Healer/Tank Anxiety - Does it Ever Go Away?

[TaleraRistain]

Just jump in. Let people know you're learning the class. You will have some jerks but most will at least be understanding of mistakes and the best will try to help and give tips if you're open to it.

[ronibosch]

Thank you, everyone, for your input! I'll be coming back to a lot of these as I gradually overcome my anxiety.

I may or may not have imposter syndrome (it creeps up in my day-to-day), so that might be a reason for my worries as well. Still, I feel a lot better after reading everybody's posts so far.

Please, keep 'em coming if you have anything else of relevance to share! :D

Also,

In short, as a tank, you are the prettiest princess at this ball.

This is giving me ideas for a future PLD or WAR glam. I'm tempted to buy the princess gown on the online store now.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Thank you, everyone, for your input! I'll be coming back to a lot of these as I gradually overcome my anxiety.

I may or may not have imposter syndrome (it creeps up in my day-to-day), so that might be a reason for my worries as well. Still, I feel a lot better after reading everybody's posts so far.

Please, keep 'em coming if you have anything else of relevance to share!

Also,



This is giving me ideas for a future PLD or WAR glam. I'm tempted to buy the princess gown on the online store now.

For healing, I recommend starting on a Conjurer and doing all the dungeons in order if you have anxiety. The first ones are so easy you will probably wonder what you were worried about They will slowly get you used to having more to worry about with mechanics and things to dodge while DPSIng.

It may seem like overkill, but the more comfort you get on the easiest content, the easier it will be to brave the higher level dungeons.

As others said, for healing especially it's more learning the mechanics than it is being too challenged with healing itself. And there was great advice about DPSING while prioritizing heals to the most important in need. As a healer, you can only control yourself - and there will be times you have to choose how and who to heal and others running into mechanics is out of your control.

[IDontPetLalas]

Healer

I can probably give the best anxiety advice about healing because I'm a mediocre to poor healer, and I 'tried' to heal quite a bit before I stopped playing.

Recommendation #1, if you've still got your sprout 'heal-heal-heal' (wish I'd been given that advice... I want my sprout back! Do"X )

• No one has the right to criticise, especially criticise a healer. You can do no wrong! So just give it your best.
  
  

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While it is well-intentioned, this treating healers with kid gloves, like a precious child, is, in my personal opinion- not a good idea.

"No one has the right to criticise, especially criticise a healer. You can do no wrong! "

Yes, they can do wrong. Just, as you said- be kind. Even sprouts should get feedback.

Certainly by level 60, or 70 (or even earlier), a healer should have some idea of the basics, and no I wouldn't say that "Again it is a hard job, its the only hard job in standard content" I respect your opinion, however "hard" is subjective, after a reasonable amount of practise and levels, healer mains (myself included ) could disagree and say that many times it isn't.

Saying that a DPS or tank can't saying anything is also not necessarily true- I agree- sometimes they DON'T know what they hell they are talking about, but healers should not be *entitled* to think this. Polite feedback from anyone in your group should be welcome.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Exposure therapy. People adapt at their own pace. Some get over it relatively quickly. Some deems it not being worthy of the effort because they're not of wanting any stress to their gameplay, and frankly enough healers can be socially stressful, especially to those who are unfamiliar with the role in general.

The more you play, the better you get. The more 'stupids' you're exposed to, the better you are at 'unstupefying' your subjects.

[Gurgeh]

snipped
While it is well-intentioned, this treating healers with kid gloves, like a precious child, is, in my personal opinion- not a good idea.

"No one has the right to criticise, especially criticise a healer. You can do no wrong! "

Yes, they can do wrong. Just, as you said- be kind. Even sprouts should get feedback.

Certainly by level 60, or 70 (or even earlier), a healer should have some idea of the basics, and no I wouldn't say that "Again it is a hard job, its the only hard job in standard content" I respect your opinion, however "hard" is subjective, after a reasonable amount of practise and levels, healer mains (myself included ) could disagree and say that many times it isn't.

Saying that a DPS or tank can't saying anything is also not necessarily true- I agree- sometimes they DON'T know what they hell they are talking about, but healers should not be *entitled* to think this. Polite feedback from anyone in your group should be welcome.

No surprise but I just can't agree. You can make a genuinely helpful specific suggestion but that's it. "Try X action combined with Y" (but then shit up for the rest of the instance)

It's just a dungeon. If they want to spend 2/3 years getting good, and dint want to fanny about with discords, forum Reddit, balance, salted, and the stupid way job actions and traits combine to make jobs impenetrable, that's their business. *It's just a dungeon* and the only thing that matters is practical reality. The practical reality is that while I've come across yes some truly terrible heaters it's never mattered. The other healer was good enough to get us through Alpha 3 eventually, etc

It's just a dungeon, they will get there eventually. If it takes them 3 years that's fine. Again the "reality" is you'll probably never have to play with them again, and the average will be better. (Although these days it's likely to be because they unsubbed)

That said it sounds like actually we are in agreement, because specific recommendations, those yes. Fiat criticisms that imply you 'ought to be doing better' rather than just 'there is an opportunity to if you want to' , those no.

For me personally I can only think of one exception, those healers on LoA that do absolutely NO healing whatsoever. If you can't be bothered to heal properly then please just spam your aoe heal and over heal. The ones that just one button DPS and assume some the other healer will do it... they should be account banned for a week.

[kiotsukete]

I'm a bit of a completionist, so a goal of mine is leveling every job to 100.

However, it's been a drag leveling my healer jobs via "asocial' means. I genuinely want to learn how to play every job well, but I'm always too scared to heal (or even tank) for others.

I feel you OP. I had the same goal of leveling all jobs to 100 and also the same anxiety with doing so on tank and healer jobs. Especially since I’d been away from the game for a long time coming into DT.

With respect to those saying how easy tanking/healing is, please realize/remember we’re not all as good at this game as you might be.

But I eventually accomplished the goal though, and you can too OP! Here’s how I did it.

1. Level all DPS jobs to 100 first.

2. That helps you learn all the story dungeons and trials along the way really well. Like memorizing mob pack placements, which mobs have big hits you can stun, boss mechanics, tank busters etc. FF14 normal content is all scripted these days, so when you go through the same content on tank/healer you can have more confidence since you already know the script.

3. Pay attention to and copy what other good tanks and healers do.

4. When starting a new job, practice on a training dummy until you’re confident in what each action does and which ones combo into or synergize well with others The better you know a job’s toolkit, the more confident you’ll be playing it. Bonus tip: take Cure 1 off your hotbar once you have Cure 2 or you might get yelled at by people who are bizarrely triggered by this.

5. Take advantage of tank/healer instaqueues for MSQ roulette to build your confidence in basic tanking/healing. It’s pretty hard to fail in those duties now. The exp rewards are huge though, so be careful about leveling all the way to 100 like this unless you don’t care about learning your higher level actions lol.

6. I also used the massive daily PVP exp bonus to level my tanks/healers. You can queue as a tank/healer then once you’re in, switch to a DPS job you’re more confident with and still get exp on the job you queued as. Same caveat as above about leveling to 100 this way though.

The anxiety never completely went away for me, as I still can’t/won’t do alliance or normal raids as tank/healer. But I have no problem tanking/healing dungeons and trials now. Good luck!

[Kohashi]

It goes away when you have confidence in yourself and accept that through mistakes you learn. Nobody is perfect, everyone started from zero and hardly anyone expects perfect gameplay.

One step at a time and the walls we see are mostly self-made. Shut down the nasty voice and just try to enjoy the ride/ learning experience.

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

Healer/Tank anxiety is a meme, you'll do a dungeon/trial as one and wonder why you were ever anxious to begin with.

If you have done them with trusts, you already know what to do, having other players doesn't change how tanking or healing is done much and you'll learn some of the smaller stuff as you play. Like for tanks, you'll learn how to properly space out your defensive suite and with healers, you'll learn how best to use all your different healing tools. But if you are worried, just run a dungeon or trial and you'll realize you were worried over nothing. Tanks and healers fuck up all the time, its not the end of the world if you make a mistake.

[MrKusabi]

... The golden rule with dungeons for me is... that no matter what happens... and how badly it goes wrong.. DPS pulling or whatever... 'it's just a dungeon' ...

Haha, true! FFXIV has so little punishment for death. Some of the best runs I've had are ones that went a bit sideways. It's important to remember this is a game. Just...have fun.

This is giving me ideas for a future PLD or WAR glam. I'm tempted to buy the princess gown on the online store now.

My original DRK glam when I was a tiny Au Ra was basically this. Be the Princess Peach you always wanted to be!