As in the real world, you will always need a job to survive in Eorzea. You started out in a class of your choice and then as you gain more experience and become worldlier, such as, being able to juggle two classes to a certain extent, you can pick up a real job. A real job is what everyone wants right?
With the new expansion Bloodstorm looming, speculations about what new jobs are available heated up again. Following the tradition from the last expansion, the T-shirt Yoshi-P wore at the last Live Letter broadcast fuel the fire of speculation further. Last year he wore a Batman T-shirt and then a 007 T-shirt, which turned out to be, unsurprisingly Dark Knight and Machinist (aka Gunner in traditional Final Fantasy lexicon). Astrologian was not really teased before it was announced but then the job was present everywhere in the A Realm Reborn storyline associated with Ishgard in the Coerthers Central Highland. This year with Scarlet Witch being prominently displayed on Yoshi-P’s T-shirt at the last Live Letter, it seems quite obvious that his all-time favourite Red Mage is really coming. Also the movement of the girl in the teaser video also set of the fire off the Dancer class. Whether these became real jobs in this ever expanding world is still too early to tell, but perhaps it is a good time to look back at my own jobs.
Since I started A Realm Reborn on the Tonberry server I have been a Cat Man White Mage. Although before that I had a small and short appearance on the Shiva server as an Elfish Archer but I hated the look of that character and found archery not as interesting as I would have thought at that time. White Maging was my calling since I started on Tonberry when a friend tried to convince me back into the game. As a squishy healer the initial adventure was not easy at all. This is particularly true for me when I need to engage in solo battles. Being a newbie to the MMO genre it took me some time to understand my role as a healer main in this world. Eventually “I got it” and then it became a lot easier.
Healer has always been my main role in the game. I have all three healers – White Mage, Scholar and Astrologian – fully geared and levelled up. I switch among them according to the contents I am playing (and sometimes according to my mood on that day). While White Mage and Scholar have great strengths, but nowadays if I am just pugging in public queues I will go as Astrologian to provide a bit of flexibility. I enjoy healing in the game, and it gives me a lot of satisfaction when I managed to time my heals and conserve my magic point pool to get through tougher contents. I personally feel that if I haven’t chosen a healing class when I attempt the game again I would probably have stopped playing a long time ago.
Of course everything has two sides. As a healer I had copped my fair share of abuse and name calling when fights went south. Usually when a party wiped in new or more difficult contents such as high end raids you could expect at some point in some parties someone will say “What the x are the healers doing?” whether it was the healers’ fault or not. I still remember I was once being called an invalid in a practice party when I first went into Turn 11 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut because I was not expecting mobs (the videos did not mention anything about the mobs! XD). I have also experienced abuse from tanks when they died because of pulling too many without employing defensive cool downs. Such is the life of a healer. When that first happened, I used to feel scared and unconfident to do those contents again. But as I have more experience as a healer, I understood quite well when is my fault and when is not. So I just pay no more attention to these explosive comments in the party chat anymore. Though to be fair, I did have experience that after the party disbanded because of the tank’s abuse on me, other players, usually DPS (the attackers) or the other healer reached out to me to stand up for me. So I think that in a way is a comforting and encouraging experience.
Nowadays, I still take my healing duties seriously but then now with a lot more experience I can sometimes even take control of the party through healing. There a multiple occasions that I just purposefully let irresponsible tanks and disruptive DPS die because they are not working with the rest of the party. Because I did it in such a blatantly obvious way, everyone in the party understood what I was doing and eventually complied and work together. As a healer I don’t usually do that very often because healing is my job. But then sometimes a healer just needs to do what a healer needs to do.
Many people told me healing is so stressful but for me it is therapeutic. And at times it is extremely rewarding when you timed your heals correctly and they saved the day for the party. Recently in one of the Alexander floor 10 raid, everyone except the two tanks were dead at the boss’ 10% health. I managed to keep the two tanks alive long enough to wait for a Limit Break 3 and triggered the Limit Break at the right time to revive and fully healed everyone. We managed to clear the content and got all 7 commendations from the party. This is when healing is really satisfying for me. I no longer really freaked out with situations as because if you are a healer and you freak out, then you won’t be able to heal effectively so it defeats the purpose of that job. Do I have my blonde moments? Yes I do. But mostly I stayed green with a clear head. J
So what do you think of your jobs? What do you like about it? Leave your comments below :D
