The biggest mystery in my life, why do I find easy things difficult to understand, and some hard things easy. Gonna sit over here carrying a torch for scholar and astro and how they just "flow" better for me. All the more reason why its good to try all the things out.
@@kurothefox6020 For me at least, the issue is that if it's TOO easy/simple, I'll overthink it and ruin everything a la Centipede's Dilemma. I had the same issue with Endwalker's SMN at first; I looked at the new kit, attacked a training dummy for 5 minutes, and went "...no, it CAN'T be this simple... I have to be missing buttons or missing SOMETHING". ...No, I wasn't actually missing anything, but it took me an hour of scouring the traits and tooltips to finally understand that.
Funny you say that cuz its one of the things i hated about Astro, as its the only healer who needs to target their AoE, which means its the only one where the tank can LOS you, the hardest one to center on the pack (no longer relevant in 7.1+ as the radius expanded), and the only one who can lose casts of their AoE due to the target dying. It also means that the healer who has to shift their target on and off of enemies the most to play cards is the one that also has to switch back to enemies to keep doing DPS. WHM can keep targeting on the tank, throw single target heals, while spamming AoEs. Sage can throw a Adlo/Excog on tank while spamming AoW, Sage does have to target enemies for Phlegmas and Toxikons tho Gravity's target plays just a bit further into Astro being the most micro intensive healer and arguably most complex to play. For better or for worse!
I dislike how it's centered on a target instead of the AST. It means that if the tank just stands in the middle of a group instead of actually grouping them up you're not going to hit everything
Great video! Thanks so much for breaking it all down so succinctly! As a scholar main, my biggest criticism of the class is its growing lack of job identity/fantasy. We went from pet healer/tactitian, to panick Seraphism angel wings/pseudo white mage. I like the versatility, but I think it's because of it we have a conflicting identity. I'd love to see more visual updates to put us back in line with the ancient scholars of Nym! (Just my opinion, curious how others feel - if they like the visuals - or if they feel the same way :D)
Agreed, I feel like SCH should be the most military leaning healer in the aesthetic. I like the fairy and literally turning yourself into an angel feels a bit much
In defense of Seraphism, SCH has had its angelic LB3 since ARR, and Seraph's true nature is still a bit of a mystery since they swapped to role quests in ShB, but is essentially a more powerful, but temporary, Selene/Eos. Those two abilities are like the trances for SCH. I do think there's a bit of a visual disconnect between the tactician spells (Broil IV, Biolysis, Art of War II, Expedient, etc.) and the faerie spells. In the Nymian SCH lore it's all cohesive, but in-game it's two competing visual styles. SGE is essentially what SCH would look like if they went all-in on the tactician spell effects.
@@Tajih Seraph really suffers from not really being... introduced? You just get it, so you have to fill in the lore gaps. SMN falls into the same sort of problem where you get Phoenix, you get Solar Bahamut (ugh), but there's no real weight behind it. Not having a jobs quest behind those does hurt that sense of job identity, imo
always remember Sages, it is your primary directive to immediately put your shield up after your Scholar cohealer does their giga shield, the party will totally appreciate your efforts
overwriting your co-healer's shields is the best way to subtly grief your team (but generally on accident because panicking does not lend itself well to considering overlaps...)
One of the best things about White Mage being so easy and reliable is you can effectively "wing it" when learning most fights and spam through mistakes, and one of the worst things about White Mage is being unable to use Cure 3 because people always find a way to stand out of range
Cure 3 was great during a lot of the level 80 savages where there were many group or stack mechanics or general raid wide after raid wide. Like I know in many of those Eden's back when thin air was on a duration instead of charges, i would have to presence of mind, thin air and cure 3 my butt off because the back to back raid wides were crazy
Terminal relativity on E12S is the mechanic I'm thinking of specifically. Honestly, I don't know how I would do that phase after the WHM changes. Thin air only being one charge and hardly any mp support other than lucid dreaming....
Cure III is surprisingly good for fast healings, in a instance where you have rely on yourself only (co healer dead or just revived) to top up people within a 2-3s window That is the go to button. ((Also a relieve finally i dont have to spam Medica II which always overheals))
I leveled all my healers in one big phase over a month or so. WHM is a good starting point, and AST just feels like the natural progression. The toolkits share the same foundation. I started afraid of being a very busy button-presser to needing that AST action. SGE still shares some of the same foundations, but the toolkit is so much different. I might just need more time with SCH, but it feels like the most unique healer of them all, not just the shared SMN level thing (which is why I had the least practice with it).
This was a fun overview! I recently finished leveled all healers to 100 (my first maxed out role!), and it is fascinating how they've managed to make the healing kits feel so different from each other. Even with lots of experience healing in other games, every time I switched to a new healer in FF14 there was a significant adjustment period where I had to let go of habits from the last job. Scholar was my first main, so I learned to use cooldowns carefully and not worry about the time in between (covered by fairy healing). When I changed to Astro I suddenly _really_ had to pay attention to maintaining healing over time, and also get used to liberally applying oGCD heals. With Sage I had to develop a strict rotation to heal properly at all--it was the first healer that felt downright _painful_ to play wrong! And last came White Mage, the only job that requires you to frequently stop attacking in order to heal properly (especially jarring when coming from Sage!). Also side note, since my perspective is mostly from the leveling experience, it's interesting to see how you use the "Entry Difficulty" rating. I had to double-check your definition of it after seeing your ratings for Scholar and Sage, as the difficulty of learning the job is _very_ different from that of actually performing it! If you continue this series into the 8.0 expansion, what do you think of renaming the rating to "Skill Complexity" or similar?
Skill complexity could work yeah. I guess I evaluated entry difficulty as what it takes to play the job to a decent level and felt it worked well enough. But that idea also works 😊🤔
This series was awesome thank you! ❤ I now realize my first experience with melee, tank, healer and caster classes were the ones with the highest entry levels and it all makes sense now 😂
I tried out healing with WHM and SCH. On WHM in early dungeons, I felt like there wasn't much time between the tank has enough health that I won't get the full potency of cure and the tank being dead. On SCH, I felt more comfortable trying to DPS while healing as the fairy heals slowed the tank's health loss and gave me more healing wiggle room.
my only maxed healer is Scholar since it comes for free with Summoner. I personally have never been super interested in healing bc I simply feel anxious about the responsibility of keeping the party alive. Maybe one day I'll give it a go. Interestingly enough, despite seemingly being harder, I almost never encountered a bad Astrologian player..somehow they're always chads haha
I've tried all 4 healers, but the one i stuck with was SGE. With all those oGCD:s it's so satisfying to be able to instantly counter and recover when the proverbial excrement hits the fan. Granted, it doesn't have the same staying power as the other healers, but that's what your co-healer is for :)
Thanks for the video^^ it allows some insight on some subilities between the job Something I noticed is that Astrologian and Sage are reversed in role lorewise : - Astrologian is described as being able to read the future and help other, which would more correspond to a barrier healer (reading the future -> mitigate the future damage) - Sage is described as their noulith to create magic diagram to heal person. So I think it would make sense to reverse these two roles^^
I actually think they work pretty well with the lore, it just depends on how you look at it! With Astro you have really cool delayed heals that reward you for acting ahead of time but don't stop the damage itself--the event you foresee _will_ happen, but your actions now will have ripple effects to take care of it later. Meanwhile, Sage to me is about being prepared the normal way--you plan ahead to make threats and mistakes less painful, but your skills aren't nearly as helpful if you take too long to act or never had a plan to begin with (mitigation is useless after you've already taken the damage).
Nah, Asto's heals are very much intended for you to "read the future". Earthly star, Horoscope, Exaltation and Makrokosmos are all spells that you need to cast before any damage happens despite not being shields. Except Exaltation you "hold" all of these heals and can either let them run out or trigger yourself once the damage went off.
Great video once again! 🏆 Interesting and informative. Im only at lvl 80 content, Nier-raids the hardest ones I've played, and White Mage is my favorite healing job. Liked SCH more at early content but after lvl 60 WHM made it to the no. 1 spot. :) Let's see how things will change when I get to the real end game! Healer jobs are the most interesting ones in this game and FFXIV is the only MMO where it's fun to be a healer! :D Only my opinion of course... I've been pure DPSer in other games. 💪 Maybe it's the balance between healing and dealing damage which makes it more interesting for me here. 👌
And now when I think about it, those burst heals and damage dealing skills are the reason I like WHM the most. :D I watch healer jobs with the eyes of a DPSer! 👊
when ast came out, noct sect instant cast barrier spell was my favorite thing. sage is that on every mind altering drug, when i got the hang of it, i was like that space man from the lego movie SPACESHIP!!!!!! runing all over casting heals and attacks.
You missed my favourite thing about being a white mage. Atherial Shift! We whm have the best/worst movement skill for a healer to have (depending on if we hit the safe spot, or the death wall ofc) It makes whm's more "Static" playstyle a lot more fluid because you have that safety net of "Point and weee!" that only SGE really compares to (with Icarus), but that relies on trusting team mates xD
Great breakdown of the jobs. Personally I love White Mage (likely because I played it the longest 😂) and Scholar. They just make sense to me and the toolkit is amazing for pretty much anything. Tried Astrologian and it is a nice job but the cards had me fumbling quite a bit on controller. For controller Scholar is probably the easiest, though Sage might be better idk, followed by White Mage and Astrologian, which is still fun but also a pain in the neck (mostly because the cards require a lot more targeting than the other healers and it’s a lot busier).
Yeah that makes sense! Even with the dt changes ast still seems crazy on controller to me! I think the main advantage sge has is it doesn't have a placed thing like sacred soil which might be awkward to place on controller!
Ground target skills tbh aren't that bad and there are and macros. The problem is more that soft targeting is on the dpad, which is a LOT slower than mouseover. It really isn't too bad and outside of full party situations (and Astro xD), it's not that noticeable. There are targeting macros for the cards on Astrologian but they are quite complicated to set up. Maybe someone will come up with something easier in the future... Sorry for waffling xD probably not very helpful to most people.
The way I managed to make astro cards manageable on controller was to create 4 macros for targeting each of the four members (for raids I could swap the numbers 3 and 4 for the best melee and ranged dps). That way I can cast my gcd on the enemy, preselect the card target with just one input, play a card as soon as it becomes available, then press b to deselect my target and cast the next gcd to autotarget back to the enemy. The sequence from the moment the card is played to when I'm ready to cast the gcd is a split second. It required some dexterity but felt so nice when it finally clicked. Targeting all eight players for healing is still a pain, though. Haven't figured out anything for that. For ground targeting I just leave the virtual cursor to the default position in the middle and move the camera to aim it which allows me to preaim the spell. It's always fun to ready about different ways people work around controller limitations.
There are quite a few more options like filters, editing job placements on the party list (putting melee in descending and ranged in ascending priority order or vice versa has helped in raids, also for other healers) or using the Conjurer hotbar for macros but so far I haven’t really found one yet that feels intuitive or very comfortable. I‘ll look into your idea for macros a bit, so thank you for that 😊 Personally, I think that as jobs get more complex SE might have to make some changes to targeting on controller to make it feel more intuitive fluid. A job‘s basic functionality should not be locked behind macros or a ton of workarounds.
SGE main here! And, while i love SGE, i wished they leaned more into the Damage to heal aspect of it. I have a good guess why they didn't, but how badass would it be to have a raid/group wide Kardia effect, and then you put a bigger one on the main tank/target. Draining life to heal others. Woulda been so cool and interesting, but probably really hard to work with and balance. That said! Great Video
As a dps main, the biggest draw of Sage for me is the fact that, minus Kardia, almost all of my healing comes from oGCDs which makes my dps brain happy since I don't have to "waste" GCDs on healing and can just spam damage.
Difficulty / complexity should maybe be mentioned. Any healer has more to keep track of - at a minimum the tank & the target(s). Astro also has the buffs to track, which unfortunately may lead to healing actually being neglected. And lack of healing is very stressful for the tank :) - even without HP zeroing.
I’m a pure healer user and I main AST. I also LOVE WHM so much. I like SGE as third option and SCH as fourth. Something about support buffs just feels awesome and fun with AST.
As a WHM main, I'd just like to say, barring total meltdown and deficiency in mechanic understanding, 90% of the time, me keeping up medica (2 or 3 depending on level) on the party and regen on the tank is enough to mitigate the necessity of oGCD heals to a point of needing cure 2 or 3. Especially in big pulls where I can spam holy and keep enemies stun locked long enough. I say this having maxed out all the healers. WHM is my go to for all content, with Sage being a solid backup for full party content. It's the easiest to use, and can help recover from "oh crap" situations the easiest.
I gotta admit I'm jealous as hell of SCH gigahumongous Spreadlo shields and the fact that I can't do that with SGE lmaoo, which I run in anything that is above the difficulty of your average leveling roulette dungeon because I don't have enough braincells to play any other healer, but generally I prefer them both to the idea of pure healers *so far*. SCH was my first healer I picked up in late Shadowbringers, then with EW release SGE became my new toy and ended up being my comfort healer. I tried leveling WHM as well but dropped it around level 60+ because I just felt like a sitting duck recovering lost HP rather than *preventing* some of that incoming damage. Maybe I really should pick up AST if I want to get the best of both worlds huh? Edit: can we also talk about how SGE's Haima is barely ever useful unless the tank is just using 0 mitigation or how Painhaima is only ever useful on multi-hit mechanics and otherwise a button I forget I even have? They gotta design fights down at the "casual" difficulty to make me use em more 😭
As someone who is ostensibly a SGE main, in casual content (particularly dungeons) I find myself using Panhaima almost like a Haima even when only the tank would benefit. Panhaima/Haima also has the neat benefit of healing if it isn't fully expended, so it can be a sort of Horoscope effect but if it -couldn't- be ended early. In dungeons in particular I find myself using panhaima on the first pull before bosses and haima on the second, which can almost by itself keep the tank alive while I turn my brain off and press the Dyskrasia button. Using Panhaima first means I usually have it if I need it in the boss fight itself.
For me, as someone who has sometimes played tanks and other times healers, a key concept is what tank theorycrafters call "effective health". It is defined as the amount of damage it takes to one-shot you. Thus, if you have 100k health and a 20K barrier you have 120K effective health. This has lead me to love barrier healing since I can often minimize raid wide and stack up damage or big tank hits. Sage's 10% damage reductions make that even sweeter. Still, that's just a personal preference between tools to quickly get people out of trouble versus tools that can keep them out of trouble in the first place, with the risk that they may get into trouble anyway. The answer to that last bit is lots of instant casts.
Currently leveling my healers to 100 and I do have to say, for some reason I find Scholar to be the hardest one to play decently by far. Just going from my impression it feels like Kardia heals a lot more than the damn fairy and I often think I'm lacking the necessary tools before Stormblood content. Quite possibly it's just down to a lack of practice due to the shared level with Summoner, but Scholar is the only one I sometimes feel like keeping the tank - and especially the rest of the party in AoE heavy situations - alive is a struggle. When it comes to favourites - White Mage is my old reliable, he's very pleasant to play ... after level 52. At 50 he feels very clunky without the lillies. But Astro and Sage aren't far behind that, I don't really have a strong favourite at the moment. /e and while I'm complaining: If I had a cent for every time I forget the fairy buggers off when I die I could probably bribe Square to have her resummoned automatically on getting up ^^
Yeah scholar is a bit special. For raidwides, it's good to try and do recitation > adlo > deployment tactics (critlo spread). Combining sacred soil with the fairy mit is another strong option. Alternatively you can eat your fairy for three aether stacks and a heal bonus for when you need everyone's up right now. Seraphism is very strong once you unlock that. But yeah scholar kinda needs two or more skills used together to really be effective.
I've been a healer main since 2017 and SGE has been my favorite healer since it came out. AST getting reworked every expansion and SCH's anti-synergy with its own kit make them less attractive imo. My only complaint is that I just wish SGE had a way to regenerate addersting charges without GCDs, or if it was DPS neutral for using the GCDs like WHM, it'd be perfect. I also would like SCH's farie gauge to be revisited, as it still feels very barebones compared to other healer job gauges.
I personally think the main draw of sage is kardia. It's super nice to be button active as a healer. Especially when your damage has a direct impact on healing. Which isn't a thing on most healer kits. Any if you don't count the blood lily...
I play mostly for theming, so I always love WHM because of how much more it leans into the helping/healing as an actual in-universe identity compared to the other two (havent unlocked SGE yet). That said, the focus on healing SPELLS actually makes me like it even better, and although it'd be fun to get some more complexity, I do like a simple toolkit that lets me enjoy the fight itself instead of micromanaging my own character. Being a healer, and in particular casting barriers, as well as having a pet, doesnt feel specifically very scholarly. However, in terms of MECHANICS, I feel like it does so to convey the tactician theme. As a tactician and not an outright fighter, being a healer makes sense as you interact with your allies a lot more by default. Barriers and mitigation requiring foresight and planning to maximize their effect also beings in that feeling. I'd say ordering your pet around foes this, too, but honestly the faerie is so simple that you can kind if ignore it and treat the spells as self-targeted (as long as you arent in the middle of moving). I'm a little bummed I joined after AST and SCH were simplified, but in the case of SCH, trying to place the pet quickly before a fight with a controller is such a pain lol. SCH is also the other theme I really enjoy (I love being a smart boy). Incidentally, my support job in FFXI is also SCH, but admittedly that's more for the strength SCH provides to my main WHM. I also play BRD, because I'm a musician in practice, but I don't play it nearly as much in XIV. I'll definitely be playing all four pretty often, though. When I got AST, I was repeatedly running the leveling roulette with parties in progress and it was such a blast.
I just started healing, my favorite healer is scholar but i was afraid to use the job because people would think im a pro scholar healer but my scholar is only lvl 100 because summoner is my favorite job
I would recommend practicing the job in lower level duties to get better acquainted with it. Possibly even just admitting you're new to it despite the level of the job probably also helps 😊 i am sure you can do it!
I want to like sage but its incredibly rough to save team screw ups as a sage at least with the others I feel like I can force the team across the finish line or save us from a wipe
When i first started this game, i picked monk, got to about level 34 before restarting completely to play with a friend. So i decided to play a healer. Reading up on the healers, Scholar was the one that sounded more fun and worked with my characters identity. It took a bit of getting used to and i kept forgetting about aetherflow when i first got it, but now at level 70 doing HW MSQ, i find it so easy to play, so far anyways. WHM on the other hand i had a hard time adjusting when i tried it out. Below level 50 is basically 10 healing spells that do slightly different things and are all GCD heals...what? Thats so dumb. I havent played much WHM since but i can just tell its not for me. AST is weird in that while it has more OGDCs which i like, i dont like having to manage the cards. Prefer it over WHM though Havent played SGE
Sage is my favorite healer since its release. Deploying barriers with Instant cast is what I prefer gameplay wise over scholar, even though they deploy bigger shields. Whenever I get a good tank in dungeons, I mostly just rotate with kerachole soltera,physis and taurochole. Uninterrupted dpsing while deploying ogcd mits feels awesome. I Rarely use haima and panhaima unless I get tanks that don’t mitigate. For pure healer, I actually play astro more this expansion because I like it’s “busier” and more fun for me compared to white mage. But white mage for me is still the best burst healer for any type of content.
My favorite unnecessary thing I enjoy doing is stacking Haima and Panhaima on a tank in a regular dungeon pull. They are unique buffs so they dont break each other AFAIK and with the other bits SGE has, good luck dying as a tank for a short bit.
Adding on to proactive vs reactive healing: This is a misnomer. All healers have to be played proactively. You can't react to a dead body after all. What this means is that it's better to heal with a plan in mind and foresight from oGCDs all the way to GCD heals. Leads to less panic in casual content for beginners and less need for GCD heals and more time for damage in higher end.
Yeah. “Pure” and “Shield” healing are much more accurate terms since ShB+ AST and WHM have almost no mits but have godlike restoration in return, while SCH and SGE can block a ton of damage but have comparatively much less hp restoration than the pure healers do. But no matter what kinda healing they do, they have to plan those heals in advance.
Personally I find WHM the most stressful job to play at high level (optimizing/pink parsing) as it does not leave much room for mess-ups, may be weird to say but it also lets you properly execute pre-planned mess-ups lol
White mage feels familiar coming from other mmos, idk why the others scare me, sage seems simple enough now that ive finally wrapped my head around it, i love ffxiv, jobs look SOO complicated but then after it clicks its so easy, samurai, red mage, dragoon etc all seemed daunting to begin with but theyre so fluid
I have a hard time ranking the healers. I think they're all a lot of fun. Buuut, I think I'd order them SCH>AST>WHM>SGE. I know a lot of people are bored with healing, so I wonder if my opinions on it are shaped by my uber casual healing career.
Ya know? White mage and scholar have strayed quite too far from their initial job fantasy’s of nature healer and fairy tactician healer, I would love to see more Druidic style spells for white mage and for scholar to have more tactical or fairy themed spells.
Conjuror was the nature healer, moving whm to holy magic was the right choice. Sch has always been a mess. It's too far gone, really. I mostly played it from 2.0 on but it's so much easier playing a different healer.
I tried scholar for the first time today Because, being a summoner main that one is leveled for free so why not, right? I managed to not drop the tank dead in an msq roulette by i panicked a lot and the dps uptime was garbage So like I kinda like the feel of the job but i struggle a lot to keeping switching target between the enemies and the tank Thank god the 2 dps never failed a mechanic and the incidental aoe healing did the trick because i definitely could've not handled that too
WHM is the best as fae healing goes. You can literally force heal everyone even if all of them have 2 vuln stacks. The other healers have gimmicks that are useful but need to press multiple buttons to heal on par with WHM using one button. When I played SCH I felt it was a class that had a hard time healing properly, but after leveling it to lv 100, I say it is a fun job specially when you pop up your big shields 😂
My main healer is sage because i am increfibly spiteful and if you are so daft as to stand in avoidable damage in my presence then you get kardia, MAYBE soteria if you are lucky
Awesome video, I've been an AST main for 5 years now, but unfortunately very unhappy with the Dawntrail changes... a lot of the cards now feel like a waste, since the job has always had enough oGCDs to achieve what the new cards now do on top. Especially in raids, in dungeons less so but I still see myself not using the cards before pulling the new sets since it's simply not needed sometimes. So, what a coincidence that I got your video recommended! Since I've always liked the complexity of AST, I'm thinking about swapping over to SCH.
Personally love WHM but do get annoyed at having a dead Cure 1 on my bar at higher levels. They should have just upgraded Cure 1 to Cure 2 and used the slot for something more beneficial.
Shoutout to Holy getting its cast time reduced to 1.5 seconds so I can use oGCDs between casts! Really reduces the skill ceiling for dungeon pulls and makes using all my Lilies between pulls much more viable. Though if someone is watching this video to pick a first healer, those WHM oGCDs start coming in at level 50, so be warned that you don't really get a good panic button right up until you get the best panic button in the game. I do think it's worth mentioning that only WHM and SGE have a dash.
Personally, I can never bring myself to recommend WHM. I think SCH is the best starting healer. Out of all the healers, SCH teaches you very early and immediately how healers will play for the rest of your 100 levels. Spam attack, used oGCD heals. WHM may be "easier" in the regards that you can spam GCDs and that's simple and also "easy" recovery, but ultimately that's not how you should be playing healers, and this actually hugely negatively impacts dungeons where shorter kill times is a massive healing gain. Holy was overwhelming for me when I started healing because of the cast. Having free instacasts makes SCH just the best at teaching you to always cast your GCD while not punishing you too bad. There's something to be said for the simplicity of "I have 3 aetherflow and once they're all gone I should just GCD heal until have more." I think this is especially true for players who are just coming into 14 from other MMOs, where a healer might not be used to spamming DPS actions as much as possible. I think SCH ingrains that pretty quick without being punishing about it like WHM is. Sage also is designed where you want to keep attacking, but with sage you *have* to keep attacking and every GCD heal has opportunity cost with your Kardia ticks. Not to mention the names and the icons and Eukrasia mechanic are all a mess. With SCH your fae will just heal whoever is lowest, helping top up your party without you thinking. SCH has some complicated combos, but you can play it just fine without them.
Cursed information of the day: i cant remember if its broil 2 or 3, but when you have one of those two, it is more efficient for damage to use art of war and be in melee for an auto attack than to use broil. Im pretty sure this is relevant for level 70 content, so go get those ucob 99's you sweaty parsers lmao
It's ruin 1 versus art of war at level 46-53 😊 Once any broil is learned, these shenanigans stop working! I went to test to be sure: at level 70 synced striking dummy in SSS, autos do around 96, broil around 1800, and art of war around 1200. By comparison, at level 46-53, art of war does the SAME potency as ruin 1, so the only benefit of ruin 1 is its range, and art gives more autos 😊
Whipe Mage! I will glare at the enemy menacingly until it dies. From fear of course. Holy feels a bit weird from a tank perspective. it is the way to go, there's no way around using it in AoE pulls, but just a few days ago, I would have liked to stop an enemy from doing something only to remember we had a WHM and that I couldn't. Well, y'all gotta move now or tank the AoE. Can't comment on any other healers. Not really, at least. My Sage is level 93 or so and I only did the quest to unlock it, then used it as a job to take EXP when my other jobs were at max level. I know Kardia, Dosis, Dyskrasia, and Egeiro, literally. No idea what else it can do. Needless to say, I do not bring Sage into any kind of content other than easy open world content where it doesn't matter anyway. Don't have any of the other healers unlocked. Although I will unlock Scholar when my Summoner hits 100. So likely next week or the week after that.
Yeah that is indeed something that causes problems for white mage! On the one hand, it maxes out stuns on everything for the defensive value, on the other hand, then no one can stun strategically! 😅
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Don't think it will happen, but I wonder how strong WHM would be in dungeons if Holy didn't have a stun. WAR probably wouldn't care, just press -Benediction- Bloodwhetting a bit earlier, the other tanks might care a little. Although all other healers have to make do without it and tanks have so many defensive cooldowns, so probably wouldn't be too much of an issue.
@Viech54 it would impact whm somewhat, but the interesting thing is that all three tanks can play around the stuns whm brings. The hard part is knowing how to - especially when not all white mages play the same! 😂
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Normally, I would use nothing for the first seven seconds or maybe only my short cooldown, then start using more after the stuns. Well, except WAR, WAR just stands there menacingly before using any defensives and heals to full once the enemies start doing something again, then does the normal cooldown cycling. Assuming the WHM actually uses Holy. That said, I could also see myself playing like the WHM doesn't use Holy and just cycle through my defensives as if there's no stun. It's more consistent in case the WHM doesn't use Holy and to prevent muscle memory messing things up when the healer is not a WHM.
Speaking for me here, I, HATE barrier healers in this game. Hate their toolkits, hate their healing design philosophy, hate the dependencies on emergency heals when the barries drop. Their toolkits are so uneven. In dungeons Sage is so uncomfortable no matter the level to play, SCH is just a jumbled mess. When either are paired with a pure healer, they shine. As a side note, you know where SGE and SCH are just all the fun to play? Trains and FATE Farms, where the whole toolkit can be expressed naturally without rigid combat beats demanding you hold this or prime that. Everything you're doing it preemptive and/or On Demand and for either barrier healer feels like the real way you're supposed to play them. That said when I do heal, I reach for WHM, but since the DT redesign AST has been quite fun for me. I also find AST particle effects on heals and attacks so unique and pretty. WHM is also nice, but everything is BRIGHT OVERSATURATED glowing bursts.
Philosophia is so underwhelming... On a 3 mins cool down. WoW's Disc Priest own version of Philosophia , (Power of Radiance I think) has two charges, on a 8 or 10 secs cool down I think 😢
For me, scholar is default option in casual. Fairy just makes things... nicer. It just passively healing everything means you don't have to pay attention so much and will rarely get overwhelmed by chip damage. When I started playing sage I honestly struggled in lower level stuff (Specifically before bubble gets that mad HoT) because I was so used to fairy just being a boss and covering my ass the entire time without me even knowing.
Played as WHM as my main healer but fell in love with SGE and now I'd say SGE is my main now. The transfer between WHM and SGE felf rather smooth because they both have gauges which encourage you to spend (WHM for damage, SGE for MP) and tbey have rather simple, snappy heals. When WHM presses a button, it just heals. When SGE presses a button, it heals and you can layer healing options for stronger mitigation. My problem with AST and SCH is I'm just too dumb! AST has many time delayed heals, and SCH has parts of its kit which locks you out of other parts, and just feels more complex to play. Which is a pity, as I know AST and SCH are just the meta now, but I've always found them hard work.
You know, thats a fair reason with ast and sch. They both have those big brain set up combos where whm and sge, at the very least, make something good about every action used, immediately! 😊
The biggest mystery in my life, why do I find easy things difficult to understand, and some hard things easy. Gonna sit over here carrying a torch for scholar and astro and how they just "flow" better for me. All the more reason why its good to try all the things out.
Oh definitely, something being considered harder also shouldn't be a reason to avoid them!
so I'm not the only one who struggles with the easier healers but can just flow with the harder ones
@@kurothefox6020 For me at least, the issue is that if it's TOO easy/simple, I'll overthink it and ruin everything a la Centipede's Dilemma. I had the same issue with Endwalker's SMN at first; I looked at the new kit, attacked a training dummy for 5 minutes, and went "...no, it CAN'T be this simple... I have to be missing buttons or missing SOMETHING".
...No, I wasn't actually missing anything, but it took me an hour of scouring the traits and tooltips to finally understand that.
I can’t heal with Astro…… it all feels like the job can’t heal at all with it’s ogcd stuff, but I like having one in my grp^^
Im the same. Play both whm and astro. Find astro way more engaging but whm struggles as I over focus on dps
Easy choice for this one. My favorite healer is the one that doesn't let me die.
Sincerely,
TANK main / DPS alt
Hahaha that's a good choice!
That is my favorite healer, too.
Can't die if you kill enemies fast enough
- Sincerely, a DPS main
Gitgud
thats not how it works. @ObsidianRex-23
I can't believe you didn't mention AST's Gravity! Having your aoe filler be ranged is so nice, I always miss it when I play any other healer
Funny you say that cuz its one of the things i hated about Astro, as its the only healer who needs to target their AoE, which means its the only one where the tank can LOS you, the hardest one to center on the pack (no longer relevant in 7.1+ as the radius expanded), and the only one who can lose casts of their AoE due to the target dying.
It also means that the healer who has to shift their target on and off of enemies the most to play cards is the one that also has to switch back to enemies to keep doing DPS.
WHM can keep targeting on the tank, throw single target heals, while spamming AoEs. Sage can throw a Adlo/Excog on tank while spamming AoW, Sage does have to target enemies for Phlegmas and Toxikons tho
Gravity's target plays just a bit further into Astro being the most micro intensive healer and arguably most complex to play. For better or for worse!
I dislike how it's centered on a target instead of the AST. It means that if the tank just stands in the middle of a group instead of actually grouping them up you're not going to hit everything
Great video! Thanks so much for breaking it all down so succinctly!
As a scholar main, my biggest criticism of the class is its growing lack of job identity/fantasy. We went from pet healer/tactitian, to panick Seraphism angel wings/pseudo white mage.
I like the versatility, but I think it's because of it we have a conflicting identity. I'd love to see more visual updates to put us back in line with the ancient scholars of Nym!
(Just my opinion, curious how others feel - if they like the visuals - or if they feel the same way :D)
It is interesting because I'm sure they could get that tactician feel with a mostly visual change, while keeping the functionality similar 😅
@@CaetsuChaijiCh 100% Agree - or at least get closer to it. Hopefully we'll see some in the future 😊
Agreed, I feel like SCH should be the most military leaning healer in the aesthetic. I like the fairy and literally turning yourself into an angel feels a bit much
In defense of Seraphism, SCH has had its angelic LB3 since ARR, and Seraph's true nature is still a bit of a mystery since they swapped to role quests in ShB, but is essentially a more powerful, but temporary, Selene/Eos. Those two abilities are like the trances for SCH. I do think there's a bit of a visual disconnect between the tactician spells (Broil IV, Biolysis, Art of War II, Expedient, etc.) and the faerie spells. In the Nymian SCH lore it's all cohesive, but in-game it's two competing visual styles. SGE is essentially what SCH would look like if they went all-in on the tactician spell effects.
@@Tajih Seraph really suffers from not really being... introduced? You just get it, so you have to fill in the lore gaps. SMN falls into the same sort of problem where you get Phoenix, you get Solar Bahamut (ugh), but there's no real weight behind it. Not having a jobs quest behind those does hurt that sense of job identity, imo
always remember Sages, it is your primary directive to immediately put your shield up after your Scholar cohealer does their giga shield, the party will totally appreciate your efforts
overwriting your co-healer's shields is the best way to subtly grief your team (but generally on accident because panicking does not lend itself well to considering overlaps...)
As a sch main I have a knife with those sages names on them
You tell me that NOW 😅 JK I been playing a week and learned sage by taking it into potd
Congratulations on 25k subscribers! I give you 5 stars in every category.
Thank you so much, Aredhel! 😄😁🎇
One of the best things about White Mage being so easy and reliable is you can effectively "wing it" when learning most fights and spam through mistakes, and one of the worst things about White Mage is being unable to use Cure 3 because people always find a way to stand out of range
I legitimately don't think I've ever actually found a good opportunity to cast Cure 3 outside of Valigarmanda's Constant stack markers
@@conormeade3849 With its increased range you might be surprised, try it during Sweep the Leg in the current Unreal!
Cure 3 was great during a lot of the level 80 savages where there were many group or stack mechanics or general raid wide after raid wide. Like I know in many of those Eden's back when thin air was on a duration instead of charges, i would have to presence of mind, thin air and cure 3 my butt off because the back to back raid wides were crazy
Terminal relativity on E12S is the mechanic I'm thinking of specifically. Honestly, I don't know how I would do that phase after the WHM changes. Thin air only being one charge and hardly any mp support other than lucid dreaming....
Cure III is surprisingly good for fast healings, in a instance where you have rely on yourself only (co healer dead or just revived) to top up people within a 2-3s window
That is the go to button. ((Also a relieve finally i dont have to spam Medica II which always overheals))
I leveled all my healers in one big phase over a month or so. WHM is a good starting point, and AST just feels like the natural progression. The toolkits share the same foundation. I started afraid of being a very busy button-presser to needing that AST action.
SGE still shares some of the same foundations, but the toolkit is so much different.
I might just need more time with SCH, but it feels like the most unique healer of them all, not just the shared SMN level thing (which is why I had the least practice with it).
This was a fun overview! I recently finished leveled all healers to 100 (my first maxed out role!), and it is fascinating how they've managed to make the healing kits feel so different from each other. Even with lots of experience healing in other games, every time I switched to a new healer in FF14 there was a significant adjustment period where I had to let go of habits from the last job.
Scholar was my first main, so I learned to use cooldowns carefully and not worry about the time in between (covered by fairy healing). When I changed to Astro I suddenly _really_ had to pay attention to maintaining healing over time, and also get used to liberally applying oGCD heals. With Sage I had to develop a strict rotation to heal properly at all--it was the first healer that felt downright _painful_ to play wrong! And last came White Mage, the only job that requires you to frequently stop attacking in order to heal properly (especially jarring when coming from Sage!).
Also side note, since my perspective is mostly from the leveling experience, it's interesting to see how you use the "Entry Difficulty" rating. I had to double-check your definition of it after seeing your ratings for Scholar and Sage, as the difficulty of learning the job is _very_ different from that of actually performing it! If you continue this series into the 8.0 expansion, what do you think of renaming the rating to "Skill Complexity" or similar?
Skill complexity could work yeah.
I guess I evaluated entry difficulty as what it takes to play the job to a decent level and felt it worked well enough. But that idea also works 😊🤔
Glad to see this series is back for a refreshed version. I love comparing and contrasting the strengths and weaknesses of jobs.
Almost every Astro: picks it for the support potential
Me (an Astro): mains it because of the pretty weapons, animations and gear
This series was awesome thank you! ❤
I now realize my first experience with melee, tank, healer and caster classes were the ones with the highest entry levels and it all makes sense now 😂
Haha, well now you're well equipped for the rest!
I'm glad you enjoyed! Thank you! 😄
I tried out healing with WHM and SCH. On WHM in early dungeons, I felt like there wasn't much time between the tank has enough health that I won't get the full potency of cure and the tank being dead. On SCH, I felt more comfortable trying to DPS while healing as the fairy heals slowed the tank's health loss and gave me more healing wiggle room.
At low level it can vary simply on how well prepared the tank is, but I could imagine eos assisting can help a lot for a new healer!
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Hey! Selene is the fairy. :)
@@Michael-jx9bh theres no more selene though
Y'all have some really funny ways of spelling ruby carbuncle. (Kidding)
Thanks for this, I've been waiting on this one. 😊
I hope it was worth the wait! 😄
Awesome series! Keep up the quality videos ❤
Thank you so much! 😄
my only maxed healer is Scholar since it comes for free with Summoner. I personally have never been super interested in healing bc I simply feel anxious about the responsibility of keeping the party alive. Maybe one day I'll give it a go. Interestingly enough, despite seemingly being harder, I almost never encountered a bad Astrologian player..somehow they're always chads haha
We just look like we know what we are doing lol
Believe in the heart of the cards!
I find WHM for learning fights then AST so I have that little extra to think about or SGE for the spell aesthetic
I've tried all 4 healers, but the one i stuck with was SGE. With all those oGCD:s it's so satisfying to be able to instantly counter and recover when the proverbial excrement hits the fan. Granted, it doesn't have the same staying power as the other healers, but that's what your co-healer is for :)
Thanks for the video^^ it allows some insight on some subilities between the job
Something I noticed is that Astrologian and Sage are reversed in role lorewise :
- Astrologian is described as being able to read the future and help other, which would more correspond to a barrier healer (reading the future -> mitigate the future damage)
- Sage is described as their noulith to create magic diagram to heal person.
So I think it would make sense to reverse these two roles^^
That is an interesting point yes! 😁
Although despite the lore it does seem like sages prefer to do all this by creating barriers and such! 🤔😊
I actually think they work pretty well with the lore, it just depends on how you look at it! With Astro you have really cool delayed heals that reward you for acting ahead of time but don't stop the damage itself--the event you foresee _will_ happen, but your actions now will have ripple effects to take care of it later.
Meanwhile, Sage to me is about being prepared the normal way--you plan ahead to make threats and mistakes less painful, but your skills aren't nearly as helpful if you take too long to act or never had a plan to begin with (mitigation is useless after you've already taken the damage).
Nah, Asto's heals are very much intended for you to "read the future". Earthly star, Horoscope, Exaltation and Makrokosmos are all spells that you need to cast before any damage happens despite not being shields. Except Exaltation you "hold" all of these heals and can either let them run out or trigger yourself once the damage went off.
Scholar is forever my favorite Healer.
Great video once again! 🏆 Interesting and informative. Im only at lvl 80 content, Nier-raids the hardest ones I've played, and White Mage is my favorite healing job. Liked SCH more at early content but after lvl 60 WHM made it to the no. 1 spot. :) Let's see how things will change when I get to the real end game! Healer jobs are the most interesting ones in this game and FFXIV is the only MMO where it's fun to be a healer! :D Only my opinion of course... I've been pure DPSer in other games. 💪 Maybe it's the balance between healing and dealing damage which makes it more interesting for me here. 👌
And now when I think about it, those burst heals and damage dealing skills are the reason I like WHM the most. :D I watch healer jobs with the eyes of a DPSer! 👊
Really awesome to hear you are enjoying healing! I am sure it only gets more exciting at the real endgame! :D
I love sch.
Lore wise? Peak.
Energy Drain? Peak.
Seraphism? PEAK.
6-7 button combo for FAT SHIELDS on EVERYONE? PEAK!
when ast came out, noct sect instant cast barrier spell was my favorite thing. sage is that on every mind altering drug, when i got the hang of it, i was like that space man from the lego movie SPACESHIP!!!!!! runing all over casting heals and attacks.
You missed my favourite thing about being a white mage. Atherial Shift! We whm have the best/worst movement skill for a healer to have (depending on if we hit the safe spot, or the death wall ofc) It makes whm's more "Static" playstyle a lot more fluid because you have that safety net of "Point and weee!" that only SGE really compares to (with Icarus), but that relies on trusting team mates xD
I’ve been playing SCH as my highest level at 67 currently and these anti-synergy skills sound crazy, what? This is really funny to me
Great breakdown of the jobs.
Personally I love White Mage (likely because I played it the longest 😂) and Scholar. They just make sense to me and the toolkit is amazing for pretty much anything.
Tried Astrologian and it is a nice job but the cards had me fumbling quite a bit on controller.
For controller Scholar is probably the easiest, though Sage might be better idk, followed by White Mage and Astrologian, which is still fun but also a pain in the neck (mostly because the cards require a lot more targeting than the other healers and it’s a lot busier).
Yeah that makes sense! Even with the dt changes ast still seems crazy on controller to me! I think the main advantage sge has is it doesn't have a placed thing like sacred soil which might be awkward to place on controller!
Ground target skills tbh aren't that bad and there are and macros. The problem is more that soft targeting is on the dpad, which is a LOT slower than mouseover. It really isn't too bad and outside of full party situations (and Astro xD), it's not that noticeable.
There are targeting macros for the cards on Astrologian but they are quite complicated to set up. Maybe someone will come up with something easier in the future...
Sorry for waffling xD probably not very helpful to most people.
The way I managed to make astro cards manageable on controller was to create 4 macros for targeting each of the four members (for raids I could swap the numbers 3 and 4 for the best melee and ranged dps). That way I can cast my gcd on the enemy, preselect the card target with just one input, play a card as soon as it becomes available, then press b to deselect my target and cast the next gcd to autotarget back to the enemy. The sequence from the moment the card is played to when I'm ready to cast the gcd is a split second.
It required some dexterity but felt so nice when it finally clicked. Targeting all eight players for healing is still a pain, though. Haven't figured out anything for that.
For ground targeting I just leave the virtual cursor to the default position in the middle and move the camera to aim it which allows me to preaim the spell.
It's always fun to ready about different ways people work around controller limitations.
There are quite a few more options like filters, editing job placements on the party list (putting melee in descending and ranged in ascending priority order or vice versa has helped in raids, also for other healers) or using the Conjurer hotbar for macros but so far I haven’t really found one yet that feels intuitive or very comfortable.
I‘ll look into your idea for macros a bit, so thank you for that 😊
Personally, I think that as jobs get more complex SE might have to make some changes to targeting on controller to make it feel more intuitive fluid. A job‘s basic functionality should not be locked behind macros or a ton of workarounds.
SGE main here! And, while i love SGE, i wished they leaned more into the Damage to heal aspect of it. I have a good guess why they didn't, but how badass would it be to have a raid/group wide Kardia effect, and then you put a bigger one on the main tank/target. Draining life to heal others. Woulda been so cool and interesting, but probably really hard to work with and balance.
That said! Great Video
As a dps main, the biggest draw of Sage for me is the fact that, minus Kardia, almost all of my healing comes from oGCDs which makes my dps brain happy since I don't have to "waste" GCDs on healing and can just spam damage.
Difficulty / complexity should maybe be mentioned. Any healer has more to keep track of - at a minimum the tank & the target(s). Astro also has the buffs to track, which unfortunately may lead to healing actually being neglected. And lack of healing is very stressful for the tank :) - even without HP zeroing.
I’m a pure healer user and I main AST. I also LOVE WHM so much. I like SGE as third option and SCH as fourth. Something about support buffs just feels awesome and fun with AST.
All I want as a healer player is a FAR shorter rescue recharge!
As a WHM main, I'd just like to say, barring total meltdown and deficiency in mechanic understanding, 90% of the time, me keeping up medica (2 or 3 depending on level) on the party and regen on the tank is enough to mitigate the necessity of oGCD heals to a point of needing cure 2 or 3. Especially in big pulls where I can spam holy and keep enemies stun locked long enough. I say this having maxed out all the healers. WHM is my go to for all content, with Sage being a solid backup for full party content. It's the easiest to use, and can help recover from "oh crap" situations the easiest.
I gotta admit I'm jealous as hell of SCH gigahumongous Spreadlo shields and the fact that I can't do that with SGE lmaoo, which I run in anything that is above the difficulty of your average leveling roulette dungeon because I don't have enough braincells to play any other healer, but generally I prefer them both to the idea of pure healers *so far*.
SCH was my first healer I picked up in late Shadowbringers, then with EW release SGE became my new toy and ended up being my comfort healer. I tried leveling WHM as well but dropped it around level 60+ because I just felt like a sitting duck recovering lost HP rather than *preventing* some of that incoming damage. Maybe I really should pick up AST if I want to get the best of both worlds huh?
Edit: can we also talk about how SGE's Haima is barely ever useful unless the tank is just using 0 mitigation or how Painhaima is only ever useful on multi-hit mechanics and otherwise a button I forget I even have? They gotta design fights down at the "casual" difficulty to make me use em more 😭
As someone who is ostensibly a SGE main, in casual content (particularly dungeons) I find myself using Panhaima almost like a Haima even when only the tank would benefit. Panhaima/Haima also has the neat benefit of healing if it isn't fully expended, so it can be a sort of Horoscope effect but if it -couldn't- be ended early. In dungeons in particular I find myself using panhaima on the first pull before bosses and haima on the second, which can almost by itself keep the tank alive while I turn my brain off and press the Dyskrasia button. Using Panhaima first means I usually have it if I need it in the boss fight itself.
For me, as someone who has sometimes played tanks and other times healers, a key concept is what tank theorycrafters call "effective health". It is defined as the amount of damage it takes to one-shot you. Thus, if you have 100k health and a 20K barrier you have 120K effective health. This has lead me to love barrier healing since I can often minimize raid wide and stack up damage or big tank hits. Sage's 10% damage reductions make that even sweeter. Still, that's just a personal preference between tools to quickly get people out of trouble versus tools that can keep them out of trouble in the first place, with the risk that they may get into trouble anyway. The answer to that last bit is lots of instant casts.
Currently leveling my healers to 100 and I do have to say, for some reason I find Scholar to be the hardest one to play decently by far. Just going from my impression it feels like Kardia heals a lot more than the damn fairy and I often think I'm lacking the necessary tools before Stormblood content. Quite possibly it's just down to a lack of practice due to the shared level with Summoner, but Scholar is the only one I sometimes feel like keeping the tank - and especially the rest of the party in AoE heavy situations - alive is a struggle.
When it comes to favourites - White Mage is my old reliable, he's very pleasant to play ... after level 52. At 50 he feels very clunky without the lillies. But Astro and Sage aren't far behind that, I don't really have a strong favourite at the moment.
/e and while I'm complaining: If I had a cent for every time I forget the fairy buggers off when I die I could probably bribe Square to have her resummoned automatically on getting up ^^
Yeah scholar is a bit special. For raidwides, it's good to try and do recitation > adlo > deployment tactics (critlo spread). Combining sacred soil with the fairy mit is another strong option. Alternatively you can eat your fairy for three aether stacks and a heal bonus for when you need everyone's up right now. Seraphism is very strong once you unlock that.
But yeah scholar kinda needs two or more skills used together to really be effective.
Oh yeah the fact you have to resummon eos can easily sneak up on you, especially if you get raised back into chaos! 😂
I've been a healer main since 2017 and SGE has been my favorite healer since it came out. AST getting reworked every expansion and SCH's anti-synergy with its own kit make them less attractive imo. My only complaint is that I just wish SGE had a way to regenerate addersting charges without GCDs, or if it was DPS neutral for using the GCDs like WHM, it'd be perfect. I also would like SCH's farie gauge to be revisited, as it still feels very barebones compared to other healer job gauges.
Yeah it is strange faerie gauge is only spent on one thing 🤔
They should let Haima shield breaks give addersting
I personally think the main draw of sage is kardia. It's super nice to be button active as a healer. Especially when your damage has a direct impact on healing. Which isn't a thing on most healer kits. Any if you don't count the blood lily...
I play mostly for theming, so I always love WHM because of how much more it leans into the helping/healing as an actual in-universe identity compared to the other two (havent unlocked SGE yet). That said, the focus on healing SPELLS actually makes me like it even better, and although it'd be fun to get some more complexity, I do like a simple toolkit that lets me enjoy the fight itself instead of micromanaging my own character.
Being a healer, and in particular casting barriers, as well as having a pet, doesnt feel specifically very scholarly. However, in terms of MECHANICS, I feel like it does so to convey the tactician theme. As a tactician and not an outright fighter, being a healer makes sense as you interact with your allies a lot more by default. Barriers and mitigation requiring foresight and planning to maximize their effect also beings in that feeling. I'd say ordering your pet around foes this, too, but honestly the faerie is so simple that you can kind if ignore it and treat the spells as self-targeted (as long as you arent in the middle of moving). I'm a little bummed I joined after AST and SCH were simplified, but in the case of SCH, trying to place the pet quickly before a fight with a controller is such a pain lol. SCH is also the other theme I really enjoy (I love being a smart boy).
Incidentally, my support job in FFXI is also SCH, but admittedly that's more for the strength SCH provides to my main WHM. I also play BRD, because I'm a musician in practice, but I don't play it nearly as much in XIV.
I'll definitely be playing all four pretty often, though. When I got AST, I was repeatedly running the leveling roulette with parties in progress and it was such a blast.
Sage is best healer!!
white mage is my favorite because in random roulettes before level 92 i get to smuggle two blood lilies into burst and jump up to #2 on the aggro list
I just started healing, my favorite healer is scholar but i was afraid to use the job because people would think im a pro scholar healer but my scholar is only lvl 100 because summoner is my favorite job
I would recommend practicing the job in lower level duties to get better acquainted with it. Possibly even just admitting you're new to it despite the level of the job probably also helps 😊 i am sure you can do it!
I want to like sage but its incredibly rough to save team screw ups as a sage at least with the others I feel like I can force the team across the finish line or save us from a wipe
When i first started this game, i picked monk, got to about level 34 before restarting completely to play with a friend. So i decided to play a healer.
Reading up on the healers, Scholar was the one that sounded more fun and worked with my characters identity.
It took a bit of getting used to and i kept forgetting about aetherflow when i first got it, but now at level 70 doing HW MSQ, i find it so easy to play, so far anyways.
WHM on the other hand i had a hard time adjusting when i tried it out. Below level 50 is basically 10 healing spells that do slightly different things and are all GCD heals...what? Thats so dumb. I havent played much WHM since but i can just tell its not for me.
AST is weird in that while it has more OGDCs which i like, i dont like having to manage the cards. Prefer it over WHM though
Havent played SGE
Sage is my favorite healer since its release. Deploying barriers with Instant cast is what I prefer gameplay wise over scholar, even though they deploy bigger shields. Whenever I get a good tank in dungeons, I mostly just rotate with kerachole soltera,physis and taurochole. Uninterrupted dpsing while deploying ogcd mits feels awesome. I Rarely use haima and panhaima unless I get tanks that don’t mitigate. For pure healer, I actually play astro more this expansion because I like it’s “busier” and more fun for me compared to white mage. But white mage for me is still the best burst healer for any type of content.
I see a healer video, I make click and comment.
Just to promote healer supremacy.
I can play all 4, but for most ill play all but Sch, i like Sch i just need more experience with it.
My favorite unnecessary thing I enjoy doing is stacking Haima and Panhaima on a tank in a regular dungeon pull. They are unique buffs so they dont break each other AFAIK and with the other bits SGE has, good luck dying as a tank for a short bit.
Adding on to proactive vs reactive healing: This is a misnomer. All healers have to be played proactively. You can't react to a dead body after all. What this means is that it's better to heal with a plan in mind and foresight from oGCDs all the way to GCD heals.
Leads to less panic in casual content for beginners and less need for GCD heals and more time for damage in higher end.
Yeah. “Pure” and “Shield” healing are much more accurate terms since ShB+ AST and WHM have almost no mits but have godlike restoration in return, while SCH and SGE can block a ton of damage but have comparatively much less hp restoration than the pure healers do.
But no matter what kinda healing they do, they have to plan those heals in advance.
Personally I find WHM the most stressful job to play at high level (optimizing/pink parsing) as it does not leave much room for mess-ups, may be weird to say but it also lets you properly execute pre-planned mess-ups lol
White mage feels familiar coming from other mmos, idk why the others scare me, sage seems simple enough now that ive finally wrapped my head around it, i love ffxiv, jobs look SOO complicated but then after it clicks its so easy, samurai, red mage, dragoon etc all seemed daunting to begin with but theyre so fluid
White Mage is the best healer because constant stun on trash mobs makes me laugh no matter what job I'm playing.
I have a hard time ranking the healers. I think they're all a lot of fun. Buuut, I think I'd order them SCH>AST>WHM>SGE.
I know a lot of people are bored with healing, so I wonder if my opinions on it are shaped by my uber casual healing career.
Ya know? White mage and scholar have strayed quite too far from their initial job fantasy’s of nature healer and fairy tactician healer, I would love to see more Druidic style spells for white mage and for scholar to have more tactical or fairy themed spells.
Conjuror was the nature healer, moving whm to holy magic was the right choice.
Sch has always been a mess. It's too far gone, really. I mostly played it from 2.0 on but it's so much easier playing a different healer.
I tried scholar for the first time today
Because, being a summoner main that one is leveled for free so why not, right?
I managed to not drop the tank dead in an msq roulette by i panicked a lot and the dps uptime was garbage
So like
I kinda like the feel of the job but i struggle a lot to keeping switching target between the enemies and the tank
Thank god the 2 dps never failed a mechanic and the incidental aoe healing did the trick because i definitely could've not handled that too
I mean, if you're trying something for the first time you are expected to do poorly/average, more so if you didn't lvl em directly.
@@rafaelmendonca1272 oh yeah, i'm not feeling guilty about this, of course
but i want to actualy improve at it you know?
WHM is the best as fae healing goes. You can literally force heal everyone even if all of them have 2 vuln stacks. The other healers have gimmicks that are useful but need to press multiple buttons to heal on par with WHM using one button. When I played SCH I felt it was a class that had a hard time healing properly, but after leveling it to lv 100, I say it is a fun job specially when you pop up your big shields 😂
My main healer is sage because i am increfibly spiteful and if you are so daft as to stand in avoidable damage in my presence then you get kardia, MAYBE soteria if you are lucky
The dunce hat kardia 😂
@CaetsuChaijiCh the tank doesn't need it THAT much. Lmfao
Awesome video, I've been an AST main for 5 years now, but unfortunately very unhappy with the Dawntrail changes... a lot of the cards now feel like a waste, since the job has always had enough oGCDs to achieve what the new cards now do on top. Especially in raids, in dungeons less so but I still see myself not using the cards before pulling the new sets since it's simply not needed sometimes.
So, what a coincidence that I got your video recommended! Since I've always liked the complexity of AST, I'm thinking about swapping over to SCH.
friend playing ff14 long time gave me randomly a book when i started last year and ehhh ehh now i scholar?
Personally love WHM but do get annoyed at having a dead Cure 1 on my bar at higher levels. They should have just upgraded Cure 1 to Cure 2 and used the slot for something more beneficial.
Shoutout to Holy getting its cast time reduced to 1.5 seconds so I can use oGCDs between casts! Really reduces the skill ceiling for dungeon pulls and makes using all my Lilies between pulls much more viable.
Though if someone is watching this video to pick a first healer, those WHM oGCDs start coming in at level 50, so be warned that you don't really get a good panic button right up until you get the best panic button in the game.
I do think it's worth mentioning that only WHM and SGE have a dash.
Id play sch but it feels so clunky in its design and just to many buttons
Personally, I can never bring myself to recommend WHM. I think SCH is the best starting healer. Out of all the healers, SCH teaches you very early and immediately how healers will play for the rest of your 100 levels. Spam attack, used oGCD heals. WHM may be "easier" in the regards that you can spam GCDs and that's simple and also "easy" recovery, but ultimately that's not how you should be playing healers, and this actually hugely negatively impacts dungeons where shorter kill times is a massive healing gain. Holy was overwhelming for me when I started healing because of the cast. Having free instacasts makes SCH just the best at teaching you to always cast your GCD while not punishing you too bad. There's something to be said for the simplicity of "I have 3 aetherflow and once they're all gone I should just GCD heal until have more." I think this is especially true for players who are just coming into 14 from other MMOs, where a healer might not be used to spamming DPS actions as much as possible. I think SCH ingrains that pretty quick without being punishing about it like WHM is.
Sage also is designed where you want to keep attacking, but with sage you *have* to keep attacking and every GCD heal has opportunity cost with your Kardia ticks. Not to mention the names and the icons and Eukrasia mechanic are all a mess. With SCH your fae will just heal whoever is lowest, helping top up your party without you thinking. SCH has some complicated combos, but you can play it just fine without them.
Cursed information of the day: i cant remember if its broil 2 or 3, but when you have one of those two, it is more efficient for damage to use art of war and be in melee for an auto attack than to use broil. Im pretty sure this is relevant for level 70 content, so go get those ucob 99's you sweaty parsers lmao
It's ruin 1 versus art of war at level 46-53 😊
Once any broil is learned, these shenanigans stop working!
I went to test to be sure: at level 70 synced striking dummy in SSS, autos do around 96, broil around 1800, and art of war around 1200.
By comparison, at level 46-53, art of war does the SAME potency as ruin 1, so the only benefit of ruin 1 is its range, and art gives more autos 😊
@CaetsuChaijiCh A shame, really. But hey, you can uh...... be one of the top performers for synced ARR extremes lmao
Whipe Mage! I will glare at the enemy menacingly until it dies. From fear of course. Holy feels a bit weird from a tank perspective. it is the way to go, there's no way around using it in AoE pulls, but just a few days ago, I would have liked to stop an enemy from doing something only to remember we had a WHM and that I couldn't. Well, y'all gotta move now or tank the AoE.
Can't comment on any other healers. Not really, at least. My Sage is level 93 or so and I only did the quest to unlock it, then used it as a job to take EXP when my other jobs were at max level. I know Kardia, Dosis, Dyskrasia, and Egeiro, literally. No idea what else it can do. Needless to say, I do not bring Sage into any kind of content other than easy open world content where it doesn't matter anyway.
Don't have any of the other healers unlocked. Although I will unlock Scholar when my Summoner hits 100. So likely next week or the week after that.
Yeah that is indeed something that causes problems for white mage! On the one hand, it maxes out stuns on everything for the defensive value, on the other hand, then no one can stun strategically! 😅
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Don't think it will happen, but I wonder how strong WHM would be in dungeons if Holy didn't have a stun. WAR probably wouldn't care, just press -Benediction- Bloodwhetting a bit earlier, the other tanks might care a little. Although all other healers have to make do without it and tanks have so many defensive cooldowns, so probably wouldn't be too much of an issue.
@Viech54 it would impact whm somewhat, but the interesting thing is that all three tanks can play around the stuns whm brings. The hard part is knowing how to - especially when not all white mages play the same! 😂
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Normally, I would use nothing for the first seven seconds or maybe only my short cooldown, then start using more after the stuns. Well, except WAR, WAR just stands there menacingly before using any defensives and heals to full once the enemies start doing something again, then does the normal cooldown cycling. Assuming the WHM actually uses Holy.
That said, I could also see myself playing like the WHM doesn't use Holy and just cycle through my defensives as if there's no stun. It's more consistent in case the WHM doesn't use Holy and to prevent muscle memory messing things up when the healer is not a WHM.
Astro having the least dmg, while also having the highest dmg done in current raids
That is attributed from the combination of their personal damage (which is lowest), and their raid buffs (raid support, which is high) 😊
Speaking for me here, I, HATE barrier healers in this game. Hate their toolkits, hate their healing design philosophy, hate the dependencies on emergency heals when the barries drop. Their toolkits are so uneven. In dungeons Sage is so uncomfortable no matter the level to play, SCH is just a jumbled mess. When either are paired with a pure healer, they shine.
As a side note, you know where SGE and SCH are just all the fun to play? Trains and FATE Farms, where the whole toolkit can be expressed naturally without rigid combat beats demanding you hold this or prime that. Everything you're doing it preemptive and/or On Demand and for either barrier healer feels like the real way you're supposed to play them.
That said when I do heal, I reach for WHM, but since the DT redesign AST has been quite fun for me. I also find AST particle effects on heals and attacks so unique and pretty. WHM is also nice, but everything is BRIGHT OVERSATURATED glowing bursts.
Philosophia is so underwhelming... On a 3 mins cool down. WoW's Disc Priest own version of Philosophia , (Power of Radiance I think) has two charges, on a 8 or 10 secs cool down I think 😢
For me, scholar is default option in casual. Fairy just makes things... nicer. It just passively healing everything means you don't have to pay attention so much and will rarely get overwhelmed by chip damage. When I started playing sage I honestly struggled in lower level stuff (Specifically before bubble gets that mad HoT) because I was so used to fairy just being a boss and covering my ass the entire time without me even knowing.
Played as WHM as my main healer but fell in love with SGE and now I'd say SGE is my main now.
The transfer between WHM and SGE felf rather smooth because they both have gauges which encourage you to spend (WHM for damage, SGE for MP) and tbey have rather simple, snappy heals. When WHM presses a button, it just heals. When SGE presses a button, it heals and you can layer healing options for stronger mitigation.
My problem with AST and SCH is I'm just too dumb! AST has many time delayed heals, and SCH has parts of its kit which locks you out of other parts, and just feels more complex to play. Which is a pity, as I know AST and SCH are just the meta now, but I've always found them hard work.
You know, thats a fair reason with ast and sch. They both have those big brain set up combos where whm and sge, at the very least, make something good about every action used, immediately! 😊
Why showcase Healers in expert roulette where we absolutly dont need healer in expert roulette
They all do the same thing 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 heal