And I'll explain why with the example of a dungeon I did at the beginning of Dawntrail on my favorite healer!
We had accidentally queued into a dungeon as three DPS with me on my Warrior, and rather than leave and requeue, we all dared to ask "why not?"
A perfect opportunity to stretch the legs of FFXIV's most mechanically interesting healer, the beloved Warrior.
The trash pulls are uneventful, because my dps companions are level 100 and have been wandering out of orange circles and cones for several hundred hours by now. The interesting stuff always happens in the boss encounters. On my warrior, when a member of my party starts taking damage, I have an option that allows me to heal them and myself at the same time; Nascent Flash. When I do damage it heals me and them a little bit, and it's more than enough for spot healing. When we all have to take damage, as you sometimes do, you can use Shake it Off to put a regen and an absorb shield on everybody, which can be combined with a few other defensives to slightly increase potency. For any healing and mitigation that I might need, I have plenty of defensive options while I wait for Bloodwhetting or Nascent Flash to come off cooldown.
Long story short, we beat all the bosses and cleared the dungeon, and I managed to juggle tanking and healing very effectively despite my limited options to make my comrades bar go up.
I think Warrior is my favorite healer in this game because of those limitations, it requires me to plan ahead and react quickly when someone inevitably forgets that orange circle bad. The lower potency on my healing abilities mean I have to pay attention and not waste them, while the simple damage rotation on a Warrior keeps me engaged in the fight.
I feel like the issue with healer design in this game could be solved with a few less aoe healing abilities, and a few more complicated abilities that require you to adjust your playstyle. They could do with a few more damage spells of their own as well, instead of sharing the same 3 abilities between them.
Though I do sometimes see and hear about healers who say "I'm a healer, I don't want to do those other things," to which I say, just make White Mage the boring healer, it's always been the boring healer.
and Mister P, do not touch warrior, it's goated and this is a criticism of healer design not warrior design
Continue reading...
We had accidentally queued into a dungeon as three DPS with me on my Warrior, and rather than leave and requeue, we all dared to ask "why not?"
A perfect opportunity to stretch the legs of FFXIV's most mechanically interesting healer, the beloved Warrior.
The trash pulls are uneventful, because my dps companions are level 100 and have been wandering out of orange circles and cones for several hundred hours by now. The interesting stuff always happens in the boss encounters. On my warrior, when a member of my party starts taking damage, I have an option that allows me to heal them and myself at the same time; Nascent Flash. When I do damage it heals me and them a little bit, and it's more than enough for spot healing. When we all have to take damage, as you sometimes do, you can use Shake it Off to put a regen and an absorb shield on everybody, which can be combined with a few other defensives to slightly increase potency. For any healing and mitigation that I might need, I have plenty of defensive options while I wait for Bloodwhetting or Nascent Flash to come off cooldown.
Long story short, we beat all the bosses and cleared the dungeon, and I managed to juggle tanking and healing very effectively despite my limited options to make my comrades bar go up.
I think Warrior is my favorite healer in this game because of those limitations, it requires me to plan ahead and react quickly when someone inevitably forgets that orange circle bad. The lower potency on my healing abilities mean I have to pay attention and not waste them, while the simple damage rotation on a Warrior keeps me engaged in the fight.
I feel like the issue with healer design in this game could be solved with a few less aoe healing abilities, and a few more complicated abilities that require you to adjust your playstyle. They could do with a few more damage spells of their own as well, instead of sharing the same 3 abilities between them.
Though I do sometimes see and hear about healers who say "I'm a healer, I don't want to do those other things," to which I say, just make White Mage the boring healer, it's always been the boring healer.
and Mister P, do not touch warrior, it's goated and this is a criticism of healer design not warrior design
Continue reading...