Getting to Know You (Healer Gaming Styles)

[Grimoire-M]

1) How long have you been playing?

Somewhere between late 2.2 to early 2.3. My first FC lead was constantly riffing the levi theme in chat. I started out on a terrible laptop (8-12 FPS people walking outsped me on a chocobo terrible) so I stuck on BLM until I got it upgraded right before HW. First healing experience was with SCH somewhere in the middle of ARR as part of levelling Arcanist for the cross-class skills. Wound up moving to Arcanist slowly once Heavensward came around (mostly on SMN in Savage as there are better healers in my static, we swap around on Extremes). I didn't really take to healers until I started maxing all the jobs out properly. Post Gordias I shifted from Astrologian to Scholar, and have been playing it and Summoner ever since.

I'm used to caster or support DPS in most MMOs as I've mostly played them casually, but looking at it more thoroughly I'm drawn to the mage archetypes that feature a mixture of offence and support or crowd control elements. Lulu/Orianna/Karma/Twisted Fate in League, Sage/Priest in Ragnarok Online. It's probably why I'm right at home here given how XIV's healing meta is bizarrely catered towards DPSing most of the time.

2) Do you use controller or mouse/keyboard?

Mouse and Keyboard. While controller's supported well enough I'll never get used to it by virtue of how much space you really have on a keyboard if you're willing to alter the default binds to your comfort level. I've been using the same 1 to 6 by Z to N layout for my hotbars since I first got into MMOs playing Ragnarok Online and Maple Story as a kid and I don't see that changing anytime soon.


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

I find healing depends way too much on other players screwing up and how much they're allowed to screw up before the fight forces you to wipe, instead of on the fight itself pressuring your resources at a base level and using those mistakes to add stress over time. In casual content I can solo-heal garbage situations but I wouldn't call it hectic as much as I'd call it a sobering experience for the sprouts involved. Extremes and Savage can be hectic, but to some extent that's limited to progression. You can see the effect that skill gap has in Alliance raids as much as levelling content. People learn at different rates and as long as you're willing to learn or share what you know you can clear every bit of content in this game, eventually.

I think the problem is SE's approach to fight design in and of itself. Ever since Gordias they've really hunkered down and settled into one niche that they are unwilling to break out of in harder content. The majority of what everyone is actually doing in each fight learning how to move their respective avatars according to the correct dance. I can't recall a time when they actually had you micromanage a mob or an encounter specific resource for more than 15 seconds since A2S. And, sure, that's okay as a DPS, they have enough to pay attention to already, but I find myself wishing there'd be more of that irrespective of the role I'm playing. On a healer in particular that's especially painful given the lack of a rotation to engage with when the party -is- competent, and SE's unwillingness to allow for recovery in harder content. If, as a designer, you have to resort to binary outcomes like Doom stacks and instant-kill AoEs to make a phase matter, you are kind of admitting the mechanics you're presenting within that phase aren't interesting in of themselves anymore.


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

All of it. Engagement and Difficulty are two seperate vectors that make up gameplay, and my concerns are primarily with the former. I don't mind content being hard. It's how that difficulty is presented that matters. We're variety starved at the moment. Dancing and DPS checks aren't the only option. That will always be a part of fights to some degree, but the better part of the MMORPG genre doesn't lean on it as heavily as XIV has. And giving players more ways to actively control an encounter also allows for more a granular difficulty spectrum to be implemented within an encounter. It also requires that you design more dynamic class kits on the player side of things, because you can expect that a greater amount of flexibility will be needed to deal with fights properly. Not everything has to be about the 1m-2m raid buff window, after all.

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

I've got three characters I'm working on at the moment. My main has all healers maxed. I have an alt with Scholar maxed and geared in case I want to do side content and Savage runs without disrupting my static's gear progression, and a third character who's quickly becoming a second main on a different Data Center, that I'm working maxing everything on. I plan to max Arcanist via Scholar on all of them first in Endwalker before branching out.

Of the healers we have right now, I prefer Scholar. I maintain the stance that it's the best healer to learn how to heal the way XIV wants you to. The primary draws to the class are Aetherflow, offering multiple low cooldown go-to heals for a minimal DPS cost; and the Fairy, a free smart regen that will give you more value than anyone really respects. If you're looking to improve it gets you to an intermediate level very quickly, and it has the easiest time optimizing thanks to its flexibility. Because its GCD heals are noticeably more inefficient than other healers, you really are encouraged to get away from the trap of Cure/Benefic spam that the other two push you into, and that cost is still worth the power the whole kit holds in aggregate. Is it a lot to juggle? Sure. But it's a robust toolbox that actually makes you flex your kit around what is happening in a fight, unlike the other two, in my experience.

The worst of the three I find is Astrologian. I don't find it particularly fun anymore in spite of how good it actually is. A majority of AST's cooldowns have the same general problem for different, nuanced reasons: While they are extremely powerful when maximized, they are also really inconvenient to work with because of how you go about maximizing them. In contrast, I think cards are fine (unless you're on a controller), but I do wish they had more use in the healing toolkit like the pre-Shadowbringers iteration did. I've posted a card rework elsewhere that accomplishes that in a manner I'd consider intuitive, but the gist of what I was after was shifting away from reacting to the card you just drew. I did that in said rework by giving players a hand of four cards and making every action that used a card draw another, but you could accomplish that by simply showing upcoming draws.

I do want to mention my opinions on White Mage. Because it's important to the healer discussion as a whole. White Mage is disappointing, completely lacking the depth that could make it a standout healer in spite of how iconic it is. I enjoy it more in ARR and HW content than I do in recent instances, though I still enjoy it more than AST because it doesn't have awkward cooldowns, just less of them. It's serviceable, but lacks key features the other two have. While Lilies are flexible to some degree, they aren't enough to carry the job the way Aetherflow and Cards do, and don't fully close the design gaps White Mage has. Every problem Healers have right now as a whole has now is something White Mage has been dealing with since Heavensward. If that doesn't tell you how emblematic of the problem they really are, nothing will.

[Roeshel]

1) How long have you been playing?

Since April

2) Do you use controller or mouse/keyboard?

Mouse & keyboard

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

Healing is never boring. The problem with FFXIV is that healing is nonexistent in the majority of the content.

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

Everywhere except for PvP. In PvP using one GCD to attack at the wrong time could easily result in death at least for WHM. Haven't played the other two in the Feast

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

Every one of them. I don't have least preferred. I use different healers for different types of roulettes.

White Mage for level cap dungeons

Scholar for 50/60/70 dungeons, Daily roulette, and Alliance raids.

Astrologian for trials and normal raids.

I initially leveled all of them in order to get into savage practice groups faster. White Mage was commonly the first type of healer filled so leveling AST and SCH reduced the time for which I had to wait for a practice group to get filled or to find one.

Since I got the last 530 BiS piece for WHM(body) I haven't played the game that much. I actually stopped playing on my main character and created an alt that is my current active character.

But before I made my alt

I rarely did roulettes unless I needed Gil.

I didn't like grinding Bozja content all over again for other relic weapons. I barely made it for AST after finishing WHM's relic.

I tried doing some extreme trials because I had never done any. They were interesting for a very short while. I started with Titania, Innocence, and Hades and I stopped after clearing them because the loot is not interesting. The gear was weaker than what I already had.


No matter how many times people claim that healers are homogenized, they never play the same way for me. I really like how White mage plays in dungeons. I can legit walk into the mobs regardless if the tank is behind me, use Swiftcast or Surecast(whatever is not on CD) and start spamming Holy, possibly use Rescue if the tank needs extra help finding their way. If I am with Scholar what I would do is play right behind my tank as they are pulling, constantly using my AoE if it deals more than my DoT, dropping the mobs HP to almost half if the pull is lengthy. It is actually perfect in lower-level dungeons where DoT-ing every mob is not as rewarding as AoE-ing. Dungeons like Amdabor Keep with lengthy pulls are my favorite to get in DF when the tank is pressing W. I do grab a lot of aggro but it's just fine, I need the tank to take the aggro off me when the pull is done immediately because unlike WHM I don't have stun for 7 seconds.

I literally cannot play AST like WHM in dungeons. I just can't. The closest I can get is to SCH's instant AoE + moving behind the tank while I slide cast or when Lightspeed is active but even then the constant target switching that occurs once the tank is planted causes a shift of gameplay. Especially after level 70+ when you get Sleeve Draw as an ability, the target switching becomes a lot in the first gate to gate pull. After the tank is planted it is like this: Gravity - LS - Gravity - f1/f2/f3/f4- Play - Draw - Tab - Gravity - f1/f2/f3/f4 - Play - Sleeve Draw - Tab - Gravity - f1/f2/f3/f4 - Play - Divination - Tab - Gravity - (). So that's like a different target every second in the first 7-10 secs and that's coupled with having to decide whether to use randomly drawn cards on melee or ranged for three consecutive times and you could end up possibly having to redraw in order to align your seals all the while keeping track of the tank's hp and also keeping your cursor on the mob in the middle in order to avoid pressing tab because tab could target a mob on the sides which is going to result in your AoE not hitting every mob. I used Tab when I was learning how to place my cards fast initially. It was a fail-safe measure for me. It is better to cast Gravity on GCD than do nothing while trying to figure out what target to press. AST is the only healer with which I've used Tab to actively support my playstyle. I haven't unlocked all jobs but I sincerely doubt that there is any job that gets close to having to go through so much target switching in order to play optimally even if it is for a very short period of time. I would really like it if the buffs we would have to maintain in Endwalker have short cooldowns like 5-10 seconds so that we have to use them constantly. Cards and Divination are what I like about AST the most but the cooldowns are too long for me.

[Gemina]

1) How long have you been playing?
I joined early 2015

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

3) Do you find healing too boring, too hectic, or just right?
It's all three of those depending on the situation, and healer is a situational role.

4) Based off question 3, which content are you referring to.
All of it. From one shotting mobs 70 levels below you, all the way to getting one-shotted multiple times yourself in Savage/Ultimate. Several things go into how much a healer kit opens up, and the tier of content difficulty is only one of them.

5) How many healers have you maxed and which is your preferred to play? Which is your least preferred?
All my healers are maxed. The healer I prefer depends on the encounter. A simple run down would be: High end (SCH), Dungeons (WHM), Roulettes (AST). It is a notable mention that my SCH is currently on strike.

[Brandedblade]

1. Since about patch 2.4.

2. keyboard

3. Just right.

4. Easier content is going to be boring no matter the role. Having more buttons to press doesn't change this.

5. All of them at 80. My preference is SCH -> WHM -> AST. WHM is only bumped up because it can do some crazy stuff in Bozja, outside of that SCH is my preferred healer.

[Noume]

1) I've been playing about playtime 900 hours. i bought it before ShB nearly released

2) I use keyboard + mouse

3) Too boring / Just right

4) Too boring if i got lowlevel like Satasha, Coppermine, etc. during Duty FInder Leveling
Just right if we are new to the dungeon/extreme/raid that everyone have little knowledge about mechanic. especially with friends that often got K.O, lol

5) for now SCH level 80. the rest healer is nearly 80. I prefer AST (its fun to think at all, doing the card buff while healing also helping attack too), and least SCH (since its simple, and must smart management).

Well, cant say more, since i never tried extreme and above using the healer (mostly i use RDM on extreme)

[MintnHoney]

1) How long have you been playing?
Since the pre-release of 2.0.

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

3) Do you find healing too boring, too hectic, or just right?
Of the choices presented, I'm between "too boring" and "just right," leaning toward "too boring." If I could use another phrase, I would say I find it too simple (currently).

4) Based off question 3, which content are you referring to.
All content except for Savage/Ultimate raiding, although I've also done those in the past and would say my comments could apply there, too.

5) How many healers have you maxed and which is your preferred to play? Which is your least preferred?
I have only leveled AST; I have little interest in the other healers (Sage included, now), though I keep some tabs on them.

[Raminax]

1) How long have you been playing?

- I started a day or two after the official launch, pretty much.

2) Do you use controller or mouse/keyboard?

- Keyboard and mouse.

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

- Generally speaking, the act of healing or DPSing is boring using this scale. I'll occasionally have some fun trying to push my limits (Spicy thought, but is just Asylum enough here?), but that feels more like metagaming rather than commenting on the actual gameplay.

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

- Honestly, all of it. I haven't done Ultimates, but even from a primarily PuG perspective, Extremes and Savages aren't that amazingly fun to heal. Mistakes at those levels tend to need to be fixed with a Raise or four, rather than clever usage of healing resources. I don't want to say I feel frustrated or powerless in that kind of content, but to clear the stuff, everyone needs to do decently well, and that means that you quickly end up going back to countering infrequent AoEs or tankbusters with a Rapture or Benediction, before seeing five people rightfully die again to a mechanic the group hasn't quite experienced yet. Rinse, repeat until you reach the finishing line or enrage.

Dungeons, normal raids, alliance raids etc. are pretty much snoozefests since day one - some more so than others.

Bozja was surprisingly fun, but that's thanks to various Lost actions like Chainspell and Seraph Strike giving you lots of freedom and DPS. And occasionally just having fun with zooming around the map with Lost Swift or giggling as you Full Cure the group.

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

All of them. White Mage is/was my go to because I used to enjoy the aesthetics and the big numbers. Won't lie, it's beginning to look a bit too feminine and flowery with Endwalker...

Scholar is my least favourite - as powerful as it is numberswise, it just feels incredibly janky to play, and I say that as a Clip Mage main.

[Metsonm]

1) Since HW. Since 3.1, I think, maybe 3.2

2) Controller

3) Too boring

4) I've healed up to Savage. Did E4S on SCH before swapping to DPS

5) All 3 at 80. I guess I usually go for WHM as I only really run healers in dungeons for the queues now, or DR if I want to mix things up from Tanks/DPS. Least favourite is SCH because playing it on Eden's Gate Savage pointed out the flaws such as the janky fairy AI and the stripped down ability pool.

[Mutemutt]

1. Since open beta

2. I use controller... but I use a set up of macros that sorta imitate targeting using the function keys. Couldn't stand tapping up and down so much.

3. I love healing as it is now.

4. I don't find the easy content very fun (on any class really); but extreme, savage, and ultimates I loved healing through. Also do a lot of pvp too.

5. I maxed them all. Mostly play ast and sch. Whm... not so much. I'd say ast is my favorite overall.

[ToodlesElNoodles]

I’d like to thank everyone for sharing so far!

Getting to know a little more about all of you eally helps me understand and put your opinions into better context! Even if I may not fully agree on some opinions, I still value them more than before on the forum!

So again, thank you!