why do i put up with being a healer

Two poor nuggets didn’t know how to do Final Steps of Faith.

Didn’t ask for tips before we began.

Blamed the tank for not tanking when the Shadow Dragon (middle add) killed them.

DPS blamed healer when they died due to running away with the multi hit stack mechanic after the first hit.

Good times.

And we’re keeping like...80% of it.

Well, first I’ll start out by saying I don’t play tanks. My highest is level 39 for perspective. I know that I should in order to get a more solid perspective on what they do and what the skill requirements/ceilings are, but in the little time I have attempted to try and at least get one past level 40, it actually became a health issue. I have been healing and DPSing for about 15 years through various games  and as such, I feel zero anxiety when playing them. I know what I can do and I will do what I can do regardless of what someone else says.

But when I get on tank, I get borderline panic attacks if the healer just fuckin looks at me wrong. And I don’t want to go through that when playing a game. Even learning how to heal was not as bad as that. On top of that, I no longer have a group of friends to help me get over it, nor would i want to burden them with the issue. So it’s a lost cause on me at this point.

Anyway with that said, from my understanding and watching analysis videos plus speaking to my tank friends, I guess I can say it’s a mix of good and bad. The concept of the tanks has been streamlined. You have this thing, this thing and this thing and though they’re under different names, they do the same thing. So because of that there’s an identity concern. However, they each also have a bunch of other different shit that makes them separate from one another that people need to focus a little more on. It’s a similar issue with healers. Focus less on the samey stuff that we’re required to have to function in our role, and more on the parts where our identity still lies intact. Once you get over that bit, I can say each tank looks really cool individually.

As far as the streamlining in comparison to other roles in the game, I think it’s good. I’m assuming it’s going to be good enough to make up for the loss of pretty much every enmity dump in the game. Tanks now have no reason to not be in tank stance when they are tanking. There’s literally no reason to not. So there should be no reason for me to get hate on my Bard or Summoner unless they are severely undergeared and underleveled. If this adjustment is as powerful as I’m assuming it is (purely basing it on the times I’ve gone full ham with a tank stance only PLD back in the day while he was learning. Thank Ryan) then yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I don’t personally think the loss of a DPS stance will kill the damage dealing tanks can do, but in the end it’s really up to the player skill and also when we can actually play the new builds.

There’s no mistake that GNB will require a fix within the first patch. This happens with every new job that comes around. I've been hearing a lot about it’s CDs being a little wierd, particularly its invincible which I’m not looking forward to. It’s like freaking out when a RDM in FFXI used Convert at 1 HP forcing me to waste a Cure VI on them.

But that’s really all I can say. I’m not the tank expert. The most I do is recognize what their buff icons look like and know the effects of those icons so I can react accordingly, honestly. I’m just glad it’s sort of encouraging actual straight tanking instead of the meta leading to people who don’t know how to stance dance doing it bad then blaming me or other healers because they did the thing bad. It even just plain getting carried and them thinking they’re doing it right. I had nothing against the tank dance since for those who did it correctly, the difference was literally not noticeable. But the skill gap caused it to be extremely noticeable on the not-yet-skilled ones and even make some afraid to tank. Now you can just do your rotation and not have to care about that button unless you’re MT and you literally lose nothing. It’s all gainz all day. To me at least.

IDK this question might be best tailored to someone who knows tanking better sorry lol

Initial Reaction: Yeet

I honestly have no opinion on WHM other than the gauge changes which were sorely needed. 4.0 Job Gauge aside, I loved the way WHM played from 2.0 all the way until now. I’m glad to see it is not changing much in that regard. It’s unfortunate that their raid utility amounts to being able to solo heal a fight theoretically (which is probably...yeah no), but that’s not and never will be my focus as a player. 

This is another class that I’ve been seeing a lot of DPS complaints about, too, which is really confusing because WHM has continuously received some of the best healer DPS burst skills in the game. It’s also prettier now. Like have you seen Glare? That spell is gorgeous. Anyway, WHM has also recievef Afflatus Misery based on Afflatus healing usages which are granted from the new Lily gauge and nourish the new Blood Lily at the bottom. basically two spells that should just replace the use of any other spell in order to charge that binch as fast as possible because Misery is also gorgeous as heck.

Of all the healers, WHM has retained a clean identity for a long time. It’s just people don’t like what that identity is and that’s unfortunate really. Makes me wonder why they continue playing it. I do get loving something so much that you want it to get better but honestly, I played 2.0 Summoner and I have never once quit that job in all 6 years that I have been playing this game. Ya’ll have 0 idea was absolute diligence truly is. Ya’ll don’t know the fun of needing to bank Bane several times across a group of mobs because it only reached a maximum of four targets. Ya’ll don’t know the feeling of healing dungeons as SCH and having whole parties just abandon you as soon as you load in because you’re not a WHM. Ya’ll just don’t know.

Anyway, I don’t really have much to say about WHM as a whole. I personally like it. Raiding is not my thing so that tier of concern goes over my head quite literally and I honestly don’t care for it. Even if I did, I still wouldn’t understand because I am not competitive. I don’t have the drive for “perfection” like some groups have in their need to get the lowest kill times. I’m satisfied with literally just downing the boss and honestly if more people had this mindset, then there wouldn’t be this issue of certain jobs being locked out of PF parties. But you can’t stop people from wanting to have the best numbers and all the power to them for going for it and wanting more out of it. But just know that WHM has always mattered. It’s not the dev team’s fault that players are excluding it. That’s 100% player choice due to the fact that all content in this game is designed to be killable by any combination of jobs including duplicates.

Final Reaction: Yeet

That’s all on my opinions on the matter. Overall I’m going to try and sooth myself with other games while i wait this final month before ShB finally drops. I’m really excited for just about everything in general.

My Initial Reaction: Fucking lit.

First of all, in case you guys didn’t know, I actually quit playing SCH gradually about part way through 3.0 only getting on it at the end of 3.5 to finish its relic weapon. The SCH that gets me warm and fuzzy inside is, oddly enough, 2.0 SCH which I loved to bits and played three times as much as I played WHM back then. However, when 4.0 dropped and I tried to continue with it, I found that I couldn’t. It wasn’t really the skills or anything. As a SMN main, I know how to handle my pet and use it to bounce Deployments, semi-macro’d spells in order to lock embrace on needed targets (until they ruined that. Thanks SE), etc etc etc. The works. I was all over that shit before.

But I just could not get into 4.0 SCH. And eventually I lost my touch around 5.2 due to exclusively playing AST and SMN. 

But after seeing the SCH changes I feel my my interest was completely rejuvenated. I love the new critlo effect. I love the new faerie skills. The new uses for the gauge. Fucking Seraph. I’m absolutely amoured. 

But I do see where the “sch got ruined” argument comes from. And it’s coming from the same place as where the AST one came from. You were comfortable and nothing was wrong with SCH. But because of WHM complaints and the need to balance the healers around WHHM without changing WHM into something it’s not, it got bent. Goodbye miasma. Goodbye bane. But hello Art of War. Basically our own Holy. Though I do disagree with the removal of Miasma II (and by extension Aero III but that’s for a different post) just for ease of group application, but then they’d have to give AST some AoE DoT because someone somewhere will be offended by the fact that we don’t have one so on second thought just keep it in the trash.

Now I do have a concern about Aetherflow and its usage. being unable to activate it until in combat is a poor idea as for ACN in general, AF prep was essential. For SMN it meant being able to do your stupid 5 hour opener in slightly less time and for SCH it just plain allowed planning your useage and having essentially 3 charges on standby for when you ran out for whatever emergency reason. Now I understand why energy drain is gone due to its new mechanic with SMN, but I think this would’ve been an amazing opportunity to give SCH an AF damaging skill. Nothing ridiculous, just something to expend AF on when you don’t need Lustrate or Indom or literally anything else. Some people have been saying Soil will fill that need and I can see it, but idk I do know I’ll miss Energy Drain.

Edit: Oh and also to the people complaining about a boring DPS rotation. Just like I said in the AST post: you didn’t play healer to DPS. You play it to support. Your DPS rotation is not meant to be intuitive.

But of course we must wait until the content comes to determine if the change was truly necessary. Is our incoming damage going to rise so much that we’ll be blasting stacks left and right in order to keep up along with our shields? I mean. We did see protect being removed but they’ve said nothing about raising our passive DEF and MDEF to compensate so..... //thonkface

Anyway my current Reaction: Still lit

I want to play Scholar again. I love the focus on the pet healing skills. I love the addition of Seraph. I haven’t been this excited for it in a long time honestly. So here’s to hoping it’s as good as it looks when 5.0 drops.

Coming up next: WHM.

You all know I main this so might as well start here first.

My initial reaction: Shocked and scared.

This was the reaction like a lot of AST mains and honestly it simply comes from the fact that nothing was wrong with AST. There was just something wrong with WHM’s core ability to compete with us in raid level content. So naturally, it would feel like we’ve been gutted for no reason. And honestly I was fearful of that. My biggest draw to AST was the card shuffle. Six situational cards that I could pull and use in different pieces of content. However here’s where the problem lies. 

Because all competitive players care about are numbers.

As such, the only card they considered useful was Balance in 99.9% of situations. Not just in raid content but outside of it as well in the content I actually do. Ever been barked at for giving a Bard who just expended Foe’s a few ewers to help them have it up again? Because I fucking have. And after thinking about it this way as well as assessing the surprisingly few situations I would use anything but Balance and Spear, I realized that hey, you know what this card change is actually a step in the right direction even if it is simplified. At least with the simplification (sorry elitists), newer players who want to get into the class will be able to do so with more ease instead of having to fish all over the place for guides on how to use the cards and who benefits from them most.

So after having 8 hours at work to really think about these changes and settle on them, I’m honestly okay with it. The shuffle effect is still there. You still have buffs to pick choose and stack in order to make the right combination for our new Divination skill. They’ve simply removed the annoying problem of trying to get a beneficial card and ending up drawing nothing but spires for an entire dungeon. RNG is nice but it does not make an intuitive/complicated job in the long run.

Now, cards aside, I am still offended by the reduction in our regen durations as well as the loss of Celestial Opposition (in its original form) and Time Dilation. One thing I adored was being able to extend the length of my regens by a significant amount and using those burst regens to give myself a semi-mitigated window where I’m able to DPS without worrying about the tank dying. That was one of my favorite things to do. The lower duration and the lower potency of Collective Unconscious is likely to change that unless CO’s regen double stacks over AH and AB regens then it’ll likely go unnoticed. 

(Forgive me for not knowing a few things I only watched a few general videos to get my toes dipped in. I am not a fan of 100% in depth videos because I do want to play the job myself and not rely on the words of someone who dug in completely.)

But again, the loss of CO and TD and the semi-nerfs to our regens down the board are not cause to call the job ruined. We can all call it ruined or perfect after we’ve really played with it.

All of THAT aside. I’m literally 0% concerned about DPS. Because I do not care about having an “intricate DPS rotation”. That is for actual DPS to have. The purpose of my DPS is to weave it between my support skills or spam it when I have no need of those support skills. We are fine and we have two new upgrades. I find complaints about the DPS across all three healers to be pointless because, again, you’re a healer. Your DPS kit is supposed to be boring because it’s not your primary job to be doing DPS. People don’t play healers to DPS. They play healers to support and for the support kit. Not the DPS kit. if you want a DPS kit, play a DPS. Unless you’re some cryptid who does it for the queue times and the aesthetic then honestly I can’t help you.

For now my opinion is: Worried, but waiting.

The changes bring it theoretically in line with the rest of the healers (especially WHM), but it lost a lot of fun toys in the process hence the anger and frustration from AST mains seen across the board. From an observer’s point of view, some of these changes were needed in order to...well basically stop every other type of healer from whining about how Balance should be removed from the game. In the end, however, it isn’t. We still have Divination and over all damage buffs. So yeah. A little worried due to lost toys, but waiting to actually feel the playstyle.

Coming up next: SCH.

I don’t think it was ruined. Full opinions going up within an hour.

Also please calm down and wait until we can actually touch the classes. I know the worries came true in SB, but you'll feel a lot more satisfied with your concerns and complaints or compliments after you've gotten to 80 and actually played the class into the ground in the new relevant content. Not even the media tour invitees were able to play the classes in a raid setting. A level 73 dungeon does not tell you about the full game play of any class and neither do tooltips without context. Just breathe. For the love of God breathe. I worry about some of ya'll.

Anyway, let's just agree to disagree ahead of time.