Is healing supposed to be this...hard?

[glamazon]

I ran gauntlet of heroes as a scholar and our tank was a gb and baby he made me work every single pull to keep him alive. I could barely even dps a smidge (dots) because his health was dropping so fast all the time.

I was never not healing him from near death except between pulls.
My gear level is like 498.
I was preshielding
I was alternating seraph and union
I was dissipating at end of pulls
It was nerve wracking but so fun

[MPNZ]

Healing is very easy unless the other players are problems, you're rusty, or they like don't know the fight really well. In general: Use the higher potency healing GCDs instead of the basic variant after lv 30, place dots, regen the tnk after he stops at the wall or at half way, and prioritize gearing over leveling at any stage since gear is like the first sign of how the whole run might go (your gear & tank's gear are the frist measurements of healing comfort you will be able to assess). A lot of players are not even trying to put forth much effort or just jump potioned, so there is like a reason why things can get really trying

Oh, and Stone Vigil is just nightmare fuel sometimes. So, expect like a lot of bad there so you don't like stress-out too much, ok...

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

To the OP...
Like any other roles, it just takes time to get used to the gameplay. It is alright to start from 'overhealing' as you tread slowly to 'efficient healing'. One of the drawback in DF parties is we'll never know what kind of players we'll be matched with.
Sometimes it's the top-notch players: your mates won't be needing too much tending and you can DPS away (some oGCDs are sufficient).
Sometimes it's the decent/average players: your mates may hiccups a few times. DPS window from you is getting tighter but by no means, still possible. Just have to be more vigilant.
Sometimes they're just plain terrible: out of oGCDs and packs are still mowing down your tank, for whatever reason... could be tank blowing off all their cooldowns in one go, or simply forgetting them. Or one of the DPS sleeping. Or too much eating red carpets. Just try your best here. Add in your healing spell as long as your resources allows to. If it still leads to a wipe you should know it shouldn't be on you.

Adjust accordingly.

In regards to Clememecy usage...
To me, they are a signal to me to squeeze in more Glare/Broil/Malefic/Lightshow/Ground Slap/Gravity... only to some extent.
I would get annoyed if:
1. I slapped an Excogitation only for it to never proc because the PLD's too scared going below 50%. (I main SCH so this irritates me the most)
2. There's no incoming lethal damage but still insists to Clememecy self or other party members to full HP.
3. Clememecy'ing to the point of not giving me the chance to abuse Benediction's & Essential Dignity's powerful potencies.

At that point I'd look up to see if the said PLD ever played other healers. If they don't, I'd usually give them word of reassurance and encourage them to go wild with that Holy Spirit/Circle.
If they have healers leveled to 80, well... I'll just enjoy that Clemency animation... subjectively speaking, I love it. lol.

[Sqwall]

To the OP...
Like any other roles, it just takes time to get used to the gameplay. It is alright to start from 'overhealing' as you tread slowly to 'efficient healing'. One of the drawback in DF parties is we'll never know what kind of players we'll be matched with.
Sometimes it's the top-notch players: your mates won't be needing too much tending and you can DPS away (some oGCDs are sufficient).
Sometimes it's the decent/average players: your mates may hiccups a few times. DPS window from you is getting tighter but by no means, still possible. Just have to be more vigilant.
Sometimes they're just plain terrible: out of oGCDs and packs are still mowing down your tank, for whatever reason... could be tank blowing off all their cooldowns in one go, or simply forgetting them. Or one of the DPS sleeping. Or too much eating red carpets. Just try your best here. Add in your healing spell as long as your resources allows to. If it still leads to a wipe you should know it shouldn't be on you.

Adjust accordingly.

In regards to Clememecy usage...
To me, they are a signal to me to squeeze in more Glare/Broil/Malefic/Lightshow/Ground Slap/Gravity... only to some extent.
I would get annoyed if:
1. I slapped an Excogitation only for it to never proc because the PLD's too scared going below 50%. (I main SCH so this irritates me the most)
2. There's no incoming lethal damage but still insists to Clememecy self or other party members to full HP.
3. Clememecy'ing to the point of not giving me the chance to abuse Benediction's & Essential Dignity's powerful potencies.

At that point I'd look up to see if the said PLD ever played other healers. If they don't, I'd usually give them word of reassurance and encourage them to go wild with that Holy Spirit/Circle.
If they have healers leveled to 80, well... I'll just enjoy that Clemency animation... subjectively speaking, I love it. lol.

I can get on board with this. Well put in ways that maybe I can't explain. Simply: If your a healer and you pick up on clemency usage...good. Your not sleeping!

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

I've played for a while, but took a break after finishing Shadowbringers. I came back about two months ago.

I have always loved healing in this game. It was awesome balancing DPS and heals as SCH, and I felt like WHM was easy mode. I healed a bit, then just ran dps for most of the dungeon.

Now, I feel like I'm constantly pushed to the limit. Tanks run right to a boss's door in dungeons, dragging all the mobs with them. If I stop healing them for a second, they are dead. I can't switch to damage spells until just a few mobs are alive.

I used to get 1-3 commendations a run. Now I'm lucky if I get 1. I just feel like a crappy healer at this point. I don't want to risk DPSing because it usually means the tank just dies and then we wipe, but if I'm healing the whole time, I feel like a beginner healer that can't balance dps and heals. It's just not fun anymore.

Is this just the state of healers right now or do I really need to rework my play style?

SCH is a particularly tetchy one to play. They added buffs and pet commands but SCH has always been more about damage mitigation (shields etc.) more than high potency heals and unless you're know your full range of skills you can find yourself hurting for MP more than WHM or AST.

Yes. Tank quality has dropped a bit. But I find preemptive healing to pretty much be the band-aid for this. Stacking regens, stacking shields (sacred soil with Galvanize/etc). Give that tank regen and medical 2 AND whatever they're calling stoneskin now--I forget that skill but it's instant now. People rant about overhealing but it's better to have a safety net already going when you want to get some damage in than heal in the moment and have the tank die the second you slip a dps spell in. Good luck out there.

[Payadopa]

If I stop healing them for a second, they are dead. I can't switch to damage spells until just a few mobs are alive.

Then why did you choose playing as a healer?
I'm honestly asking.

[Riluske]

Then why did you choose playing as a healer?
I'm honestly asking.

Wow, I did my initial reply and walked away, just came back to check on this thread. I didn't think it would stay active.

It's a great question. I started because I don't get a lot of time to play, so I don't want to spend that time waiting in queues as DPS. I played a tank in wow, but I hated how the whole pace of a dungeon was based on you, especially in the mythic dungeons.

I thought I would try healer in ffxiv, and really liked it. I liked how you had to balance healing with dps. I started as a scholar, and it just felt really good all around. It was really awesome when you could get in a flow and keep damage up while keeping the tank near full health.

I think there was a major change when Shadowbringers came out. I can't remember exactly, but I want to say scholars lost a lot of their damage spells (it might actually be just one or two). I think tanks also started taking a bit more damage? It was a pretty strong shift to primarily healing.

Mind you, I left just a few months after 5.0 came out (I beat the main campaign, and began to loose interest and didn't want to pay if I wasn't playing everyday). Back when I left, I think tanks weren't pulling as much because no one had a high item level. So coming back was really tough. Keeping up with the huge pulls was really hard.

I recently switched back to white mage. I reassessed my healing and use of gcds. I'm doing a lot better now and enjoying it again. I still don't feel like I have the hang of SCH though, and whm doesn't feel as smooth as I would like (just getting used to long casts). But it's getting better.

[Rilifane]

Then why did you choose playing as a healer?
I'm honestly asking.

Chosing to play healer doesn't mean you want to babysit everyone 24/7.
Having to heal spam everyone is not nearly as fun as successfully juggling healing and dpsing.

[Saefinn]

On the Clemency debate, each healer has spells that are more efficient if your health drops below a certain threshold and a good healer will know when it's okay to let you drop. But I can get it can be hard to tell if it's a good healer let your health drop on purpose or one who isn't paying attention. I think with PUGs all roles should expect some unpredictability.

I was tanking Shiva in a roulette yesterday and watched my HP drop low and was like "oh Shi" the first time but I never died because healers were on it and relaxed seeing them on it. Then contrast to Lakshmi a week a go when I died within the first 2 minutes of pulling not expecting to die that quickly. So my general rule of thumb is to just see what happens, a wipe is not the end of the world, if it seems the healer is on top of it, I'll not worry. If it seems they're struggling, I'll do what I can to help out more, because when I play PLD I'd rather my MP be used for Holy Spirit/Circle, but not at the cost of a successful run. I once had a healer who was having connection issues, he offered to leave but I just helped heal with Clemency instead. I feel it should always be a team effort.

As for the OP, an anecdote for contrast, I used to main a healer on WoW, yesterday I decided to heal a dungeon on WoW for the first time in a long time. Tank was new to tanking, the tank died twice, the DPS's died a few times, I died once. And it felt like I was doing a terrible job. Yet healing in XIV is very second nature to me. But it was a mix of things, the tank pulled big, some of the DPS are AoEs, my rustyness, probably my gear and the tank being inexperienced too.

I think there was a major change when Shadowbringers came out. I can't remember exactly, but I want to say scholars lost a lot of their damage spells (it might actually be just one or two). I think tanks also started taking a bit more damage? It was a pretty strong shift to primarily healing.

SCH was gutted of DPS spells, it was quite a big change for their DPS. I think SCH stopped being OP but I disagree on there being a strong shift to primary healing as one DPSing 60-70% of most runs of stuff.

But the jobs have changed so there may be new things to learn to optimise the healing aspect more.

[Riluske]

SCH was gutted of DPS spells, it was quite a big change for their DPS. I think SCH stopped being OP but I disagree on there being a strong shift to primary healing as one DPSing 60-70% of most runs of stuff.

But the jobs have changed so there may be new things to learn to optimise the healing aspect more.

Right, and I think that's where I was struggling. I just have been trying to re-learn the healing classes and how to optimize them. I wasn't feeling like I spent a lot of time DPSing because I don't think I was used to the wall to wall pulls and how to optimize healing gcds yet. Just jumping back in was a lot harder than I thought it would be.