How to have fun healing in normal content?

[Bellsong]

Yeah OP just go do old content in a way that barely anyone actually wants to do it with jobs that turn the fights into jokes anyways! :v

At least no one ever has to look very far to see why XIV is the way it is currently, especially when it comes to healers lmao.

[Kohashi]

Yeah OP just go do old content in a way that barely anyone actually wants to do it with jobs that turn the fights into jokes anyways! :v

At least no one ever has to look very far to see why XIV is the way it is currently, especially when it comes to healers lmao.

Are you trolling or genuinely oblivious at this point? MINE content is very active. There are entire communities shaped and dedicated to Old stuff.

[Azurarok]

really just shows how much the battle system relies so heavily on the content to be enjoyable as opposed to skill/party interactions nowadays

[Bryson]

Because it's normal?

Why you'd give up progging M6s since May?

[Derio]

Instead of WHM play AST. WHM is the healer with the most job identity crisis and needs some serious work in 8.0 and WHM was my favorite healer since the game was released.

[AmiableApkallu]

Both of them are very much context dependent

SCH’s modern design relies completely on its healing kit. So it’s really only better in casual content if you were already healing but want to heal in a more interesting way which doesn’t seem to be the problem OP is having

AST is also arguably less complexity more pointless busy work that doesn’t feel engaging. Like is it engaging to have 12 single target heals when all of them together barely actually contribute more than WHM’s 4. At least SCH can claim to a feeling of nebulous “impact” that really only applies to expedient and spreadlo

I’d really say the other healers don’t make casual content better, there is arguments that contextually they can actually make the experience worse

In the context of current jobs and current casual content, and presuming that we're sticking to healers, I'd argue that just about the only avenue right now for having more fun is to simply give yourself more generally-considered-okay/viable options so that you can simply do whatever you feel like in the moment.

It's not about whether a million single target heals are especially useful or necessary. It's that it might just be fun to pick a button based on VFX and SFX.

It's not about whether Expedient and Spreadlo are especially useful or necessary. It's that it might just be fun to give people the zoomies or to try to zero out an incoming raid wide.

It's not necessary, but you could try throwing out two DPS cards under every Divination, or seeing just how much Aetherflow you can dump into Energy Drain (and under Chain, for bonus points).

None of this addresses the core issues, but in this context, I don't think WHM does any favors here.

[Raikai]

I often find myself falling asleep during boss fights where no damage is going on until next raidwide and whm is my favorite aesthetic in the game but im not always doing high end so im wondering if anybody does anything special to make healers more fun in there

I actually have all the other way around...

Healing normal content feels a bit more engaged because people do mess up a lot more. But I must say it gets old pretty fast - having your difficult threshold being dictated by how bad the players are rather than by the challenges the mechanics themselves put against you.

And then healing high end fights is only interesting during prog, and as people get used to the mechanics it gets progressively more boring and spreadsheet-y.

There's 2 things that can make a healer's life less miserable:

1) Give the same dps complexity of tanks - not as intrinsic as DPS jobs, yet not barebones as Nuke + dot. This way, in both scenarios where the healers find themselves bored of healing, they have something more engaging to do.
or
2) Fundamentally change the whole healing system and encounter damage profiles for healers to GCD damage less and GCD heal more. Make damaging actions related to MP economy by giving replenish, free healing action procs,etc.

[Striker44]

Personally, I just do practically all my content using DF, and random groups by their nature - at least the large majority of the ones I happen to join - take a lot of unnecessary damage.

[AnotherPerson]

I often find myself falling asleep during boss fights where no damage is going on until next raidwide and whm is my favorite aesthetic in the game but im not always doing high end so im wondering if anybody does anything special to make healers more fun in there

That's the neat part, you don't.

This is where I'd link you the stacks of healer complaints and feedback on these issues littered all over the forums to show you that you aren't alone, but SE showed they frankly don't care or see it as an issue for over half a decade, so it's pretty pointless. Really, just play another role.

At some point, no matter what kind of random players you get in roulettes, you will feel either helpless, bored, or useless. It's unfortunately inevitable with the way they designed the toolkit, unless you're devoting half your attention doing something else.

Healers are the only role who aren't given an option to do more interesting mechanics after meeting minimum healing requirement, other than press your monotonous single target attack button for ~5 to 10 minutes. Getting better as a healer inversely results in having nothing interesting left to do due to the way healers are designed. This is why most healer mains eventually grow to dislike healer more overtime. The core gameplay loop is simply activate your over-abundant healing abilities immediately, then press the button you bound your lv 1/lv45 damage spell to until the enemy is dead, with very few deviation in-between. This only gets worse the higher level you go because you get more healing abilities and every role gets more healing abilities as well, to the point that they sometimes don't even need you if they play well.

The faster you accept this reality, the faster you realize healer role is a dead-end role if you want fun unless you're playing on patch day where you are more likely to use your entire toolkit from not knowing what to expect for safety rather than a portion of it.

[Minarisweet]

Fortunately my main healer job I play, Scholar still does a decent amount of auto-attack damage (well at least when compared to other healers/casters), keeping my auto-attack active as much as possible is part of my enjoyment in normal content.

Also since Scholar has Energy Drain to spend unused resources on damage, it keeps me awake throughout the duties as you know sometimes there are players accidentally taking avoidable damage and I have to adjust my heal plan for better aetherflow usage.




(Fun Fact: In Porta SCH's AoE, Art of War is a gain on 1, and if everyone plays well, you can heal without casting a single GCD heal, feels satisfying to me when things go smoothly.)


And yes, I do miss Miasma, Miasma II, Bane and Shaowflare but yea...

I tried this and it didnt really work it just felt like added tedium for no reward... i was even using up all my aetherflow in energy drain and purely healing with the other ogcds i got and it still didnt feel rewarding.