Aspiring healer questions.

[MysticWoolie]

Hey all,

I have been leveling myself towards a healer class, both Scholar & Astrologian.
Been busy reading, but not everything is clear to me.

This is me:

CON 8
THM 16
ACN 25.

I know that having certain classes at certain levels allows me to use certain skills whilst playing another class.

What skills should I be looking at? Cleric Stance, Surecast, Protect?

My initial aim is for the Scholar.
Not sure if I interpret the class correctly, but it is my understanding that a Scholar heals and mitigates pretty well, while also having considerable DPS - is this assumption a correct one?

And when I can finally jump into Astrologian, what preparations should I make?

What would be a recommendable method to level my lower classes (conjurer in particular)?

Will I benefit from Weaving, Cooking and Alchemy? (making my own gear, creating pots and making buff-lunches)

Love to hear your valued feedback.

Azuna.

[Risvertasashi]

Swiftcast, at THM 26, is pretty important. Lets you get off a raise in high movement fights, and resummon your fairy quickly if it dies. Protect and cleric, those should be high priority as well. Less important is stoneskin.

Not a lot of people like Surecast. I think it has its uses but it's definitely very niche. Not a priority.

SCH has the highest combined DoT potency of all healers, so if you can get into cleric's for just 3 GCDs now and then you can maintain decent DPS while healing. However, since we all massively overgear most content, a lot of lower end stuff the fairy can heal alone, or fairy + cohealer for 8 man content, which means you can spend a lot of time in cleric's. SCH also has the best mitigation (For example, stacking fey's covenant and sacred soil is 30% mitigation of a raid hit or a magic tankbuster, and then you can reduce that more with supervirus), but AST has better shields generally.

SCH heals are pretty expensive and/or consume stacks and often have long CDs. So it's very important to time their use correctly and not overheal. Though it won't matter in leveling content. But SCH is the least forgiving here because you can't simply recast a lot of stuff if you mistime or misuse it. However, as long as you can do this, SCH has enough healing for anything.

AST you want the same cross classes as SCH. Swiftcast, protect, and cleric being the most important. AST also requires good multitasking ability (You don't want to be one of those that just stops healing while using card skills, they're oGCD so use them as such). Managing your SCH fairy can be OK practice for that.

For leveling: PotD is probably fastest if you can tolerate it and having a healer is pretty good at ensuring smooth, reliable runs. You'll also get good dungeon queues, usually, if you prefer that. As always you can FATE if you want a change of pace.

Crafting is tricky. To really succeed at it you kind of need a lot of cross class skills which includes carpenter and some others at 50. Crafting can definitely be worthwhile to pursue but I wouldn't do it as a prerequisite for leveling. If you use PotD you don't need gear at all, dropped gear > crafted, and pre-endgame food is cheap. If you want to do it for your own enjoyment, and profit when you level them up then definitely do it, just be aware you have to level almost all of them (at least somewhat) to be effective and overall I would consider it a separate project from leveling a healer.

Good luck and have fun!

edit: You also have a lot of MSQ ahead of you and that will do a lot of leveling for you on your first job. If you have the Heavensward expansion, the very many level 50 MSQs will also give you experience towards 60.

[MysticWoolie]

Wonderful post!

I am okay investing in some cross-class crafting activities; I thoroughly enjoy the crafting mechanis FF14 has.

What would you recommend I grab as crosscraft-skills for Weaver/Alchemist/Cook?

As far as management goes in terms of healing - I love that.
I am no stranger to healing (my prefered role in most MMO's i have played) and I really like the diversity in FF14: pet healing, raw massive heals and card based healing!
I am literally trampling with excitement to get started.

[ChiiSoSeriouz]

The cross class abilities you want are going to be the same for ast and sch, they come primarily from cnj with the exception of swiftcast which is thm. You want cleric, protect, swiftcast, aero and stoneskin.

[Elamys]

I don't use Aero as I prefer Surecast over the tiny bit of little extra damage Aero gives, but basically, you want CNJ/THM up.

I primarily plat AST. MY cross classes are in this order Cleric Stance, Protect, Swiftcast, Stoneskin, and Surecast.

A lot of people will tell you to class Protect first which is fine, however it is absolutely not necessary at the dungeons before level 20. Just go cleric and help clear the dungeon faster.

On WHM I also use Eye for an Eye and Virus from ACN, which are both pieces of handy utility.

[Spiroglyph]

As far as cross classes on SCH - I usually find stoneskin pretty useless since I have adloquium already, so I generally prefer to swap it for Blizz 2 for extra DPS.
In lvl 60 dungeons I shield the tank pre-pull with Adlo, throughout the pull I may refresh the shield if it wears off as shields generate little enmity (or maybe I'll target my fairy's embrace on the tank), e4e when the tank is done pulling or maybe sacred soil if e4e is on cooldown, then let the fairy do her thing (haha jk, I micromanage her skills) while I bane + miasma 2 + (sacred soil should have worn off by now, so you can shadow flare), and now since your aoes are up and running and you have downtime, BLIZZ 2 things until they're dead.

[AmalonStar]

What would you recommend I grab as crosscraft-skills for Weaver/Alchemist/Cook?

Personally I would say for cross over skills would be....

Weaver, leather worker, carpenter lv 50 skills and cook at at least lv 37 I think it is for the skill there. Those are the ones I use a lot for crafting cross skills and I've found crafting to be fairly easy, having good crafting gear also helps.

[Risvertasashi]

Personally I would say for cross over skills would be....

Weaver, leather worker, carpenter lv 50 skills and cook at at least lv 37 I think it is for the skill there. Those are the ones I use a lot for crafting cross skills and I've found crafting to be fairly easy, having good crafting gear also helps.

I'll also add Alchemist to 50 for Comfort Zone, which can be especially helpful if you're not overflowing with CP, and Tricks of the Trade (Alchemist 15) for starting out (Less useful once you start using macros and tighter rotations). Also, you may wish to use the Ixali daily quests which were specifically designed to help players level crafters.

Ingenuity II also comes from Blacksmith 50, but I would put this at less important than the others so far. But you see what we mean when we say crafters kind of have to level all of them to be effective...

I am no stranger to healing (my prefered role in most MMO's i have played) and I really like the diversity in FF14: pet healing, raw massive heals and card based healing!
I am literally trampling with excitement to get started.

Enjoy it ^^
Stop by here with any questions, sometimes some topics can get heated here on the forums but generally there's at least a few people willing to help out.

[Urthdigger]

First off, everyone's done a good job answering about what skills to take, but I'd like to mention a few things about Cleric Stance since being able to DPS as a healer is one of your goals. First off, Cleric Stance is not only helpful to DPS later on, it is ESSENTIAL. The skill swaps your INT and MND stats and increases attack power by 10% while reducing healing potency by 20%. Early on, the main effect you will see is the latter, but a 10% boost is nothing to sneeze at. Later on however, it's mainly the stat swap that is needed. The skill doesn't just swap your base stats, it swaps your stats after all your gear as well! And while early on you'll be using "Disciple of Magic" gear that has equal amounts of INT and MND starting out, later on in the game you'll be using "Healing" gear that only grants MND. In addition, jobs like WHM, SCH, and AST have more polarized stats than classes like CNJ or ACN. As a result, later on you'll have something to the tune of 5x more MND than INT, and trying to deal damage with such a low INT score is just ineffective.

Secondly, it has some nice synergy with Damage Over Time effects. When you apply these (as well as Heal Over Time effects like Regen, Fey Wind, or Aspected Benefic), it basically takes a screenshot of your stats when you apply it. Once it's on the target, it doesn't care about your stats anymore. You can turn off Cleric's Stance, turn it on, let buffs fall off, die, heck maybe even quit and delete your account if one had enough time, and the DoT/HoT would keep plugging away regardless. So, for all intent's and purposes, one can consider a DoT/HoT the same as a very high potency spell (take the duration, divide by 3, multiply by the effect potency, and apply the base potency if necessary, to find the total) that can only be used so often if you want to get the maximum effect from it.

Finally, you mentioned cross-class skills for crafting. Due to how crafting works, it's really in your best interest to level them all up. For starters, aside from some level 50 and 60 armor sets they all use the same gear (and folks generally prefer the general-purpose gear at high levels due to being able to add materia and make it better than the specific sets), so once you've geared one up all you need is a tool to gear up the others. Second, there is a LOT of overlap between what materials are required. With the exception of cooking, everything makes plenty of secondary materials used by other crafters. Third, jobs typically need gear from a wide variety of classes, and why would you craft some of them but not others? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there are a LOT of skills you'll want to share between classes.

[Elamys]

Oh! I didn't even weigh in on the crafting question and that's what I mainly do.

If you want to get serious about crafting you will unfortunately need to level pretty much every class. I use a cross class ability from each class except leatherworker for my crafting rotation. (My rotation is a bit odd, most others do prioritize leatherworker). I always recommend that newbie crafters level CUL, then CRP, then ALC.