Picking a healer

[Neela]

I would follow tera Luna because it's true that whm is the most simpliest and boring heal
Best to start

well most of the comm will say whm is the easiest and most boring heal to play... for me (i own all three at max gear atm) sch is the easiest one to play in combination of support and dps at the same time. however whm comes with the strongest burst dmg, sch provides best dps for longterm fights but defintly lacks with burst aoa dmg. ast is for sure the "newest" or let's say most modern cls of the trio. synastry, cards, choice of stance, dots, hots, burst dmg and self buffs are way more complex than the other two.

for me – everybody who enjoy healing at all should max them all, they are all nice to play =)

as a sidenote if you a familiar with all three healers, you are ready for every raid or trial grp-constellation. for me there is no "best" healer, they all shine or whine in certain situations ; )

[Reinha]

I'll give you a few pointers about game play.

• AoE: Do you like being able to heal everyone at the same time whenever you want? SCH cannot do so as well as the other two, because all the raw AoE heals have cooldowns.
• Extra management: Do you want to focus on healing or juggle more things? AST has to keep using cards and SCH has to take care of the fairy's position and abilities.
• Party role: Do you want to be the main healer or support the main healer? AST and WHM are the main healers because of a good reactive kit and strong heal-over-time spells, and SCH supports by preparing for incoming damage and doing more dps. This dynamic only exists in 8 man content.
• Emergencies: How do you prefer to deal with bad situations? WHM has big raw heals with cooldowns for single target and AoE, SCH has 3 charges of a buff to use every minute on various instant heals and on top of those some cooldowns on the fairy, AST has a mobility cooldown (everything becomes instant heals) and also a combined -10% damage and heal-over-time bubble that has to be channeled.
• Overall playstyle: What kind of healer do you want to be? AST is good at keeping the healing going by extending heals, WHM is good at burst healing, and SCH has both burst and sustained healing at the expense of missing some regular on-demand heals

If you like healing, though, you should level them all because they share gear. It may take some time to develop a preference.

[LDR]

Asking for complexity, want fun, AND your asking for actual opinions?!
I like you already.

SO, in my opinion the answer to that one is AST.

I used to be a SCH main throughout most of 2.x and up until somewhere in 3.1-3.2 because for me it was the most fun whilst being more engaging and complex [to me] than WHM.
WHM is still a fun class to play from time to time, but i personally find its toolkit is so straight forward theres not enough variables in what you can do for me.
Being able to manipulate the fairy and co-ordinate heals either chaining back to back on a single target or healing multiple people at once in different areas of the arena/map was engaging, as was juggling cleric stance and knowing how far i can push it along. I personally also found good fun in learning optimal places to position the fairy and ways to bounce skills about [placing fairy in the middle of a group away from me and launching a deployed adlo off her is always nice etc.]

That said i always liked the core toolkit feel of WHM more, and AST generally emulates that core kit layout, plus has skills that can be deployed skillfully in interesting ways like SCH; and so in the end i was always doing "more" each time i played an instance as AST than any of the others. I personally feel theres more of a juggling act going on as AST and you can use the tools in a few various ways which make tactical choices and the complexity of the class all the more entertaining than the other 2.
Sure, a noticable part of your kit is RNG, but using what you can to manipulate it to your best and then deploying things correctly is just as good to me as placing the fairy and knowing when to use her skills. You can still set up nicely to give yourself time to dps if you wish and have the means to turn things around and recover from spikes if needs be.

In all my opinion is that AST is the more fun and complex choice of the 3 simple because of how active you can be in comparison and the variables of your choices.
But you should most definately play all 3 to get a feel for the styles they bring and work it out from there; i whole heartedly believe you will be a better healer if you know how to play all 3 and use them effectively.

[Seoulstar]

As with every class, you'll be crucified if you choose to spend long periods of time afking while the 3 other players in your team are actually doing stuff.

Not getting into another debate on this topic again. I'm just stating the pointless complaining over something that truly isn't much of a big deal.

[Powe]

If you want to dps while healing, go scholar. Eos allows you to basically dps most of the time and if the tank you have is a good one, you won't have to heal a lot unless mistakes happens. Whm and AST can basically heal an entire group within seconds because of their stronger healing power, so if you don't want to be trusting with the DF go with either of those 2( though from my experience dpsing as an AST can be difficult since it doesn't have as much as the regen affects as WHM and Eos.)

[Kabzy]

If you want fun, and you say you enjoy healing, you should go with AST. SCH is more of a DPS that has a fairy and shields to aid the main healer. When I go into a raid as SCH, I look to see where I can add more DPS, not necessarily making up a healing rotation like our AST would do.

Though I would second what Tera said and say don't count WHM out. There's nothing wrong with going straight to AST, but it may take you longer to get better as it's a much less forgiving job than WHM.

[Angvir]

Thanks for the replies. I appreciate the thought that went in to your statements. I'm going to weigh a lot of this with what I think and then come to a decision. I will eventually level all 3, but I wanted to begin with a more complex class which is why I decided between SCH and AST. I'm pretty familiar with healing in MMOs, so I believe I can handle it.

[Atoli]

The downside to starting with a more complex class first is that leveling WHM later on will be even more boring

To answer between SCH and AST:
Like most people said, all three healers have their good and bad parts, and which you care about more will end up determining which healer you enjoy the most.
To me personally, AST is the most fun to play. SCH always feels..limited? Don't get me wrong, you will be very active, lots of DPSing and some shielding/healing.
AST on the other hand is a healer and supporter that also is DPSing. Basically, 3 things instead of 2. Is it somewhat stressful? Yes. But also very satisfying.
Especially if you enjoy being not only a healer but also a general supporter

As AST, you can regen, you can shield, whichever fits the fight better. You can throw all kinds of useful buffs onto your party without having to give up regen for it like SCH has to.
If you want to throw a big heal, you just do it without having to think about maybe needing a big heal later on whenever you use completely unrelated skills (like SCH has to, because if you use up your eatherflow stacks on the wrong skills, no big heals for a minute). If you need big aoe heals, well, just cast them. No limit other than your MP.

All that said, I really hate AST below max level. While most of it's healing toolset is available from surprisingly early on, it's the only healer who gets DMG spells really, REALLY late. Aoe at 52, stronger single target attack at 54 even.
And even at 60, you will fall behind the other 2 healers in terms of DPS. Still, our high-potency DoTs are nice and also don't need any accuracy to land, so that's something

[Fernosaur]

I will adress the elephant in the room brought up by some posters and ask the OP: Does the sound of DPSing while also having to handle healing sound appealing to you? Or do you want to just HEAL. I say this because all three healers have potential to deal a lot of damage, particularly in dungeons, but in 8-man raid settings, WHM and AST are usually relegated to being almost purely focused in healing, while Scholar usually is a secondary healing that is expected to DPS. This isn't needed in most daily content, but if you ever intend to tackle more complex fights in the game it's something that is very important to note. This isn't to say Scholar can't heal things on their own, but it takes a little bit more planning to do so.


Getting that out of the way, I'll give my two cents on the healing kits of both classes you seem to be interested in:

While I absolutely love Scholar, the one SUPER postive thing Astrologian has that no other job in the game does is the ability to make every encounter different for yourself, simply because of the cards. Sometimes you'll get a super Balance on your top DPS, other times you might get an enhanced Bole before a big hit on the tank, or you might be able to give a big haste to yourself, a DPSing WHM or a Dark Knight in Blood Weapon, and they will all love you for it. Sometimes you won't get shit and you'll be mad at the RNG for some time. I think that alone makes Astrologian a "high skill" job, since it requires you to know a lot about the other classes and their toolkits in order to properly react to the randomized buffs you get and use them optimally.

That said, my love for Scholar comes from the vast, vast amounts of options the class has for handling things. I really like solo healing current 8-man content on Scholar, because it requires you to plan ahead, know the fight or do some research. Since its reactive potential is much more limited, you have to know when to use what for better effect. Believe me when I say that using a particular Cooldown in X part of a fight can definitely make or break the next few seconds when solo healing on SCH, whereas a WHM or AST can just raw-heal everything as a reaction and still come out fine. This isn't to say that they are easier to play, because AST can definitely take advantage of its own CDs and plan ahead for better effect, but that's the core difference in their playstyle, in my opinion: Planning ahead is absolutely necessary if you're playing Scholar.

[Neela]

I will adress the elephant in the room brought up by some posters and ask the OP: Does the sound of DPSing while also having to handle healing sound appealing to you? (...) WHM and AST are usually relegated to being almost purely focused in healing, while Scholar usually is a secondary healing that is expected to DPS. This isn't needed in most daily content, but if you ever intend to tackle more complex fights in the game it's something that is very important to note. This isn't to say Scholar can't heal things on their own, but it takes a little bit more planning to do so.

oh that is a very good advice - like he said you should decide if you want to play a main-healer or support-healer in 8/24 grp content first. most advices in here count towards endgame in generell but for casual farm situations some things came up i wanted to share with you too.



- if you want to run dngs unsync (meant lvl60) for whatever reason (low level gear farm for other cls, craft items, etc) Ast & Whm provide aoe burst atks in which sch sadly lags (holy & gravity)
- if you want farm things in sync mode (lvl50 capped) whm is the only one who got an aoe for burst dmg.
- if you like or have to farm fates or mobs solo, sch beats the main-healers in obvious reasons... feary will heal you, chocobo will tank, you will dps

while writing things down... i recognized that those tips are just about dps-ing life of the healers... is this even interesting for you or do you want to concentrate on pure healing for now?