Learning to play a Healer in FF14

[BahamaLlama]

Heya all,

I've been playing a healer (Scholar) for around 50-60% of my full playtime (around 110 hours) and I feel I've been doing alright. I'm currently sat at level 63-64 and doing the Stormblood MSQ.

But, I decided to look through forums and other things, to find out that I've been playing it wrong. I want to be as good as I can be on a job and fully utilise everything I'm given, but, It's hard getting out of the mind-set of how healing worked in WoW.

In WoW, you'd want everyone to be at 100% health at all times, so, you'd be spamming healing most of the time.

It seems FF14 is different. I've constantly been told I am over-healing too much, I don't need to worry about people's health until around 50% etc.

I also barely use any of my oGCD's, nor do I ever use my Aetherflow unless I'm putting down the shield. I mainly use my GCD heals a lot of the time and use my fairy regen whenever it's off of CD. But, after reading posts and such, it seems a lot of good healers barely use their GCD's and mainly heal through their oGCD's.

So, since I've decided that I wish to change up how I play the game so that I can improve on things, what advice, tips or things should I be doing/not doing that would be a good thing to learn now to help me get better?

I'm also going to look into re-mapping my keybinds as well, since i have everything kinda spread out and all over the place. So, to me, it's not difficult to follow. But, at the same time, if I streamline my buttons, I'll actually have a place for things rather than "I'll put it here" then instantly forget I put it there xD.

Thanks in advance!

[causality]

Shameful, absolutely shameful. 2 pages and no one has given OP the correct answer. The #1 most important thing for a healer is to look cute.

[Kiana]

Publicado originalmente por casuality:

Shameful, absolutely shameful. 2 pages and no one has given OP the correct answer. The #1 most important thing for a healer is to look cute. :lunar2019piginablanket:

That's self evident.

[Oberon]

Publicado originalmente por tathen:

If you have time to DPS your tank is lazy, only time healer should be DPSing is boss fights cos the tank cant pull any thing, at the end of a dungeon run everyone should be alive and the healer should have anxiety.

Or the tank is well-geared and good at their job.

Publicado originalmente por Hex:

Publicado originalmente por tathen:

If you have time to DPS your tank is lazy, only time healer should be DPSing is boss fights cos the tank cant pull any thing, at the end of a dungeon run everyone should be alive and the healer should have anxiety.

Wat? This is ridiculous. As SCH you can spam art of war on every pull. Even on the massive pulls in ShB dungeons.

See, this here folks is why the novice network is trash, it's full of people giving garbage "advice" like this.

I'm not sure what that has to do with novice network. The NN on my server would vehemently disagree with this guy.

[Hex]

Publicado originalmente por Kiana:

Publicado originalmente por casuality:

Shameful, absolutely shameful. 2 pages and no one has given OP the correct answer. The #1 most important thing for a healer is to look cute. :lunar2019piginablanket:

That's self evident. :pixeltressa:

I'll take a burly Rho in a swimsuit if they can keep me alive.

[Jonas™]

Publicado originalmente por Seraphita:

Publicado originalmente por MOSLEY:

This is painfully incorrect.

And painfully is being nice about it. As a main healer, I can dps and still have the tank pull everything around so I'm really not sure what they're on about. Also, I never really had any anxiety on a dungeon I was well familiar with, with a good party. They play healer wrong.

It is flat out CRAP advice to the point of being the opposite of what you should be doing. I literally give side-eye to bad tanks and DPS who make me GCD heal on WHM/SGE when I'm in my Presence of Mind window or about to cap on Addersgall.

As many people have said, unlike WoW, damage in FF14 is predictable once you know what to watch out for so you should have plenty of down time to DPS and in most content (below EX/Sav) you can get by with oGCD heals in most situations and just cast your DPS abilities. This was actually a problem for WHM in 6.0 because their oGCD heals don't generate mana and once they had EX/Sav on farm they would literally go oom just spamming Glare. This was fixed somewhat in 6.1 so that now using Lily heals isn't a DPS loss anymore (DPS neutral? I think?).

I recommend learning what the big target markers indicate especially as a barrier healer. The less you have to actually heal people up and the more you can mitigate beforehand means the more DPS you can do and the shorter the fights will be. They have been going back and standardizing things like the stack markers, pair markers (aka danger doritos), and spread markers in older content. Once you can recognize those and the boss abilities that do major damage (comes from experience) you can prevent it with barriers and continue to DPS without having to resort to GCD and high mana cost burst healing on SCH.

On a personal note I would recommend trying out SGE or even AST (regen healer like WHM) once you hit the level req to unlock them. I personally find SCH to be the most complex, tedious and least intuitive of all the healers and can't stand playing it. I literally deleted the gearset for SCH as soon as I maxed SMN on both my characters.

EDIT - Also this, because it's directly relevant to the discussion and i found it funny:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/ubaouq/healing_beginnings_to_healing_today/
If you are at >50% health and I know nothing coming in the next 20 seconds will chunk you for more than that I'm going to finish my DPS rotation and then I'm going to pop a couple oGCDs and you should be damn grateful for the effort.

[giganova]

JoCat is correct, DPS when time allows. If your tank is at 1 HP or above, they aren't dead. The rest is just getting a feel for how low you want to set the limbo bar that is their HP pool.

[tathen]

Publicado originalmente por casuality:

Shameful, absolutely shameful. 2 pages and no one has given OP the correct answer. The #1 most important thing for a healer is to look cute. :lunar2019piginablanket:

No looking cute unless you have developed PTSD from healing!

[Glov]

Publicado originalmente por tathen:

If you have time to DPS your tank is lazy, only time healer should be DPSing is boss fights cos the tank cant pull any thing, at the end of a dungeon run everyone should be alive and the healer should have anxiety.

this has to be the worse opinion on healing I've read, congratulations

[Sel Und Irae]

The guide to playing any healer in a video game

Step 1: Play how you want
Step 2: If they don't listen let them die
Step 3: They talk ♥♥♥♥ or bm you? No heals for offender

Healers are the rarest class in FFXIV with tanks coming close second before Warrior got those Ultra Buffs. There is a reason every single waiting time is so long and its because everyone wants big PP DPS or Faceroll Tank while healer is always the last slot to fill cause most don't feel like dealing with nonsense randoms love to pull. Tanks running ahead and pulling like, 15 mobs is one of the worst things for a healer cause you have to button mash to keep Dumbo McGee alive and then he just runs in again to rinse repeat without letting you recouperate.


Play healer how you want and you'll play it better than trying to appease to Children.

[Hex]

Publicado originalmente por Sel Und Irae:

The guide to playing any healer in a video game

Step 1: Play how you want
Step 2: If they don't listen let them die
Step 3: They talk ♥♥♥♥ or bm you? No heals for offender

Healers are the rarest class in FFXIV with tanks coming close second before Warrior got those Ultra Buffs. There is a reason every single waiting time is so long and its because everyone wants big PP DPS or Faceroll Tank while healer is always the last slot to fill cause most don't feel like dealing with nonsense randoms love to pull. Tanks running ahead and pulling like, 15 mobs is one of the worst things for a healer cause you have to button mash to keep Dumbo McGee alive and then he just runs in again to rinse repeat without letting you recouperate.


Play healer how you want and you'll play it better than trying to appease to Children.

Pulling everything possible is the only way to have fun as healer. You should stick to rolling your face on the keyboard as Baby's first job, the Reaper.

The reason healer is rare is the same it has been since multiplayer games were a thing. People don't want the responsibility, or the illusion of responsibility.

In truth? Tanks and DPS are 100% responsible for their own survival. Once you realize that as healer it becomes downright relaxing. Playing optimally on a Sam or Blm is 10x harder than any healer in the game.

[DDRMANIAC007]

Publicado originalmente por Sel Und Irae:

The guide to playing any healer in a video game

Step 1: Play how you want
Step 2: If they don't listen let them die
Step 3: They talk ♥♥♥♥ or bm you? No heals for offender

Healers are the rarest class in FFXIV with tanks coming close second before Warrior got those Ultra Buffs. There is a reason every single waiting time is so long and its because everyone wants big PP DPS or Faceroll Tank while healer is always the last slot to fill cause most don't feel like dealing with nonsense randoms love to pull. Tanks running ahead and pulling like, 15 mobs is one of the worst things for a healer cause you have to button mash to keep Dumbo McGee alive and then he just runs in again to rinse repeat without letting you recouperate.


Play healer how you want and you'll play it better than trying to appease to Children.

Wall to wall pulling is the norm in this game unless you're new or doing dungeons under a certain level.

[Kiana]

Publicado originalmente por Hex:

I'll take a burly Rho in a swimsuit if they can keep me alive.

Cute is a very broad descriptor. Having a max height roe healer and a min height lala tank is also really cute.

Publicado originalmente por ℜ | DDRMANIAC007:

Wall to wall pulling is the norm in this game unless you're new or doing dungeons under a certain level.

And SE modified some of those old dungeons to prevent over pulling, so it's easier to gauge. There's still some room for error (Sastasha's last room still has mobs that you don't have to fight, for instance) but like, it's impossible to run ahead and get separated from the party by web walls in Toto-rak now.

[Hex]

Publicado originalmente por Kiana:

Publicado originalmente por Hex:

I'll take a burly Rho in a swimsuit if they can keep me alive.

Cute is a very broad descriptor. Having a max height roe healer and a min height lala tank is also really cute.

First, No.

Second, puppies are cute. Lalafells are derpy, and will stop this game from ever being serious. They are for people whose brain stopped developing at 6.

[Hex]

Publicado originalmente por ℜ | DDRMANIAC007:

Wall to wall pulling is the norm in this game unless you're new or doing dungeons under a certain level.

If you have a group that knows what they are doing, you can pull wall to wall form the very first dungeon.

I've done it, several times as I leveled my whm with FC mates.

[DoctorEva]

Simply put: you want to heal as little as possible.
You want to do as much DPS as possible.
You want to have as little time as possible where you're not casting (or having your gcd in cooldown).
Therefore, you want to always have your gcd in use.
You always want those gcds to be dps.
If you have to use a heal gcd, it's because you HAVE to.

But if you don't care to be optimal, then just don't let people die.