How does healing *feel*?

[Kesia]

In any game I play, I'm always interested how classes *feel* to players. I'm not looking for what you think about individual spells, but the actual feeling of just playing the class. Thrilling, boring, easy, difficult, relaxing...?

That's all I want to know! Describe to me how you feel when you play your chosen healing class/job.

Thank you!

[Nullie]

I play a healer because it is by far the most interesting for me. Your job is to keep everyone alive. Especially the tanks. Without you no one advances and you can take care of yourself better than most classes. If someone is being a jerk to you, well stop healing them if you wish. On top of making sure everyone is ok you can also sneak in damage here and there when the opportunity rises. You don't have to just sit there spamming cure all day long. Make the fights interesting for yourself, but don't put you or your party in jeopardy. You are protected by the other classes and they'll come to your defense the moment you are in trouble. Think of everyone as your own personal body guards. Hehe.

I used to play dps classes, but I made the switch to healers and I doubt I will ever go back again.

[ttyl]

Eos feels like a partner. I've grown bored of easy "maintenance healing", she handles that. She's not so smart, so I handle the intense parts and cooldowns. It fits my playstyle perfectly.

However, the party UI is horrid. I don't need to see other's cast times or DPS's MP/TP bars. With all the HUD customization elsewhere, I shouldn't have to mentally block unnecessary information. I'm reluctant to level Scholar until addons are out.

[fanservice]

Can be boring in places like preatorium, exciting in ifrit hardmode, and just stupid stressful against crap like demon wall with 'meh' for DDs as a scholar.

[Karti]

When I read this topic title, I thought of the epic stoner guy from that 70's Show saying it! lol

But healing for me feels great. I'm used to tanking, but when ever I switch to a healing role, I always feel like there is that special link between me and the tank. So romantic! =3

(Also, I apparently have a twin from Hyperion named Ava. )

[Alente]

I play a healer because it is by far the most interesting for me. Your job is to keep everyone alive. Especially the tanks. Without you no one advances and you can take care of yourself better than most classes. If someone is being a jerk to you, well stop healing them if you wish. On top of making sure everyone is ok you can also sneak in damage here and there when the opportunity rises. You don't have to just sit there spamming cure all day long. Make the fights interesting for yourself, but don't put you or your party in jeopardy. You are protected by the other classes and they'll come to your defense the moment you are in trouble. Think of everyone as your own personal body guards. Hehe.

I used to play dps classes, but I made the switch to healers and I doubt I will ever go back again.

I've adopted a similar play-style, used to be a hardline DPS until I got sick of being at the mercy of healers who hadn't figured out the finer points of their class.

Being a Healer gives you a pretty good overarching view of the fight, good for leading raids, which is always nice for improving tactics later on. I suppose DPS gets a little less tantalizing as you get older - the blood stops boiling as fast.

With FFXIV in particular though Healing is pretty fun once you get to end-game. There's plenty of decisions you have to make; can the tank survive long enough for me to pump out some AoE heals on the DPS? Do I need to mitigate this next big hit with a Stoneskin? How important is that paralyze debuff on the BLM? Before that though, especially before the 40ish bracket, it usually boils down to a snooze fest of spamming Cure 1 most of the time. And I certainly would not suggest solo mob killing on any CNJ/WHM before 50 unless you really like mashing two buttons constantly.

WHM is pretty fun though once you get to the end, looking forward to trying SCH next =)

[Valiant]

Eos feels like a partner. I've grown bored of easy "maintenance healing", she handles that. She's not so smart, so I handle the intense parts and cooldowns. It fits my playstyle perfectly.

However, the party UI is horrid. I don't need to see other's cast times or DPS's MP/TP bars. With all the HUD customization elsewhere, I shouldn't have to mentally block unnecessary information. I'm reluctant to level Scholar until addons are out.

I have a feeling accounts will get banned for using addons... seen it in 11 and I doubt 14 will be any different... this is SE not Blizzard

[Lachryphage]

Healing doesn't feel good as a scholar. I'm always overhealing and wasting mana because my fairy decides to heal someone right before I do. My AOE heal is worthless. My single target heal works fine for the tank since he'll use the shield. However, most of the people hit by an AOE heal won't be getting hit again soon. So basically my AOE heal is at 50% power. It doesn't seem like sacred soil is a significant buff, especially considering it's stuck in one place and uses a stack of aetherflow. They should double its power and cooldown and the MP reduction should be changed to succor 1. The only fight so far where free succor II would have been useful was the last phase of Garuda, but I didn't have sacred soil yet for that fight. The UI is terrible for healing. Everybody has several icons next to them. If I have to sort through 32+ icons to see if anyone has a debuff I can remove the tank is going to die so the result is that I just never use leeches except on myself in PUGs and only on people who request it in Teamspeak while partying with my FC. I feel like I depend too much on bards for mana. The tools I have to regain mana rarely get used in boss fights since I spend most of my time dodging AOEs or frantically spam healing. There just isn't time to use them on cooldown consistently during boss fights unless you're a Korean Starcraft player with 300 APM.

TLDR; The UI sucks and I wish I was a white mage.

Edit: And succor II needs a bigger range. With everyone constantly running around to dodge AOEs it usually misses half the party.

I have a feeling accounts will get banned for using addons... seen it in 11 and I doubt 14 will be any different... this is SE not Blizzard

You need to do your homework on the game then. Square said UI mod support is coming 6 months or so after launch.

[Everdark]

I like playing WTM but it really depends on the party... some people make it more stressful(pulling when they shouldn't, tank ignoring stray aggro... etc) while I've had parties that were so good at their jobs I almost fell asleep, it was that relaxing.

and then there are the parties that just rant at everyone from start to finish. -__-... not so much a healer centric thing but it makes it hard to want to heal them.

MP is manageable if you don't panic too often and making the call to "take a hit" to get the heal that the tank needs off or run and hope he makes it till you're in position lol

healing is a lot of fun but can leave you feeling like you're letting the team down when things go south(and they will) just remember that its a game and most of us are here to have fun!

[Fisren]

Sch here, I've played healer-type classes in almost all mmo's I've come across (i.e. Ragnarok Online, WoW, etc). Must say that I enjoy healing in FFXIV quite a bit. Most of the end-game dungeons require constant movement for all classes, so even as a healer its pretty busy.

I don't trust others with healing so its how I end up with that role. Only thing I hate about being a healer is being unable to see a boss's casting bar (maybe there's a solution but so far the dps/tank just call it out for me). As a scholar it's somewhat underwhelming, since the heal numbers are ridiculously lower than a WHM in terms of AoE heals and base heal numbers. It's useful being able to top off a main tank's hp with a shield (esp. for PLD), but overall may feel lacking (especially for inexperienced healers).