Healing is NOT easy!!!!

[Doomfist]

I'm a tank main, and I filled a book run for m3s for shits and giggles, since I already healed that on sage once. Maybe it's because it was late at night, but I was fighting for my life out there!!

Between dying from taking the wrong spot in fuse or foe (forgot that healers took intercards), to not healing and mitigating enough to get through fusefield cuz I tried using seraphism for an earlier mechanic, and finally dying because instead of looking at the attack name being used, I was looking at my hotbar to see what I can use to pull us through Xboom Special. Also, I didn't realize that corpses can iframe through healer LB3 when they respawn from outside the arena to the center, at which point I was flailing around desperately GCD shielding, only to wipe once more.

At least we recleared on the very last pull after wipes from me, ddos, and general tomfoolery. But I learned my lesson, never heal savage late at night......

[Rithy255]

I do think that learning healer on a savage fight is likely the most difficult. I heard M3S is also a fight designed to test healers a bit.

The "Healing being easy" was more towards casual content. where you don't need to heal much even in big AOE situations due to serval different issues stacked on each other (no its not just tank sustain that only plays a part in it).

What people are generally saying/asking for when saying "healing is too easy" is that in all forms of content they should feel impactful and like actual "healers". Instead of only the most difficult kinds of content.

[CaptainLagbeard]

It does somewhat depend on the content... Something like Everkeep EX is rather insultingly easy to heal...

[AmiableApkallu]

I'm a tank main...

Between dying from taking the wrong spot in fuse or foe (forgot that healers took intercards), to not healing and mitigating enough to get through fusefield cuz I tried using seraphism for an earlier mechanic, and finally dying because instead of looking at the attack name being used, I was looking at my hotbar to see what I can use to pull us through Xboom Special. Also, I didn't realize that corpses can iframe through healer LB3 when they respawn from outside the arena to the center, at which point I was flailing around desperately GCD shielding, only to wipe once more.

From my own, (very) limited experience running Savage fights when they're current: If you're a tank, you need a good plan for your mitigations. If you're a healer, you need a good plan for your heals. Making sh*t up as you go will likely end poorly, though, depending on the party, you sometimes have no choice but to try.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]Between dying from taking the wrong spot in fuse or foe (forgot that healers took intercards), to not healing and mitigating enough to get through fusefield cuz I tried using seraphism for an earlier mechanic, and finally dying because instead of looking at the attack name being used, I was looking at my hotbar to see what I can use to pull us through Xboom Special. Also, I didn't realize that corpses can iframe through healer LB3 when they respawn from outside the arena to the center, at which point I was flailing around desperately GCD shielding, only to wipe once more[...]

If it helps, you devise a heal plan in a rather similar fashion to devising your mitigation plan on tanks. I.e. X cooldown will always be up for Y mechanic (in its most basic sense). Failing to do that in EX or more difficult duties means you're at the mercy of whatever fight or flight response you'll likely spit out and/or your other 7 party member's competencies at covering your mistakes.

Other than that, general inexperiencedness with the role also impacts decision making i.e. panicking instead of remaining calm and collected when something goes wrong; and that's just to be expected if you don't main the role. Everybody starts somewhere.

[PercibelTheren]

Healing is only remotely challenging when learning a fight. After that, you're back to pressing your one damage spell waiting for a raidwide to happen 90% of the time.

[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.

[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.

[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.