Let’s compare the Healers of FFXIV; whos good at what? Whos bad at what?
White Mage Guide: https://youtu.be/R7Z-9uj_h0Q
Astrologian Starter Guide: https://youtu.be/87IPb89oyBQ
Astrologian High Level Guide: https://youtu.be/_lJVSV19rsY
Scholar Guide: https://youtu.be/kudMV5m1AcY
Sage Guide: https://youtu.be/2PShHyCuMPI
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Music Used:
FFXIV Dawntrail – Starless Skyline
#ffxiv #dawntrail
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:30 Similarities of Healers
01:42 White Mage
06:36 Astrologian
10:45 Scholar
14:53 Sage
18:48 Final Summary
20:18 Fun Fact
source
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.
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 😭
I see a healer video, I make click and comment.
Just to promote healer supremacy.
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 ^^
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.
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
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 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 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.
Awesome series! Keep up the quality videos ❤
I can play all 4, but for most ill play all but Sch, i like Sch i just need more experience with it.
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
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?
All I want as a healer player is a FAR shorter rescue recharge!
Id play sch but it feels so clunky in its design and just to many buttons
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…
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
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.
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).
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.
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.
Why showcase Healers in expert roulette where we absolutly dont need healer in expert roulette
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 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
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
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
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
friend playing ff14 long time gave me randomly a book when i started last year and ehhh ehh now i scholar?
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 😂
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.
They all do the same thing 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 heal
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.
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.
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.
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.
white mage was so fun to play in shb, now the job is too easy