Healing is NOT easy!!!!

I'm a tank main, and I filled a book run for m3s for shits and giggles, since I already healed that on sage once. Maybe it's because it was late at night, but I was fighting for my life out there!!

Between dying from taking the wrong spot in fuse or foe (forgot that healers took intercards), to not healing and mitigating enough to get through fusefield cuz I tried using seraphism for an earlier mechanic, and finally dying because instead of looking at the attack name being used, I was looking at my hotbar to see what I can use to pull us through Xboom Special. Also, I didn't realize that corpses can iframe through healer LB3 when they respawn from outside the arena to the center, at which point I was flailing around desperately GCD shielding, only to wipe once more.

At least we recleared on the very last pull after wipes from me, ddos, and general tomfoolery. But I learned my lesson, never heal savage late at night......

I do think that learning healer on a savage fight is likely the most difficult. I heard M3S is also a fight designed to test healers a bit.

The "Healing being easy" was more towards casual content. where you don't need to heal much even in big AOE situations due to serval different issues stacked on each other (no its not just tank sustain that only plays a part in it).

What people are generally saying/asking for when saying "healing is too easy" is that in all forms of content they should feel impactful and like actual "healers". Instead of only the most difficult kinds of content.

It does somewhat depend on the content... Something like Everkeep EX is rather insultingly easy to heal...

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Originally Posted by Doomfist

I'm a tank main...

Between dying from taking the wrong spot in fuse or foe (forgot that healers took intercards), to not healing and mitigating enough to get through fusefield cuz I tried using seraphism for an earlier mechanic, and finally dying because instead of looking at the attack name being used, I was looking at my hotbar to see what I can use to pull us through Xboom Special. Also, I didn't realize that corpses can iframe through healer LB3 when they respawn from outside the arena to the center, at which point I was flailing around desperately GCD shielding, only to wipe once more.

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From my own, (very) limited experience running Savage fights when they're current: If you're a tank, you need a good plan for your mitigations. If you're a healer, you need a good plan for your heals. Making sh*t up as you go will likely end poorly, though, depending on the party, you sometimes have no choice but to try.

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Originally Posted by Doomfist

[...]Between dying from taking the wrong spot in fuse or foe (forgot that healers took intercards), to not healing and mitigating enough to get through fusefield cuz I tried using seraphism for an earlier mechanic, and finally dying because instead of looking at the attack name being used, I was looking at my hotbar to see what I can use to pull us through Xboom Special. Also, I didn't realize that corpses can iframe through healer LB3 when they respawn from outside the arena to the center, at which point I was flailing around desperately GCD shielding, only to wipe once more[...]

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If it helps, you devise a heal plan in a rather similar fashion to devising your mitigation plan on tanks. I.e. X cooldown will always be up for Y mechanic (in its most basic sense). Failing to do that in EX or more difficult duties means you're at the mercy of whatever fight or flight response you'll likely spit out and/or your other 7 party member's competencies at covering your mistakes.

Other than that, general inexperiencedness with the role also impacts decision making i.e. panicking instead of remaining calm and collected when something goes wrong; and that's just to be expected if you don't main the role. Everybody starts somewhere.

Healing is only remotely challenging when learning a fight. After that, you're back to pressing your one damage spell waiting for a raidwide to happen 90% of the time.

Okay this week I healed m1s and m2s for the first time, and healed m3s again.

M1 on sage was pretty easy and relaxing, though I died from a dps' mistake during splintering nails.

M2 wasn't bad as scholar but I never noticed the dot in beat 1, when hearts start crossing the room everyone drops to like 70% hp for some reason, I caused one mistake where I went to H1 spot during pairs since I got a bit spun around in beat 2.

M3 as white mage was surprisingly smoother than when I'm on shield healer, temperance and asylum during fusefield was adequate, while liturgy during xboom special makes that sequence a little less panicky. I told the other healer (sage) that pure healing m3 was easier than shield healing it, but they weren't quite convinced this is the case, exclaiming that mits make a bigger difference. Perhaps I was paired with mediocre white mages during my shield healing m3 fights?

I didn't heal m4 and just tanked it on warrior instead of pld or drk like I normally do. I bought the 730 axe, went in, and the 735 axe dropped....I literally used the 730 axe for ONE fight before getting my first 735 weapon that coincidentally replaces my shiny new axe, oh well.

Yeah the savage raids in particular are disappointing. They seem brutal at first, but the way savage/ultimates are designed in FFXIV it is always just a certain "pattern" of oGCDs and sometimes GCDs being expected of you. And nothing more. And it's all planned pro-active preparation, never reactive healing like in other games as very few elemens are random in damage-size or damage-target.

Don't get me wrong though, I absolutely agree that healing isn't easy. It's boring and has a design that goes against what makes healer-players want to play a healer in the first place (the reactive nature), but it's not easy in particular for a newcomer. I had high hope in early EX runs that the dev team changed direction but it turns out they haven't, they just elevated stats where the difference between undergeared and geared are even bigger than before.

Yeah EX1 was praised a lot for being a fun healer extreme, because of how intense it is. Funny that m1 and m2 savage are easier for healers than ex1, though bear in mind I'm healing in duty complete parties of well-geared players so that further makes healing easier. I'm not exactly new to healing either since I healed barb golbez and zeromus ex before dawntrail dropped.

And besides, this is the first tier of the expansion, I didn't do panda savage but I heard that p1-4 were easy as well. I'm wondering if next tier will be a big spike like abyssos was, where healers were at their rarest.

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Originally Posted by Doomfist

M2 wasn't bad as scholar but I never noticed the dot in beat 1, when hearts start crossing the room everyone drops to like 70% hp for some reason, I caused one mistake where I went to H1 spot during pairs since I got a bit spun around in beat 2.

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After the transition usually there are hots around.
Then as we pass the 1.5min mark many of the ogcd from the first AoE at 30s come back which keeps the group alive (like assize n stuff).
By the time you reached the share, you've been a whole minute under the DoT damage and people have taken a few towers and altough they don't really hurt. The DoT still nibbles on people hp bar and once the share and next thing arrive everyone is at 50-70% life.

The core reason is that arena wide dot isn't something we're used to deal with.

Yeah, but it's something we absolutely ought to be handling in most fights. Or a variant of it, it's not like other games have no long explored the space of "consistent raid damage output":

* A simple DoT ticking away constantly.
* Random attacks hitting 1-3 random people for a non-trivial amount of damage every few seconds (so they need targetted healing lest the next such attack or overall AoE could down them).
* Similarly, random circle of line AoEs that have no prior warning that hit for a lower but still significant amount, these would force the group to spread apart in idle times plus assuming they would not stop during mechanics they'd add some extra spice onto otherwise fully dependable situations (their damage is of course much lower than the single hits).
* 360° cleaves where AAs hit everyone but the primary target in melee range, too, but for far less damage. Basically melee DPS need constant healing attention.

It's hard in prog, where every job is hard.

It's easy has hell AND boring once you go for reclear, Especially most jobs has heal prep now.

GCD attack, GCD attack, GCD attack x10, raidwide come after this mechanic? bam, earthly stars, flowers, SGE layered shield thing, fairy buff, one or two OGCD after dmg pop. bam.

other jobs as the pleasure of managing their CDs, maximizing their damage.
With healer if you are REALLY REALLY good you get to squeeze in 1-2 same GCD single target spell every once in a while.

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

Healing is only remotely challenging when learning a fight. After that, you're back to pressing your one damage spell waiting for a raidwide to happen 90% of the time.

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How is this any different from dps or tank rotations?

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Originally Posted by Wilford111

How is this any different from dps or tank rotations?

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Because a DPS or tank has a full rotation a healer has one button

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

Healing is only remotely challenging when learning a fight. After that, you're back to pressing your one damage spell waiting for a raidwide to happen 90% of the time.

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Your static spoils you. Healing is always challenging if you PF, as the average cohealer is more likely to suck than not. And if any readers don't notice this problem... They likely are it.

So if your not doing ex - ultimate content healing is easy. Its easy in normal raids alliance wut not. Once you get to higher content healing becomes much harder. The need to communicate, manage gcds, understanding shields, over healing, when to play safe. It becomes way more technical in higher end content.

That sounds more like 'frustrating' than 'challenging' when the only factor that bars you from a pleasant run is 'how stupid my cohealer is/whoever presses the mits in the party'.

Most of things becomes moot when one plays it safe by choosing to pump out 1 or 2 safety GCD heals to account for these types of players instead of casting Glaroilficosis, which only needs a pair of watchful eyes, something that a healer is normally already accustomed to. So again, where's the challenge to that?

I agree that feeling compelled to pre-shield all of the heavy raidwides in savage because I can't rely on my random party to be using their own abilities is not adding meaningful engagement to an encounter.

Ideally, the encounter should force them to do that instead of getting complacent and allowing the burden of survival to be shouldered mostly by the shield healer.

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Originally Posted by bp_isa_ff

Your static spoils you. Healing is always challenging if you PF, as the average cohealer is more likely to suck than not. And if any readers don't notice this problem... They likely are it.

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The co-healer is rarely the sole issue, it's mitigation from randoms in general. Since pretty much every mechanic is a mit check more than a healing check and randoms in PF aren't exactly known for using their mitigations in the first place.

Having a Reprisal + Feint + Addle + something like Shake or Holos on almost every AoE or having absolutely nothing reducing the damage is what makes the big difference.

Let me see if I have this straight.

You did savage, the hardest content in the game bar ultimates/criterion.

on a job you don’t normally play, on a role that isn’t your main.

Late at night while tired.

AND you cleared?

And this is your argument to show that healing isn’t easy?

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

Let me see if I have this straight.

You did savage, the hardest content in the game bar ultimates/criterion.

on a job you don’t normally play, on a role that isn’t your main.

Late at night while tired.

AND you cleared?

And this is your argument to show that healing isn’t easy?

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Thank you for summarizing my own reaction so well. I was too stunned that anyone would come to OP's conclusion to be able to compose anything anywhere close as good as you.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

Let me see if I have this straight.

You did savage, the hardest content in the game bar ultimates/criterion.

on a job you don’t normally play, on a role that isn’t your main.

Late at night while tired.

AND you cleared?

And this is your argument to show that healing isn’t easy?

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We cleared on the LAST pull, after OVER AN HOUR of wipes, some from my mistakes, some from others. And unlike on tank, I actually have to care about healing the party after every. single. raidwide. I have to constantly move to the middle while also being less mobile from constantly casting my dps spell, so that my heals and mits will hit everyone. When someone dies, I have to look at the party list to see who I need to rez (I play on controller btw) which distracts me from the next mechanic and makes it easier to mess up. When I'm on tank, I can just trust my healers on fusefield and xboom special after I mitigate properly, but when I'm on healer, I am the one who has to spam heals and mits to get us through those back-to-back damage waves.

I am the only thing stopping the party from being annihilated, the pressure on this role is immense!!! There's a reason healers are the rarest in PF and it's -not- because of the boring dps rotation. Every fight gets boring on every role if you repeat it 10+ times, much more if you count prog.

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Originally Posted by Doomfist

We cleared on the LAST pull, after OVER AN HOUR of wipes, some from my mistakes, some from others. And unlike on tank, I actually have to care about healing the party after every. single. raidwide. I have to constantly move to the middle while also being less mobile from constantly casting my dps spell, so that my heals and mits will hit everyone. When someone dies, I have to look at the party list to see who I need to rez (I play on controller btw) which distracts me from the next mechanic and makes it easier to mess up. When I'm on tank, I can just trust my healers on fusefield and xboom special after I mitigate properly, but when I'm on healer, I am the one who has to spam heals and mits to get us through those back-to-back damage waves.

I am the only thing stopping the party from being annihilated, the pressure on this role is immense!!! There's a reason healers are the rarest in PF and it's -not- because of the boring dps rotation. Every fight gets boring on every role if you repeat it 10+ times, much more if you count prog.

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I'm sorry, after reading this, you still haven't realized that (a) tanks are the aberration- you basically get spoiled playing a tank (yes- tank privilege is a thing). I realize you took the time to write " unlike a tank", but I don't think you fully appreciate just how big that privilege is.

In addition, a good half of the items you mentioned become second nature on a healer main- knowing where to stand, slidecasting, having less mobility (choosing which skills to use for that), looking at the party list (managing your UI)- know when to look at the UI.

Even saying that 'you are the only one keeping the party from being annihilated" - technically, not always true, especially in more difficult content, which is why PF tends to have its issues. Every job has skills to help a healer. Whether or not they use them is outside a healer's control- sometime they don't, but MUST- but blame the healer when they die. Healers get fed up.

So no, I have no issues with someone running into issues on a job that they admit to hardly playing on what should be challenging content, when they admit to being not at their best. It might be easy for some people ( a minority) , I wouldn't want most people to just to be able to pick it up and master it in those circumstances.

Bro you should see some of these people I encounter in PF/DF. Healing good people who know what they're doing versus healing random mouthbreathers is like night and day. I've had groups eat so much damage that they made casual story content feel like a damn EX run and I'm still amazed that it happened. It's so bad I stopped doing it. I wasn't having fun; I was just stressed and pissed at how bad people were in stuff that was supposed to be easy.

I've been finding healing incredibly hard and difficult. It feels almost impossible to keep the groups up and buffed on top of the fact with positionals and everything else especially once you hit the level 40 dungeons and up. Like bless the healers that can do it in this game. Becuase this game is the hardest to heal in I've ever encountered which sucks cuase I love healer roles. I love the healer classes and lore.

Is this sarcasm? There are no real buffs in this game, outside of maybe Astro, and even that isn't buffs you have to "keep up"? Modern MMOs don't really do that any more.

What healer positionals are you talking about

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Originally Posted by nobleboivin

I've been finding healing incredibly hard and difficult. It feels almost impossible to keep the groups up and buffed on top of the fact with positionals and everything else especially once you hit the level 40 dungeons and up. Like bless the healers that can do it in this game. Becuase this game is the hardest to heal in I've ever encountered which sucks cuase I love healer roles. I love the healer classes and lore.

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There's no buffing on any healer aside from AST- and that has been greatly simplified- I don't see how that's "almost impossible to keep up", in addition, technically in normal content, if someone is a new healer- if they miss half their cards as they are learning, due to be overwhelmed - there are likely to be little consequences. The group will still complete the content as long as they get the necessary heals.

I can't speak to your prior experience, this game expects healers to deal with mechanics while both healing and DPSing, perhaps that is what you find difficult. I can say that what I find different in this game as opposed to others is that in FFXIV healers wear the same gear as casters, in other games we were regarded as casters but could wear different gear providing higher HP pools that provided higher defensive stats, which made our jobs easier.

I mean, I’ll be the first to say healing certainly isn’t hard - it’s usually no more than a literal button press lol.

That said, considering they made Esuna instant cast and most healers still can’t be trusted to use it under any circumstances, I have to wonder how they’d cope if they made it any harder lol. Then again, most healers can’t be trusted now precisely because most healing literally just boils down to ‘press any button for giant potency instant oGCD healing, continue DPS’ing’; can’t expect anyone to learn when there are no lessons ever being given lol.

They’ve basically created a healer cycle of suffering lol. Healing is super easy, it can’t be harder because people are only able to cope with super easy, even though the only reason they can’t cope is that they know nothing else other than super easy healing.

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Originally Posted by Connor

I mean, I’ll be the first to say healing certainly isn’t hard - it’s usually no more than a literal button press lol.

That said, considering they made Esuna instant cast and most healers still can’t be trusted to use it under any circumstances, I have to wonder how they’d cope if they made it any harder lol. Then again, most healers can’t be trusted now precisely because most healing literally just boils down to ‘press any button for giant potency instant oGCD healing, continue DPS’ing’; can’t expect anyone to learn when there are no lessons ever being given lol.

They’ve basically created a healer cycle of suffering lol. Healing is super easy, it can’t be harder because people are only able to cope with super easy, even though the only reason they can’t cope is that they know nothing else other than super easy healing.

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I don't know what brought on so many uses of hyperbole i.e. "super easy", and such a low opinion of healers "most healers can' be trusted under any circumstances" , "I wonder how they'd cope if they made it any harder". Did a healer let you die?

If so, kindly move on, healing can be made more challenging, I have no idea where you get the idea where this "cycle of suffering" comes from nor the idea of healers only being able to cope with only these limits comes from- and looking at your join date that's rather surprising.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

I don't know what brought on so many uses of hyperbole i.e. "super easy", and such a low opinion of healers "most healers can' be trusted under any circumstances" , "I wonder how they'd cope if they made it any harder". Did a healer let you die?

If so, kindly move on, healing can be made more challenging, I have no idea where you get the idea where this "cycle of suffering" comes from nor the idea of healers only being able to cope with only these limits comes from- and looking at your join date that's rather surprising.

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And I don’t know what it is about my specific word choice of all things that has you so personally offended. What, should I have said ‘slightly easy’? ‘Moderately’? ‘Somewhat?’ What’s the appropriate term here, language police? ‘A small fraction of the playerbase’?

I’m saying that healers can only cope with the limits they’re set. The bar was higher in 2.0 / 3.0, people played at the bar. The bar went down in Shadowbringers. Players…still play at the bar. With generally little incentive to improve - outside of those who want to challenge Savage or beyond - why wouldn’t they? Or are you going to say that somehow despite the bar lowering the average player is somehow even more skilled than ever before?

Always remember good strategy will get u further bs'ing around will get you no where. So like others say coordinate plan and procceed as planned. Im sure you will get it. Take your time.

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Originally Posted by Connor

And I don’t know what it is about my specific word choice of all things that has you so personally offended. What, should I have said ‘slightly easy’? ‘Moderately’? ‘Somewhat?’ What’s the appropriate term here, language police? ‘A small fraction of the playerbase’?

I’m saying that healers can only cope with the limits they’re set. The bar was higher in 2.0 / 3.0, people played at the bar. The bar went down in Shadowbringers. Players…still play at the bar. With generally little incentive to improve - outside of those who want to challenge Savage or beyond - why wouldn’t they? Or are you going to say that somehow despite the bar lowering the average player is somehow even more skilled than ever before?

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Where did I say that you "personally offended" me? I didn't. What is odd is you're finding it odd that I would look at your choice of words- since it's a forum- there really isn't anything else to go on, is there? Words do matter, usually when someone repeats the same one over and over, there's a reason- and usually it sends a clear message.

Now, in your last paragraph, you go from excusing healers if they aren't up to some standard- since they don't design the jobs, to saying that healers really don't have any incentive to play at their limited jobs anyways to questioning whether healers are more skilled than ever? That is really the most disjointed reply to my comment, not to mention it completely ignores that the healer segment is not monolithic.

I have never seen this type of bizarre reasoning - to summarize: "well, healer design has been simplified so all of a sudden any veteran healer has lost their brain cells and , years later, in DT, is a worse healer, than they were in HW".