Last time I talked about some healer skills and quirks that have come and gone during the last 10 years. However, as the healer mechanics were tweaked by each expansion and occasionally during in between patches, a lot of things we see now in its current iteration are very different. These changes may look incremental at the time of changes, but looking back you would notice how different these healing jobs played back in the days.
RNG Lilies
There is an obsession of Lilies for the XIV team at Square Enix. I am never a big fan of the over feminisation of the job, especially when I play a male character. But that’s just me.
However, when the Lily Gauge was first introduced, do you know it was one of the most annoying things as a White Mage for me?
Nowadays the Gauge fills up with time during the battle and blooms accordingly. When you used a corresponding skill, it uses up one Lily, and when you used three, you unlocked an additional attack to boost your damage output as a White Mage.
However, back in the days when this Gauge was introduced, it was heavily RNG based unless you are willing to use up more of your MPs to get guaranteed ones. Also, you can only use certain skills when you got three Lilies. Even things as simple as Divine Benison to shield your tank used up all your three Lilies. Yup, every skill used up your hard earned RNG Lilies during your spamming of Cure I and Cure II spells (the only way to get a 100% chance of a Lily). So, if a tank buster is coming in a raid, with Stoneskin taken out as part of the White Mage skill set, there is no way as a White Mage to shield your tank. All you were left to do was watching the tanks HP bar went down and hope you could top it up quick enough. At that time, I regularly complained that it feels that White Mages are being punished for just doing their jobs – basic healing.
Yes, we should not forget the fact that with the increasing number of Lilies on your Gauge, your off global cool down skills times were reduced, that included Asylum, Assize, Tetragrammaton and Divine Benison from 4% to 20%, depending on how many Lilies you have. However, once you used these skills you are back to square one, as using any of these skills will clear out all your Lilies. Also, the more important skills like Benediction and Presence of Mind were not included in this set. So, this additional nuisance became, well, nothing but a nuisance for long time White Mages like me. As these RNG Lilies do not add value to the gameplay but became restrictions in your gameplay while clutter up your HUD.
I am quite glad that they changed it in Shadowbringers, and now the Lilies become so much more relevant for White Mage.
Eos Vs Selene
In Shadowbringers, Eos and Selene are just twin sisters doing the same thing with a different look. However, back in the days, they have very different functions.
Back before the change, Eos was a healing Faery while Selene was a utility Faery. All the skills they shared now were Eos’ skills, and Selene’s skills have sunk into obscurity.
Prior to Shadowbringers, Eos has three different skills (I don’t not include Embrace, the standard 3 seconds cool down auto heals from both Faeries), Whispering Dawn for area wide heal over time (HoT), Fey Covenant that increases the magic defence of the party, and Fey Illumination to increase the healing potency received by your party members.
As for Selene, she used to have Silent Dawn, a skill that silences an enemy (a skill I have no idea what purpose it serves as later in the end game most enemies are resistant to it), Fey Light that increases your party members skill speeds (mainly for melees, range and tanks), and Fey Glow that increases the spell speed for all casters nearby. Since both Fey Light and Fey Glow last for 30 seconds each, and has a one-minute cool down only, technically, if you are skilful enough, you can just cycle through these two skills to increase your party’s DPS output throughout the whole fight continuously. As such, Selene was the preferred Faery when partied with a White Mage in raids.
Nowadays, Eos and Selene are just the same thing with different skins. Also, Fey Covenant and Fey Illumination have been streamlined into one skill. This without a doubt made the pet management a lot easier, but then sometimes I do think, if there is no pet management in a pet management job, what’s the point of having a pet management job?
Same deck, same cards, different plays
In this modern time, Astrologians have made their cards a lot more straightforward. All you need to do is to draw the cards, depending on what they are, assign them to either melee / tanks or casters / rangers and that’s about it. When you managed to get three cards assigned, depending on their nature, you can use Divination to boost the party’s attack regardless of their jobs, and the boost will depend on the combination of arcana you built up.
But do you know that there was a period you really need to read the cards and understand them?
When Astrologian was first introduced, each card has a different function:
· The Balance – gives 10% increase to damage output to any job you assigned to. Everybody loves them, especially Monks (pre-Samurai days I mean) and Black Mages
· The Bole – decreases damage received of your target by 10%. I usually saved them up for tank busters (yup you could actually save a drawn card for emergency use at that time)
· The Arrow – increases recipients attack speed by 10%. This is usually a Bard or Summoner’s favourite as their damage over time (DoT) skills’ output were determined by the attack speed
· The Spear – it reduces your spells’ recast time by 20%. Who else but the Black Mages loved this most?
· The Ewer – it reduces the target’s MP cost by 20% (I think they later changed it to increase MP regeneration rate), which was loved by all White Mages
· The Spire – it reduces the target’s weaponskills’ TP costs by 20% (Yup it was a thing back in the days, that you need TPs for melees, tanks and rangers to take action – and don’t try to sprint in a dungeon or raid, as Sprint consumes all your TP and your party will not be impressed)
So, learning all these traits and who will be benefited by what during the fight made Astrologian an extremely dynamic healer, not to mention their ability to switch stance on the fly once entered the instance to compliment the other healer (Though as an augmenting healer, Astrologian was once the bane of the healing ranks due to its low healing output, but that’s for a story for another time).
This of course leads to the issue of drawing cards that nobody can benefit from and you have to exhaust your Redraws. But do you know that it is only until later that you will not be able to draw the same card twice? When Astrologian was first launched, there were chances that you can draw the same useless card several times in a row!
Whether the XIV team has improved the job is still an active debate among Astrologians. For me, I do appreciate certain improvements in the mechanics, e.g. less reliant on RNG, but I do miss the time that I need to make on the fly decisions of how to manage the cards as they are so vastly different, than nowadays just assign depending on the nature of the job.
The DoTing Healers
Since we arrived in the First, healer DPS tool kit has changed quite drastically.
Before the First, healers like White Mage and Scholars have a lot more DPS tool kits.
Take Scholar as an example, even branched out as a healer from the Arcanist roots, it did not forget a lot of the Arcanist skills. As such, I used to be able to pile on damage over time (DoT) status on the boss or enemies in between heals. How much can I pile on you ask? Well, we used to have Bio (Instant), Bio II (Cast), Miasma (Instant), Miasma II (Proximity Instant AOE Miasma), and Shadow Flare (Ground AOE DoT). So, on top of these DPS tool kits, Scholar also has Ruin and Ruin II, which made Scholar a very versatile DPS plus healer combo. However, the effects of the First has sent a lot of these DPS skills packing. Bio II, Miasma II and Shadow Flare are now all memories of the past, and for AOE attack, Scholar got the ground stamping Art of War. For me, this was what I felt like when the removed all those DPS toolkits.
Similarly, White Mages used to be able to pile Aero, Aero II and Aero III on the same enemies on top of their Stone based attack spells. But with the streamlining of all skills, Aero II as a separate skill disappeared first, and then the AOE Aero III also met its demise. Nowadays, as a White Mage, all we do are Aero / Dia, with Stone / Glare on individual enemies or Holy spamming on mobs. Luckily, we still have Assize and the Lily attacks, making it less boring as compared to the ill-fated DPS Scholars.
So much for this time…
There are without a doubt more changes I can talk about, but that will need to be another time before this is getting too long.
If you are interested, I do post FF XIV videos I took from my PS4 on YouTube from time to time. Subscribe if you like them 😊
Till next time!
