they should deal with that dragoon destroying the team.

The main thing in PVP, however, is to understand the tempo of the battles. Look for when people pop their big burst, and then know there's little they can do to hurt you for 10~15 seconds. Especially as you get to higher ranks, just diving into the middle of the enemy team is often an insta-death sentence. When you understand the tempo well enough to understand when you're about to get focused by a bunch of burst, you can pop guard to negate that and make them waste their abilities - or at least stall them.

As for the game as a whole, outside of pvp. Well, let me put it this way. The game certainly isn't going towards a direction of healing being more important. If the healer dies, or if you preform and just don't take a healer, it's no big deal for more and more content. Makes sense for PVP to move in this direction too, but PVE doesn't have the other spaces to expand into like PVP does.

healers are fun in PVP. We now have actual variety between the healers, so you can try out which ever one suits you better, Personally I find that while WHM can be very powerful, so can AST. It shouldn't be underestimated with its ability to throw out good DPS, buffs, debuffs and heals. The LB is excellent, and the card buffs include the regen on everyone LB and their MP- so that helps if their are spamming their personal heal (which they should be doing).

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

I've had to tell countless friends and other people - Do not think of healers in PVP as healers. They're DPS with some support tools and CC. Do not give critical priority to killing them (Maybe to white mage sometimes, but it's because of its stun limit break and polymorph CC) - but really you should kill opportunistically. Still, a lot of people act like healer's are as important as they once were and throw matches focusing them at all costs, when really they should deal with that dragoon destroying the team.

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This one really gets me TBH. Constantly, I just get leapt onto by 4 DDs. Like... I barely heal. The match barely begun so it's not even like my LB is a threat just yet. I know playing healers in PvP is asking to be focused - but yeah like you said, I don't get the logic when many DD Jobs are the real threats.

Thanks for your replies guys. I think I'll just keep practicing a little and see where it gets me.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

I've had to tell countless friends and other people - Do not think of healers in PVP as healers. They're DPS with some support tools and CC. Do not give critical priority to killing them (Maybe to white mage sometimes, but it's because of its stun limit break and polymorph CC) - but really you should kill opportunistically. Still, a lot of people act like healer's are as important as they once were and throw matches focusing them at all costs, when really they should deal with that dragoon destroying the team.

The main thing in PVP, however, is to understand the tempo of the battles. Look for when people pop their big burst, and then know there's little they can do to hurt you for 10~15 seconds. Especially as you get to higher ranks, just diving into the middle of the enemy team is often an insta-death sentence. When you understand the tempo well enough to understand when you're about to get focused by a bunch of burst, you can pop guard to negate that and make them waste their abilities - or at least stall them.

As for the game as a whole, outside of pvp. Well, let me put it this way. The game certainly isn't going towards a direction of healing being more important. If the healer dies, or if you preform and just don't take a healer, it's no big deal for more and more content. Makes sense for PVP to move in this direction too, but PVE doesn't have the other spaces to expand into like PVP does.

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DRG, SMN, WAR, and RDM are the jobs I try to focus the most. It's far better to take out the biggest threats rather than the WHM. Sure the CC can be powerful, but you can also bait it out, and they can't really kill you by themselves very easily.

Unlimited healer heals were one of the biggest reasons the old PVP was an awkward footnote in the list of FF14 features. The basic role balance is spot on now, and the issues are more with certain jobs being undertuned. The mode had a complete rework and has been out for a week, so that's not a disaster, and the fact PVP is finally popular regardless is a testament to how successful the basic concept is.

I'm having a blast in pvp, including but not exclusively with healers. They're all really powerful in very different ways. It's honestly better class design than the pve versions.

WHM is mostly passive and defensive but that polymorph and incredibly quick LB charge means they can regularly make huge game-changing plays. Fun, straightforward, powerful.

SCH is an incremental attritional caster, relatively hard to play and requires the game to not be decided by egregious mistakes. Easily the rarest healer; I've only seen one really good SCH, but they were an absolute monster.

SGE is a burst assassin with a side of shielding. It's not uncommon to see a sage as top damage at the end of a match.

AST is the only one I haven't played personally, but it's got enormous utility in every dimension. Scuttlebutt suggests it's probably even more powerful than WHM as the average level of play rises.

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Originally Posted by RobynDaBank

This one really gets me TBH. Constantly, I just get leapt onto by 4 DDs. Like... I barely heal. The match barely begun so it's not even like my LB is a threat just yet. I know playing healers in PvP is asking to be focused - but yeah like you said, I don't get the logic when many DD Jobs are the real threats.

Thanks for your replies guys. I think I'll just keep practicing a little and see where it gets me.

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Best to hope for is... Run them around the map and hope your team is clever enough to use the chance to push the crystal. Good luck

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

[...]but really you should kill opportunistically. Still, a lot of people act like healer's are as important as they once were and throw matches focusing them at all costs, when really they should deal with that dragoon destroying the team.

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Easily one of the best advice imho. (I never touch anything other than FL at that time)

Before the PvP 6.1 change, I've always told my friends to either cc or outright ignore (if the healer was just incompetent) the healers because they were just that good in wasting 3+ players' time when all those same resources can be used to kill that other DPS that was mauling on the other side. Also to keep them guessing who we're planning to burst, preferably a DPS as well because keeping a DPS from dying against extended assault is easily more taxing to the healers than any other roles. We only marked the healer if, like you said, opportunity presents for an easy kill. Or they're a BH5 for some reason.

Healing in pvp is not fun.

Supporting my team and being a nuisance in pvp (throwing out cards/CC) is fun.

I do wish our heals as limited as they are were more effective and I do wish I had more tools (heals or damage or CC) than just 1 hotbar but for the most part I'm satisfied with how healers are in pvp.

I main SGE and while topping the damage is nice it's a little odd to untrain myself from rushing in to phlegma or not being able to reliably shield anything or doe any kind of aoe sustain. Usually I poke and toxicon and then zoom in when there's an opportunity so SGE is like the healer NIN in that regard.

WHM is busted imo. It has too much in its kit and is the reason a lot of people burst healers. It can just do so much so quickly that if they're even half awake they can turn a lot around. Instantaneous stun nuke that gives them temperance, dps buff, and regen is just...crazy compared to the others and that's not even thinking about the extra purify they get that gives them a huge shield.

SCH is really good at sustain damage but I don't know if it's worth the lack of CC. Mummification seems cool on paper until you realize why reduce when you can stop with CC/stun/silence. They're good but more niche.

AST has crazy skill ceiling imo and has some really cool interplay but I'm unsure since I haven't played it as much. Seems like it could be more powerful than WHM in terms of raw damage/utility if played right, but WHM just has so many griefing skills that are so easily utilized it's hard to determine while the current meta is "Get stun locked forever"

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Originally Posted by Tobias_Azuryon

SCH is really good at sustain damage but I don't know if it's worth the lack of CC. Mummification seems cool on paper until you realize why reduce when you can stop with CC/stun/silence. They're good but more niche.

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I understand why, but I absolutely loathe having to be in melee range as a caster / ranged job.

Only downside of playing a healer class in PvP, is how everyone comes after me.

I just wished pve healing was as fun as pvp healing.

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Originally Posted by RobynDaBank

This one really gets me TBH. Constantly, I just get leapt onto by 4 DDs. Like... I barely heal. The match barely begun so it's not even like my LB is a threat just yet. I know playing healers in PvP is asking to be focused - but yeah like you said, I don't get the logic when many DD Jobs are the real threats.

Thanks for your replies guys. I think I'll just keep practicing a little and see where it gets me.

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If you're too far forward you're gonna get dog piled. That said, even if the "concept" of the new pvp is trying to remove the identity of roles, healers still have the flavor of healing so they can turn the tables pretty easily (especially whm and their bugged cure 2 spam) in a match, so its logical for a team to focus down a healer, especially given they are easier to burst down usually.