So, the media embargo is lifted and every FF XIV influencer is rushing to publish all their materials as floods out of the gates. The people benefited from this are us – the mere mortal players living the life of the Warrior of Light / Darkness – trying to find out how we can traverse this even more dangerous new world safely.
There are lots of hypes around us healers, simply because we got a new healer job.
All of a sudden, the three camps of power house healers (White Mages), shield healers (Scholars) and inbetweeners (Astrologians) are facing the dilemmas of whether to shift our job allegiance. Every single video, especially the job action video, was scrutinised to the last pixel to figure out who is going to lose the healer race when Endwalker drops in a month’s time.
Now we found out more about the job changes, while Scholar seemed to have suffered in the job action video, all is not what it seems.
I have been watching and re-watching those job change videos again and again, and that’s how I feel.
Disclaimer: as all the influencers said, what we saw were just development builds, so the final product could be very different.
White Mage
I have been maining this vocation since the A Realm Reborn (ARR) was launched. I will not be still playing this game if I did not enjoy being a White Mage.
White Mages used to have MP management issues in the past and I still remember how I tried to stack as much Piety to my gear as possible in the old days. However, those days are long gone as White Mage has a lot more utilities to help them manage its MP.
In Endwalker, from what I saw, some of the major changes includes the use of Thin Air. At the moment Thin Air has a 12 seconds duration and a 2 minutes cooldown. The new change seems to be giving one stack of Thin Air every minute, so, instead of us trying to throw in as many free spells within those 12 seconds, we can now throw a free speel out nearly every minute. How that would work will be interesting.
The infamous Fluid Aura is now finally done away. Seriously I never knew why they even kept it, as losing the push back function, Fluid Aura is technically useless as lot of enemies are in fact immune or resist to binding.
However, the water root was not all gone. In place of Fluid Aura, now White Mage has something called Aquaveil, which provides a shield for damage mitigation. That’s a proper use of water in my humble opinion.
Another major addition to White Mage is the continued obsession with Lilies with the introduction of Lilybells. To me it looks like the old Machinists turrets but for healing. This Lilybell pulsates for 15 seconds and when you got hit, it heals. It has a maximum number of 5 stacks, unused stacks will provide a final area of effect heal to all party members, with the potency depending on how many stacks you have left.
Divine Benison can now have two stacks, so more protection can be given to our fellow tanks who ran out of mitigation cooldowns.
One of the weirdest things is that now Glare and Holy are at III already when we never had II? Maybe they would rectify this in the final build?
Scholar
The traditional healer partner for White Mage providing shield protection to the party had received quite a bit of batting since the job action video. Who would forget the little Lalafell ran out of an AoE when we all expected some sort of gap closer or instant dash move?
The talks of ‘Scholar is dead’, especially with the new favorite Sage coming into the picture was rife.
However, after watching the job change videos again, I think a lot of existing Scholars might feel better.
While Sage is shiny and pew pew, Scholar is still very solid with the shields. Also, while Sage seems to be a shield healer with a DPS focus, e.g. a number of DPS spells provide healing, Scholar seems to have moved to a pure shield and utility healer.
The most noticeable was the immense buff to Adloquium and Succor at level 85. If the number stays, an increase to 180% and 160% potency to those spells and considering the crit effect still a thing with Adloquium, that is some seriously insane shield. Considering that Scholar can also use Recitation and Deployment Tactics (with now a shorter cooldown at 90s instead of 120s) with them, that is some serious shielding with Scholar that I do not know whether any other healers, including Sage can match.
Further, Scholar has also learnt its version of Thrill of Battle from Warrior and using it for the party members. The new skill Protraction can increase the maximum HP of a member or yourself while healing with the amount that it increased. That added an additional layer of protection to your tanks during tank busters.
Apart from that, Scholar, after reading so many books, has finally figured out how to reinstate Swiftsong from Bard with its shield twist. Expedient, the new skill allows you to increase movement speed for 20 seconds (hence that running demonstration in the job action video?) while reducing damage taken for all nearby party members. Just imagine how useful that is during some of those fast-moving mechanics in raids.
As for the faeries, it was said that they are more responsive now. That I think will need to wait till we tried the final product. But the removal of Fey Blessing from Faery Gauge requirement literally leaves the Gauge for nothing but Fey Union. What’s the point then?
On the DPS front nothing too interesting was added, just your normal upgrade, which is quite disappointing. But then DPS for healers have gone really boring since Shadowbringers. However, with Scholar we can still reminisce all those damage over time (DoT) attack spells I guess.
Lastly with Chain Stratagem still intact, Scholar still has a number of cool utilities and tricks up its sleeves.
Astrologian
The inbetweener of White Mage and Scholar had experienced a lot of changes since its launch.
Their cards are now barely recognisable as compared to day one. Sometimes I wonder if Astrologians are real people in this world, how do they catch up with their accreditation when there are so many drastic changes to their basic job requirements every two years?
Take one of the basic mechanics Draw as an example. Now instead of just Draw, and if you don’t like the card, you can have a choice of undrawing the card, or redrawing the card three more times or use it as a Crown card, you have two stacks of Draw and one Redraw. So basically, if you don’t like the card, either you Draw again or Undraw? What’s the difference? I think probably I can only tell when I am trying it in the game.
Also, Minor Arcana, aka the Crown cards, are no longer tied to normal cards but a separate category that requires separate execution instead of the normal Play. I personally found this a bit too busy for my liking as for the basic Card mechanics now you have Draw, Play, Redraw, Undraw, Mini Arcana and Crown Play.
On top of that you still have the Seals to manage, however, this time not for your typical Divination stacks, but for something completely different. Divination is now a separate Skill with a separate cooldown, and the seals are now for something new called Astrodyne. The fundamentals are similar i.e. better with three different seals, but the effect are different, from regen to reduced cast time and increased damage output.
That’s just the change in the card system.
The major change is moving from an inbetweener to a full fledge pure healer.
It still kept some of the Astrologian roots such as the Nuetral Sect, but a lot of old skills have now lost their shield capability with the Nocturnal Sect now completely removed. The new skill Exaltation still reduce damage taken but hardly a full fledge shield, and it has an interesting delayed heal effect too.
Another interesting skill sounds like Machinist’s Wildfire but for healing. You damage via an AoE but then at the same time grant a status that compiles the damage data your received and at the end of the status healed you with 50% of the damages you received during this period.
Together with Earthly Star, Astrologian now has a lot of delayed healing skills. I start to wonder whether that is a healer for players with bad connections.
Or, probably they are good with time and maths because they read so many cards?
Conclusion
This is nothing conclusive really, just need to separate the last paragraph from the Astrologian section.
I can’t comment much on Sage as I haven’t played. My views are just based on all the videos I watched.
But judging from what I saw, it seems that they still managed to make each healer unique from each other despite now they firmly stand in two different camps.
