To other Healer Mains: What keeps you around?

[ZAZX]

Didn't see a thread like this when I took a glance, and figured I'd ask other healer players just out of curiosity: What keeps you around? What's that big draw that keeps you coming back to FFXIV healing, despite the lacklustre treatment the role may or may not have received? I'm not here to debate that, really. Merely just wondering what facets of the healer role other players enjoy, and what keeps them playing healer in general.

The question came to mind when going through the game with a friend who was new to it, and explaining how each job worked. He was confused as to why I enjoy healer so much despite my complaints with it, and why I keep playing healers and why I've done so since A Realm Reborn.

I struggled to explain it, immediately my mind went back to some of the most fun moments I've had in this game, with the majority being day one content where I fought tooth and nail to keep the party alive, as well as getting to solo heal trials. Yet I couldn't really say that was why, because those moments are the exception, not the rule. The majority of content in this game doesn't push me, barely anything does any damage outside of savage and I spend most of my time hitting a single button. (And to clarify, I'm not trying to brag or anything. There's far better healers out there than me. But the fact is those are the moments I've enjoyed myself the most, where I truly felt like my contribution mattered!)

The best response I can give is I suppose I enter a state of zen unlike any other game for me, where my mind just sort of turns off and through memorization and gauging of how much damage things do I can get through fights with the bare minimum amount of healing required. It's passing strange that performing my duties as a "healer" as little as possible is what's most enjoyable to me, but yet I always come back and never stick around when trying to play tanks and DPS.

If I had to sum it up, to me, HP is a resource to spend, and spending it as skillfully as possible is the hook that keeps me coming back.

[PondHollow]

It's over now, so I can only speak in the past tense.

There's a point in Omega 7 Savage, against Guardian, where you have to run through a missile field, dodging persnickety moving targets with hitboxes you just had to get accustomed to. If you get hit by one, you will probably die. Immediately as this mechanic resolves, everyone has to stand in a personally designated meteor tower, which will deal modest damage unless one of the towers is neglected, ie, if someone's dead or at very low health, it's over. A standout moment for me as a player was seeing sometonw fail the former mechanic and reacting in a fraction of a second to stop the following mechanic from wiping the team.

But healing was a learned affiliation. I do tend to play healers but I can't say anything particular about it being on purpose. As this is my first MMO and I didn't understand how MMOs work, I started in 2016 as an Arcanist because Summoner seemed like the closest thing to a job that could do 'solo,' ie do everything. Then I went Scholar because of the queue times, and I was a Scholar main until finishing E8S. I learned to appreciate the options, and the 23 different OGCDs it used to have. But I can't say I was particularly affine to it. It was a series of welcome accidents that made me a healer main. It just turned out okay. Presumably, it would be a nice thing for every job in the game to afford many people a story of happy accidents.

I only stuck with Scholar from 5.0-5.2 because I assembled a group to do content with, and got locked into a role, and though there was (amicable!) turnover, some highly collegial acquaintances said they would join me pre-5.2 and when I looked at what my options were I got locked into the role again, and hadn't really practiced tanking to join people like that in Savage on Day 1. Once people went on hiatus and I got my mount the tether was released.

[Wilford111]

I never really thought anything was wrong with heals, tbh. I know everyone says healing is braindead but I still like it. Especially AST.

[Gemina]

Heals are still needed for clears. I think it is as simple as that, and so long as that remains, I will be here.

Healing situations are all over the map. When grouping with randoms you really don't know what you are going to get from one party to the next. You could clear something difficult without a hitch, and the same night get a NM trial that is just an utter mess. This aspect of FFXIV group play I find to be, I don't know... entertaining. But I definitely get more enjoyment out of reactive healing opposed to the proactive scripted healing of the game's harder content.

I would be one of the first to tell you that you have to be a masochist to play this role. The treatment the role has received by both dev and player has been very poor to say the least. It might be just me, but I do feel like there is an unspoken appreciation for the game's healers. Somewhere, out there in some tavern; mugs of all are risen in the name of rezz mages, err.... healers, "May they forever get us through stupid! Yarrrrrrr!!"

[AphraelAmarantha]

I like where healing is at right now. I don’t know why people think healer is brain dead easy. I don’t really think so. It’s quite challenging for me and keeps me engaged. Plus the role clicks for me unlike dps. Plus I like how WHM is more of a reactive healer.

[Limonia]

I just like having heals in addition to having attacks. I always liked various kinds of healing spells in other games and I always liked playing characters that have strong healing spells and magic attack spells, for example Nina from Breath of Fire IV.

While healers in FFXIV currently aren't really at their best, I still kind of like playing them. It's boring to only have one direct DPS spell. It's also boring to just use an oGCD heal like every 30 seconds in between spamming that one DPS spell. Like in BoF IV I also didn't control Nina only, but the other party members as well. But generally having heals + DPS is more fun to me than the other roles. Also, playing healers is the easiest for me, because I'm so used to playing them, so I'm always coming back to them.

I also like the type of spells healers have: pretty, "positive" instead of "evil" (with some exceptions like Bio and so on), swirly animations and so on. I main WHM and like having a staff as a weapon. I like the earth, wind and holy spells. So it's also the aesthetic I like about it.

I would love more interesting DPS for the healers, and I would also love it if at the same time healing were more than just weave in an oGCD heal here and there. But even in its current state I like playing healer enough that I play it regularly - hoping that it gets better next expansion.

[Iscah]

I prefer reactive gameplay and I don't mind the "single" attack button (or rather the small pool of situational attack spells) - more skills would simply take up more hotbar space and distract me from paying attention to the party.

Yes, some dungeons are easy and need minimal actual healing, but others are still hard.

It's a role that needs filling in the party, and I enjoy filling it.

[Saix027]

I never really thought anything was wrong with heals, tbh. I know everyone says healing is braindead but I still like it. Especially AST.

The problem is how they are now compared to the past, issue here is not the heals themself mostly, but what you do when no healing is needed, staying around lettign mana regenerate is not amazing really and the view attacks we have is boring since they got limited so much that outside of healing you lost heavily on variety, and that made the healing boring.

Well, except WHM that rolls his head on the keyboard or controller and has to watch not accidently reviving Haurchefant somewhere att his grave, while other healers have to actively use there CD's while WHM ahs them as glam and there OP second AoE attack with his black lily.

Overall outside heal intense fights the healers fall asleep basically. Since attacking is very limited, and now i not support healers that want to do DPS, i simply want to do something more active if no healing is needed, i would be happy already with more debuffs or buffs, but all got taken away and simplified way to much. Not wanting elitism on skills also but, some bit of thought in some skills would still be nice, not just spam something.

[Brandedblade]

What keeps me healing is the fact I didn't find the changes so bad as to make me feel toxic about it, I mean sure I get missing having a few more things to do but on a fundamental level I'm still healing the same way I healed as a sch in 4.0, by setting up mitigation preemptively or by managing a pet and resources to minimize my gcd heal casts. The difference being i press less buttons to do it. I know this is a controversial take on these forums but I do absolutely believe that this expansion was focused on bringing the 3 healers to a base to not only set up a 4th healer, but to allow the 3 current ones to grow in a healthier direction.

[Liam_Harper]

I still enjoy it.

It's a little more interesting than dps for me because it's dynamic with the group, rather than a set rotation. People can die, stand in fire, you can have a good co-heal or bad one and you react to and adjust to that on the go. The double game of pushing high damage and healing the group means you feel you can contribute more by playing well.

That said, there are definite problems. 2 button dps, clunky fairies, WhM's clipping, freecure traps, old abilities being ripped away renamed and added as new ones, parts of the toolkit that don't make sense and so on. I'll be continuing to leave my feedback here like everyone else, but I do think this section of the forums tends to work themselves up a bit with the whole "I've been playing 25 years and I've quit the game forever because healers put me to sleep, put my family in a coma and made my computer stop functioning from boredom". I think we just want to feel listened to and some people are frustrated, but if we didn't like the healer role we wouldn't be so vocal about wanting it to receive some attention.