Healer Meta in Endwalker! Barrier, Pure and HYBRID HEALERS

It's interesting because I just got into AST (started with SCH around 4.0, mained WHM in 5.0, I took a huge break playing in between). AST diurnal feels like the most pre-emptive healer that isn't shielding. I can use Earthly Star and Horoscope in advance and have it be more forgiving. If I know by the general tempo of the fight something will happen in this window, I can set it up in advance and then proc it as needed. More forgiving than shielding obviously (me, struggling with Noct when I don't have content memorized and depending on the other duty finder healer). I wonder if Sage will be the more "reactionary" shielder, as reactionary as you can be with shielding 🤔 with its extra healing capabilities, it reminds me of Noct AST's role

Still wish they tidied up SCH's kit. I hope SGE gives them some ideas to work off of for 7.0.

I'm all in for a barrier-tastic bonkers healer, seeing a breakdown like that is actually quite reassuring to a noob SCH hugger like me. Great vid, thanks!

They are gonna need to seriously buff Eos' healing in order for Sch to feel like it's not getting shat on by Sage. I know Sch still has it's uses but Sage has much more "passive" healing going on and a lot of players are gonna see that as more attractive.

Wait, I'm not sure I followed the AST part.

If I understood your assumption correctly, I don't think neutral sect is keeping the nocturnal sect portion, because nocturnal sect is going away. So I would assume it's just a 20% healing boost. Have we seen a endwalker tool tip that shows the nocturnal sect part still present on the ability?

love your vids. keep it up

Going into this, I really thought SGE would have a massive shielding component than this. And whilst I like how well designed the SGE toolkit is, I just wish Dissipation didn't clash with the idea of being a faerie healer and that there were better faerie gauge uses (especially now that it looks like Fey Blessing is a regular oGCD that doesn't use it) like maybe a really big oGCD shield that consumes 50 gauge. Or even some kind of damage ability ala energy drain as a gauge spender.

So they gonna split main tank off tank?

Another differences between sage and sch is sch has fairies while sage has no pets

I'm just excited for Sage, I main WHM and noct AST was great. SCH never clicked for me, too many buttons and I never liked the disjointed feeling of the fairy, like I feel like I'm not doing anything sonetimes or like I'm not actually sure how much I'm doing, never had that issue on noct AST so happy to see a slight hybrid focus personally, it'll def be a smoother transition.

As a SCH main I'm not worried, be kinda nice to be the only SCH on my server lol. In all seriousness I didn't want any changes to my healing kit SCH already have more than enough shielding and healing (changes to how the fairy abilities activated would be nice). I would have liked more interesting dps mechanics. SCH isn't "bad" just alot of people don't know how to play it well. Interested to see the rest of the changes.

captions going faster than formula one lmao

Scholar just needs to gain aetherflow stacks on crit like monk chakras. It would synergize with recitation and chain stratagem so well.

while i doubt it, i just hope for slightly better potencies on the shields of scholar now i know we arent getting anything truely meaningful. sure we're getting a single target buff and the battle peloton (probs 10% and 5% damage mitigation each) but i'm hoping for atleast 175% shields. 125% is good, but we really need an upgrade as unlike WHM or AST we got NO new healing or dps options. so we need a buff to our existing stuff.

My bet is on AST and Sage while whm is let as the easy mode and SCH not use

I main AST, and I am excited to see the rework in action

Regardless of performance on healing, Sage seems to bring the heat for damage, and the fact you heal from damage in anyway, there's going to be absolute DROVES of Sages next expansion.

I've always wondered if healers were autistic. Now it know healers are on a spectrum.

I am honestly really worried about the queue time later on. Why is the seperation between pure und bar. healer important?

Sch: I got a speed buff yall! Ready!?!?
Everyone: "nah..." activates sprint then Uses gap closers 😂✋🏾
How does no one see this happening?

I guess that at the end of the day, they will somehow manage that every job is playable in any composition to clear savage.
So far they never really fked up balancing and I absolutely love the devs for it.

For the physis II vs dissipation argument: Keep in mind that scholar also gains full aetherflow stacks for even more healing or damage. Sage's resource stays tied to the timer.

Also, energy drain dps should not be discounted because with the endwalker changes you can weave energy drain together with broil which leads to slightly more dps compared to ShB scholar.

After processing it more. SCH is going to be a stronger barrier healer in terms of the meta. Yes, Sage will have stronger healing potency and more dmg reduction, but SCH and it's crit rate buff, now group movement speed/dmg reduction.....going to pretty OP the more I think about it.

SE: So, we heard all of those things you want for SCH...

SCH mains: Yeeeeah?

SE: So we gave them all to SGE.

SCH mains: 😡

There also seems to be a soft distinction between dps oriented healers and not. All healers got some editions to their dps kit, but it feels like whitemage still outshines the old three healers in terms of personal damage. Sages has a whole “synastry”-esque kit which heals while you deal damage. I’m not sure how they fare in terms of raid-wide dps overall, but it looks like there is at least some dabbling in dps focus and buffing playstyles for each healer type.

I look forward to your channels rapid growth, great video.

There’s still 5 sage skills we dont know the tooltips for, but yoshi P used 2 of them and it was shown to be ogcd shields! (One single target, one aoe)

With all the stuff they did to Monk and Summoner, they probably felt like Scholar needed less work done on it because it’s always been functional. Clunky, sure. But it still functioned more than people give it credit for. Here’s hoping Scholar gets touch ups over the course of the expansion before 7.0 gives us some kind of revamp to spice up the job.

I just want dissipation and seraph to let me keep building fairy gauge,

I just hope the sage will not outshine my main scholar and bot will be viable

AST has become a favorite of mine in the healer scene with both its theme and how busy it has you be. And looking at the actions trailer again, the gauge will be expanded a bit to show and save a Minor Arcana.

I’m a fan of how the healers are being treated. Honestly, I think that people would’ve been fine with Scholar if it got a new flashy ability like the other healers. For me personally as someone who predominantly favors healers like WHM and AST I feel like Sage will have enough throughput for me to truly enjoy being a barrier healer more akin to Nocturnal AST right now.

Seraph is pronounced more like sereph than seraph

huh, sch will be more of a barrier healer than sage.... from the earlier vids, it looked like it would have been the opposite. while I usually main sch in most content, I am looking forward to trying out sage and seeing how it plays out. really looking forward to endwalker. thank you for all the vids that you make :)

As a person who went SCH because my main was Disc priest in WoW and I love shields and doing dmg for healing. It seems like Sage will be more that now. And now I'm not sure what to do. SCH has been my main for years now, and I don't wanna switch. But dmg and healing are my bis. Lol 😆

As a SCH main, your mispronunciation of Scholar skills hurts me. :( Anyway, none of this matters, because we don't know all of the changes made to Scholar yet, nor do we have all information on Sage's skills. Or White Mage and Astrologian for that matter. The media tour will give us a proper look at all four, but we really have to wait until the full patch notes to get THE proper look at them and understand what's happening.

I'm loving this analysis of the healers! Will try to dabble with healers again before Endwalker drops this November to get back on how it feels to play the job (not a main healer here). I did play all healers to 80 but didn't used them other than usual dungeons and MSQ. It is also nice to see the difference between specific healer jobs.

Watching this video again got me thinking about the fact that it seems like certain healers might pair better together than others. From your own description, it seems like Sage and Astrologian would pair up very well as Astro focuses on buffing the party and can apply a powerful aoe shield at times where Sage is focused on DPS throughput, damage reduction, some basic shielding, and has backup aoe regen abilities it can use to compensate for Astrologian's lesser potency as compared to White Mage. By comparison, White Mage is all about those aoe heals and regens, even gaining a new ability to aoe heal but offers no party buffs whereas Scholar can put out the biggest of big D shields and offer some party buffs and utility. Obviously they'll balance the game to where any pure and shield healer can pair together and clear all the content in the game but I do feel that these specific pairings that I've mentioned have a lot of promise for healer synergy.

If SCH drops as is in EW ill just stop playing healer all together... killing SCH for SGE to excist.. i guess thats how SE does things..

Just started at the end of July in FF14. Really enjoyed the base game. Currently working on my Black Mage to get to level 60 so I can pick up Astrologian.

I like this approach quite a bit, it helps conceptualize the kinds of tools each healer has.
I would actually like to see a second axis applied to this chart that represents where their damage comes from... so like a personal damage versus raid damage spectrum. I feel like having SCH lean a little bit further into its team buffing capabilities would help provide another form of distinction from SGE on the offensive side. So WHM and SGE lean towards more personal damage while AST and SCH help the party more. Maybe that could be a way to bring back Selene? Eos soothes and shields (heals and shields), Selene silences and strengthens (buffs and debuffs).

Sage, I my eyes, is just a WHM but with more shields, they have "right now" bonker heals

So basically scholar is exactly the same but has a manual gap closer lol

That's not how you pronounce succor >.>

I think astro and sage are going to be a good combo for the expansion.

I’ve internally debated over the changes and considered the pros and cons, but I’ll be sticking to my WHM. Plenary Indulgence and Temperance will come into play significantly more given Thin Air changes towards MP management. Lucid Dreaming will become more strategic, I believe. We have the best burst healing and the lowest skill floor, plus while everyone is doubting Lilybell, we haven’t seen level 90 content yet. It might be OP in its own right. We don’t know. Either way, I’m very comfortable in my decision after much thinking over the matter.

"Neutral sect the most broken healer ability" eummm I would dare say this is actually "Benediction" you know my oh shit lemme heal all your pv no matter what…

Also, I am so happy you mentioned Plenary indulgence + Afflatus rapture I’ve been talking about this combo (which I made into a macro) forever. Since back when ppl were complaining AR wasn’t doing enough heal.

with the intro of sage, I wish WHM had a bit more of an identity.

Hey, everyone. I'm an IRL healer archetype (I work as an Emergency Manager) and (regrettably) have twenty-five (25)+ years of experience playing healer classes/roles in nineteen (19) other table-top RPGs, RPG video games, and MMOs. Starting from the original D&D and Runescape all the way to the current FFXIV and everything in between. Additionally, I'm an ilvl 630 OmniHealer Main on Faerie who has been playing FFXIV over the last eight (8) years. So, I can confidently say that I know a thing or two and have seen a thing or two…

FFXIV does have a serious problem regarding poor class/job design on behalf of the game developers, but it also has serious problems with the expectations/demands of the community on players playing healer classes/roles. Which, leads players to avoid playing them altogether. The main problems for this stem from elitest casual players and so-called "healing fans" in FFXIV masquerading around as self-proclaimed hard-core end-game raiders who have never actually played any other fantasy RPG/MMO. And they also actually know nothing about the 1974 Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), don't know historical Fantasy lore, the origins of "The Holy Trinity (Tank/Healer/DPS)," and what Archetypes, Classes, and Roles are. In truth, they just like to whine and complain about anything and everything while attempting to shove their own ideologies and playstyles on others while attempting to cover up their own faults and insecurities. AKA, a "Toxic Fan/Fandom."

* First -- Let's get this out of the way: Healers are Healers, not DPS. If you want to DPS, then play a DPS class. Please stop trying to forcibly paint every single damn class/job you come across with a DPS brush and then getting upset when your randomly painted "DPS" class/job doesn't do the same damage numbers as an actual DPS class/job. That's hella childish. In FFXIV, you have two distinct sides of the healer's house. 1) You have your Proactive Healers (aka "shielders" or "barrier healers"). These are Sage (SGE) and Scholar (SCH). Their spells and abilities are primarily geared towards preventing damage from occurring in the first place by preemptively buffing or shielding teammates to soak up any potential incoming damage, and then mitigating the overall percentage of incoming damage sustained after their shields break. Their primary goal/mission is to prevent one-shot instant deaths/KOs from occurring due to failed mechanics in harder content. And 2), you have your Reactive Healers (aka "regeners" or "pure healers"). These are White Mage (WHM) and Astrologian (AST). Their spells and abilities are primarily geared towards reacting to damage that has already been sustained by restoring team members' health and attempting to prevent their health from being drained to 0/being KO'd. Their primary goal/mission is to "reset" health bars to full either after a failed or passed mechanic in harder content. Like in most RPGs/MMOs, both types of healers are designed specifically to interact with and work together with each other in co-op settings in order to have complete healing coverage. Once shields break, the shielder "taps out," and the pure "taps in" to restore health. As soon as team members' health is fully restored, the pure "taps out," and the shielder "taps back in" to add a shielding/mitigation layer. If there is significant and constant ride-wide damage occurring, both shielders and pures can pump out the heals to keep the party/raid going. If you weren't aware of this, well now you know! It's in fact designed to be a dance. During the downtime in between, healers are free to DPS their hearts out or to just stand there and derp about. And of course, all healers have access to the full gambit of healing styles for solo and minimal party content (Buffs, Shields, Mitigations, Regens, ST Nuke Heals, and AoE Heals), just some to a lesser degree/extent based on the class/job.

* Second -- "Healers need to DPS and prioritize dealing damage over healing." "If we hit the boss's enrage timer, then it's the healers' fault for not DPSing!" I'm sorry, not only are you wrong, but you're blatantly ignorant and should be ashamed of yourself. If your group/party/raid is slow in killing enemies or is consistently hitting up against a boss’s enrage timer, THEN. IT. IS. YOUR. DAMAGE DEALERS/DPS'S. FAULT. Period. Full stop. A DPS role/class in RPGs/MMOs has significantly less pressure and less responsibility than any Tank or Healer class/role. Why? Because a DPSs sole existence and primary function are to deal as much damage as quickly, effectively, and efficiently as possible. They do not have to worry about pulling or maintaining aggro, and they do not have to worry about when to pop defensive cooldowns to soak up as much damage as possible, like a Tank. Nor do they have to worry about healing themselves and others, curing afflictions, or rescuing teammates, as a Healer does. The only thing a damage dealer/DPS * DOES * need to worry about, is the encounter mechanics themselves, their positionals, and their damage rotations. So, if your group/party/raid just isn't getting the numbers it wants to, then look no further than your Damage dealers/DPS. Either they're: a) too under-geared for the encounter, b) they aren't using all of their spells/abilities correctly, c) they don't have their proper damage-dealing rotation or positions down, d) they don't know the mechanics of the encounter and when the appropriate burst window is, and/or e) they aren't using/equipping food buffs, potions, and materia. It's as simple as that. Appropriately geared and experienced DPS make a highly noticeable difference in the speed and simplicity of an encounter. And honestly, with great DPS players, you can effectively bypass certain encounter mechanics entirely. In fact, I can tell you right now as a veteran player and mentor, that the single greatest DPS losses in the game are Player Disconnection, Character Death, and Damage-down Debuffs. In FFXIV, a single death in an encounter results in a negative -25% debuff to ALL stats (Weakness) for 90 seconds. Two or more deaths in an encounter results in a negative -50% debuff (Brink of Death) to ALL stats for 90 seconds. Not to mention the added time it takes for a healer to go through the in-game animations to fully resurrect you (short end: 8 sec, long end: 15 sec). So, before you go throwing around blame simply by looking at the raw damage numbers, you should also check the death count and overall damage taken meters.

* Third -- While sure, I completely agree that healers * SHOULD/AUGHT * to help out in DPSing during downtime in between shielding, healing, ensunaing, resurrecting, and moving out of dmg zones; they should never be hard required to. Especially if that DPS expectation/requirement means that players die due to a healer being forced to forgo healing in order to deal damage. Why? Because a wipe is non-recoverable. It would be squarely the healers' fault for not doing what they were supposed to be doing, which is shielding/healing. It makes them look incompetent and makes you look like an ass who won't take responsibility for pressuring them. This is exactly why all healers have instant-cast DoT spells/abilities specifically for this reason, to help out in doing damage. It's also why Healer's damage-dealing Single Target (ST) and AoE spells/abilities tend to be quick-casting and on a short cooldown (but nowhere near as quick as an actual DPSs), as well as straightforward with a simple one-two rotation. That way, a Healer can throw in an attack or two in between their shields/heals. I'm sorry to have to break it to you, but a Healer’s damage-dealing spells/abilities are primarily meant for solo content and survival. They're not meant to be stylishly combo'd or meant to be complex, challenging, and fun to cater to the ADHD whims of fidgety-fingered teens/adults attempting to paint a DPS brush on a Healer. To back this up with data --> I triple-dog dare you to go ahead and pull up and review the DPS logs and meters. I can guarantee you with 97% certainty that a Healer or a pair of Healers combined overall trial/raid damage contribution did NOT exceed over 20% of the total damage done by everyone else. I'd bet you a very real $1,000 USD on it. If by some weird utter miracle it was, then your Tank(s) and DPS are highly unskilled and undergeared. For a good example of this, in a typical 4-man dungeon, the damage breakdown will roughly generally be: 35% DPS #1, 35% DPS #2, 20% Tank, and 10% Healer, for a combined total of 100% damage done. In a typical 8-man trial/raid, a Healer's damage contribution will be even lower. You’d be lucky to deal 5 - 7% of the total damage done, especially when there are now two (2) Tanks and five (5) DPS as opposed to one (1) Tank and two (2) DPS previously. In a 24/48-man Raid with typically six (6) Tanks and twelve (12) DPS, drop that number down to 1 - 3% of the total damage done. It’s just not THAT much of a difference. That 1 - 5% damage will NOT help you beat a boss's enrage timer, contrary to popular belief. If a Healer class/job is ever expected and required to forgo healing and instead DPS, and encounters are designed with that in mind, then it shows that the game developers are highly inexperienced and didn't do their due diligence.

This is the hill that I will gladly stand, fight, and die a glorious death on. Sorry, not sorry.