My excitement and my concerns

[Paddle]

Holy crap! Hello everyone! I wasn't able to post this past weekend. Actually this is the first time to post in the Lodestone forums. Hello!

Man it was a good time to start following the forums during Gamescon!!!! Yoshida has totally given the game a facelift. He seems a little more upbeat than our last producer Tanaka, tehe. My hope, is that Yoshida really listens to our feedback with the up coming beta. I personally felt like I was being kicked in the balls for being a loyal fan. I really had high hopes for the game. Tanaka, to me, felt like he was on his high horse watching us all from below. I'm enjoying Yoshida! I mean the guy threw off one of his shirts to give to the crowd. Lets all hope Yoshida sees eye to eye with us during beta.

So, I have a lot that I wanna throw at to you all. First I'm going to vomit all the excitement out of me.
Patch 2.0

The Good:

• Jumping~finally!!! Being able to jump over some objects in game is a relief.
• Implementing classic iconic places from old FF titles is amazing and brilliant!! I don't even know why FFXI didn't do this (if SE did I left FFXI before then).
• Limit Breaks?! Yoshida is tapping into our nostalgia. Its a good marketing move.
• Action Bars is going to make a huge difference. Click and hit.
• UI looks functional now, lol. Looks a little drab BUT I hope all the tech people start making some cool UI mods.
• Summoner/Arcanist leakage. Always been a fan of the SMN class. All I ask is that I'm not a "sub" healer this time around. Please and Thank You.

The Bad: (just speculation due to lack of info we have and beta is beta)

Healers I haven't Healed past 30 but correct me if I'm wrong but the first instance is going to be around lvl 15-20? I'm sure abilities are going to be tweaked and new abilities added. Which I hope they do! But Cure alone is boring. Listen, I'm a healer and have been for the past 10 years. I looked at the whm abilities. You got 2 AOE heals(which one is on CD), 1 Regen, 2 single target heals and some stuff, lol.

Classic abilities are fine with "some" classes. White mage to me seems limited on what they can do. Look at Rift and Secret World, both games are more action based healing. Player can actually hit the mob and heal. Not saying that SE should do that but the tempo in healing needs to step up a notch. How about a Dark White Mage that uses holy and dia to heal the party. hmmmMMMMM?! Add some spice to my life SE!

Cross Realm grouping This is probable THE biggest issue that I have. FFXI had the best community I've ever run into. It also strives in FFXIV. This is where World of Warcraft messed up royally. The community WILL suffer with cross realm pugging.. Its like stepping onto an airplane, you'll see this person once in your life and never see them again. Why should I make personal connections with other players? I don't want to que up for an instance and be with mindless drones where no one is talking.

Secret World actually handles Cross Realms beautifully. If you meet up with someone you like in TSW you can friend them, join the guild, party up and do quest....EVEN if both players are on different servers. TSW still restricts you from just jumping by yourself. The player needs to be in the party to zone to the another server. The way that WoW handles it has killed the guild's/servers community. Its almost like playing a single player game. I play an MMO for a reason and that's for the community!

You all have probable different experience other than my own but this is what I've noticed. I feel that cross realm instances WILL cripple the community and bring about selfish behavior in your LS. Prove me wrong Yoshida.

My main plea for Yoshida is make the community strive with the content he adds.

[Helius]

I can see the reasons for your concerns about Cross Realm pugs, but as for the Healers, I'm not so sure. The way I see it, the healer should be just that, a dedicated healer. In my personal opinion at least, I feel like if the healer was also attacking, it takes away from their supporting role. If we look at some of the more end game content (or even exp parties in Natalan), the WHM is almost constantly busy with healing 7 other people at the same time. Granted they may not necessarily all be getting damaged at the same time, but the fact is that keeping up with the damage being done (along with chasing down people out of range) keeps the healer busy enough as it is.

[Skies]

Healers I haven't Healed past 30 but correct me if I'm wrong but the first instance is going to be around lvl 15-20? I'm sure abilities are going to be tweaked and new abilities added. Which I hope they do! But Cure alone is boring. Listen, I'm a healer and have been for the past 10 years. I looked at the whm abilities. You got 2 AOE heals(which one is on CD), 1 Regen, 2 single target heals and some stuff, lol.

Not really, Paddle. First off you get one AoE heal (Curaga) and one Ohshit button (Benediction). Then, you're probably going to find yourself doing more than simply healing, my LS has 1.5 dedicated healers (I say 1.5 because either one of the second ones tend to always vanish from the face of the world), and they heal in pretty different manners. One of them almost exclusively holds out the battle by using Stoneskin to negate damage and Regen to heal what goes through, whereas the other tends to be curebombing the whole fight long (that said, we do tend to run with both around most of the time).
Also, the White Mage does have quite a few damaging tools that also come with situational debuffs, Stone comes with M.Eva Down (though in a boss fight it'll eventually get fully resisted) and Aerora comes with dispel, they're good off-nukers if the party is handling themselves well (heck, during the Nael fight one of our white mages was nuking as fiercely as our black mages).

That said, earlygame healing can be pretty weird, I remember this one time I was in a party fighting an NM... 2 Pugilists, 1 White Mage. The White Mage (myself no less) was nuking, one of the pugilists was tanking and the other was healing. With the usage of cross-class skills early healing can be pretty fun since you end up doing the weirdest stuff.

[Paddle]

Not really, Paddle. First off you get one AoE heal (Curaga) and one Ohshit button (Benediction). Then, you're probably going to find yourself doing more than simply healing, my LS has 1.5 dedicated healers (I say 1.5 because either one of the second ones tend to always vanish from the face of the world), and they heal in pretty different manners. One of them almost exclusively holds out the battle by using Stoneskin to negate damage and Regen to heal what goes through, whereas the other tends to be curebombing the whole fight long (that said, we do tend to run with both around most of the time).
Also, the White Mage does have quite a few damaging tools that also come with situational debuffs, Stone comes with M.Eva Down (though in a boss fight it'll eventually get fully resisted) and Aerora comes with dispel, they're good off-nukers if the party is handling themselves well (heck, during the Nael fight one of our white mages was nuking as fiercely as our black mages).

That said, earlygame healing can be pretty weird, I remember this one time I was in a party fighting an NM... 2 Pugilists, 1 White Mage. The White Mage (myself no less) was nuking, one of the pugilists was tanking and the other was healing. With the usage of cross-class skills early healing can be pretty fun since you end up doing the weirdest stuff.

Well, my n00b is showing. Thanks for feedback, but like I said I haven't really done a whole lot of healing in FFXIV. I'm just noticing what I see now.

Correct me if I'm wrong Skies but you just said one whm focuses on Stoneskin + Regen... Rinse+repeat (2 abilities total). The other whm just cures and esuna? And Helius sounds like you're just single target healing everyone (1 ability total).. What's the total amount of skills that the healer will actually use in battle? I'm sure I'll get more of a feeling for what I'm in for with harder content. I'm just looking for my diversity when I heal. If I have plenty of tools at my arsenal I'll be fine. Or I maybe I need to drop healing all together and start hitting my "healing aggression" with a dps class, lol.

Which brings up another question. FFXI had 2.5 healers when I used to play. Which were RDM, WHM and SMN. Little bitter when I played SMN during the FFXI days. Here we have this cool radioactive squirrel that cast a water down cure/protect but I'm having to stay in no summon mode to sub heal? Honestly would like to see SMN be more of a hybrid roll in FFXIV. Oh we don't have a tank? Let me pull out Titan. Oh we don't have a Mage? Let me pull out Shiva. I know I know Primals are going to be only wondering NMs but you get my picture.

What other healing classes did FFXI have?

[REDace0]

...

Let me tell you a little about how I play WHM.

1. Stoneskin and Regen. Cure only when necessary to prevent death. This minimizes enmity gained.

2. If you don't need to buff or cure, nuke! People use WHM as a damage dealer in Caravans, Stronghold parties, and solo because Stone(ra) and Aero(ra) do decent damage and are especially useful when mobs are resistant to Thunder or Fire.

Unless you're running a fight with a single, dedicated healer that's kept busy, WHMs should nuke as much as possible imo. I respect pure WHMs that gear for maximum healing potency and MND, but for most situations, I think you're better off mixing nuking gear with one or two WHM AF pieces. I tend to favor Healer's Boots (enhanced Regen) and Healer's Robe (enhanced Cure, also clearly identifies you) because 90% of your healing as WHM will come from the use of those two skills.

[Skies]

Correct me if I'm wrong Skies but you just said one whm focuses on Stoneskin + Regen... Rinse+repeat (2 abilities total). The other whm just cures and esuna? And Helius sounds like you're just single target healing everyone (1 ability total).. What's the total amount of skills that the healer will actually use in battle? I'm sure I'll get more of a feeling for what I'm in for with harder content. I'm just looking for my diversity when I heal. If I have plenty of tools at my arsenal I'll be fine. Or I maybe I need to drop healing all together and start hitting my "healing aggression" with a dps class, lol.

Actually, you'll be cycling through roughly 5 abilities when doing support as a white mage. Thing is my LS's healers kind of have their own style, usually I play hearing the crossed shouts of "why aren't you curing? " "why are you curing?" and it the end it all works out.

Essentially, you'll want to cycle between Cure and Cura to keep people healed, keeping up Stoneskin and Regen as well as revitalizing Protect as the need be as well as the eventual Raise. And during certain battles, wherein statuses are particularly powerful (Stone from the moogles come to mind) you'll be tossing down Esuna. And when you get a breather, contribute a little bit to the damage with Stone/Stonera and Aero/Aerora (though that eats a lot of MP)

One thing in particular is that usually people run with one white mage, sometimes two (my team prefers two). And this game is heavily reliant on positioning and there are often a lot of AoEs requiring you to keep your eyes not only on the tank, but all of the melee as well and sometimes even the ranged. (this is assuming your party works at a level below 'absolute best skills'). As a solo healer, you'll be asking for MORE cures, believe me, i've tried and it's not easy. On a duo it'll definitely be better.

That said, my friends say that a healer job is definitely less button-intensive than DD, though.

[Jennestia]

XI's healers depended on the situation - SMN because people didn't know any better, WHM, RDM, SCH and even BLU could heal if they so chose (white wind can be pretty potent AoE cure for taking hate off someone and tanking for a bit.)

The "SMN heal" push has been happening since SMN in even the main series doubled as a white mage (if locked roles like Yuna/Garnet etc.)

SMNs aren't healers these days, they're focused on DD (the good ones anyway) so it's very likely XIV's SMN would be on the DD route too since 1 let alone 2 WHMs are enough healing for most content (currently) in XIV as is.

[Deli]

puppet master's pet can heal not bad too...so that's another 0.5
for my team both of our whm use regen and rotate stoneskin to the tank, occasionally use cura. so it's pretty much enough for most bosses fights...
and they haven't define cough*Archanist*cough* role in the pt too...maybe it's time to bring back "sacrifice"
it match cough*summoner*cough too... they sacrifice something to make the summon...

[Kerwin]

The community WILL suffer with cross realm pugging.

I think the opposite, when this was implemented in wow I was excited that I could actually find a party without waiting in town shouting for one.

[Jennestia]

I think the opposite, when this was implemented in wow I was excited that I could actually find a party without waiting in town shouting for one.

I think the suffering part mentioned is the fact specific server communities won't matter when you can do everything between all servers.