Healing is NOT easy!!!!

[Absurdity]

Your static spoils you. Healing is always challenging if you PF, as the average cohealer is more likely to suck than not. And if any readers don't notice this problem... They likely are it.

The co-healer is rarely the sole issue, it's mitigation from randoms in general. Since pretty much every mechanic is a mit check more than a healing check and randoms in PF aren't exactly known for using their mitigations in the first place.

Having a Reprisal + Feint + Addle + something like Shake or Holos on almost every AoE or having absolutely nothing reducing the damage is what makes the big difference.

[Doomfist]

Okay this week I healed m1s and m2s for the first time, and healed m3s again.

M1 on sage was pretty easy and relaxing, though I died from a dps' mistake during splintering nails.

M2 wasn't bad as scholar but I never noticed the dot in beat 1, when hearts start crossing the room everyone drops to like 70% hp for some reason, I caused one mistake where I went to H1 spot during pairs since I got a bit spun around in beat 2.

M3 as white mage was surprisingly smoother than when I'm on shield healer, temperance and asylum during fusefield was adequate, while liturgy during xboom special makes that sequence a little less panicky. I told the other healer (sage) that pure healing m3 was easier than shield healing it, but they weren't quite convinced this is the case, exclaiming that mits make a bigger difference. Perhaps I was paired with mediocre white mages during my shield healing m3 fights?

I didn't heal m4 and just tanked it on warrior instead of pld or drk like I normally do. I bought the 730 axe, went in, and the 735 axe dropped....I literally used the 730 axe for ONE fight before getting my first 735 weapon that coincidentally replaces my shiny new axe, oh well.

[Sylvain]

M2 wasn't bad as scholar but I never noticed the dot in beat 1, when hearts start crossing the room everyone drops to like 70% hp for some reason, I caused one mistake where I went to H1 spot during pairs since I got a bit spun around in beat 2.

After the transition usually there are hots around.
Then as we pass the 1.5min mark many of the ogcd from the first AoE at 30s come back which keeps the group alive (like assize n stuff).
By the time you reached the share, you've been a whole minute under the DoT damage and people have taken a few towers and altough they don't really hurt. The DoT still nibbles on people hp bar and once the share and next thing arrive everyone is at 50-70% life.

The core reason is that arena wide dot isn't something we're used to deal with.

[Carighan]

Yeah the savage raids in particular are disappointing. They seem brutal at first, but the way savage/ultimates are designed in FFXIV it is always just a certain "pattern" of oGCDs and sometimes GCDs being expected of you. And nothing more. And it's all planned pro-active preparation, never reactive healing like in other games as very few elemens are random in damage-size or damage-target.

Don't get me wrong though, I absolutely agree that healing isn't easy. It's boring and has a design that goes against what makes healer-players want to play a healer in the first place (the reactive nature), but it's not easy in particular for a newcomer. I had high hope in early EX runs that the dev team changed direction but it turns out they haven't, they just elevated stats where the difference between undergeared and geared are even bigger than before.

[Doomfist]

Yeah EX1 was praised a lot for being a fun healer extreme, because of how intense it is. Funny that m1 and m2 savage are easier for healers than ex1, though bear in mind I'm healing in duty complete parties of well-geared players so that further makes healing easier. I'm not exactly new to healing either since I healed barb golbez and zeromus ex before dawntrail dropped.

And besides, this is the first tier of the expansion, I didn't do panda savage but I heard that p1-4 were easy as well. I'm wondering if next tier will be a big spike like abyssos was, where healers were at their rarest.

[Carighan]

Yeah, but it's something we absolutely ought to be handling in most fights. Or a variant of it, it's not like other games have no long explored the space of "consistent raid damage output":

* A simple DoT ticking away constantly.
* Random attacks hitting 1-3 random people for a non-trivial amount of damage every few seconds (so they need targetted healing lest the next such attack or overall AoE could down them).
* Similarly, random circle of line AoEs that have no prior warning that hit for a lower but still significant amount, these would force the group to spread apart in idle times plus assuming they would not stop during mechanics they'd add some extra spice onto otherwise fully dependable situations (their damage is of course much lower than the single hits).
* 360° cleaves where AAs hit everyone but the primary target in melee range, too, but for far less damage. Basically melee DPS need constant healing attention.

[KanataNanaya]

It's hard in prog, where every job is hard.

It's easy has hell AND boring once you go for reclear, Especially most jobs has heal prep now.

GCD attack, GCD attack, GCD attack x10, raidwide come after this mechanic? bam, earthly stars, flowers, SGE layered shield thing, fairy buff, one or two OGCD after dmg pop. bam.

other jobs as the pleasure of managing their CDs, maximizing their damage.
With healer if you are REALLY REALLY good you get to squeeze in 1-2 same GCD single target spell every once in a while.

[Zakuyia]

So if your not doing ex - ultimate content healing is easy. Its easy in normal raids alliance wut not. Once you get to higher content healing becomes much harder. The need to communicate, manage gcds, understanding shields, over healing, when to play safe. It becomes way more technical in higher end content.

[KageTokage]

I agree that feeling compelled to pre-shield all of the heavy raidwides in savage because I can't rely on my random party to be using their own abilities is not adding meaningful engagement to an encounter.

Ideally, the encounter should force them to do that instead of getting complacent and allowing the burden of survival to be shouldered mostly by the shield healer.

[Cabalabob]

Let me see if I have this straight.

You did savage, the hardest content in the game bar ultimates/criterion.

on a job you don’t normally play, on a role that isn’t your main.

Late at night while tired.

AND you cleared?

And this is your argument to show that healing isn’t easy?