With the current story arch of Final Fantasy XIV coming to its own Endgame style ending with Endwalker, I think it is a good time to look back at the good old times, or maybe good bad times of the game. Especially, when there are so many new players joining the game.
Please note that I am by no means an expert in the game, but just looking back as a player who tried and abandoned 1.0 and then joined 2.0 aka A Realm Reborn at the persuasion of my friends, and stick with the game since then.
I wouldn’t have stuck with the game if I haven’t found my calling as a healer. From a timid White Mage at the beginning stressing over every single instance, coping trash talks from tanks and DPS who didn’t think they need to do any mechanics properly, to now feeling more confident and willing to help others on their journey as a healer is a long time coming.
However, even for the healer role, lots of changes have been made making it a quite different kind of beast in its current form.
Cleric Stance
While nowadays Healers can also DPS to their hearts’ content without any issues or severely impacting their healing capabilities, when A Realm Reborn first launched, it was no easy task. Since at that time magic attack ability came only from the Intelligence stat, and Healers inherently has very low stats for Intelligence, as its power came from the Mind stats, if a healer wants to DPS, there is a little button called Cleric Stance to ‘facilitate’ this.
By turning on Cleric Stance, you shift your Mind stats with Intelligence. As healers have high Mind stats, this shift over to Intelligence will allow healers to deal proper damages.
But there’s a catch.
Because of the stat shift, you, as a Healer, will not be able to heal properly because now your Mind stat is low. Remember the switch between Mind and Intelligence by turning on the Cleric Stance?
So, it is always a delicate Cleric Stance dance for Healers in raids and instances. I still remember so many times that I was wondering why the party was not get the proper heals that I belted out, only to remember that I forgot to turn off Cleric Stance after helping the party with DPS. That delicate dancing of Cleric Stance has always been a sore point in Healers’ DPS in my opinion, as I always felt that I could not commit to either of the functions because of trying to switch to and fro between the two stances on the fly all the time.
It was until later when Square Enix changed that Healer’s DPS stats will come from the Mind stats and removed the Cleric Stance requirement that Healers are finally free to DPS without any worries.
Scholar – Summoner Rivalry
Arcanist as a class is one of the most unique ones in Final Fantasy XIV as it branches out into one Healer and one DPS job. You can choose either to go Scholar (Healer) or Summoner (DPS).
Both are interesting jobs with all the pets you can master and manipulate.
However, there is one issue – If you go Scholar you will be a bad Summoner. This was because once chosen, the stat growth will be permanently determined by which branch you chose initially.
As such once you chose Scholar, you render your Summoner irrelevant as a DPS, though it does not mean that your Summoner will be better healer-attacker hybrid either, as the stat scaling would prevent that to happen.
At that time, there was a little trick I had to perform on a regular basis – there is a book / item you can get from your Grand Company that resets all the stats of your current job so you can re-assign them – yes, there was a stage in the game that as you level up you got extra points to be assigned to your job to suit your play style. So, If I knew I need to go Summoner for a while, I will just:
1. Switch over to Summoner
2. Use that item to reset all my stats to Arcanist base level
3. Re-assign all the points to Intelligence as compared to Mind
4. Then repeat the process for Scholar, but instead of Intelligence, assign all the points to Mind
It was a tedious process and I don’t do that often unless I knew I will be using that job for a while. And of course, those books / items did not come cheap with your Company Seals either. But then at least I find a way to play either job properly when I feel like to.
However, after the change of stats regarding Mind and Intelligence, when you switch over between Scholar and Summoner nowadays, these stats just adjust accordingly. So, the days of tedious stats management are finally over.
Stoneskin and Stoneskin II
Ah good old Stoneskin and Stoneskin II. So glad to see you guys back as Lost Action in Bozja.
Stoneskin has always been my favorite skill as a Healer. It allows you to create a shield around a party member proportionate to its HP value. So, it is quite useful for tank busters and serious damage raid wide attack, as I can time them to reduce damages for my party in raids. As the protection also stack with Scholar’s shield, that could be extremely handy for serious raid wide attacks, such as bosses’ phrase transitioning ultimate attacks.
I still remember how Stoneskin saved my parties lives so many times as a White Mage.
Scholar always have Succor as a party shield but for a White Mage Stoneskin comes in handy.
When they later introduced Stoneskin II, a party-wide Stoneskin that you can cast right before the battle (and only right before the battle), it makes it so much easier to shield your party up for pulling raid bosses.
However, as with some of the things you like, Square Enix removed Stoneskin and replaced it with Divine Benison when Stormblood launched. Though similar effect but then at that time Divine Benison usage costs you your Lilies on the gauge, and the Lilies are RNG based when you use Cure spells. So basically, in my opinion, you are being punished by trying to do your job properly. At that time, I really hated the Lilies and the change they made to White Mages. Eventually they changed it so Divine Benison became an instant shield for a party member out of cooldown. However, the longer cooldown means that, unlike the Stoneskin that you can apply to individual members quickly in succession, you can only do this once, which I will reserve it for tank busters. In Shadowbringers, they have Temperance, which acts like Stoneskin II but then it also has a long cool down. So nowadays I just enjoy my Stoneskin power in Bozja whenever I went into one of its instances.
Modern Vs Retro Healing
As I said healing is a different game nowadays, but then there is no right or wrong or better or worse. As how you can heal really depends on the content and the changes to the broader side of the game. But the most important thing is, if you choose to have a healing job as your main, make sure you enjoy healing. At the end of the day, it is about enjoying the game, not making the game another job of yours. I personally found healing very therapeutic and relaxing. 😊
