Healer question on Reddit sub was a mistake

So, I recently came back to the game and decided that, even though I'm almost exclusively playing to get through the story content, I wanted to stick strictly to a healer role. I have a WHM almost to lvl 50 and was just asking if that particular healer job was worth holding onto or if If a different healer job was better for focusing on solo content.

What a huge mistake that was. The amount of people that couldn't remotely fathom that I want to stick to a healer job was ridiculous. I don't know what the thought process is for people when they read "Which is the best healer job for solo content" and then somehow the only thought they can come up with is "YoU ShoUlD sWItCh tO a dPs".

I'll admit that there were a few responses from people that were incredibly kind and helpful, but MOST of them were not.

So, I figure I'll ask the same thing here. Other healer players: Which healer job do you prefer for solo content? Is one better than the others or are they all about the same? Thanks in advance.

You're going to end up casting one damage spell over and over and over and over and over again for the entirety of solo content. Yes, it's that boring. No, they're not significantly different. Maybe Sage for Icarus and two charges of Phlegma? That's about the only minute difference between them. I wouldn't recommend AST just for the slightly lower personal damage. Each enemy might require an additional cast of the single damage nuke to kill. Those add up.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

You're going to end up casting one damage spell over and over and over and over and over again for the entirety of solo content. Yes, it's that boring. No, they're not significantly different. Maybe Sage for Icarus and two charges of Phlegma? That's about the only minute difference between them. I wouldn't recommend AST just for the slightly lower personal damage. Each enemy might require an additional cast of the single damage nuke to kill. Those add up.

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Thank you so much, that's the exact kind of information I was looking for.

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Originally Posted by Sotha

Thank you so much, that's the exact kind of information I was looking for.

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I can't exactly speak to your interests without knowing in more detail what it is you're looking for in your experience, but some other suggestions:

If you swap over to ACN, a DPS class, it offers two jobs at level 30: the DPS Summoner and the healer Scholar. Summoner is the simplest DPS, and later does gain access to a "utility phase" of sorts, which is still a part of your damage rotation, but provides a party regen and allows you to grant someone a target heal. Scholar is the strongest healer for raiding and also marginally more engaging DPS combo for soloing since you'll use your Aetherflow on Energy Drain since you won't need the heals while soloing, but both Summoner and Scholar share the same level, so if you level up as Summoner, your Scholar is also being leveled by the same amount. So you could have a bit more fun playing as Summoner and swapping over to Scholar for dungeons or other forms of group play if you really want to heal, or just have Scholar which offers a bit more to do during solo instances than White Mage or Sage realistically.

If you're open to exploring jobs outside of healers that offer sustain and utility, you're coming up on level 50 which will allow you to access the Red Mage. It's a caster that's fairly easy to get the hang of and gets access to a usable healing spell and a resurrection spell. You won't generally worry about healing others in group play, but you can help salvage a nasty run in a pinch and you can instantly revive players back-to-back better than even healers can. They also have magick barrier later which is a defensive ability that also increases how much HP your party receives from healing.

Dancer is available at level 60 as well and is a physical ranged DPS that has the ability to pick another player to dance with and provide them with buffs consistently throughout the fight, has a healing ability that heals both them, their partner, and everyone standing around the both of you, and later has an ability that puts a regen on nearby allies which you can then follow up with a barrier on the party immediately after. It's also one of the more simple attackers and very easy to understand. They have the lowest damage, but offer a lot of power in their ability to buff the party and make everyone else hit harder, especially their partner.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I can't exactly speak to your interests without knowing in more detail what it is you're looking for in your experience, but some other suggestions:

If you swap over to ACN, a DPS class, it offers two jobs at level 30: the DPS Summoner and the healer Scholar. Summoner is the simplest DPS, and later does gain access to a "utility phase" of sorts, which is still a part of your damage rotation, but provides a party regen and allows you to grant someone a target heal. Scholar is the strongest healer for raiding and also marginally more engaging DPS combo for soloing since you'll use your Aetherflow on Energy Drain since you won't need the heals while soloing, but both Summoner and Scholar share the same level, so if you level up as Summoner, your Scholar is also being leveled by the same amount. So you could have a bit more fun playing as Summoner and swapping over to Scholar for dungeons or other forms of group play if you really want to heal, or just have Scholar which offers a bit more to do during solo instances than White Mage or Sage realistically.

If you're open to exploring jobs outside of healers that offer sustain and utility, you're coming up on level 50 which will allow you to access the Red Mage. It's a caster that's fairly easy to get the hang of and gets access to a usable healing spell and a resurrection spell. You won't generally worry about healing others in group play, but you can help salvage a nasty run in a pinch and you can instantly revive players back-to-back better than even healers can. They also have magick barrier later which is a defensive ability that also increases how much HP your party receives from healing.

Dancer is available at level 60 as well and is a physical ranged DPS that has the ability to pick another player to dance with and provide them with buffs consistently throughout the fight, has a healing ability that heals both them, their partner, and everyone standing around the both of you, and later has an ability that puts a regen on nearby allies which you can then follow up with a barrier on the party immediately after. It's also one of the more simple attackers and very easy to understand. They have the lowest damage, but offer a lot of power in their ability to buff the party and make everyone else hit harder, especially their partner.

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All of this. Don't torture yourself by soloing as a healer. The most boring DPS job is head and shoulders more likely to keep you awake than the most complex healer.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I can't exactly speak to your interests without knowing in more detail what it is you're looking for in your experience, but some other suggestions:

If you swap over to ACN, a DPS class, it offers two jobs at level 30: the DPS Summoner and the healer Scholar. Summoner is the simplest DPS, and later does gain access to a "utility phase" of sorts, which is still a part of your damage rotation, but provides a party regen and allows you to grant someone a target heal. Scholar is the strongest healer for raiding and also marginally more engaging DPS combo for soloing since you'll use your Aetherflow on Energy Drain since you won't need the heals while soloing, but both Summoner and Scholar share the same level, so if you level up as Summoner, your Scholar is also being leveled by the same amount. So you could have a bit more fun playing as Summoner and swapping over to Scholar for dungeons or other forms of group play if you really want to heal, or just have Scholar which offers a bit more to do during solo instances than White Mage or Sage realistically.

If you're open to exploring jobs outside of healers that offer sustain and utility, you're coming up on level 50 which will allow you to access the Red Mage. It's a caster that's fairly easy to get the hang of and gets access to a usable healing spell and a resurrection spell. You won't generally worry about healing others in group play, but you can help salvage a nasty run in a pinch and you can instantly revive players back-to-back better than even healers can. They also have magick barrier later which is a defensive ability that also increases how much HP your party receives from healing.

Dancer is available at level 60 as well and is a physical ranged DPS that has the ability to pick another player to dance with and provide them with buffs consistently throughout the fight, has a healing ability that heals both them, their partner, and everyone standing around the both of you, and later has an ability that puts a regen on nearby allies which you can then follow up with a barrier on the party immediately after. It's also one of the more simple attackers and very easy to understand. They have the lowest damage, but offer a lot of power in their ability to buff the party and make everyone else hit harder, especially their partner.

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Thank you, but I know all of that already. I understand that I can play as a DPS or tank instead or that I could level multiple jobs and switch as desired, but at the moment, I'm really just asking for information on the healer jobs.

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Originally Posted by Sotha

Thank you, but I know all of that already. I understand that I can play as a DPS or tank instead or that I could level multiple jobs and switch as desired, but at the moment, I'm really just asking for information on the healer jobs.

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For solo content, there's really nothing to heal, so all the healers are basically the same.

For group content like dungeons, trials, and raids on the other hand:

WHM arguably has a slightly more interesting "rotation" since it has the freedom to stop attacking to heal with its lilies, and there's some mild optimization on using the spell Afflatus Misery during burst windows. As a healer, though, WHM feels inferior to the other three. While it's not incompetent as a healer, there's really nothing WHM has that each other healer doesn't have a better version of. As far as healing is concerned, WHM is, with no exaggeration, diet AST. It's also very lacking in the ability to mitigate damage which has become a very important aspect of harder content. That said, none of this should matter in any real tangible way for casual content.

AST has a far more involved system of buffs to provide to the party which involves a lot of weaving OGCDs and single-targeted other party members which is a point of contention for some players. Its card system also feels quite convoluted for many, being 6 different ways of doing the same thing, and their gauge UI does offer hints to help you, but these hints are incredibly vague and lack strong visibility. In terms of healing though, It has everything WHM has, but better, and more on top of that. It also offers more mitigation for harder content, which as mentioned, is very important if that's what you want to get into in the future. As Sem said though, for soloing, it is quite slow since its personal damage is very low, but in parties, their ability to buff the party makes them more valuable than the higher personal damage of WHM.

SCH, as I mentioned above, is the best healer for raiding. It offers a lot of mitigation, an incredibly powerful combo that allows them to ensure a critical heal-powered barrier and then spread the bulk of that to the whole party--worthless in casual content since it's highly excessive, but very helpful when learning more challenging fights. They also have the strongest piece of utility which gives combat sprint to the entire party. Again, this is mostly worthless in casual play but invaluable during raids. Its damage output is middle of the pack, but also has a party buff that pushes them over the edge in offensive contributions overall. It also has a pet that heals, which makes solo content that much easier since you don't even have to worry about healing yourself when you make a mistake most of the time. That said, it has several tools that take away your ability to use other tools, like Dissipation removes your faerie and faerie actions and generally isn't worth the buffs in healing and is just used as a DPS resource on an unnecessarily long cooldown, but other than having some clunk in that regard, it's quite powerful.

SGE is less finnicky than AST and SCH and is very smooth to play as for a healer. Like WHM, it doesn't have any meaningful utility beyond mitigation, and its personal damage is good but not as good as the buffs AST and SCH provide, but it has the largest quantity of mitigation tools, which makes it quite powerful especially when paired with SCH, and it also has an incredible burst healing combo at level 90 in Zoe + Pneuma. It heals by attacking, though its offensive library is just as shallow as all the other healers, but it means using your GCD heals are even less valuable than with the other healers. In savage raids, you may still be forced to use them in some capacity, particularly in prog, but in casual content there's no reason you should ever need to stop attacking and can just weave heals between your attacks for 100% of most situations.

If you are going to remain on a healer, having soloed quite a bit of the MSQ on AST, I would say that it is rather painful but absolutely possible (as the dv team would say), however I did start out on the SCH path as I knew I would have the benefit of a DPS , an picked AST as you can easily level 2 jobs in the MSQ.

This was before the pure/barrier split, however that would be a consideration now- it's a good idea to learn both, and it is also a good way to see which one fits your own personal preference. Regardless of anyone who talks about a job being "clunky, finicky, complex, convoluted, etc" - these are personal perceptions, you may or may not share them, and you may end up liking it even if you agree.

WHM or SGE is your best bet if you want to do solo content as a healer.

WHM and SGE both have a skill that hits hard (Afflatus Misery / Phlegma), which helps speed things up ever so slightly. I say ever so slightly because all 4 healers have bare bones DPS kit in doing solo content. They're all bloated with healing skills to the point a big portion of your gameplay in doing solo content will end up feeling the same as every other healer - large amounts of time, you'd be pressing your main attack skill. In terms of smoothness, SGE wins out because of its mobility and sensibility with its toolkit. WHM and SGE has the higher nuke potency (main attack skill), so their sustained DPS is generally higher than the latter two, who relies on buffing the party instead. For solo play, WHM doesn't really benefit until lv 74+ because your entire gauge becomes fairly worthless for solo runs (no access to Afflatus Misery until level 74) when regen can mostly handle the job for open world content.

AST is the healer you would least likely want to pick for solo content because it has card buffs that work best with multiple allies and have the lowest personal damage out of the 4 healers.
SCH doesn't have any particular strengths to doing solo content. However, it does share a class with Summoner, so you can always choose to go SMN if you ever get sick of SCH for whatever reason. I wouldn't recommend SCH because its mobbing capability for AoE is one of the weakest out of the healers even if its personal potency is the highest.

Unfortunately, there's not much else to add, because all healers are really bare bones in terms of solo play potential.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

If you are going to remain on a healer, having soloed quite a bit of the MSQ on AST, I would say that it is rather painful but absolutely possible (as the dv team would say), however I did start out on the SCH path as I knew I would have the benefit of a DPS , an picked AST as you can easily level 2 jobs in the MSQ.

This was before the pure/barrier split, however that would be a consideration now- it's a good idea to learn both, and it is also a good way to see which one fits your own personal preference. Regardless of anyone who talks about a job being "clunky, finicky, complex, convoluted, etc" - these are personal perceptions, you may or may not share them, and you may end up liking it even if you agree.

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Well, SCH and SGE are pretty happy to pair with each other, so having one of either under your belt is probably a good idea if you want to play WHM and AST, because while SCH/SGE is a great combo, WHM/AST might really struggle with mitigation needs.

Don't make the same mistake we did. I went from 1-90 as a Scholar/Sage (at the end because the monotony was too much to bear) and it was the same 21111111111111111111111111111111111111111 spam while the rest of my abilities gathered dust in the solo content. The problem with levelling with DPS is that it takes half your lifespan just to queue into one duty. Granted there's trusts now, but the tank trusts only single pull which makes the run take sooooooo long. IMO tank is the best role in the game because you get fast queue times, a fun rotation (subjective I know), and the ability to decide the pace of dungeon runs. Not to mention PLD does a pretty nice job scratching that healer itch with Divine Veil, Intervention and the occasional cast of Clemency.

OP, it honestly doesn't matter, the DPS difference between Healers isn't large enough to make Solo content feel significantly different between them. You are much better off choosing whichever healer has Lore/Gear/Animations that you prefer more, since you're going to be stuck looking at them... a lot.

Choose from:

• White sparkles
• Fireballs, plagues, and faeries
• Tarot cards and blowing up stars
• Techno 1980s lazer synth rave

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Originally Posted by Iedarus

the tank trusts only single pull which makes the run take sooooooo long

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Not a problem, just misbehave. They'll attempt to tank as much as you "accidentally" aggro, the only challenge is using your defensives to keep yourself alive long enough for your Trust healer to wake up and realize you need a Cure.

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Originally Posted by Iedarus

the tank trusts only single pull which makes the run take sooooooo long

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Stick a regen/shield on the tank to hold them over, regen/shield yourself while you run to the next group, hit one of them with your dot because it's instant, then run back to the tank with the second group in tow. All jobs of all roles can do full pulls in trusts; it's just more touch and go on some jobs than on others. Going as healer, your trust group has the best survivability on full pulls, but you'll also gain the least by full pulling because you will have to use some GCD heals on the tank and won't be able to spam just your AoE like you would with real players. In this case, WHM has an advantage over the other healers in that Holy stops all damage outright for about 10s, but WHM will also probably spend the most GCDs on healing after stun resistance kicks in and the mob groups might live so long that it doesn't make a difference anyway, since each trust only uses so many AoEs in their attack script. Personally I like sage for their obnoxious number of oGCD buttons, and had the best trust pulls as such, but that could just as easily be my higher comfort level with sage as it could sage having any sort of measurable advantage. Basically, play the healer you like best.

tl;dr: the best healer to play is the one you like best

Sage can passively heal themselves with Kardia, which is pretty neat for soloing. It has a strong single target damage spell. Having so many oGCD heals/shields/mitigation tools makes it easier to tackle harder enemies while you continue to do damage. You have a damage spell that can be cast whilst on the move as well.

White Mage also has a strong single target damage spell and it can stun enemies, which is great for mob farming activities like fates. It has a damage buff which speeds up short quest battles as it's usually available at the beginning of each one. At higher levels you can spend lilies in between battles and start with a big hit Misery.

If I were you I'd stick with WHM for now and see how you feel about SGE at level 70. Maybe level them both.

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Originally Posted by Sotha

What a huge mistake that was. The amount of people that couldn't remotely fathom that I want to stick to a healer job was ridiculous. I don't know what the thought process is for people when they read "Which is the best healer job for solo content" and then somehow the only thought they can come up with is "YoU ShoUlD sWItCh tO a dPs".

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As someone who's been stuck as a healer in a raid setting for years now even as SE continues to gut the role and make it more and more boring, those people are just trying to spare you the hardship and annoyance they've likely also felt.

If someone asks me, "how rare should I cook this chicken?" I'm going to decide that their actual question isn't really the right thing to address and instead point out that chicken shouldn't be cooked rare at all. This isn't meant to be disrespectful, but I just don't want them making themselves sick.

That being said, probably SGE for it's superior personal damage? Or SCH, largely for access to SMN - unless that also reads as "jUsT sWiTcH tO dPs" to you somehow.

White mage is the most '' simple '' of the healers, but playing through the game casually, there is absolutely no healer job that is better than the other. Even in high end, more difficult content, there is not really one healer job that outshines the rest, as the healers are very homogeneous in design. Stick with white mage if you find it to your liking, but you might as well unlock all the healer jobs as they come available for you.

As a person who has gone through the entire MSQ as an AST since they've been able to unlock it, I highly recommend you choose the other 3 healers instead.

AST feels by and large the most painful to solo anything in this game.

And as a person who has done the entire MSQ as a healer and parts of it (ARR-HW before the prune of ARR mind you) four times over I don't recommend doing any solo content as a healer at all.

To simply answer the question, anything except AST. The other 3 are all roughly equal. AST isn't.

SGE is most engaging healer gets when it comes to DPS. All the rest are basically same 'single target, dot and aoe'. SGE gets two more spells in addition to that, and a different version of one of spells that is charged by having your barriers tank damage. Not really that riveting still, but definitely the best of all healer gameplay. And as for leveling, until you can get SGE I personally think SCH is most enjoyable.

As someone who played main story content exclusivelly as a healer it really is about animations, your personal roleplay if you are that kind of person and story of that job.

If i would start the game again and pick one job then i would pick Scholar. Fairy and SCH story are winners for me.

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Originally Posted by Sotha

So, I recently came back to the game and decided that, even though I'm almost exclusively playing to get through the story content, I wanted to stick strictly to a healer role. I have a WHM almost to lvl 50 and was just asking if that particular healer job was worth holding onto or if If a different healer job was better for focusing on solo content.

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So, I figure I'll ask the same thing here. Other healer players: Which healer job do you prefer for solo content? Is one better than the others or are they all about the same? Thanks in advance.

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People forget not everyone likes the same things and so think everyone thinks like they do. There are a lot of...less happy...people, for various reasons, that are down on healers right now and will be for the foreseeable future. Some think you are like them and want to spare you the heartache. Others are in the "misery loves company" camp and want you to be as miserable with healing as they are. And there are probably as many other types out there as there are groups of people.

Here's my take:

I love healing and am pretty meh on DPS (I do it since it makes sense not to sit on my hands when my party doesn't need healing, but I'd rather keep it simple), so I actually enjoy all the healing Jobs other than AST, since it's a bit busy. They can all do all the solo content in the game, all clear the MSQ, etc. Here are the pros and cons of each:

WHM: Straightforward and powerful heals, straightforward and (for healers) strong damage. WHM has no party damage buffs and so is a "selfish DPS" (insomuch as its damage kit goes), meaning its damage attacks do higher damage than the equivalent on, say, AST. Its straightforward nature makes it easy to pick up and play with, and pretty much all of its kit is easy to understand and use with nothing to really trip you up. It sometimes feels like it's missing something (like a second party mitigation...), but this is mostly due to its niche as powerful direct healer, which it does very well.

SCH: One of the more complex healers, but what it pays for in complexity it makes up for in versatility. SCH is probably the most powerful healer in the game. Its kit can have a little clunk to it (e.g. using Dissipation sending your Faerie away so you can't use any of her healing abilities until she comes back), but if you're playing at a lower skill level, that doesn't matter too much and you have plenty of neat tools to use as an answer to anything the game throws at you. A bonus is that SCH and SMN have the same base CLASS, Arcanist. What this means is that as you gain levels in EITHER ONE, you get the other one to level for free alongside it. Every other Job either comes from a class it doesn't share (like WHM from CNJ) or came after they stopped making Classes (AST and SGE), but SCH is unique in the entire game for getting a second Job "for free" without you having to level it separately. SCH also has a higher skill ceiling if you want to up your game, and I think has the most varied damage kit as far as that's concerned since they have a DoT, their direct damage spell, an instant cast direct damage for movement that has no CD (can be used anytime unlike SGE's), and Energy Drain using Aetherflow if you don't need it for healing and want some extra chip damage to throw out. Your Faerie is also pretty good about keeping you alive in solo stuff with you only needing to heal yourself a bit, so that can keep you from accidentally dying to stuff.

AST: Probably the hardest healer right now with the biggest focus on utility and party buffs. The main issue is a lot of buttons/button bloat (which SCH also has) but also trying to draw and play your buff cards on party members (that you must target to apply them) while doing all the other stuff you want to do in combat like heal or deal damage. And when it comes to soloing, because it's balanced around buffing its party members (increasing total party damage), it has lower personal damage than the other healers, so it can take a bit longer to kill things in solo fights/duties. Note that AST starts at level 30 and requires you to be at least level 50 and to Ishgard in the MSQ to pick it up. So if you want to start with a healer right away, you can't with AST (or SGE)

SGE: The newest healer, starting at level 70, requiring you to have a battle class to level 70 and the Endwalker expansion to pick up. SGE is probably the most complex healer to pick up since it's based a LOT more about CD use and shielding/damage % reduction abilities to smooth damage the party takes, and so doesn't have as many direct and powerful shields as any of the other healers. It's probably the hardest to learn to play well, though once you're experienced as a healer, you'll find it's less outright complex than SCH or AST. It's like a simplified SCH without quite all the tools, which can make it harder to learn but easier to play once you've learned it...depending on the person - some people find SCH easier. In solo play, you can place Kardia on yourself then just damage the bosses to death since your Kardia will heal you up just like SCH's Faerie would.

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So I think it depends on what YOU like.

If you like WHM right now, you'll probably keep liking WHM, so keep playing it. If you don't, SCH is a good choice since it also starts at level 1, gets a free SMN beside it, and is generally enjoyable to play if you want a little more complexity. You can pick up AST once you get to Ishgard (I see you're level 49?) and just try it out for fun. But it's a bit harder to play than WHM and more focused on party stuff. SGE is a ways off since you need level 70 to unlock it, so you can try it out when you get there but don't need to worry about it right now.

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Hope that helps!

Complexity is quite relative.

For example, if someone has played SCH, they likely would not find SGE to be complex (I don't) and fun to play. I would not classify AST as complex, however playing AST optimally is another matter, becoming the "best" AST is a real challenge.

Interestingly, although I started out on SCH, I find it one of the more challenging healers, it's completely a matter of personal taste but it is an extremely effective and versatile healer.

Finally, WHM is a great go-to healer for specific cases, I would agree that most people find it easy to start with.

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Originally Posted by Sotha

So, I recently came back to the game and decided that, even though I'm almost exclusively playing to get through the story content, I wanted to stick strictly to a healer role. I have a WHM almost to lvl 50 and was just asking if that particular healer job was worth holding onto or if If a different healer job was better for focusing on solo content.

What a huge mistake that was. The amount of people that couldn't remotely fathom that I want to stick to a healer job was ridiculous. I don't know what the thought process is for people when they read "Which is the best healer job for solo content" and then somehow the only thought they can come up with is "YoU ShoUlD sWItCh tO a dPs".

I'll admit that there were a few responses from people that were incredibly kind and helpful, but MOST of them were not.

So, I figure I'll ask the same thing here. Other healer players: Which healer job do you prefer for solo content? Is one better than the others or are they all about the same? Thanks in advance.

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Hey man! I haven't read all the responses, but I'm gonna sum it up as I did exactly what you are looking for to do. I did all the MSQ as a solo healer.
I played as Scholar and it was pretty easy. I'm currently leveling Astrologian, and I know it would be pretty much the same. They are harder than White Mage to play, and because of that, a bit more fun for me. So just pick what you think it's better: straightfoward or complex. White Mage is the easiest healer, while Astrologian is the hardest; Scholar is second and Sage is third. in difficulty.
I have only one tip: keep doing roulettes as much as possible, so that your current level is always higher than the MSQ requires; this way, you'll always be doing things smoothly.
Have fun!