Has anyone quit healing?

[ForsakenRoe]

Hearts really are the second class citizens in the game huh. With the fewest examples. Half the time you’re just a glorified babysitter spamming Glare or Broil anticipating a basic bitch raid wide that can be wiped clean with a Rapture or a indom then continue to spam. The game desperately needs more scenario where healers need to be primed like SOS or Ivalice boss #7

What the hell is 'ivalice boss 7'? The math robot? cos that doesn't exactly require healers to know what they're doing, it requires people to 'not stand in the rotating cone aoe', 'dont greed for the drill proximity thing' and 'have basic understanding of maths'. The only 'heal really hard' part that comes to mind in that fight is right after the maths, where your max HP jumps back to normal but you're left at single digit health. Which can be dealt with entirely via OGCDs, as usual. The only 'primed' happening in that fight is when he tells you to make your HP be one haHAAAA

And I farmed SOS 99 times for the mount, I don't really recall there being a time where I was 'primed' per se, any time 'oh big spooky damage' happened I'd have something to deal with it. Looking at a certain site that shall remain unnamed, apparently I was AST for a lot of the SOS runs? Weird, thought I was mostly a WHM main by then. Anyway, if I was AST, then that'd mean I'd have CO, CU, Earthly Star, Horoscope, and all four of those have a 1min CD. you could ration them out and have one used every 15 sec, they're SO frequent. It's ridiculous

[Rilifane]

I've never been fond of the idea of "Here, have a big empty HP bar and now fill it like the good little HP battery that you are" as healer mechanics.
I consider healchecks like WL2 to be much more interesting because to me, healer (despite what the word would suggest if you want to be stubborn about it) hasn't been about moving HP bars to the right instead of left like DPS do.

It's mainly about juggling.
Decision making, responsibility, weighing the risks and then working down a priority list while keeping an eye on resources.
Going 1111 on a HP bar is just as interesting as going 11111 on a boss to me; Terminal was a terrible heal check for that reason because it was literally just "stand still and spam heals". Exciting.
Something like WL2 however had more to consider since you had a lot of movement involved and a mix of hard individual hits, regular hits and multihits while also having to keep an eye on heal range and your MP since it was so late into a long fight. I've seen more than one group wipe to a healer being oom halfway because they spammed their GCD heals too liberally.

[Renathras]

Playing FFXI lately...very different Healing model there.

VERY different. Not in a bad way, just in a different way.

[Absurdity]

Playing FFXI lately...very different Healing model there.

VERY different. Not in a bad way, just in a different way.

I've never actually played XI, nor am I planning to. Is it more akin to the oldschool model of attrition healing, with the party taking smaller amounts of damage but constantly the entire fight?

[Sebazy]

It's much more an attrition model yeah. Stand up, do a big burst of healing then get right back to meditating. Healing itself generally wasn't hard, you just had to tread on eggshells and respect the content, doubly so if you were a Taru.

FFXI did a far better job of making everyone feel important even in merit or exp grinds though. I was a BRD main and on paper you'd look at the job and think it was entirely useless, I did so little personal damage that it'd take me some 10 minutes to solo some random fluff mob for a sliver exp at the level cap even though I was one of the best geared EU bards on the server. Yet many groups wouldn't even leave town without someone like myself for the support role. A good healer that could keep their MP going for a long chain was also absolutely cherished.

[Vinal211]

It's much more an attrition model yeah. Stand up, do a big burst of healing then get right back to meditating. Healing itself generally wasn't hard, you just had to tread on eggshells and respect the content, doubly so if you were a Taru.

FFXI did a far better job of making everyone feel important even in merit or exp grinds though. I was a BRD main and on paper you'd look at the job and think it was entirely useless, I did so little personal damage that it'd take me some 10 minutes to solo some random fluff mob for a sliver exp at the level cap even though I was one of the best geared EU bards on the server. Yet many groups wouldn't even leave town without someone like myself for the support role. A good healer that could keep their MP going for a long chain was also absolutely cherished.

as someone who never played XI I'm assuming that the idea was that even stepping outside of a haven was akin to queuing up for a dungeon with how much could kill you. wasn't there also something like using loopholes in the system to have someone lure mobs to a central locale and everyone else bursting them to high hell or something? cause i could have sworn seeing a few videos of that.

[Sebazy]

as someone who never played XI I'm assuming that the idea was that even stepping outside of a haven was akin to queuing up for a dungeon with how much could kill you.

Sort of, at the endgame for merit farms you'd generally form a PT in town and then head out to camp as a group to make things safer. At lower levels it was more common to have people waiting at a zone line or safe spot for a spot to open and groups would just replace people as such, this practice gradually falls out of favour as typical camps get more dangerous, widespread and expensive to travel to (through travel reagents use like Silencing Oils).

Wasn't there also something like using loopholes in the system to have someone lure mobs to a central locale and everyone else bursting them to high hell or something? cause i could have sworn seeing a few videos of that.

It wasn't so much of a loophole, more just how leveling was done back then. Camps were generally safe spots that were mostly agro free and safe for the casters to stay sat as long as possible. Having something pop within agro range was at worst, highly dangerous and potentially caused deaths, or at best would prevent your casters from medding (aka regenerating MP) thus breaking your EXP chain. Thus you'd have a puller that would tag mobs and bring them back to your camp to be tackled in a safer manner than roaming around. Many other MMOs of the same period followed the same concept, Everquest probably being the best example.

One thing that is quite surprising to people that never played FFXI is just how dangerous simple leveling trash was. As a Taru caster and bard main, a typical IT rated EXP farm trash mob hitting me whilst I was sat down would generally one shot me with an auto attack. Tanks would fare much better at taking hits from them but would deal very little damage, certainly not enough to tackle them solo. Even with the better survivability, it wasn't exactly uncommon for entirely innocuous looking mobs to have enough firepower to have your tank fearing for their life and potentially even getting one shot from full. Corkscrew says hi.

In many ways, the game's brutality was what forced it's player base to be much more tight knit even if rather cliquey. There was only so much you could do solo and even then you were pretty much forced onto the pet jobs to get anywhere at that point.

[ZephyrMenodora]

I still love healing but as a casual player most of the content is just too easy / boring, so I don't find it challenging as a healer. I'm actually at the point where I appreciate "hot mess" runs so I have something to do.

As such I moved a lot of my playtime to tanking and DPS which I spent less time doing, so is still learning and something new to do.

Lots of times in lower level roulettes heals are barely needed if at all, so too much time spent casting your repetitive DPS skills.

[Nizzi]

"I still love it but also it's boring so I don't play it"

what?

I mean I completely agree with you that it's boring but IDK why you would say you love it still if you think it's boring and you don't want to play it lmao

[ForsakenRoe]

"I still love it but also it's boring so I don't play it"

what?

I mean I completely agree with you that it's boring but IDK why you would say you love it still if you think it's boring and you don't want to play it lmao

assuming it's from the same point of view as I have for the role, it's pretty simple: we like healing, we enjoy being healers in games, but we also can see that it's currently very flawed in this one, and hope it receives improvements. everyone whos suggesting changes for healers arent suggesting them because they hate healer role (well, not entirely), but because they like healer role and want to see it be better than it's forced to be right now