What makes or made your healer job fun

[Sloprano]

By the sounds of it here, I'm one of many who took to the Healer Role forums for the first time after we learned about healers in 5.0 and wondered whats going on.

In the hopes SE takes a gander at these forums now and then when considering changes to healer, I wanted to try and make some noise about what everyone found to be the peak fun of your favorite healer(s) job and how it compares to now in 5.0.

I wanted to try to put into words what I found to be so fun and not to mention engaging about scholar from what I consider the peak of the job, Heavensward:

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3.0:
If I were going around solo and found a group of mobs I needed to kill: Fey Wind, Activate Cleric Stance, Miasma, Bio 2, ED, Bio, Bane, Miasma 2, Swiftcast Shadowflare, then either ED or Lustrate if low on HP. All the while keep Selene up for Esuna and Fey Wind with Embraces keeping me alive. If the fight is going to drag on, Adlo + E4E on Selene then DT spread it to me. Refresh dots as they fall off and try to keep mobs in Shadowflare.

In a party: Pre-adlo, wait until tank has gathered all the mobs. E4E, Rouse Whispering Dawn, Re-adlo and gauge how fast the tank's hp is dropping. If too fast, then I keep Adlo ready and use Rouse. Put up Shadowflare for damage and slow on mobs. When all seems safe, Clerics Stance, hit up one mob with Miasma, Bio 2, ED (with enough AF in case I need to lustrate) Bio , Bane and then jump into the pile hitting Miasma 2, turning mid-air then getting out of AoE central. Then apply Aero on each mob if the time allows. And remember Cleric Stance went off cooldown so I can deactivate it.

If tank keeps dropping while applying dots I stop, heal what I can before I can turn off CS and lustrate. If I run out of stacks I used Emergency Tactics. All things fail, it's using Dissipation and 3x Lustrate. Using Virus, Ruin 2 for Blind, Sacred Soil and rest of the fairy skill suite where applicable to further avoid incoming damage.

If any in the party takes too much damage and is outside range of Succor and Indom I can order Eos to fly over and Embrace. For every single gcd I cast I make use of the manual Rouse+ Embrace to top people off or save them from danger if I need to focus on the tank first.

This whole dynamic of being able to prevent damage, apply dots, shield and control the fairy while I was casting made any encounter so much fun to do. I could do any content in HW and still feel engaged with the job. There was no need for Lucid Dreaming as AF gave 20% mp every minute and clever use of stacks meant you could keep going.

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5.0:

Going to do anything solo in ShB: It's Biolysis, and Broil III until the mob is dead or Biolysis needs reapplying. If health drops low I can no longer rely on Embrace and just put Excog on myself.

Now in ShB you who play sch know the healing part, healing is no problem even on big pulls. There are so many ways to replenish healthbars. So in a dungeon you pre-Recite-Adlo/Excog and then tab-target through the mobs, apply Biolysis on each one before casting Broil III until you need to shield or heal again. Putting down Sacred Soil mostly because I find myself with the AF to spare. Seraph is used on cooldown, but with no way to redirect her shield Embraces it's to use the charged Consolation which works two times every two minutes.

I can't order the fairy to embrace far-away DPS anymore and often have to resort to Lustrate so they don't die from party-wide damage. Even if Embrace reaches them, it's so weak now that I will always need to give a Lustrate, Adlo or Physick so they are ready for the next attack.

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Please notice on above I forgot to write up Broil in 3.0. That's because I had so much else to do I sometimes went entire pulls without using it once. And I was sometimes rather using Ruin 2, as that had a Blind effect. Ruin/Broil was at the bottom of all things to do which seemed right. Even the Arcanist Guildmaster's words still rings true chastising you for only using Ruin in lower levels.

I omitted 4.0 since looking back it was a feeling of things to come: Cleric stance gone, Virus gone,two less dots, Shadowflare not placeable whenever. Quickend AF did made things interesting, but I felt there was were a good part of the flavour was lost.
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Anyone else?

[_forgotten]

Tbh, if it wasn't for the people I play with, I would loath healing. The casual bants and the occasional attempt at murder with good people is why I enjoy healing in ffxiv.

[falroth]

AST here.

I used to really enjoy the randomness of the cards and figuring out how to use the hand drawn with the tools I had.

I also really really really miss having a card saved, I loved being able to hold onto one card and draw another one for a double whammy. It was cool to see all the effects and sound go off as well.

I mostly just miss feeling useful lol. Right now I feel bad playing AST. I just end up thinking the party would be better off with WHM or SCH.

[Takahiro]

Looking back, I had the most fun in 3.0 . The DPS was just about right. You could still use Cleric Stance and get a dps increase for a brief moment. The changes they made were welcomed. Stormblood, and its changes to SCH, is when I began to really not enjoy SCH in FFXIV anymore. I actually left at 4.1, came back fro Anemos, didnt like it, Left again and didnt come back until after 4.5 was released. I remember loving this game, being at work and couldnt wait to get home to play my SCH. Now, Im so bummed out, Im so uninterested in how SCH plays, that Iv been playing DRK and considering unsubbing once I finish the story.

I participated the least amount I had ever participated in content during Stormblood. I barely played it. That sad part is, because of how polished and how good the graphics and art style is in FFXIV. I cant stand to play anything else. I just miss FFXIV more when I try. I miss 3.0 more than anything. Atleast the story is amazing this time around. Stormbloods was awfully dull for me.

[Atlantasia]

As a WHM main:

In dungeons: I thoroughly live for big giant pulls with lots of monsters and a good tank who I don't have to baby hard with heals. That has been the case since shortly after I started playing this game when people were geared enough not to get so hammered in places like Amdapor Keep and it started to allow those. Love the challenge of those pulls. How I approach those pulls may have changed over the years with more added DPS, more complicated things to keep them up, but that has always been my everyday fun of this game. The only thing 5.0 has changed really for me there is the use of Aero III in general and Divine Seal/Largesse at lower levels. I miss them both.

In harder content: The fun in progression for me is in progress and clears. The fun in farm is in perfection of your class with optimization. Which while that may shift with skills being added and taken away, it doesn't ultimately change the source of my fun. 5.0 Is not really really different so far from other expansions, other than the DPS is a bit more boring, because keeping up two DoTs was more interesting than an extra long single DoT. Otherwise, nothing with the way or amount of heals needed has really changed, only what I do in my downtime has, which is now more boring. Misery doesn't change that for me. Adding some damage to Fluid Aura might though. xD Weave would be a lot more fun!

[Brandedblade]

Honestly. I like 5.0 sch. To me it still plays the same way fundamentally. The only things I miss are the aetherflow dump skills. I'm still dpsing, I'm still weaving ogcd heals, and I'm still managing my fairy. Ironically enough my very first dungeon on sch in 5.0 was aurum vale, and that certainly made me grateful that pets are now immortal. Sure some extra complexity is nice. But as long as it functions the same at its core I don't mind. Just give us an aetherflow dump and fix some of the bugginess with the faerie and I'll be satisfied.

[CupidCrux]

As an AST main (or WAS...) I love being useful. That's not to say other jobs aren't in any given dungeon or situation but I loved BRD/SCH in FFXI that had quirks that helped the team. Ast felt that way with it's card system. Not to mention I was not put on this earth just to balance fish so some dps could get 'MUH DEEPS', and it took actual brain power and quick decision making in the middle of war. Literal life or death situational decisions. I like that.

Also my favorite is, the only way I can describe it is remember in the matrix when they shoot at Neo and he stops the bullets like No. I LIVED for that feeling like ish hits the fan, and you Celestial Opposition stun and stop time, everyone is healed up and you're electric eyed unloading gravity spam on a wall to wall pull. You felt powerful and useful. Now it's a struggle just to keep tanks up and dont get me started on the cards. Sigh.

And finally ( I could go on and on but for a post...) I loved my co-healers. Even bad ones lol No offense to DPS but when there's a whole lot of you (or I when I dps on dnc) in a crowd, but there's just 2 healers, there's this connection, that someone across the globe you have this unspoken understanding. It could be a silent high five that you kept all these people alive even though they stood in the bad constantly, or even that silent side eye about any given situation lol When your co-healer types "..." and you type "..." mid battle it's like we're both shaming some person who can't stay alive. An invisible synergy between healers. A secret coven lol The insta queues arent bad either

[Duskane]

im not a big healer main but i have played them all for decent amount of time
but i really enjoyed staying busy with AST and SCH
planning ogcd
cards
dot management
etc etc

[Silver-Strider]

I play healers because I get triggered to no end when I see bad healers that can't (or won't) use their entire toolkit when applicable. A Tank with no sense of self preservation that can't pop a CD? Whatever. A DPS that's allergic to its AoE despite wall to wall dungeon pulls? Whatever. But a Healer that either stands still doing nothing or Cure/Physick/Benefit 1 spamming a full health tank? I just rage harder than Bahamut during the calamity.

Case in point, I was determined to main MNK this expansion. Was farming Titania for her weapon when we get a WHM that was absolute trash. No AoE heals used at all, little to no oGCD/CDs used (I saw Presence of Mind used maybe once but that's really it), and many, MANY screw ups on their part that often resulted in her death or flat out wipes.

After that run, I hung up my MNK gloves, grinded my WHM from 70 to 80 in a day or 2 and have been healing since. Now my days are spent babysitting Tanks without CD and AoE lacking DPS and I couldn't be more content in life.

[Impurrrsive]

1) Able to get through a great pinch without anyone dying
2) A good tank. Yes... U're the body, and I'm the soul, as long as u protect me, i will keep u alive.