Getting to Know You (Healer Gaming Styles)

[ASkellington]

1. Been playing since the start of Shb.

2. PC. Mouse/keyboard.

3. I find healing in general boring depending on my team mates.

4. All content. Dungeons for the most part are a snoozefest. Alliance Raids depends on how many new people we get and even then meh.

I think I can sum up trials and raids (including ex and savage) pretty much the same: the mechanics are difficult. The healing is not. Best way I can explain that is learning the mechanics of a new trial/raid are challenging for me. Once that's been met, the challenge of healing it goes down. Dramatically.


5. I have all 80. AST is my most preferred played since I've pretty much mained it the moment I unlocked it and feel the most comfortable with it. WHM I'm not as comfortable but will play. SCH is the least preferred for many reasons chief of which being shielding has never been my favorite play style in any MMO and it is too clunky.

[EaMett]

1) How long have you been playing?
5 years, only ever mained healer but I like to take tank/dps through content when I can.

2) Do you use controller or mouse/keyboard?
Keyboard

3) Do you find healing too boring, too hectic, or just right?
Too boring. Too much downtime and too little to do in that downtime. The easier the content the worst it gets. Even random pugs that perform horribly don't make it that interesting, they just shift the focus to MP management, you can still heal stupid in 1 or 2 spells.

4) Based off question 3, which content are you referring to.
All content. Even ultimate fights (bear with me I'll explain why). Solos, dungeons and normal 8 man content being boring is perfectly fine IMO. We need entry-level content for people learning the role. They're all perfectly solo healable, even with terrible groups and no mana. That gives healers a lot of leeway so it's bound to be a little boring. It would be GREAT imo if we had a few more things to do, beginners could ignore it and veterans could indulge. But alas, I'm not going to cry a river over this content.

The rest of the content goes like this: Either the damage is too low or spread too far appart to generate any sense of urgency (unless you're in a bad group and panic < depends on your experience as a healer). Or the flip side of that is that bad play is punished severely (savage/ultimate = death) in which case healing requirements don't really change that much if you're in a bad group. In all cases, as soon as you have a good grasp on healing, it becomes very dull because there's no execution difficulty associated with the role. If you end up farming content, then that just makes things worse. Ultimate is pretty much just farming (even during prog, you run pulls so often that you're farming parts of the fight). So even thought the pacing is good, the healing requirements are higher, etc. etc. You start running into the same execution boredom the other content suffers from. Albeit to a lesser extent.

5) How many healers have you maxed and which is your preferred to play? Which is your least preferred?
All of them, HW/Stormblood SCH was my favorite. Right now they all play roughly the same. WHM and SCH are equally bad. AST gets a few bonus points with cards.
I'll be leveling SCH/SGE in EndWalker, doing the first savage tier + ultimate and then I'll decide if I drop healer or not (will depend on if they made it more interesting or not). I'm hoping my group will accommodate, but none of them (including us healers) have expressed the desire to play the role. Soooo I'm hoping it's a decision I don't have to make.

[Sani2341]

1) How long have you been playing?
late HW/early SB

2) Do you use controller or mouse/keyboard?
Mouse and Keyboard

3) Do you find healing too boring, too hectic, or just right?
Imho, healign comes in two distinct flavors:
Too boring (usually with competent groups)
Fun (usually with abysmal groups in casual content)

4) Based off question 3, which content are you referring to.
Mostly more casual leaning content (Dungeons, normal raidsand trials, 24 mans), though I do heal the odd Ex trial from tiem to time with the FC

5) How many healers have you maxed and which is your preferred to play? Which is your least preferred?
All of them.
used to be SCH, and I did bring it to 80 first, but that was not because I really enjoyed it's ShB incarnation, but because it got me a magic dps 'for free'.
Atm, it's probably AST, because that still feels busy and engaging with the half arsed card we have left compared to the other two healers 'noone's going to die in the next 2.5s, guess another nuke it is'

[QooEr]

1) Started in mid heavensward.
2) controller
3) Too boring. I only seem to have fun when progging new fights or when saving runs where everyone is messing up mechanics.
4) Literally all content except TEA basically. Im fine with dungeons being easy but I dont even feel like a healer in savage anymore due to how sparse damage is. Add to the mix cohealers that heal instantly and dont even let me use my own healing ogcds and i basically feel like decoration in anything not ultimate.
5) All of them. ast has always been my fav. i used to like scholar in stormblood but now i hate it. at least with whm i can fully turn my brain off for DF content and still do more damage than some dps players.

[Erakir]

1) How long have you been playing?
FFXIV since 2.3 or 2.4. Can't remember which. A few months before Final Coil released.
Healing since EQ in 2000.

2) Do you use controller or mouse/keyboard?
M/K, though I'm very glad this game is designed so well to accommodate both as much as possible.

3) Do you find healing too boring, too hectic, or just right?
I find healing too simple. This stems from a variety of factors, but includes
-An overabundance of strong healing cooldowns
-Static fight design
-Generally, a continuous removal of healer weaknesses across the board (MP Management, etc).
-Healing tools that do not interact with one another in any significant way
-Filler game (mostly via DPS) that's become even less interesting as time has gone on.

This has led to gameplay where our new tools do not augment our toolkit - they straight up replace older abilities outside of emergencies. Seems every expansion we just axe another from the list, putting another ability in the "bad spell" category due to getting something new. This expansion, due to lily rework, it was regen for WHM - our bread and butter in ARR.

On top of the static nature of our encounters, the more things go right, the more the meta has become never clip, never stop nuking. I don't play healer because I enjoy trying to robot a fight as down to the excel spreadsheet as I can. I'd play DPS in games if that was my goal. I play healers because I enjoy having numerous tools to try to best apply to numerous situations, not so I can play rotate-the-CD. Unsurprisingly I enjoyed EQ Enchanter & Bard a lot.

There is room for healer engagement to increase without making healing normal mode content difficult for lesser skilled healers. The skill floor is VERY low right now, and you can tinker with everyone's kits while not raising that floor. You reward the healers who do optimize their kit for the situation, not wipe normal mode groups due to a healer using their base kit. It doesn't even need to be that much. We'd jump through twice as many actions per minute if it increased our damage by 10% while leaving our healing potential similar.

4) Based off question 3, which content are you referring to.
All that I've done, although I haven't personally done ultimate, and I also do not think someone should have to do ultimate to find enjoyable gameplay for an archetype.

In all content I am only engaged when things start going wrong - Up to a point due to savage's eventual design of making wrong things lead to more and more guaranteed wipes.

Due to the wide variety of skill in duty finder this means I'm most often engaged in random trial/raid roulettes - but again, first people have to start making mistakes. A lot of them.

5) How many healers have you maxed and which is your preferred to play? Which is your least preferred?
Leveled all, WHM is my favorite. I have personal investment in the job since FFT so that's a large part of it, and it still feels like due to lily nuance in less-ideal groups I have planning to do. I don't get to use my lilies for ideal weaving/movement spots most of the time.

AST is my least favorite. I don't feel like I have any significant constraints to play around, and solving those puzzles is what I find enjoyable. Cards make me press buttons and at the top end optimizing those in line with personal DPS buffs would be much more engaging, but the more general card-usage isn't that special. I enjoyed it more when it had the chance to run into MP issues. Not having Cure 3 in duty finder content does come into play now and then though.

SCH is in the middle. It's very flexible in theory. It's the practical application that makes it feel like a touched-up classic car. It works - it performs pretty well - but you're constantly flipping levers and switches in the driver's seat. They're not hard, there's just a lot of them and you gotta remember where they are - and we already know how that feels with weaving on SCH right now. I can go 85 on the highway, but I can do the same on AST with cruise control in comparison.

[Risvertasashi]

1) How long have you been playing?

2) Do you use controller or mouse/keyboard?

3) Do you find healing too boring, too hectic, or just right?

4) Based off question 3, which content are you referring to.

5) How many healers have you maxed and which is your preferred to play? Which is your least preferred?

1. 1.0 CBT

2. KBM

3. Usually too boring. Rare occasions that push my healing to the limit - there's nothing better.
But since it's usually boring, I've been playing DPS more and more lately - including, for all 8 years or whatever of raiding, DPSing for the first time in a static environment in 5.4.

4. Everything from dungeons to hard core content. Stopped pvping on healers as of ShB.

5. All
I see healers as situational rather than always having a preference or dislike for one or the other. Prefer SCH for low to mid level dungeons, or current content when I'm feeling lazy; WHM for when I'm trying hard; and AST when I'm particularly energetic.

[Crushnight]

1) How long have you been playing?

Since patch 2.2

2) Do you use controller or mouse/keyboard?

Controller as I am a ps4 player

3) Do you find healing too boring, too hectic, or just right?

Way too boring for most content I do

4) Based off question 3, which content are you referring to.

Long list:
-MSQ
-Overworld content (maps/daily hunts/beast tribes/fates/side quests)
-Dungeons(when I want the worst possible stuff to happen for engagement in these there is an issue in the design of either the role or the content)
-Savage(Prog is fine enough but once that is over back to my pathetic reward that is 1 button spam)
-Extreme trials (see above)
-Normal modes(see dungeons)
-24 man(see dungeons)
-Helping other players(This is usually a if I have to I'll go healer when in previous expansions it was I wanted to be a healer)

5) How many healers have you maxed and which is your preferred to play? Which is your least preferred?

All 3 maxed, Ast is still my preferred to play but Whm feels better to play over Ast, Sch is my least which is a shame given that was my roots back in 2.2

The healer jobs most looking forward to in EW are Sage because it looks like it will have some measure of the old design in it and Ast because I just love Ast.

[Hereon]

1) Since the launch of HW i think (I still remember needing to level both Conjurer and Arcanist for Scholar and whitemage). Though i took a long break until the middle of Stormblood, around the time Tsukuyomi released.

2) Im exclusively a KB/Mouse user. tried controller once, but i just couldnt get the hang of it.

3) Id say its about right. Though i do find myself looking for more challenges like solo healing content or doing mentor roulette with 7 sprouts, to get that extra kick out of it.

4) Like i said: Endgame content and Mentoring. I guess i just like, if things go sideways.

5) I maxed all of them, and 2/3 are BiS gear. My prefered healer changes with content and mood, but generally id say 1st: AST, 2nd WHM, 3rd SCH.

[Urthdigger]

1) 1.0! Technically did a bit of healing in other games before this one but it was never truly my main until near the end of 1.0.

2) Controller! I find it way easier to move and hit the right buttons.

3) Well that's a question. By and large I'd say it's too boring. There's some content where I can find it enjoyable, mostly stuff that introduces special mechanics like searing wind or briny mirror, or even just often targets the healer for certain mechanics so finding when and where I can top people off is part of the game. For most content however, I find the actual healing part is brain dead easy.

4) My experiences cover the whole range up to and including Ultimates. Casual content feels much the same except I don't get any special mechanics and the sole way I make them interesting is seeing how few heals I can toss out and still survive.

5) I've maxed out all 3, and by far my favorite is WHM partly for gameplay and partly for lore (I like the conjurers). My least favorite is AST but that's mostly because the kit just doesn't click with me for some reason, not a bad class.

[Iedarus]

1. Only since Shadowbringers.

2. M&K

3. Kind of boring. As someone who loved the aesthetic of Scholar throughout the course of the series, Astrologian, while also cool in the aesthetics department, is the only healer I can play without falling asleep. Not to mention it also has MUCH better ability synergy.

4. Mainly dungeons, however running trials has the same issue when everyone knows what they're doing, and that's the issue. Healers are essentially punished for teams playing well, which is why it doesn't take a veteran to know healer design is messed up.

5. Like I said before, I have two maxed (I'm sorry but White Mage is way too stagnant). Astrologian is the most fun.