How I Learned to Love Healer [Final Fantasy 14]

And maybe how you can love it too! Healer gets snubbed in Final Fantasy XIV-some people think it's boring, but I've come around to it through huge hits of copium and now I genuinely think it's actually fun (in its own way*). I don't go into the jobs much here, but rather as a Healer main why I enjoy the role itself. It should be obvious through the occasional clipped GCD in the footage, but I'm not a top player by any means. I'm just like, a guy with some Savage and (incomplete) Ultimate experience.
Hopefully you learn something and feel inspired to get out there and kill some tanks!
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[@TheGreatDanish]

Healer's difficulty curve has two factors that impact it. Your level, and the IQ of your team. If you've got a freestyle Samurai, a thunder mage, and a warrior that doesn't know that they have other cool-downs besides Shake it Off, its gonna be a bad time no matter how good you are at your class of choice :V

[@specstreTV]

Definitely true that healer performance is MORE chained to party performance than other roles, but hey, I wouldn't want to be a DPS in a run where heal checks are being failed and people are dropping to unavoidable damage! It's all a team game at the end of the day, so as frustrating as it can sometimes be picking people up off the floor, I like to think it all evens out when you get the DPS who put up big numbers AND know Feint/Addle exist!

[@TheGreatDanish]

@@specstreTV oh definitely. Eveyone impacts the result of a run. But i definitely feel it more on a healer. Less so when I'm up my own ass focusing on my rotation as a dps or zoned out and vibing as a tank. Like when I'm dpsing, I don't really have the mental liberty to be looking at anyone else's play since it's a much more internally focused role. With healer, a good third of the job is watching your dps for the off chance someone takes an orange circle to the dome because they're just as far up their own rotation as I would be. My excuse on tank is that its been streamlined to the point of almost autopilot :v

[@specstreTV]

@@TheGreatDanish Absolutely true on all points! Healer really benefits from organized static play. Being in voice with not only your cohealer, but everyone else too REALLY simplifies a lot of that struggle for me. I GENUINELY believe that healer gets easier the harder the content is-not because the healing is easier (this tier esp. is brutal on heal checks) but because everything just slots into place way easier than in unorganized play. Also, ps - I have a small brain and literally cannot play DPS. I've wanted to try SAM like 3 separate times, but the ~30 GCD rotation just feels so restrictive and I can't wrap my head around rigidity like that. Healing being so fluid and "priority" based is, on the other hand, perfect LOL

[@FragileEgo]

@@specstreTV you don't have to think of it as a string of 30~ GCDs. Just think of it as a priority where you do X number of midare + your filler inbetween bursts and dont drop your buffs. If you do your filler right (which is very easy to do) your cooldowns will show up exactly when you need to use them. You don't actually have to think that hard other than adjusting for downtime

[@specstreTV]

@@FragileEgo That’s totally fair! I’ve messed with SAM only a bit-enough to go “wow, that seems like a chore,” but not enough to comfortably figure out the anti-drift filler. Totally take your word for it though, and will maybe give the job a shot SoonTM!

[@TorManiak]

I usually play all roles and always wonder why healer is so hated despite being BLM with extra steps(and no BEEG DAMAGE). I mean, it's all about optimizing your postioning, using your resources properly and coordinating with the other healer in order to enable the party to do said BEEG DAMAGE. You always have something to do when it comes to hard content, especially in PF. Babysitting and adjusting _is_ the fun part. Ofc, there's always a point when it's not you who has to do so when the DPS and the Tank don't hit any defensives, but it's largely what you're meant to do.

[@specstreTV]

Totally agree on the BLM comprison! (And hey, a crit Afflatus Misery inside raid buffs can hit for like 80-90k, so it’s BEEG enough for me!) But you nailed it, I love the constant uptime of healer and having to make decisions about what I want to do with my GCDs/weaves. It keeps it fun!

[@perksofvon]

The role/jobs aren’t the issue. It’s the people. It has become a hated role because people will belittle, insult, or blame you for something that’s not even your fault without knowing the cause. You have to sacrifice your DPS because you have to cover for others who won’t pop their defensive cooldowns on time or at all for some ungodly reason. So when people die to a raidwide, it’s because others didn’t mitigate. Just having a SCH/SGE isn’t enough. Can’t stress that enough. And let’s not forget people choose to stand outside of your aoe heal and get upset when you have to rescue them from danger. You run out of resources because you’re too busy covering for one person who’s choosing not to work with you. As someone who has healed for 5+ tiers people will cause you to burnout and become exhausted mentally from all the abuse healers receive.

[@Torbulous]

@@perksofvon some of the most fun I've had in FFXIV is fixing some bad situations, and imo the amount of respect you get afterwards out weighs any finger pointing that could occur. I usually shrug it off when someone starts pointing fingers, but I haven't really had much situations like that.

[@Crispierbug]

Healer has a much smaller toolkit for damage, most of the time your just spamming the same spell over and over.

[@ridespirals]

maybe it's because I'm not at max level but considering 98% of the time the duty finder has "tank in need" for every category, I would have guessed tank was the most hated role. I do think people are the most scared of healing, and don't understand what tanking is or what it's like (I mained tanks in wow since vanilla). it's the most misunderstood role. (this video makes a good point about how healing is misunderstood as well). playing tanks and healers will make you a better DPS. actually, every job will make you better at every other job.

[@acidtux]

Your view on the healer role is exactly like mine. I don't ear it worded as you do often. It's crazy how many players are afraid or uninterested in the role while to me it feels so easy and comfortable in casual content / roulettes.

[@specstreTV]

I love it, and always glad to see someone who agrees! It's free queues in casual content like you said, and I think it scales into a really interesting and fun role in harder stuff! Thank you for the comment! :D

[@OzixiThrill]

Hey, the upside of people being scared to roll healers is that it's a miracle when you see a queue number. In fact, it's pretty rare when you see the queue interface.

[@dianitestar1234]

big same

[@elgatochurro]

​@@OzixiThrillwhere are you that you lack healers? Crystal has tons of them

[@OzixiThrill]

@@elgatochurro Having tons of healers does not stop the fact that they are substantially less than 25% of the overall queues; Which leads to healers rarely even seeing the queue interface; And I'm speaking from experience here.

[@ruruen6886]

I started as archer then went on to become both bard and RDM where DPS buttons started to overwhelm me so I picked up AST in HW coz I wanted to "heal" as RDM but it didn't go well and guess what, I was hooked. It might look stressful that I have to manage cards distribution, heal, buff and dps but I find it more engaging and I can focus on the whole thing that's happening on the floor instead of worrying what's my next attack combo should be I am now a healer main with AST, Sage, and WHM

[@specstreTV]

I missed this comment!! Love that you play AST though, its high APM is definitely a turnoff for a lot of people, but it used to be my fave healer. Spot on about juggling utility vs a combo too! That’s really what makes ALL the healers fun. Hopefully the announced rework for AST in 7.0 doesn’t gut its APM identity. They could streamline some things, but I’d hate to see them totally destroy the job for the sake of simplicity. As much as I love WHM, we don’t need another “simple” healer…

[@eliasschaffels538]

loved the healer speech at the end. picked up sage for the aesthetic after maining RDM till endwalker and havent looked back.i love popping barriers to make a mechanics almost trivial. but i do hope they add some more love to the dps rotation. even a single ogcd or a combo, just something

[@specstreTV]

I'm glad you enjoyed it! :D Sage is a lot of fun. I'll always be a WHM at heart, I think, but I love SCH and SGE and it's a totally different experience seeing health bars freeze at 95-100% while raidwides are going out. In harder Savages where the damage is much bigger, it's equally nice to know you kept the party from being pulverized, even if they tanked a litttttle further. But hey, the only health point that matters is the last one! PS - I go back and forth on the damage thing. I love the oGCD DPS abilities like Phlegma and Assize and I used to want a healer combo, but this current raid tier has shown me that their current design, when it's actually forced to its limits, can REALLY shine. They gutted SCH AoE / damage a few xpacs ago and that was sad, but they seem like they're finally getting healer tuning "right" (at least to me), so I've been happy w/ it!

[@eliasschaffels538]

@@specstreTV i can see that, i havent had the time/courage to commit to any high end content past extreme. So i cant comment on how sage plays there. Hope to dip my toe in them one day tho. (Quick correction btw. Phlegma isnt ogcd. Its instant like most of SGE's kit it gcd. SGE doesnt have any ogcd attacks.)

[@Akihito_Kanbara]

I didn't see the likes/subs until after I finished the video. I was honestly surprised. This is so well written and delivered. Great video! You have my support 😁

[@specstreTV]

I appreciate that a lot! :D

[@fivesidedpixels4991]

there was actually a fair comparison between BLM gameplay and healer gameplay prior to Endwalker: that being, restricted movement, scarce weaving windows, and tools to work around those. Before 6.0, AST was the only healer with a 1.5 second cast time. WHM and SCH were essentially BLM-lite, with their DPS spells taking up the entire GCD. Your job was to be a Glare/Broil/Malefic turret that was BEGGING for a chance to weave heals (without losing a DPS cast, or clipping). Each healer had a unique method of working around this problem: - White Mage probably had this issue the worst. Now that healer DoTs last 30 seconds, that meant you only got ONE free movement/weave window every 30 seconds. The only other instant cast you had was Lily heals. Afflatus spells felt like gasping for air while you've been drowning the entire fight. But WHM being encouraged to use their heals for movement/weaving sounds perfectly fine, right? It would've been, if Afflatus Misery didn't happen to be a DPS loss (at the time). You lost one Glare cast for every Misery you used. This is how we ended up with a situation where optimal WHMs wanted to heal as little as possible, while their co-healer picked up most of the slack. Both because WHM lacks the powerful oGCD heals SCH/AST have, AND the windows to actually use them freely. - Scholar was in a similar situation, since Broil had the same long cast time. Thankfully, you had Ruin II as your instant cast alternative. It was a potency loss over Broil, but you could at least continue doing damage while using your oGCD abilities and moving. On top of that, weaving Energy Drain after Ruin II actually turned it into a (very tiny) potency GAIN over Broil. So optimization was a game of doing as much as you could within these Ruin II windows, and using as many Aetherflow stacks on Energy Drain as possible. - Astrologian, again, had the 1.5 second cast time before anyone else. One free oGCD per Malefic cast. This was downright necessary because of the sheer amount of buttons AST presses. However, many times even that wasn't enough. Between the healing oGCDs, Redraw spam (you had three charges and could redraw the same seal every time), and Sleeve Draw throwing THREE extra cards at you during burst, you still needed more weaves. This is where Lightspeed really shined, and still does today and obviously, every healer had Swiftcast and slidecasting available, so you'd be using those for some BLM-style shenanigans All that being said, while all of this added *some* more depth to the 111121111 healer gameplay, I wouldn't say this was a substitute for a proper rotation. The higher skill ceiling was fun, but it felt bad going through hoops just to use your cooldowns. This is why everyone got their hopes up for Sage, thinking it would be the Gunbreaker of healers... Only for it to be more of the same. No rotation to speak of. It does, however, have what I want to see more of: stacking oGCDs with synergy. I don't necessarily want a full on tank rotation, but I DO enjoy pressing multiple buttons to make good things happen. I can only hope that the devs lean into trying to make this direction more interesting

[@specstreTV]

I started raiding/taking the game seriously in Shadowbringers and REALLY liked AST's generous weave windows. There was definitely some absurd RNG, but when AST hit just right, it felt amazing. I wasn't super thrilled with some of the Endwalker changes and the cut to WHM/SCH GCD brought me to those jobs. Now, I'm curious what the announced 7.0 rework for AST will be, but it really seems like Square doesn't quite know what to do with the job. Its identity as a high-APM healer has more or less been preserved in EW, and while I'd hate to see them take that away, I also know it intimidates a lot of people, and after seeing what they did to SMN... You're right about Sage, btw-I was one of those very excited for it, but I'm not surprised we got what we got. This tier of savage pretty much proves what Square wants healers to be, and tbh, I don't mind it at all. I think healing has been a LOT of fun in these fights. Making the most out of my oGCDs and thinking about mit planning (for me) totally redeems the "boring" DPS rotation, and I REALLY feel rewarded for optimization in these fights. I'm pretty optimistic you'll / we'll get what we want-every xpac, they've been adding more oGCD tools, so I think it's an identity they want to lean into. Great comment :D

[@michaelbart7014]

Yeah i mean tbh though WAR only needs 3 to maybe 4 things for trash pulls. Blood whetting, Reprisal, Arms length and maybe equilibrium if things are looking a little dicey while waiting on bloodwhetting cooldown. Its really rare that i have to pop a proper mitigation for trash pulls, and usually when something unfortunate happens to the DPS in the party lol.

[@halapenopepper]

You summed up my opinions on healers pretty well, and this video also highlights why Astrologian is my healer of my choice, because on top of the healing optimization and resource management there's another layer with the card system, which, even at its most basic, still adds a lot to the second to second gameplay of the job imo

[@softestshark]

maybe i’m just stupid, but yours is genuinely the first video i could 1. pay attention to, and 2. understand when it comes to talking about classes/jobs in FFXIV. and i’ve watched a LOT of videos, trying to understand everything in FFXIV. i’m not an experienced MMO player at all, so videos like yours help out guys like us a lot 🙏 appreciated

[@Sylvie0512]

finally a video on healing that's actually relatable ;3; tysm for this ♥

[@specstreTV]

Glad you enjoyed it! Ty so much for watching :D

[@chewedw1re]

i just picked up sage and i haaaate it lmao - i’ve never picked up healing ever and it’s the most humbling experience i’ve ever had. i don’t know if i’ll try it again, but i’ll definitely keep giving it a shot

[@temerri]

I like all your videos so far, they are a good mixture of humour and helpful advice. I hope you continue to make videos as I really enjoy them. :) Was actually surprised how new your channel is and how few views and subscribers you have yet, since it feels like you have experience performing and editing videos. I wish you a lot of success as I think you deserve it.

[@specstreTV]

Thank you so much!! That kind of feedback really means a lot and makes me want to keep at it! :D I've actually been thrilled with how far I've come in just a month-I had no idea about editing or anything like that even back in August, and now I'm nearing in on the 1k sub mark. I've just been reading and watching stuff and trying to have fun with it, and comments like yours give me so much motivation to continue, so thanks again, seriously!

[@azuresparks]

I like your voice, delivery, sense of humor and thoughtful angles. But yeah, you sound great.

[@yuitsuki189]

You explain exactly why I love healing in this game!!

[@specstreTV]

Glad it resonated with you!! Always happy to spread the word of healing-I think it’s legitimately a lot of fun! :D

[@damien3393]

I completely agree with pretty much everything u said and I used to not like healer as much as I do now. I leveled my scholar to level 90 a few months ago and I literally fell in love with its kit! I find it so much fun and positioning the fairy adds a little extra difficulty depending on the fight/mechanics

[@OldManDoom]

I have a 614 ilvl scholar because I swore that this would be expac where I heal in EX and Savage. So after having Barb on farm and sitting on about 64 or so totems, I tried to heal it last night and was so mind blown that I barely made it to the sword for the first cleave and stack. It is such a different animal, and it will take a lot of brain conditioning to start thinking about how to heal and be two steps ahead of the encounter

[@specstreTV]

Scholar/Sage can definitely be trickier because they have so few good recovery tools and really hinge on having good mit prepped, like you implied. But if all else fails, yell at your DPS and tell them to Addle/Feint more!

[@TheGreatDanish]

A suggestion that helped me get over the initial jump between Normal and EX was to que with a co-healer who's experienced, and have them *not* heal unless its clear you're about to boff it. You can absolutely solo heal a Normal raid, and having skilled back up ready to pick up slack as you're feeling it out takes a load of anxiety off, i found.

[@eorzeanECM]

@@TheGreatDanish In our static, I had an amazing WHM mentor whom I co healed savages with. Together, it was a beautiful dance. I 100% agree . SCH main here.

[@jakeastside]

In the end healing depends on the party’s competency. The more competent the players are the more duller healers are and turn into glare bots. It’s in chaos healing become fun and stressful which can be a turn on or off depending on the S&M spectrum the healer’s at.

[@00yiggdrasill00]

THANK YOU! it's not just about the dps rotation it's about the crunch when the boss/mobs pull out the stops and you need to dance across the field trying to dps, heal where needed, deal with mechanics and keep that random sprout alive.the dps rotation is simple because greens have several jobs to do, though I wouldn't mind some greater job differences.

[@TheFrantic5]

I started the game around Shadowbringers as a tank, and switched to Arcanist/Scholar. I was already very active in ground slaps, so it was so very much amazing how well Sage fit with my playstyle when it was released. My only trouble is that I still have much to learn and tend to be more reactive, so I usually hit mitigations one GCD too late.

[@specstreTV]

The shield healers definitely have a learning curve - in Sage's case, just remember that your best CDs (esp Kerachole) are all pretty low-commitment in terms of resources and cooldown, so never be afraid to throw them out! If you want a secret tip: regens are affected by healing buffs, so if you pop Physis and then Kerachole, Kera's regen will not only stack with Physis's, it will tick harder. :D

[@28cappuccino21]

i do not play healer in pve (i play ninja so quite the opposite) but this video was very good. your range really shows seeing as how u took a different (though really informative and entertaining all the same) route in commentary compared to your NEVER make a BAD GLAM again! [Final Fantasy XIV] video. keep it up and i'm looking forwar to the next video EDIT: realized i could edit my comment instead of replying to y own comment. anyways oh right also nice bunny boy

[@28cappuccino21]

oh right also nice bunny boy

[@specstreTV]

@@28cappuccino21 thank u means a lot coming from an oob legend such as yourself

[@whitenoise8619]

just subscribed! :D have only watched 2 of your videos!

[@specstreTV]

thank you so much :D

[@aaronparker7898]

Great review of the heals struggle. When done right healer feels really good when you save everyone and prevent a wipe. I really struggle in normal 80-90 dungeons as heals, (being late to the Shadowbringers party a couple months before EW.) 1 or 2 mechanics failures and its my fault for a wipe feels bad. I love playing heals for the challenges you mention. ABC is just as important for the roles I have played. AST and WHM both to90. Overhealing is just a bad as underhealing when you are losing 25 to 30% total damage in fights. In good random parties when the tank is geared and the dps uses their utilities correctly i can really notice a huge stress relief and can throw a LOT of rocks. I have had to blow every spell on some tanks the whole fights and never get but a couple tossed rocks before the next noob usually me still stands in the fire... Yes rotation is simple I have seen tank die (not a warrior) from full hp during 1 AOE cast time. Practicing and knowing fights is important. tool tips reviews... Healing is fun and can be stressful if you are as sprouty as other sprouts and cant be carried.

[@mishi-shi]

Healer main here too, and spot on with everything. I didn’t start loving healing until I picked up sage and started playing it in harder content, specifically trials and raids. Even at lower levels, in the sub 90 content, something just clicked. I loved the balance between doing damage and shielding, learning how to use my toolkit effectively. I love the puzzle of min-maxing effective skills, like a zoe pneuma after a spicy raidwide and watching everyone’s health bounce back up, without stopping my damage from rolling. So satisfying. Also. A thousand times yes about lower level dungeons. When I was leveling conjurer, I thought I hated healing because it sucked to try to keep the party alive when all I had was cure i and maybe medica, if that. It’s the crucible all baby healers must go through, but once you’ve got at least your 60 toolkit, the role changes so much. Thanks for your video! It’s nice to see healers get some love, even if it’s from one of us, about us

[@restlesstoaster]

Good video made me reconsider trying healer 👍

[@specstreTV]

That's awesome!! It may not be for everyone, but I think it's absolutely fun and if can find the right frame of mind, it really is an interesting role! :D

[@bendonatier]

I find it interesting that in the two statics I've been it, it was the healer, not the tank that was the shot caller. Specifically the white mage as well, since it is a 0 brain cell job, but one that gives you ample time to focus on the fight

[@omegazero5884]

the best way I can put it is Healer is more like bap and Ana if we're using the overwatch characters than Mercy and that's not even getting into mits and barriers and over healing and buffs debuffs different dmg cards on AST, Fairy on SCH, BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD LILY, and lazers on that other one.

[@specstreTV]

I agree with that! It's unusual compared to the other MMOs I've played which all had more traditional "pure healers," but I love all the DPS and utility of healers in this game

[@Geist1337]

To me, with the amount of healing you need to do, healer is more like green DPS. Issue is, Green DPS only has a 1-button damage rotation with the occasional DoT reapplication mixed in. So if I'm trying to do damage, I prefer to play something with an actual rotation, combos, and procs, to avoid the RSI of spamming '1' repeatedly.

[@hugoming5086]

I started as a warrior, then wanted to try summoner, and after sometime I had not much to do while waiting for queue (was a begginer(still am) ) so tried scholar as they share the exp and ended up loving it, then I unlocked sage and loved it even more, the sound effect of eukrasian prognosis gave me shiver the first time I heard it with a headphone on

[@user-qe3dk9pj9f]

Probably super late into the fray since the video was made year ago. But you perfectly encapsulates my take and feelings about the role within my 'honeymoon' phase around the time I start playing the game from mid 5.2. Sadly that honeymoon phase didn't last long enough that I quickly become jaded 2 patches later. This further worsens when I got too curious by deciding to read extensively into the history of the role only to find out that there were hefty sum of intricacies that were removed but never replaced with something of equal, and SE's track record with the role (it's a can of worm but to put it simply: it's not a pretty look IMHO). I still had the benefit of doubt at this period. When they mentioned of their vision of creating Regen/Barrier split, I was thinking a lot of fun stuffs they could've added to our kits. But that benefit of doubt was proven to be wasteful, too. See: - Trashologification, a.k.a. giving everybody 1.5s cast time. For what? What a way to devalue Lilies & Ruin II benefits. - Noct AST axing to make "Easier SCH". Why waste an entire design space for a carbon copy? - Massively expanding key abilities radiuses. What a way to invalidate ability placement: Earthly Star can be macro'd to yourself/boss now; so much for saying SCH having 'totem healing' that is fairy but lmao SGE/WHM can literally hit parties progging in another instance. - The infamous "go play ultimate"-comment by Yoshi-P, etc. Damn, I'm no ultimate raider. I'm just some casual/midcore savage raider. Guess I'm not allowed to have fun in casual contents? You know... the very content that majority of us touch? I lost it. I hated them all. And I'm kinda jealous that I'm no longer in that 'honeymoon phase' anymore. I still retain some fun of playing healers---I always main healers in any MMOs I play (the fantasy is important to me!). The best feelings are ones from queueing manually into Ivalice/NieR ARs and hoping that the group I dragged along would be a clusterfk. But that is assuming that I can get them to pop. It's normal to see these ARs having longer than 30m, sometimes it extends to a comical 1-2 hours because should they pop but not everybody commences, those players sometimes would be pulled away by alliance raid roulette into something else (most likely CT raids).

[@Qupi816]

You have a very unique view at the design of the Healer Job. I personally extremely dislike the simple healer dps buttons and would like a massive rework in the next Expansion for that. Something that makes Healers in that regard a bit more engaging in that regard. It is quite interesting to see another take on this. Good Video. I can see your points. Its also a nice way to motivate some new people trying to heal :)

[@specstreTV]

And this is a totally valid take too. :) I don't think there's any one answer to enjoyment, least of all in a video game-some people absolutely love golf, but it seems pretty damn boring to me. Healer clicks in my brain and I like it, but it for sure isn't for everyone. I do think anyone who likes working with systems and planning WILL get some joy out of it, though, and yes-we always need new healers! :D

[@althelor]

I think you just explained to me why I don't like healing very much. It's the lack of an actual rotation. While I'm leveling, I have no actual idea how or when to use half of my abilities. I'll level and get new ones and then just.... Never use it. Because so many of the abilities are about resource management as you said, and are situational. And when leveling, a lot of the situations where you want to use those abilities... Just don't come up. Leaving me struggling to find out how to heal effectively by myself. Tanks and dps at least, their leveling experience sorts teaches you how to play the class with each new ability, since each ability directly effects how you deal/take damage, and you can almost immediately figure out how to use the new ability with the rest of your toolkit. But healer is so situational, that on sage, I have to occasionally read through my whole spellbook just to remember what each ability even does...

[@TamaraBloodhoof]

I personally would suggest running through PotD as Sage to get an idea about them as my spells have become instinctive due to needing the abilities. While the scenarios where you require abilities are unique, I find myself using so many of them all the time just to keep the damage rolling like Krasis (increase healing for one target by 20%) into Physis II (AoE regen and increase HP regen by 10%) into Kerachole (DR of 10% with a regen as well). Mix all three and you basically just slapped 2 regens on the tank that got an effective boost of 30% or so more healing and all while keeping your DPS going. It's the same about synergy, but damn if the synergy isn't simply fun to me and PotD and HoH really helped me realize it.

[@ahrims7]

Yeah I agree with your whole opinion on this. Healing is unlike any other gameplay in this game. Unfortunately things like duties rip that “split brain” mechanic away from us so duties can feel a but boring. However, I hope they push for Healers having a bit more depth, Incentivizing damage through Healing and Incentivizing Healing through damage

[@camposforce93]

Since Stormblood I was main tank and I was like nah I dont need to use rampart the healer can handle the damage but now that I am main healer I know undertand the importance of teamwork and communication. I fell in love with healer I would adore to have at least a continuation combo of my single target but it is a great role. Nice Video keep growing friend.

[@specstreTV]

Thank you so much for the encouragement! :D Using mit as a tank is huge, no doubt! The communication part is what I love about healer now too-especially in 8-man content when you have a cohealer and get to map out your cooldowns and set up a mitigation plan for the raid. It's some truly nerdy Excel sheet stuff, but man is it fun to see a hard fight solved by good planning! PS - welcome to the healer club!

[@goober4502]

A minute and half in and he’s nailed healing with three words: Party Finder Babysitting.

[@nafslee]

I'm literally a DPS that also became a Scholar because of how much I loved the job - with EW, even though it was heavily memed on at the beginning made me love it more with the QoL improvements.

[@Blazingbeard]

Glad you pointed out low lvl dungeon healing. Other guides say you can just Aoe spam and use Ogcds for dungeons. Well not in low lvl. Heal spam with occasional DOT or if lucky a RuinedMalefectedStoneDosis. And yeah managing party health while doing damage is fun and 😃

[@specstreTV]

Yeah, my first healing experience ever was a level 30 Ast in Lost Temple of Qarn, and I was absolutely floored. I think I had queued with my friend on his also undergeared tank, but it was nightmarish and I almost quit the role on the spot. But then I kept leveling and unlocking stuff and I was like, "Oh, actually this is getting easier," and now I've done a good bit of Savage and some Ulti! Just takes time to grow into the role AND unlock all your abilities. Agreed on the management of course! :D

[@Blazingbeard]

@@specstreTV oof Ast as first healer. Those are some self esteem damaging experiences. Grats on the Savage and Ulti clears! I wanna go jump in but a bit afraid, undergeared at the moment (PLD has best gear now) and also time constrains. Wanna try Barbarriccia first. Just before END hit I tried to lvl SCH, but failed so miserably. Then I tried SGE and first solo duty I died so many times with npc. Got the hang of it and did some normal (alliance) raids with it. Healer clicked for me when I lvled WHM. Every healer has sort of the same-ish abilities, but with WHM it's more clear what everything does. So now I can relate all the SGE and SCH abilities to my WHM toolkit and know what I should be pushing. Now lvling SCH and firstly I didn't use Sacred Soil much, but man that is one powerfull ability. Im having fun lvlving it now. WHM has bubble on 90 secs SCH 30 secs. And I like the pooling of aether stacks (not optimal) instead of the slowly getting a stack like in SGE.

[@DCAMM720]

A lot of this is kind of why I went with summoner first so it also leveled scholar. I could switch between them whenever I needed and scholar is actually fun to play imo.

[@dankerus9642]

i'm a healer main who never really cared about dealing major damage. in the begining i struggled to maintain damage while healing, but when i hit level 60 Scholar, it all started to make sense. these day's i find enjoyment in optimizing my dungoen runs to use as little gcd heals as possible

[@undo45]

I’m that one newbie whose level 35 run went terribly. To be fair, it’s because I’m terrible at moving and am still figuring out Keybinds etc., but I’m learning, so I guess all’s well what will, in time get better

[@specstreTV]

You absolutely will!! Honestly, even without seeing the run, I would bet you're being way too hard on yourself -- when you're a low level healer AND new to the role (and also probably undergeared), it is HARD. Savage healing can legitimately be easier than being level 30 in vendor whites with no real tools unlocked. If you push through and stick with it, you will 100% get comfier w/ keeping people up!

[@dalgona4819]

Learning Healer rn thru SGE and AST. I was initially intimidated by healing bc of all the things they do (watching out for party health and applying DoT to enemies, keeping tank healthy and making sure the rez is ready, mana management etc). One thing that I learned is that sometimes, ppl die no matter how hard you try to keep them alive 😂

[@Drakkyr]

Coming from WoW, I used to play a Holy Paladin as my main healer(Warlock main, but I liked having a healer too) and DPSing while healing was a core part of how I would play because more crusader strikes meant more Holy Shocks. Fortunately I have found a healing job I like in AST, but sadly it's the only one I actually like. Cards keep me busy and really help drive home that Support role for me.

[@danielgalaz7669]

I agree with your view of healer I went from low use of my healer classes to now playing mostly white mage and loving the fact that there so much chaos going on and the responsibility to keep everyone up and creating more of it

[@specstreTV]

LOL, keeping everyone up to create more chaos is such a good description of it. Glad you’re enjoying WHM! It’s still my favorite healer despite or maybe BECAUSE OF its simplicity-just a simple glaremage farming DPS.

[@Terixofevermore]

I’ve always played tank, but I’m about to get into healing as a scholar soon, so it will be a different experience for me .

[@specstreTV]

It's definitely different, but I hope you enjoy it! :D

[@Mizerka_]

I like healing, just give us more engaging damage rotations, like idk, lillies, give us a ogcd that spends 1 stack and does a little more than glare, as a means to prevent overcapping during lack of aoes and without forcing us to overheal for no reason

[@terraglade]

ive pondered trying to heal. But i also have a consistent 10-15fps so i probly wont lol. at least with tank i can aoe spam and pop defensives as needed

[@herebejamz]

I stared WHM, played til 70 basically just that. Since branching out a lot, I feel like there's literally a healer for anyone. WHM is the most "chill", even in higher content your usually the team "Oh S*it" button. SCH really relies on Galvanize and OGCds, so they feel pretty active. AST for if you constantly want to be doing something basically at all times. SGE feels the most like a DPS class, especially with Toxikon and Phlegma, but also it's reliance on shielding. One odd note is that SGE doesn't have a DOT until Eukrasia, level 30, so it's awfully boring to play synced.

[@specstreTV]

Yeah, I like that all the healers still feel a little different! There has been SOME homogenization over the game's life (SCH used to be so crazy-used to have all kinds of AoE, multiple DoTs, etc), they've done a decent job of making each still feel fresh and distinct. SGE and SCH feel the closest to me, but even then they're unique enough. Always love to see another healer, especially these days where there's a high demand! :D

[@nikkoh15]

i like sage because the spells make funny sounds :D i have also played white mage, but as I was a tank main this expansion, sage just feels right with all the mitigation lol

[@HolyShield]

Nice video and lovely bunny!🥰

[@specstreTV]

So kind, thank you!! :D

[@hidari.k]

What's your glam shoes?

[@raleo7466]

I'm a casual player and I enjoy healing a lot just because you can let your brain rest for a while. You just get a flow of "now this oGCD, now this one, now this one". Unless people start taking avoidable damage, but you can always use a GCD or two on the party. It's true that I'd like more big buttons like WHM blood lily, like an even bloodier lily at lvl 100 I don't know. Or a two step combo on the GCD casts. Or an alternating empowered DoT. But I like how simple the damage rotation is

[@sergel02]

Ended up becoming a healer main in ShB and then again later now in EW. I think they made healing more fun between the 4 jobs. My only issue is I wish they’d make DPS more interesting, since that’s still what you’re pressing most often. Even something like SMN’s burst phase would be cool. I’ve known healers who stopped playing because they found the DPS boring, which is apparent anytime you’re doing things solo like quests or Trusts.

[@specstreTV]

It's funny, that's such a divisive opinion in the healer community. I'm on the fence, personally. I actually... don't mind the simple damage? It depends, of course, and I like having other dmg buttons to press (eg Assize, Afflatus Misery, Star, Phlegma, etc.), but I think introducing healer combos would be somewhat dangerous to an already fragile role. A lot of healers don't feel comfortable DPSing anyway, especially less experienced players, and I think throwing a wrench in that and making them juggle a rotation on top of their other responsibilities would gate SOME people off from a role that's already low in representation. Or maybe you're right and a lot would come back to it! We'll see what they do in 7.0!

[@sergel02]

@@specstreTV I suppose the thing is DPS is still fairly common among healers and the game encourages that in their quests, so if a healer isn’t comfortable they can continue to just heal until they do. Of course EX and up will have enrages that benefit from healer DPS, but anyone trying to get to that level will hopefully understand the importance of both healing and damage and how to prioritize it, and get better with experience. Something small like having WHM’s Presence of Mind change your glare into a new button, or every time you spend an Aetherflow stack your Ruin II changes into a Ruin III or IV or something like that. Something that’s more powerful and more flashy but also breaks the monotony.

[@specstreTV]

@@sergel02 I actually think both of those ideas are really interesting. I stand by being a little worried about throwing in complex "rotations," but having mini-healer burst phases could definitely be interesting and I'd love to see them experiment with something like that. Great thoughts!

[@sergel02]

@@specstreTV thanks! On another recent video people were discussing healers too, and someone pointed out the resto shaman rotation as a healer in WoW. It’s similar, where you spam a button (lightning bolt) and apply a dot (flame shock). But every tick of flame shock has a chance to proc a lava burst for good damage. Even something as small as that, a proc, would make the healer jobs so much more fun I feel.

[@specstreTV]

@@sergel02 I can totally see that working and being fun! It's obviously not a proc, but WHM's Afflatus Misery is super satisfying to press for this reason-it's just something different and it feels -nice-. I would absolutely support this idea!

[@crankpatate3303]

wow, I was starting to get into this game, because I missed good old times as a healer in GW1, but after this video I'm not so sure anymore. I don't want to be a green DPS with boring healing and maybe kinda fun DPS weaving. I was hoping for interesting and impactful heal & protection mechanics that need some skill at reading the situation and deciding what skill(s) to use accordingly. Not just "click heal when HP bar low". But your video makes it sound like that. D:

[@specstreTV]

Sorry, day late replying to this, but I’d it depends on what level of content you’re looking into! Mit plans and well-thought out healer cooldowns are absolutely a part of Savage and Ultimate content, the “endgame” raid scene, but yeah, much rarer in casual settings. Dungeons are generally easier the higher level you get because you just have so many tools as a healer, but that’s only because you NEED all those tools for raiding, whereas dungeons are simply casual content in this game. If you’re looking for CONSTANT and active healing though, I’m afraid FFXIV might not scratch that itch. Damage as a rule is very bursty in this game, which is why healer DPS exists, essentially-you dos, dps, dps until mechanics are coming, then set up your mitigation and prepare to heal the aftermath. But again, trust me when I say there is Plenty Of Healing To Do in higher end stuff. If you want to see endgame footage, look up a healer PoV for something like Dragonsong’s Reprise, though be aware there are… mild Heavensward spoilers? Ish? It’s kind of an alternate timeline thing though.

[@crankpatate3303]

@@specstreTV Thanks for this reply. I've played a bit further in the story and hopefully soon with a few friends, I'm just lvl19 so far, but I've already had a few moments, where the healing felt fun. But it definitely feels kinda weird to me, that I can basically use the same heal skill non stop, cause the global CD system. In GW1 you had only 8 spells, but all very different and with their own CDs. It was very fun to create your own build, hone it for the task ahead and then manage these CDs. The skills in gw1 were also multilayered, having stronger or additional effects in different situations, making you ponder if you want to use it fast to get the CD back fast or wait a moment to get more effect out of it. I definitly keep playing FF14 and see how much fun I will have. So many people like this game for a reason. :)

[@skyjetende4391]

one of my favorite mechanics of sage dps for instance is in order to keep dpsing, you Have to heal. you will eventually run out of mana if you dont. it gets a little weird in content where everyone is doing perfectly and you dont get to heal, so you rely on lucid dream.

[@continuallyblessed44]

I much prefer healing over tanking. I don’t like leading the group lol

[@ZelosSama]

For me , its because i dont want to depend on someone on a rile im too familiar with. Im gonna judge it real bad most of the time lol

[@shara5985]

I find it fun. I just start sprinting and trying to see how fast we can get through the dungeon.

[@electrogonorhea]

As a 3700 bap Lucio main healing is fun in this game. I will say your mercy main remark fits as I see who cant juggle the in between.

[@specstreTV]

I only played OW in Season 1 at ~67ish SR, so I forget what that translates to in the "modern" Elo, but from what I remember, Lucio is actually a pretty good fit. Bap was past my time but I saw some stuff with him, and same deal-being a "DPS" contributing member who just also happens to be a healer is what the role is all about in FFXIV. Good connection! :D

[@skyfall3079]

what boots are you using as glam at 7:50?

[@specstreTV]

They're the Virtu Didact's Boots dyed Russet Brown! They're recolors of the Lvl 89 Sage job boots that you can buy in Wolves' Den Pier for I think Wolf Marks or maybe Trophy Crystals, so PvP.

[@skyfall3079]

@@specstreTV thank you for replying they look so cool!

[@graytiamat]

My experience was kind of the reverse. I started as a CNJ, picked up SGE halfway through Stormblood, and decided I wanted to try a DPS class eventually. I couldn't get melee DPS to work properly for mea and ranged DPS (or, at least DNC) felt like it had too much going on. BLM felt like the perfect compromise between my already trained skillset of simple rotations with the complexity coming from my positioning, and RDM came as a close second. I never thought about the actual reason that BLM felt right at home for me until now.

[@user-mu1os7me8s]

I am currently a Reaper, but perhaps I will switch to a healer role in the future. I am good at strategizing, so perhaps I would be good at it. However, I am currently a bit nervous to try since I don't have healer experience in mmos, and leveling takes time. Maybe I'll do it when 7.0 eventually comes out.

[@specstreTV]

no better time to start than now :) i promise it isn’t so bad!

[@Shadkow]

That's why I also love healing but sometimes I like to just afk mode and I've never dps mained before so went dragoon this time around! I justify it because I provide buffs AND my "utility" is melting things so it goes faster. I also love the none instant ques I can level BLU or crafting while I wait.

[@specstreTV]

Absolutely valid! That's awesome you're enjoying DPS, and honestly, you DO have good party utility! Besides your DPS raid buffs, if you're the type of DRG that's actively looking to use Feint, you've put yourself in the top 10% of all melee players. Helping out with party damage is such a major factor in end game success and it's EVERYONE'S job, so it's always good to have a bit of the support perspective even as a DPS! :D

[@Shadkow]

@@specstreTV ya even in dungeon I try to feint raid wides, use second chance, blood bath, etc. How do you feel about monk right now? It's the other dps I enjoy and I honestly thing I'm better at it but it's hard to find info on how its doing!

[@specstreTV]

@@Shadkow Melee as a role is in a pretty solid spot at the moment, and Monk has great representation in this raid tier! That might be a higher-end perspective than you're looking for, but it applies to more casual content too. It's got good damage, good mobility, and a solid raid buff through Brotherhood. What really matters though is that you're having fun with it! :D

[@user-vb8nd4qy6j]

I started the game with DPS, an Archer and my friend told me to play a healer so I swapped to Conjure/ WHM. Got hooked with it, but after seen so many comments about WHM been simple, so I challenged AST and fell in love with it. Now I got all 4 healer maxed cos. Different playstyle force me to learn the fights and mechanics in different perspectives by means of passive and reactive. I wouldn't say I am a good healer but I want to be a good healer. However, I do get frustrated when the Tank do big pulls and wall to wall where I see their HP drop like flies. It really tense me up. Sometimes I also get frustrated when the Tank pulls big and stopped in orange circle in Dzemael Darkhold, it makes me feels if I wasn't pulling my weight enough when the party wipe. It also frustrated me when the party don't want to do the mechanics in boss fights and I die because no one wants to share damage, or the DPS just don't care about his position and stand infront of Ultima Weapon and takes that green beam. He just don't want to move. So "Yes" beside the healer been a important part of the party, but each of us have our responsibilities to carry, or otherwise we will wipe in the most easiest content you would least expect. I have experienced wipe in Ultima Weapon, The Crystal Tower and many other duties simply because of mechanics been ignored. In spite of been a healer, I still couldn't save the day. That out me down alot.

[@shanty2782]

Newbie question,which is more difficult blm or astro ?

[@Flamongirl]

I would say it also depends on the healer class too because all four are different from each other. I remember how when Sage was announced to be the new 'shield healer', I thought I would be completely fine with it since I main Scholar... I was totally wrong, lol. I now find Sage kinda... Like a mix between Scholar and White Mage weirdly enough. It's not a bad class at all, I'm just not used to of it yet. Also, when testing a class at the beginning, the feel for it is a completely different feeling from when you get fully used to of it. I remember I didn't really like White Mage back then, but now, I'm completely fine with it. The healer classes, even though the same role, they have a somewhat different way of playing them and you still need to have plenty of practice before you can truly get good at it. Even if you are a main healer. But yeah, I honestly agree with your video. In fact, what you said made me realize why I love playing Scholar so much. On how you'll have times when you have to do something right away in a short amount of time because someone messed something up. The feeling of being the group's hero when you saved them from a wipe truly feels good when you are always nervous on how well you will do (especially those times when it's that one trial that you haven't done in a few years and you aren't sure you can remember all the mechanics). But yeah, the healer class is definitely for those thrill seeking players, but also for any players who are unsure about themselves who wants a confidence boost when they find out they are doing fine (And probably better than some other players).

[@specstreTV]

Hey, loved your comment about the Maroon 5 pneumonic the other day! :D Great points here-it’s pretty impressive how even after significant homogenization of the role, the four healers DO all retain pretty core identities. I didn’t play much back then (was still mostly into WoW), but I remember SCH having some crazy AoE DPS options and AST cards being way different. Despite the simplification that took all that away, though, these jobs really do still shine. I’m curious about the announced 7.0 rework of AST! That poor job is the one they can’t really settle on… But no I totally agree w/ you about the rush of healing. DPS doesn’t have that same feel of “triage” when things are going south and you need to patch holes while still juggling DPS. Love that feeling, and it’s kind of ruined other roles for me!

[@Flamongirl]

@@specstreTV lol, fun you recognized me! Oh, AST was definitely different back then. The mere fact that some of the cards had stuff like mp regen and haste probably made a lot of people focus too much on the cards and little on the healing. Makes sense that they changed the cards to be similar dps boosts. Another thing I noticed that was vastly different from 2.0 when it comes to ‘max level’ is how almost every spell is a instant cast off global cooldown spell (we had basically like almost half and half). Just recently I made a rule for myself that in dungeons that I should only heal via instant cast ogcs and practically dps all the time without stopping. (I still use Adlo when setting up a defense for the tank for big pulls. But always pair it with swiftcast since no one generally dies) Pretty much realized during trust duty that there is generally plenty of time between a tank buster and aoe damage at bosses, you don’t even necessarily have to focus on healing at all. Like 1 or 2 aoe insta cast heals and fairy/regen on tank and then repeat via mechanics. (unless someone stands in nasty) Guess another reason to love healing, you get to figure out the most optimized way to do battles. XD

[@specstreTV]

@@Flamongirl Of course!! I love talking with people who share their thoughts / experiences here! :D Really fun. Healing back then seemed way different in general, yeah. Cleric Stance was before my time, but man it looks funny to use. I'm sure it was a total pain in reality, but my DPS-healer brain is intrigued by it... And yes, definitely true about dungeons! It's my favorite part too-scaling down the (GCD) healing and optimizing for damage is what makes the role so interesting to me, even if the -actual DPS- is a... little bland. It works for me, though!

[@PurpleFanatic]

Personally always loved playing as a healer in every game I've played. Definitely agree with your mindset, healing this tier is lots of fun. So many mechanics going out which requires more constant heals going out. I feel more like a healer now more than I ever did the last 5 years of playing ffxiv. Great video 👍

[@specstreTV]

Thank you so much!! Yeah, P5 and P6 weren’t so bad, but starting with P7 things have been getting spicy. Really fun though and glad to see Square take healing checks a little more seriously! :D

[@willowm.8444]

as a red mage main soo agree i love healing and raising and keeping the party alive it is the best great video ! i really hope you keep posting these : ) can you make a video on how to

[@astrid2432]

I started as a dragoon, because I love pointy stick I'm already someone, who likes the non main dps role and for the sake to get every job in gridania, I choose white mage quite early. and of course paladin to have every role to try out or mix around dragoon is still my main class, which I do every story quest, but White Mage and paladin helps for not over level or do the dungeons I enjoyed up to lvl 50 every role, I think I run every lvl 50 story dungeon/boss with every role now and now I mostly wait to farm my gear for all the stuff after lvl 50 item stuff then come odin and I try to procrastinate as I'm not sure, if I can handle a 8er group xD from procrastinating I started to try the second mage class scholar so I could then play every role too: melee dps, ranged dps (bard), magic dps is summonerm and so one scholar is only lvl 35 or so, but it damm feel amazing to play with it. specially with your fairy skill you get at lvl 30, as you can quite focus on healing I'm still unsure how it will be later as I still have barely any job abilities thanks to that most of it comes after lvl 50 but well I try to play more to get a feeling for all the stuff

[@astrid2432]

to add stuff for the video: I had never any problem with the green dps thing. maybe because I watch various guides or my brain just feels like doing just anything I'm not perfect as I try to fit always the best thing, and yeah I'm someone who use benediction as a "sh** goes down" emergency button I'm not sure what for healer I like more, as White mage has the hotbar almost full and scholar has like big gapes xD

[@GaleGrim]

"Not satisfy any AFK mercy mains" YOU MADE ME CACKLE. TAKE A SUB.

[@rigormortex7568]

The problem about healer is that the entire job category is a challenge to get used too at the start. But after doing healer for some time and learning the good use of ogcd you effectively become a 1 button spam machine with no good ways of optimization. As dps or tank have situations we’re you can hold raid buffs for specific situations or greed for more gcds we’re as healer you have these sleep moment because you know the fight and realize there is year of downtime between aoe attacks the boss does. Like even with 1 or 2 dead people in extrem or savage fights you have almost always the time too pick people up before you reach the big mechanics. And even then quick thinking does nothing as healer if the mechanic wipes you with less then 8 people alive. Fun thing as a healer is learning the fight and plan ogcds and sadly that’s mostly it.

[@specstreTV]

You're absolutely right that the hardest part of healing is learning a new fight. But the simple damage somehow clicks for me, and I really enjoy Glare/Broil/whateverspamming after solving the "puzzle" by mapping mit out with my cohealer. When you have a fight solved, it feels like you've been rewarded by getting to just DPS. That said, this tier especially really encourages you to use EVERYTHING, and so mit has been especially fun. I think it's been my favorite tier for healers in a while, even if inevitably we'll out-mit and out-gear it soon. True comment though! :D

[@rigormortex7568]

@@specstreTV I think with just some more downtime options the role would be fine and not boring like this. Its just not fun that all the other roles can optimize in a lot of different ways and healer are bound too gear and a good team.

[@tsulong]

I felt SO called out when you said the line about "games that trick your brain into thinking you're a productive human being" 😂 I've been a healer main since ARR and you've done a great job putting into words why I love the role so much

[@specstreTV]

That's awesome you've stayed with healer for every xpac! I know some people burn out of it, but even when I pretend I could play DPS, I always come back to healing since it's just the most satisfying...

[@zidaryn]

I'm a healer main and I love adapting to what's going on with my team. Most dungeons are straight forward. But then I get an old dungeon, but the tank is BARELY iLvl enough to get in and it becomes difficult and fun.

[@specstreTV]

LOL, I can agree with that -- things going wrong or people being inexperienced can absolutely make healer more interesting. :D

[@WolfmanXD]

I disagree with 2 things in this video. A - I think tank is the easiest role in the game, having mained all 3 roles in savage. Tank mechanics usually boil down to, mitigate this attack, move boss here. It's why I got so bored of it after awhile. B - people in pf and roulettes don't give a fuck about healers, because they only notice when a healer is doing bad. If a dungeon run went WELL, it's because you had a good healer keeping everything glued together. If things go to shit, that's when people blame the healer for being bad. Sometimes true, sometimes not.

[@specstreTV]

Honestly, that's fair! I think both healers and tanks tend to be harder for newer players who aren't super familiar with the game and don't have the confidence to lead dungeon pulls or plan out mitigation in raids, but at the higher end, I agree that BOTH tanking and healing are easier to optimize and play well than DPS. also, sadly true about pf/df not noticing a healer's dps or smooth work, but the unsung hero is still a hero! I've had plenty of runs where I steal all 3 comms and I like to pretend it's because they noticed :D

[@WolfmanXD]

@@specstreTV I don't have enough experience healing in savage yet to agree or disagree with that statement, but I'm sure it's accurate. Also, you hit the nail on the head. Confidence. That's literally all you need to play tank or healer is the confidence to do it.

[@haydarinna631]

Healer mechanics boil down to: heal and shield. I can see how you would feel like tanks are easier in the context of savage though. But healers don't even have dps rotations like tanks do. Both tanks and healers changed a lot since HW, and their current designs don't work as well with the old content design. And it takes the dev team some time to adapt to the job changes and start designing content that actually works with the job design, I feel.

[@forFoxSake404]

My love for playing healer comes from two factors: 1 being that i can correct small mistakes made by my party members. Melee dps is taking an aoe to the face because they were too slow or simply learning? Have a heal! Standing in the way of impending doom and death? Rescue! Healer feels like the backbone of a party, the oil that keeps the dps machine rolling. 2 being that with all four healer jobs, i still am able to focus on the fight and learn mechanics on the go. A comfy UI allows it so. As dps i am too focused on executing a better than good rotation go maximize damage output that i can't concentrate on mechanics well enough to dodge death or vuln stacks.

[@randomaether]

as a person that PFed this savage tier, same for the previous ones, in several roles, I would say, you are not all the mit in the group, for example WHM has minimal tools to mitigate a hit, but your random NIN9000 has a feint that could be put to good use

[@adonisdarkblade]

Temperance has a 10% mit on everything. Feint is only 5% mit on the vast majority of attacks

[@randomaether]

@@adonisdarkblade sorry for the late response, I did not mean as a comparison, I meant it as more as DPS not tending to mitigate, its a common mistake on people to undervalue their mitigation, which leads to, well, a lot of deaths because the Supports can only do so much

[@ReyOfLight]

I’m a DPS main (mainly Reaper) but being the way I am, I don’t want to be stuck in tunnel vision with roles, so I also want to feel comfortable on healer and tank. I’m pretty comfortable on my lvl 90 Sage now at least in content up to Shadowbringers (am yet to try Endwalker dungeons on Sage as I’m mostly playing with my boyfriend who’s leveling another job at the moment, and with two friends who are still sprouts and not yet in Endwalker) and I even heal alliance raids now despite saying I’d never run them as anything else than DPS just weeks ago 😅 Working a bit on GNB as well at the moment but I’m nowhere near as comfortable on tank as on DPS or healing. I’m not yet raiding, but do intent to get there eventually as well. I’m only just about to reach 6 months of playing FFXIV without having previous experience from similar games so there’s a lot to learn both with roles and mechanics for me. And Sage is a lot of fun, there’s even a chance it might be my new main or may become the job I main. Also makes it easier for friends when there’s a designated healer on the party when we do dailies so no one has to change jobs for us to run a party of four

[@specstreTV]

It's great to play a little bit of everything, ESPECIALLY when you're learning! If you've only been playing MMOs for 6 months, don't worry about not being a master yet-honestly impressive how much you've been throwing yourself into already. I've been playing for years and STILL don't love tanking, but I've definitely come around to healing. It's a lot less scary when you get your head around it and start seeing what challenging content expects of you. This current tier -is- kind of sharp on healers, but the worst thing that happens is you die and all respawn at the front, anyway. Failing's a necessary part of learning, so if you're liking Sage, just keep playing it! We always need more healers. :D PS - you're totally right about that last bit and that's why I got into healing. Was sick of the queue times and messing around w/ party comps just to play w/ my friends. Turned out I loved it, thankfully!

[@ReyOfLight]

@@specstreTV I just go into hyper focus mode when I get into something haha I started playing the game on April 1st, made my main toon a couple of days later, by the time 6.2 came out I had already been done with Endwalker for several weeks (and that was with some slacking from my end as I started leveling Reaper before being completely done with MSQ) I’m one of those people who can easily spend many hours per day in the game as long as I’m working on something and/or just feel well enough for battle games (chronic illness and being autistic can limit me at times as stuff like alliance raids can just become too overwhelming with everything going on) but at times when I’m not quite where I need to be for group content, I just grind fates and side missions if still wanting to play but be more at my own pace. A fair bit of my Sage leveling was actually from doing side quests in Shadowbringers and then in Endwalker, along with doing a lot of fates. It’s so satisfying on Sage to just go to an area that should be challenging because of you being under leveled, only to see the enemies do 0 damage against you because of the eukrasian diagnosis barrier, and quickly heal up any damage taken just by hitting the enemies because of Kardion. I was having fun with fates at lvl 84 Sage over in Ultima Thule and it didn’t even make me break a sweat. Chocobo always in free stance Now it’s even more satisfying when easily hitting the enemies for some 14K with the basic cast and at times over 20K with Phlegma Healing (most) DRK can be challenging though because they’re just not as tanky as the other tank jobs. The tank I run dailies with in the FC is a DRK in training and he definitely keeps me on my toes! I’d probably not struggle at all if my boyfriend tanks though because he’s a really good tank no matter if he’s on DRK or GNB, and he’s also training the DRK guy so I do believe we will be very solid over time as we get more practice and mainly know each other well. It’s not unlikely I’ll be the designated healer in Bozja as well once more people in the FC progress enough to go there. I also don’t like completely brain dead jobs, I like a bit of a challenge. The tanks I am working on are ironically DRK and GNB after all, though they’re only lvl 50 and 66, GNB feels more fit for me this far. I started conjurer last week or something to unlock the unicorn mount, and while my WHM is at 37 now, it just bores the living heck out of me! I will however endure because I know from the other jobs that below lvl 50 is pretty trash, and the real fun starts at 80+ Eventually intend to level all jobs, possibly with exception for blue mage and maybe bard, also not too sure about ninja and monk because I use controller

[@ReyOfLight]

@@specstreTV Healers are just needed in general and Sage is a lot of fun, still learning it though as I’ve only been playing it more for some weeks by now and mostly in lower level content where I don’t have my whole arsenal of skills at my disposal. But holy crap it’s fun to solo fates in places like Ultima Thule (spent the past weekend just grinding out all of Endwalker fate ranks to unlock the traders in the cities as well, and I’m collecting music scrolls hehe) FC is going to run Bozja when more people unlock it and it’s likely I’ll be the healer or one of two healers for our team

[@post-mastersodium3136]

I love healing, still my favorite role in the game. Sure, I'd love a more complicated dps rotation, but the healing rotation is tons of fun. Because it depends so much on others, it's frequently unique and interesting in casual content.

[@specstreTV]

Pretty much exactly my stance! I've had some interesting comments about adding a proc damage spell for healers or SOMETHING to add a little more to the DPS part, but I'm more or less content with it and like you said, I REALLY enjoy the healing portion. :D

[@post-mastersodium3136]

@@specstreTV as much as I think I want a bit more in the dps rotation, it still has massive potential to overcomplicate the role. Because it's such a flexible and reactive healing rotation, tracking a combo could get hard. Not to mention, if heals would break the combo or not, and other decisions like that. So long as they keep healing interesting like they did with this savage tier, and ex4, I'll stay happy healing 😊

[@specstreTV]

@@post-mastersodium3136 totally agree with that-i think a COMBO would be really hard to fit in with healer’s current playstyle and i don’t see them doing a massive overhaul. an occasional GCD proc (something mechanically like Firestarter for BLM, where Fire 1 occasionally gives you a Fire 3, except ideally with less jank) DOES seem semi-plausible though. We’ll see what they do in 7.0, but they’ve added so many oGCDs to all healers that a lot of casual content has been trivialized. Taking a break to add in 1 new, non-intrusive damage button on every job between 90-100 could be cool and maybe even likely considering the community’s request for more healer DPS options. But ultimately I agree that if they go too far, it’ll cause problems. We’ll see what happens!

[@specstreTV]

@@post-mastersodium3136 totally agree with that-i think a COMBO would be really hard to fit in with healer’s current playstyle and i don’t see them doing a massive overhaul. an occasional GCD proc (something mechanically like Firestarter for BLM, where Fire 1 occasionally gives you a Fire 3, except ideally with less jank) DOES seem semi-plausible though. We’ll see what they do in 7.0, but they’ve added so many oGCDs to all healers that a lot of casual content has been trivialized. Taking a break to add in 1 new, non-intrusive damage button on every job between 90-100 could be cool and maybe even likely considering the community’s request for more healer DPS options. But ultimately I agree that if they go too far, it’ll cause problems. We’ll see what happens!

[@Zoru_Kaizu]

ï started the game as a tank, and i still love to play as a tank

[@GaleGrim]

3:29 I'm gonna disagree there. Most modern content is designed to give the OPTION to pull wall to wall to wall, but if you try that with sub par gear your gonna get bodied no matter how many CDs you use. and with how gearing in this game works you may not have an option BUT to go in and do it with small pulls. Your getting that impression from that sweet sweet blue tome gear your probably running as well as the tank is probably running. Not from the actual design of the dungeon. You might say "well yeah gear properly duh" but if the game says "If you have the iLevel to enter you should be able to clear" then where are we? If the dev meant for you to do large pulls they would spawn large pull on you. Giving the players "the out" so to speak proves that the devs intend for you to do what ever pull method works to get you through the dungeon.

[@specstreTV]

Interesting, and I can accept that it's true to an extent! I think it partly depends on the LEVEL of the dungeon too. Xpac endgame dungeons (so 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s) tend to be MUCH less punishing in terms of mob damage, partly of course because of gear scaling, while leveling dungeons are much harsher. The Lvl 71 Shadowbringers dungeon was and is truly a trial by fire for healers and tanks (especially in EW when Sage dropped), BUT I think it's still doable. On the other hand, I'll give you a +1 for the Lvl 65 Stormblood dungeon-if you go into Bardam's Mettle with only Augmented Shire gear, you will have a horrendous time. I've done it as both healer and tank in that scenario, but 100% it felt like a Savage dungeon. But you're right that the devs give you the option! Certainly it's a lot easier to take it piecemeal, but hey? Are you really playing healer if you don't have a head of gray hair by the time you're 30?

[@GaleGrim]

@@specstreTV HA, gray?! my hair is white from all the clutch heals I do! GG. Thank you fro your input and wonderful guild and tips! Yeah, I still have flash backs to that 71, like WOW... SO MANY WIPES.

[@Catrell]

My first class was a pugilist then Monk. Realize I had no idea what I was doing so I chose healer to learn the game a little better. I am so much more powerful now and they will all pay.....

[@specstreTV]

Perfect. Go forth and wreak some havoc with your healer DPS! Who needs fists when you have the Blood Lily? :D

[@cali4806]

The only healer i can manage is WHM. Others are a real problem for me cos maybe im a reactive healer which i should be pro active i think

[@tituslupus5454]

Honestly, I don't think this is bad, but it still does feel off. I don't mind helping. As a SCH main, I'm very used to assisting and healing. Coming from the perspective of someone who doesn't do high-end content, there's a struggle more apparent. The DPS is simple and limited, and allies sustain very effectively. I don't know where to stand on the matter. Keeping DPS simple, even if it is very shallow after playing other jobs, does free up the necessary attention and focus to watch the mechanics, party, and the boss. I recall once being the group spotter in the last ShB normal raid because I was the healer and had the freed attention that I would otherwise use on my rotation to focus on the boss, learn mechanics, and then guide others through them. There's something satisfying about making a recovery, keeping people alive, and having the proper space to study, analyze, and navigate boss mechanics like it's nothing ..On the other hand: Broil III... Broil III... Broil III... Broil III... No matter what healer I've played, tank jobs now have absurd sustain and mitigation (though DRK still needs a bit of help now and again) and DPS have enough that as long as they don't screw up too many times, they usually are fine. I can tolerate simple DPS and having some easy rounds, but with the buff to Living Dead, the likes of Clemency, and Warrior's absurd healing rotation, I can't find myself enjoying healer as much. As frustrated as I can get when people fail mechanics repeatedly, I do understand that it happens. Some rotations are hard, some are disadvantageous in the current fight, it's easy to get caught up in the fun, etc., but at least there's something to do there. Now that EW has hit, it feels like playing healer casually is only really fun when the content or the players are new and likely to fail stuff so you can actually heal. Otherwise, I use Chain Strategem, Biolysis, and back to Broil III. It isn't helped that I'm often sacrificed for the sake of rotation. Had several times where people plain let me die to mechanics they were supposed to save me in (such as the boss binding you at Baelsar's Wall) because they didn't care to break their rotations on the boss, or several times where I want to watch a cutscene for the first time and people charged in anyway because my DPS as healer is negligible and they often don't need neither my DPS or healing. Don't get me wrong, I love healer. Contrary to what my previous statement suggests, I do genuinely love helping people, and it takes some actually bad behavior or massive stupidity to make me upset, such as getting rescued to death in the second HW alliance raid, to name an example. Guess which boss that was. It just sucks right now. I had to take a five month break from the game just from my exhaustion of playing a thankless job. The only options I can see are either nerf the tanks mitigation, healing, and sustain further so we need to actually react and care beyond avoiding orange markers and following mechanics at the cost of ruining some of the fun tanks have, they need to buff damage from enemies to higher extremes (which would effectively cancel out the buffs tanks get anyway and possibly make things worse and more lethal for everyone else), or introduce at least another button or two, but then we have button bloat problems that could even extend to keyboard and mouse. Controller players already need to really nail their button layout already. There's no easy fix. I don't really know what should be done, or what even can be done now, but I still really want a change because healing now is monotonous not because of the simple DPS, but because causally, there's no reason for me to be there other than to fulfill queue requirements now.

[@specstreTV]

I can understand this argument 100%. In any content that ISN’T fresh prog savage/ulti, healer’s flaws kind of bubble to the surface after you get familiar with it. i would definitely love to see them do SOMETHING to the very linear jobs, like white mage, but I will say, I’ve been re-learning AST in the current savage tier, and it’s… Quite Active. if you’re looking for a job with more than just DPS spam, have you tried out current AST? It’s kind of a mess admittedly, but if you’re someone who likes even simple optimization, there’s a LOT to maximizing card output. The Balance’s AST section goes into it way better than I could atm, but I’ve been loving the challenge. Or maybe I’m just a poor learner and so it FEELS hard, LOL. WHM was beginning to put me to sleep, though, so again-I empathize with your main argument.

[@double_joseph327]

They need more healer jobs. Definitely need a melee healer.

[@Ramotttholl]

I liked healing till i hit endgame.. still its a good job to Skip Queues with through the story XD

[@rexcyjones9416]

I find sage to be very easy to love healing. Very smooth brain friendly, which I am.

[@sacredlunatic]

Brown?? DPS is RED my friend!

[@wolferyxproductions]

I've always been the healer in my group i use healers in almost every game i can and ff14 has alot really understand with ogcd and gcds but even when the party is doing bad im always having fun learning how other people forget you legit need a healer in every situation . Side note one example we were doing a regulas lvl 60 dungeon the tank wants to drag everything and their grandma without letting me know ahead of time so he died in 4 seconds so the tank said im useless and the dps took his side both said they dont need a healer after doing about 50% of the dungeon with my keyboard on fire keeping them in good shape i told them ok you can try but you guys wont last they laughed called me names and i just waited 20 seconds later tank died 6 seconds later dps died they tried 5 times while i was just watching them and then they realized ohh shit hes been the one thing keeping us going full blast with no reguards for death...they didn't apologize or anything i just told them can we finish the dungeon now?

[@JangoFox11880]

The only thing I have to say about your video is the following: Healer damage is not important. At least in casual content. In Savage and Ultimate - definetly because of the enrage timer that goeas down invisible in the background. But normal dungeons and raids? No attacking needed to clear it. Of course it gets faster but technically speaking a Healer doesn't need to attack. And I know that is an unpopular opinion or even a hated one XD But I stick to it because it's true. No one can stop the healer from attacking but on the other side no one can force him to attack, too ^^ That's why I say: If you're new as healer and you're still uncomfortable with the role, that's okay. Then don't attack and focus more on the fights until you know when you can attack. Especially when the encounter is totally new and you don't know whats around the corner.

[@elgatochurro]

"now that I'm a healer main, healing is easy! also you're set up for failure at low levels where you're expected to press your healing buttons to learn and practice how to heal" I... Cannot... Comprehend how you got either of those conclusions...

[@markup6394]

Same. I dont mind healer being simple either. Current raid tier is a killer if your support roles (tanks and healers) arent up to snuf, so a simplified rotation isnt that bad. Personally, I have no problem doing GDC heals. They are part of my kit and if the others are on cd, well, than they are on cd. I wont go to FF14-jail and I wont have to pay a fine when I do when the boss is dead and the team still stands. Parse and optimization can be fun if thats the kind of gameplay for you, but personally, I just want the boss dead. And if I waste a GCD to get there, then, hell yeah, Imma waste that GCD :D

[@specstreTV]

No GCD heal is "wasted" if it keeps someone alive! It's all a juggling act, and while the "technical" ideal is pure oGCD healing, it's 100% not the reality for even the best players, especially when they're new to a difficult fight. At the end of the day, the "Green" part of "Green DPS" is more important than the "DPS" part-if we weren't healing, well, we'd quickly lose our raid slots to a 3rd melee or another caster... At the end of the day, if the boss dies and people live, you did your job! :D

[@markup6394]

@@specstreTV amen XD

[@Ziyanani]

I generally refer to my role as a healer main as Idiot management. My job is not to kiss every scrape better, its to make sure the idiots are on their feet and poking the enemies. I'm a generous and benevolent goddess though and will generally keep them above half health... unless the first thing I see in party chat is "does your husband know you're dressed like that" then.. I'm sorry you are going to die repeatedly. Healing in ff14 is half god complex and half masochistic 'why the hell do i do this to myself' but.. having played many an mmo it does strike a very nice balance.

[@specstreTV]

Herding cats is definitely part of the role LOL. But that’s why Yoshida in his wisdom gave us Rescue. :) That and to pull our friends off the P7S arena. But I totally agree, I love the balance between damage and healing in this game, and it’s way more interesting to me than playing a pure DPS is!

[@Kyrinson]

I sometimes see people freeze up when they play healer not knowing what they should be doing when the damage comes in hot and heavy. I personally go with an ordered list of importance for who gets it first. 1: ME, if I am dead I'm not healing anybody. 2: The TANK, if they are dead then I become enemy number one and suddenly I fail at item number one. 3: Any Redmage in the group, Pocket rezbot FTW. Co-healers also fit into this slot if there are any in the group. 4: EVERYBODY ELSE. Once your party is put into that ordered list its easy to know who gets your heals first and who its ok to let die if it will save somebody higher on that list. And if nobody on that list is going to die in the next 5 seconds then ITS RAINING FLASHBANGS!... erm.. I mean Holy spam at least twice (spaced out to take advantage of stun duration) and then glare em down when the pack is under 4 mobs remaining.

[@specstreTV]

Spot on - "triage" is such an important part of being a successful healer. Really helps if you've internalized a priority system and know what can be delayed / sacrificed and what can't be. Your list sounds right to me! :D Interesting on the Holy spacing-someone else brought that up too. For me, I tend to just gas pedal Holy for the damage (again, so long it's a gain over Glare meaning there are 3+ mobs), and treat the stun as a bonus rather than a core feature. However, like I said to that person, TOTALLY see it being viable if your tank is struggling to roll their mit well and the stun will keep them safer. Just depends on context, I think!

[@Kyrinson]

@@specstreTV The reason I space out the holy casts for the first 2 is that there is a hard cap of 2 stuns per monster where they become immune to all new attempts to stun them.. so its best to wait out the stun duration before hitting them again so you have maximum uptime of no damage coming in to hit them hard.. after those 2 stuns are used it is ok to just go ham with Holy spam till there are only a few left where Glare becomes more potency efficient.

[@specstreTV]

@@Kyrinson No that makes sense! I'm familiar with the stun immunity they get, I just prefer the pure damage from Holy spam since, especially at endgame, I'm rarely too concerned about the tank's health and value the faster kill time more than the lighter damage load. But like I said, if the tank's having a hard time and spacing out the stuns will help you more, by all means! It seems totally valid from a mitigation perspective. :D

[@SmellyNerd]

I guess one of the things that discourage me from healer is that we're the run enders of the party What happens if DPS dies? They get revived What happens if Tank dies? Other tank takes over and they get revived What happens if Healer dies? Full pressure on the single healer, they may die and the run ends or if they're dead, run is over Then everyone hates you because you single handedly ruined the run. Healer is a hate magnet for how much pressure in terms of playability it is quite simple and a resource management , but man, it's definitely not allowed to learn, it always feels like to do content you have to know it entirely to prevent everyone else from having to restart. And everyone says ''then don't die'' as you're trying to main healer so of course you're going in some content blind and mechanics are just going to hit you and kill you at least once or twice, which in other classes can be just a loss in DPS but in healer is just ...everything

[@Rc3651]

I feel like you're still in the bright eyed and bushy tailed healer phase 😛 It sounds like you're still finding joy in smooth runs. Personally I actively wish for people to fuck up because chaos is the only thing that adds spice to the fights. As a main healer since 2.0 early access I'm very jaded at this point, and I think most long term healers are the same. It used to be that you could bite off more than you could chew and would be constantly using your entire kit, including GCDs, in creative ways to survive. Now everything is so streamlined that you're only planning out when to press each cooldown. And once that's figured out you're just pressing one DPS button on repeat while waiting to press the same oGCD at the same time in the same order every pull. And that's not helped by them significantly simplifying healer damage. For example, going into Shadowbringers Scholar lost like 11 abilities (around 8 of them being damage abilities), the ability to directly control your pet like a second character, and an entire pet. I still play healer since it's what I'm best at but it's really mind numbing at times compared to how it used to be. And I don't think anything will fix it across all content besides making healer damage more interesting, especially from lower levels onwards.

[@specstreTV]

Admittedly, I really only started playing the game in any meaningful sense during Shadowbringers, so it's possible! I have no point of reference for healers before then, but I have heard a lot of the interesting damage was stripped, yeah. However, I actually really like the simplicity of healer damage-I won't claim to play with perfect groups (nor play perfectly myself), so I also see plenty of spice my raids, LOL. I'm sure in a more optimal environment than a semi-casual static I'd have a different story, but fights like P7S and P8S are giving me plenty to do in terms of healing and the randomized nature of P8S especially makes a traditional mitsheet somewhat less rigid, which I've enjoyed. We'll see where I'm at in a few years! :D However, I have seen some interesting suggestions for complicating healer damage without overemphasizing it, such as proc-based damage spells. I suppose only Square knows what their plans are, though!

[@shara5985]

I looooove near wipes or just pure chaos too. It is so fun.

[@GhostBoyX18]

FIRST

[@lolleonlolable]

healer is for sure not the easyest roll, i cant agree with that. like yesturday for example i had did a duty roulette and it was twintania, the two tanks had no clue what they doing, faced the boss to the raid all the time, ppl were dying left and right, i died to aggro from adds three times. like had had to do fucking miracles and kite adds arround rezz ppl left and right and we were still dying. and also minmaxing damage (when ppl actually know what they doing) is really hard too, as a dps u just do ur rota right and thats it u dont have to calculate if the tank dies if u do another glare or not and stuff like that. a rota of a dps is maybe more complicated but its just muscle memory u dont have do adjust to anything. i personally think its way harder to have like one eye on the grps HP and one eye on the mechanic u need to doge than just doing dps. also since ur a support u can do stuff like pull some1 to you if u see hes failing a mechanic and stuff, or maybe save him with a cheeky instant heal after he went from 100% to 10% because he didnt dodge and would die 1 sec after and stuff like that. a good healer is pretty much a hard carry that noone is really noticing.

[@specstreTV]

That's an interesting perspective and a valid experience! I'm sure it depends to some extent on the individual. In the case of your roulette experience, sometimes inexperienced tanks can absolutely ruin a run no matter what you're playing, and that's rarely the healer's fault. In fact, I will agree that healing and tanking ARE actually harder at lower levels, 100%. However, my overall take is more aimed at endgame Savage/Ulti raiding, where I think the support roles kind of "cap out" on skill at a much, much lower level than DPS. The sprout BLM in your Sastasha doesn't have to do a lot to "carry" the group, but being, say, an optimal SAM in P8S requires you to strictly adhere to a 30-GCD rotation and not drift out of raid alignment, etc., all the while ALSO solving mechanics. My brain does not do so well with that sort of rigidity, whereas the comparatively simple flexibility of, say, WHM makes it so heals or tanks are often raid callers just because they have the least on their plate 90% of the time. But again, totally valid perspective, ESPECIALLY for lower levels!!

[@lolleonlolable]

@@specstreTV yeah i didnt do any like "real" raiding so far only some of the normal raids just finished endwalker msq a few days ago. and the only option on dps is my dancer and i feel he is really easy to play compared to healing. but yeah on a really high lvl its maybe harder to do good dps as a meele i guess, not sure jet. i guess the answer is depending on alot of things like how good is your group? are u playing a "easy dps" or a "hard dps" etc etc. i get kinda ovwerwhelmed when everyone is dying to mechanics and i have to save em while dodging myself :D but i didnt play healer that much.

[@specstreTV]

@@lolleonlolable That totally makes sense! And all levels of content are valid-its your sub money, as the saying goes! But if you stuck with healing a bit and got into higher end content, definitely imagine you’d see what I mean. All jobs/roles have difficult and easy things about them, but in an “optimized” environment, healer gets to coast a bit. Total hell in unorganized play though, especially while you’re leveling, so your opinion is 100% valid!

[@SuperCallum112]

It's a nice sentiment and all, but why is no-one talking about how this absolute deviant has his map BETWEEN his hotbars?!?!

[@willowm.8444]

i have my map to the right of my hotbars it makes looking at it so much quicker than looking up during faster paced content

[@specstreTV]

LOL, ok it might look ridiculous, but having the map near my bars where I'm glancing frequently anyway helps during raids-there's a lot of activity and I need to see where the cardinal directions are for mechanics. As for why it's BISECTING the bars, uh... no excuse. It just seemed easy. :D

[@Wanderingsage7]

Imagine if you could do DPS by healing.

[@specstreTV]

Ok, you joke, but that's pretty much what Assize is, LOL. Whatever the devs intended it to be, it's a DPS button pretending to be a heal.

[@Wanderingsage7]

@@specstreTV not the same, but yeah. :)

[@silverian]

If I remember correctly in FF8 casting healing spell at undead will damage it.

[@galloviking4766]

I started as healer. Found it boring. Changed to DPS. Hated the queue times. Went back to healer. Somehow enjoying it now.

[@frostedflakes8432]

I was the opposite, I started as healer and then proceeded to change to BLM for raiding lol

[@specstreTV]

Nothing wrong with that! I still love BLM any time I feel the need for explosions. :D

[@sankuosankuo9257]

To spice things up you should absolutely try 3 dps 1 Tank (ideally a War) Expert and lv.90 dungeon, need to get a premade party for it tho, but that's what actually makes these last dungeon fun for me, the lv.90 dungeon felt bland and boring because the damage was too low, so just asked friends to pick dps and rolled out my WAR, and that's wayyyyy funnier to do it this way than the regular way I'd say! :D

[@gordan_varn]

I both agree and disagree with this, and this is my personal opinion. To me, healing's only ever been exciting in uncontrolled environments like Party Finder or random queues because you don't know what to expect from the people around you, it's sad to say but for me the only time I feel particularly excited playing healer (as I've done for Savage, Week 1 Savage and Ultimate) is when a pull is scuffed, multiple people are dying and everyone's screaming. THEN and only then does the healer class require me to make spot decisions, quickly coordinate revives and decide which cooldowns you can use within barely enough time for the next mechanic. In controlled environments like statics, and the time-line scripted boss mechanics, my healing rotation demands about as much thought as my DPS rotation, which is to say, it requires none. I look at a fight's timeline, discuss with my co-healer where I'll be using what, and then press that button when the time rolls around to do so. Since boss mechanics are scripted the way they are, I know for a FACT that I do NOT require that specific cooldown at any other point while it is on cooldown, making the 'oh but you need to be thinking about how to do DPS while healing' almost completely irrelevant because it is just a static rotation of set cooldown intervals that you keep to. This counts for both Savage AND Ultimate, and is also why I heavily dislike Yoshi-P's comment of "Just play Ultimate if I want to derive pleasure from playing healer", Ultimate isn't designed any differently from other content, nor are the healing checks in there. It feels like a really shallow and ignorant way to wave off some of the troubles people have been having with FFXIV's healer design following Shadowbringers and onward. To me it is an unfortunate combination of Square Enix' method of designing healer classes and the way fights are designed in this game. I love playing healer, I play healer or support in almost every other game I play, but I just can't find the same measure of enjoyment out of FFXIV's healing than out of other games. I still play it because it's my primary class and I'll always be a support oriented player, but I find it a huge shame that rather than expand on Healers, SE's decision for the past few expansions has been to burn away healer complexity almost completely. Before I get called out, I'm not trying to undermine anyone's enjoyment. I'm just stating my observations and experiences as a healer player playing healer in FFXIV. I am of course open to discuss (if its civil) because I love talking about stuff like this.

[@specstreTV]

This is a totally valid take, and not one you should feel worried about! It sounds like I'm probably a less experienced healer than you (I tend to take Savage slower and only have a little Ultimate experience), so veterancy could go some ways toward explaining the enjoyment gap. Maybe in a few years, I'll feel the exact same. However, I don't really need the "in the moment" chaos, usually-I can absolutely enjoy it, but I absolutely prefer when everything comes together and goes smoothly. It's a kind of psychological reward for me when the mit schedule is "solved" and I get to simply press buttons and see everything pan out exactly as planned. It's not a high octane enjoyment, for sure, but it feels satisfying, like having built something and seeing the finished product. I do like that Square has been experimenting with more randomization in fights this tier, since that kind of keeps things semi-fresh from pull to pull, but I also play at probably a lower skill level where mistakes DO happen in my statics and recoveries are required, so that helps too. Again though, very legitimate opinion and it deserves to be expressed!

[@gordan_varn]

@@specstreTV I don’t think it’s necessarily a difference in experience, it could just be a different way of viewing the healer role in general. It’s nice that you pull a lot of enjoyment out of solving the cooldown spreadsheet, it's an equally valid take. Personally I just wish Sqenix would provide the opportunity for Healer players who want a bit more; like a Healer job that isn’t specifically better than the others but maybe has a bit more going on. In my opinion, classes within set categories should differ from each other in order to appeal to a wide audience, it’s why I dislike SGE/SCH because their kits are almost copy-pastes of each other. Right now I’d categorize healers like this: SGE / WHM are the ‘basic’ jobs of their respective branches (Barrier and Regen). Basic isn’t an insult, but they’re easier to pick up than the others and do their job well, they’re nice entry points from other classes or for new players. SCH / AST are the ‘intermediate’ jobs of their branches. SCH optimization is a little tougher than SGE due to the lack of movement options and Aetherflow management. AST is the hardest healer in the game currently due to Astrodyne/Card management, but they lost a lot of complexity with the homogenization of their Draw system. Why not have a set of ‘hard’ healer jobs then too? Just for those who want the extra challenge? All the options are viable and valid, but we’re lacking a level of healer class that (I at least) consider hard. For example, introduce a melee healer (think Way of Mercy Monk from DnD), or a healer that has distinctly less access to healing buttons than others or has to take extra steps to heal (Chemist or Vampire Healer?). You shouldn’t talk yourself down like that, from watching the gameplay in your video you’re doing great, and mistakes happen all the time at all levels of play. It’s just kinda unfortunate to me that I personally look *forward* to people making mistakes, so I have to deviate from my normal autopilot. I do agree that they’re doing a bit more randomness in this tier, and I enjoy that, but from friends who have been in the game way longer than me, I also understand that Sqenix is often hesitant to lean into their ‘experimentation’. Basically what I am saying is that they should get a backbone and take some chances. If it works out, great, and if it doesn’t just tell us ‘Sorry, we wanted to try something exciting, and it didn’t go as planned’, I don’t think anyone will condemn them for trying something out of the box. What Sqenix tends to do is take a chance, and then when it doesn’t work out, completely flip to the other extreme and never do something in that vein ever again (The old AST Card system was dreadful, but completely removing all complexity from it was also a mistake imo, they should've tried to streamline it).

[@specstreTV]

@@gordan_varn REALLY good write-up here. I appreciate the vote of confidence and will say that I absolutely agree with your breakdown of the jobs. I’ve also considered SGE the WHM of shield healers since EW launched and Square decided on that split. SCH/AST definitely -feel- like more intermediate jobs, and I think your proposal for another tier of healer difficulty would actually be quite amazing. As someone who loved FFT (my first Final Fantasy as a little kid), Chemist is a dream job. I would love to see a healer that required a little more thought, just simply to break the mold and have some spice to play with. I DO think preserving “simple” healing in WHM and probably SGE is wise, but your addition wouldn’t get in the way of that unlike the more common proposal I see of adding “combo” DPS spells across the board. Even as someone who tends to prefer simpler jobs, the appeal of a Chemist having to do mini-Invoker combos to come up with concoctions (mechanically similar to DNC’s steps, maybe, but with more options) or even just having a wider variety of damage options would be really cool. I’m obviously not a game designer, but it -feels- like there’s a wide range of potential they could explore. It was well before my time as a “serious” player, but hearing about old SCH having a closer identity with SMN and having things like Shadowflare and multi DoTs is always sad. Again, I’ll defend the overall “feel” of healer as a role in this game, but I happily concede that ADDITIONAL options for complexity would be awesome and probably the healthiest way to tackle their current indecision about what sort of difficulty they want healer to have (and from what). Love the thoughts!

[@gordan_varn]

Thank you for the like-minded responses, it’s nice having a normal conversation (in KZbin comments of all places) about a topic that can, admittedly, draw some pretty heavy fire from all sides of the community. I completely agree, simple healing should stay simple, in no way do I want a role that I adore to become inaccessible to new players and unfun for a specific part of its community. I also think that this is what a lot of people who are *for* Job complexity often fail to translate properly when discussing with people that enjoy it the way it is (which then turns into bickering). I’m fully with you on Chemist, even though this is my first Final Fantasy game. I, too, wish to chug suspicious concoctions and yeet elixirs at my teammates. I also dabble in fanmade Job designing, though I’m nowhere near a game designer either, and I see so many potential choices for exciting Jobs to take the stage in the future (especially with Sqenix mentioning they want to start making Jobs that aren’t from the FF franchise). I also want to recommend the idea of Shaman/Mystic (using spirit animals together with healing, maybe with buffs), the P4S boss (but as a vampire healer that does things like equalizing health or taking health to heal) or even a melee healer, though I have no clue how that’d work. I’ll admit I was probably a bit hyperbolic when talking about Healer in my original post. No matter my comments, so far I’ve never outright loathed playing healer, my wish for this role is to simply get more *options* (damn you melees for taking so many class spots) for things to do based on what you enjoy doing. In my opinion, if the class itself is fun then the fight design doesn’t really need anything else or vice versa. Either way, it’ll draw more enjoyment from people looking for a bit more than what it currently is. I find this a very fun topic to discuss ^-^

[@gordan_varn]

@@specstreTV i forgor to ping 😭

[@Robulite]

sage is just the fun healer. Plus it can do a lot more than the others.... oh well

[@whitemoonwolf13]

I don't find sage as much fun, much to my disappointment. It's really good with a co-healer but dungeons, especially lower ones, are just super painful. I'm also an astro main so, take my opinion with a grain of salt XD

[@x3AnimeFanXD]

Healer is much easier than tanking because as a tank you have every responsibility imaginable. You need to lead people, you need to use your mitigations constantly while aoeing and doign wall to wall pulls and you can pray if you arent warrior that you will stay alive. I have disappointed more people as a tank than as a healer i ever could. Healign people by pressing a button or 2 is easier than having to know how to tank bosses and a whole as dungeon. So much shit can go wrong and its always the tank's fault.