Some Questions About FFXIV vs. WoW

[Daftedly]

Hello! I'm new to FFXIV but not to the MMORPG genre; I've been playing WoW for about 5 years now, but it really hasn't been that fun for me anymore as of late (you could say I'm a BfA refugee).

For some context, I main a Restoration Druid in WoW and really enjoy healing. I have quite a bit of experience in casual, mid-level (Heroic) raiding. I've been a roleplayer for 15+ years in and out of WoW so that's also something I'd like to get into in FFXIV once I know the lore better.

First question (which might be a dumb question): Are there any healers in FFXIV that play similarly to WoW's Resto Druid? I quite like the heal-over-time playstyle and the support/utility capabilities that spec has to offer.

Second: How do healers play in FFXIV? Are things like mouseover macros used/recommended? In WoW I pretty much exclusively use mouseover and other kinds of macros but I'm not sure if that's a thing in FFXIV. (Sorry if that's vague, I'm not sure how else to word this question.)

Third: Are there ways to level alt jobs other than spamming dungeons or doing the MSQ? I don't mind if the other ways aren't as efficient or fast, that's not what I'm looking for, just alternatives. There are some jobs I'm interested in playing but I'm really not comfortable playing them in group content (yet).

Fourth: I've mostly just been doing the MSQ while I level up initially so I don't get totally overwhelmed with tons and tons of quests, but are there any side quests that a new person might miss that are noteworthy? I've been trying to pick up and complete the blue quests that unlock things but I don't know if there are any other quests that might be fun or cool to complete, either because of the story or rewards or whatever. Eventually I want to clear the maps of all quests but that's a far-off goal at this point.

Fifth: As I've gone through the MSQ, I've noticed that some of the armor rewards for other jobs are really pretty or cool looking, but I couldn't pick them up because I didn't play that job. Is there a way to obtain the armor I had to pass up on from somewhere else? Like from a vendor or the marketboard or something?

Sixth: Is there a way to sort of replay parts of the story from the MSQ without having to make a new character and redo everything? I've really been impressed with how immersive FFXIV's story is and would love to be able to go back and replay the highlights.

Final question: Any other advice for someone who has come to FFXIV from WoW? I've caught on to a lot of things pretty quickly in FFXIV, but I'm still definitely a noob and will be for a while.

[Niwashi]

... once I know the lore better.

Be sure to check out the Lore forum. Ask lore related questions there and you'll find players who would love to regale you with all the lore you're looking for and a even more that you didn't know to look for.

First question (which might be a dumb question):

There's no such thing as dumb questions.

Are there any healers in FFXIV that play similarly to WoW's Resto Druid? I quite like the heal-over-time playstyle and the support/utility capabilities that spec has to offer.

Second: How do healers play in FFXIV? Are things like mouseover macros used/recommended? In WoW I pretty much exclusively use mouseover and other kinds of macros but I'm not sure if that's a thing in FFXIV. (Sorry if that's vague, I'm not sure how else to word this question.)

People who main healers and play on PC can answer these better, so I'll keep mine short. Scholar sounds more like the playstyle you're looking for than White Mage, but I haven't played Astrologian, so can't comment on that one.

Most macros tend to be frowned on in combat because they don't allow queuing in advance like skills directly on your hotbars can. But for healing spells specifically, I know a lot of players use mouseover macros for those, even while avoiding them for their attack skills. (To be honest, I've never quite understood why they'd be less problematic for healing than attacks, but since I play on console without a mouse, I never really looked into it.)

Third: Are there ways to level alt jobs other than spamming dungeons or doing the MSQ? I don't mind if the other ways aren't as efficient or fast, that's not what I'm looking for, just alternatives. There are some jobs I'm interested in playing but I'm really not comfortable playing them in group content (yet).

• Roulettes: Super XP bonus once each day, but does require grouping up. Casual enough that grouping is rarely stressful, so I wouldn't shy off of it on that basis.
• regular dungeons: On or near level, they're still really good XP even without the extra boost of the roulette. But again, it's (casual) group content.
• deep dungeons (Palace of the Dead and Heaven on High): another fast leveling method if you're willing to group up. They can be soloed but it's really slow that way. (And the deepest levels might not be viable solo. I've never gone far in them so don't know how deep you can get without a group.)
• FATEs: Pretty good leveling and most are soloable (particularly if you bring your chocobo companion along.)
• Levequests: Solo and decently good XP. Limited by how many leve allowances you have, and if you're leveling crafting and gathering, you might want to use most of your leve allowances for those rather than combat jobs.
• any remaining sidequests you haven't finished off with your previous jobs: Soloable, fun, might get a bit of story going on in the better ones, and decent XP if on level. (Pathetically low XP if you out-level them by much.)
• Hunting Log: Only available for ARR levels and classes/jobs. (It got abandoned in the expansions.) But good XP for really low levels when you first start a new class, and then a slight XP boost up through level 50.
• Challenge Log: Extra weekly XP bonuses for doing a variety of those same things

I recommend alternating around doing a bit of each of them so you don't get sick of any one method. (Any of them will feel too grindy if you just keep doing the same one over and over and over...)

Also, alt jobs (any combat job of a lower level than your highest combat job) get a big boost on mob-kill XP anyway, in order to speed up leveling additional jobs.

Sixth: Is there a way to sort of replay parts of the story from the MSQ without having to make a new character and redo everything? I've really been impressed with how immersive FFXIV's story is and would love to be able to go back and replay the highlights.

Not yet, but there might be once Shadowbringers comes out. At least we're getting a new feature to replay the MSQ, but I don't know how flexible it's going to be on just picking out the highlights you want. (It's possible it will wind up being just a chance to play through the MSQ again from the beginning if you want to re-run the whole thing.)

[Rongway]

In general, macros have a bad reputation because they don't participate in the action queue. If you try to activate a macroed GCD ability half a second before the GCD ends, nothing happens. You have to wait until the GCD ends, then press the button, so you lose tenths of seconds from macroing your GCD abilities. Macroed oGCD abilities need to be pressed after the GCD ends, or if weaving, after the animation lock of the previous instant action.

That said, if mouseover macros are how you are most comfortable healing, then use mouseover macros. Outside of bleeding edge microseconds-matter elite raiding scene, those lost tenths of seconds will not outweigh your confidence and comfort in performing your job.

The general form for a mouseover heal should be:

/ac "Action Name" <mo>
/micon "Action Name"

I recommend using autotranslate phrases instead of typing them out manually--the macro parser is very picky about spelling and punctuation in action names. If you use autotranslate phrases, don't include quotes.

If the macro is for a pet action, the command is /pac (short for /petaction).

If macroing to mo target, don't try to cover other target types in your macro. Mixing types will most likely result in you healing yourself unintentionally when you really need to heal someone else, because for healing actions the <t> target defaults to self if target is not valid.

There are a few ground target bubble actions. You can automatically cast these centered on target by macroing them onto <t> or <mo>. In the case of ground target actions, this actually speeds up their use. You can also provide a targetless line in the same macro so that you can place them manually if desired. For example:

/ac "Bubble Action Name" <mo>
/ac "Bubble Action Name"
/micon "Bubble Action Name"

If you have a mouseover target, this will center the bubble on them. If you don't have a mouseover target, it will skip the first line and give you a cursor to place the bubble manually.

[EaMett]

Most of your questions have been answered I'm just going to touch on a couple of points that haven't been thoroughly addressed yet.

First of all we expect healers to see an overhaul in the next expansion (in 3 months time) so everything that follows is the current set of affairs:

White mage is essentially going to be your druid equivalent. Has party wide HoT, single target HoT, one shield on cooldown, an aoe HoT, and comes with some bonus powerful heals all around (single and multi target). With that said, Astrologian offers pretty much the same toolkit with the added bonus of multiple player/party buffs with their card system. You can find many resources around the net introducing all three healers so I won't go into detail (here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs3zVWS6tGs ).

As far as healer gameplay goes here's the catch. Healers in FFXIV are expected to DPS during their downtime. And as you optimize your play you will get A LOT of downtime. It gets to the point where you will rarely ever use a GCD skill in dungeons/raids. All your healing will be done with ogcd skills.
Healer DPS is not negligible here. In dungeons, it isn't rare to top the charts as healer, and in raids two healers combined are worth one dps (roughly).

This leads me to macros. Like mentioned before you can't queue skills server side with macros. This, however, is very rarely an issue with healing skills because you use so little of them. So it's fine to mouse over macro your healer skills, it won't keep you from keeping your party alive or even keep you from being able to parse in the top percentiles. You however never want to macro your dps skills because queuing is crucial for good dps.

When it comes to healer macros however, never EVER (caps for emphasis) use multi-action macros. Unless you understand exactly what you are doing. Because of how things are set up in FFXIV, in pratice, the order of your actions within a single macro is NOT guarantied. So if youu take the second macro from the post above, it is both possible and likely that you will heal yourself or your hard target instead of your mouseover target. The first macro in the post above is the correct way of doing things.

Feel free to ask if you have any questions.

[ShinShimon]

To make things even more confusing for you, I'll disagree with those above me and say that Astrologian is probably what you're looking for. It has a choice between stances that give it either HoTs or shields, and in the HoT stance you have two AoE HoTs and one single-target HoT, which AFAIK is more than White Mage. It's also the support class, as its main gimmick is using cards to buff party members. There are 6 different cards drawn with RNG, but you get one free redraw per card, and a couple of options to convert suboptimal cards into something useful. I have to say that it feels really damn good to give the best damage-dealer in your party a 15% damage boost, and then extend it to almost a minute.

Scholar has a fairy pet that throws out free heals, but otherwise focuses on shields and predictive healing. The only HoT is a 1 minute cooldown fairy ability. You get 3 stacks of a resource called aetherflow per minute, and while you have a lot of really powerful instant cast heals, they all consume one aetherflow... as do some of your damage abilities. Speaking of damaging abilities, in FFXIV a good healer is expected to optimize their DPS, and Scholar has the most offensive abilities and damage potential of all the healers. It also shares experience with Summoner, meaning that if you level a scholar to 70, you automatically have a level 70 Summoner. Summoner is one of the more demanding DPS classes, but it's also one of the most rewarding, with the highest AoE damage and 3rd highest single-target damage. Because you get it for free along with your Scholar, you could almost view it as your Balance druid spec.

White Mage is a pure vanilla healer. Unlike Scholar, you have your own HoTs, and a lot of straightforward, powerful heals. I don't play the class, so I can't talk about specifics, but if you really want HoTs and you don't like Astrologian's card mechanic, it's probably the class for you.

[Rongway]

When it comes to healer macros however, never EVER (caps for emphasis) use multi-action macros. Unless you understand exactly what you are doing. Because of how things are set up in FFXIV, in pratice, the order of your actions within a single macro is NOT guarantied. So if youu take the second macro from the post above, it is both possible and likely that you will heal yourself or your hard target instead of your mouseover target. The first macro in the post above is the correct way of doing things.

My second example is strictly for ground target actions (Asylum, Sacred Soil, Earthly Star, Shadow Flare), in which case there is no danger of mistargeting a heal--if you have no mouseover, it gives you a ground cursor.

But generally speaking, yes, I mentioned that healing action macros should only ever have one target and it should be <mo>. Macroing heals to <t> begs the question why use a macro at all.

[EaMett]

Snip

Oh yeah, I didn’t mean to attack you or your comment. I was just trying to drive the point across that care needed to be applied. The actual example in your post, although it does carry the same flaws as I mentioned, will fail gracefully since it maintains practical use in both scenarios. But that is a rarity and replacing the skill with anything but a ground aoe will result in unpredictable behavior. I wanted to make sure newer players understood this