Should anything be updated in game and this document require modification, you can contact me on reddit (/u/Syluan), on discord (Anaviell Seris#5983), on Twitter (@Anaviell) or in game (Anaviell Seris, Moogle, Chaos Datacenter). I will update it as necessary by myself too, but feedback is always appreciated.

I am open to suggestions, corrections (being a native French speaker, I expect a few mistakes were made while typing this, especially around 4am.), criticism, ideas, donations, compliments, questions, discussion, ~~nudes,~~ and more.

If you are familiar with the basic notions of healing and only want job-specific details, please head to sections VII, VIII or IX to get into the specifics of your chosen job.

Contents show

I – Preface

To start this off, I’d like to remind everyone that the healing role is pretty much feeling-based. Healing will be a different experience for everyone according to their own preferences, what stats they like more, and how many AoEs their team can dodge.

Finding the right balance between healing and DPSing is probably the hardest part of the healer job, and also the one that has the most significant impact when comparing to other healers. Thus, this guide is assuming that you’re willing to use your kit and class for more than half of it’s job. DPSing as a healer will also be detailed.

I am by no means a pro-player, I still have a lot to learn, but I feel confident enough to give some advice given my current experience and overall performance in various fights. This “guide” will be oriented both towards newer players interested in the healing jobs, as well as more experienced players willing to get into savage, or optimising their gameplay a bit. I assume most high percentile loggers will get nothing new from this. There are also more advanced guides out there for specific jobs. Feel free to refer to those as necessary.

I’m doing decent enough I think.

This guide, being aimed at everyone, is going to be long and very detailed. Too detailed, maybe, but hopefully it does cover all the aspects of the job.

With that in mind, let us move on.

II – The “Muh job is to heal not to dps” debate

A pretty popular debate for some reason is whether a healer should be dealing damage or not. The answer to this is pretty simple, and there is really no reason to argue about it : the game states, during several low level missions, that healers should help with dealing damage when they have nothing better to do. If the game tells you so, the debate is pretty much settled.

On a more serious note, it is true that the healer role is to keep the team alive. That said, there is not a single fight in the game that requires the healer(s) to be healing 100% of the time. Knowledge of the fight you’re healing is a very important part of the healer job, but overall your goal should be to keep your team alive, and use the time when healing is not required to deal damage. Keep in mind that “healing” does not mean keeping the tank and/or the whole team to 100% health at all times : you have several regen abilities. Getting your team back to 100% health could result in a lot of wasted healing (overhealing) or useless casts depending on the encounter. If the boss is gonna lower everyone’s life to 1HP (Think of Alte Roite’s Charybdis, for example), getting back to full before it happens is pointless.

Another relevant point is quite the same as DPSing as a tank. While it’s not the primary thing you’re expected to do, it is recommended for the simple reason that things will die faster. Whatever it is, it dying faster means less damage on the tank/team, which translates into the best defensive ability in the game : killing enemies. It should also be noted that if you plan of doing high-end content, your DPS can very much be the difference between an enrage and a kill. 2500 DPS on both healers is far from negligible, and some math can easily make you realize how impactful it is : just take a parse from a boss kill, calculate the raid DPS if healers did 0 damage, and compare that to the required DPS to clear the fight. If the DPS check isn’t met, add the missing DPS to DPS jobs instead and see how much more they need to do to compensate for laziness.

If you can’t agree with the fact that a dead enemy is better than waiting between heals and having the fight be longer, I’m afraid I cannot help you further and this guide isn’t for you.

III – Abreviations

Just in case, here are some abbreviations you’ll encounter throughout this guide, and commonly used in-game.

DPS : Damage Per Second. The more the better.
DoT : Damage Over Time. Abilities that deal their damage over a period of time rather than instantly.
HoT : Healing Over Time. Same as DoT but with healing.
CD : CoolDown : The time it takes an ability to be available again.
GCD : Global CoolDown. The recharge time shared between most of your abilities, usually around 2.5 seconds. Some skills might cause it to be higher or lower.
oGCD : Off Global CoolDown. Any skill that only goes on CD when you use it. These have their own CD time and are usually free and instant.
AoE : Area of Effect. Multi-target abilities, things that hit a specific zone.
Aggro : Enmity. The one with the highest value is the one the monster attacks.
Clipping : When talking about clipping, we refer to delaying the use of the next GCD ability by using too many oGCD abilities. Clipping should mostly be avoided.
Double Weave : using 2 oGCD abilities between a single GCD. Usually, mages can pull this off with little to no clipping only when using Swiftcast. It is more frequent to see tanks / ranged / melee DPSes do so. Avoid using if your have latency issues, as clipping gcd is bad.
Weird sequence of letters and numbers like O8S : Codified Raid names. Omega 8th (Sigmastice v4.0) boss Savage.
MT / OT : Main Tank, Off Tank. The tank currently tanking, the second tank. This position might switch if tank swaps are required.

IV – Which Healer should I pick ?

If you’re a bit newer to the healing scene, you might be wondering what are the differences between each of the 3 available healers, and what type of content they best fit in. Fortunately, I’m here to give you a general overview of what they all do.

1. White Mage

The powerhouse of raw healing, White Mage is the most basic and straightforward healer of the three. It specializes in powerful healing spells, both single and multi target, and regeneration over time effects. The gameplay doesn’t change much from Lv 1 to Lv 70, you just get more tools to do the exact same thing better. Skills such as Asylum helps regenerate the party by creating a healing area, whilst skills such as Assize will damage enemies, heal allies, and give some MP back. Benediction instantly restores someone to full health, and later you’ll have tetragramaton to help you instantly heal people for a good amount, but much more often than benediction could. Regen is an extremely powerful and MP-efficient ability, as it is actually the spell that will heal for the highest total potency on a single target. Cure III is a very powerful AoE heal but has a high mana cost, and is centered on the target which can make it tricky to use. Medica II is also extremely powerful, as it heals and applies a very nice regen effect to everyone it touches. The WHM also gains access to Divine Benison later on, which gives it some shielding potential, and Thin Air will help manage MP a lot better.

DPS-wise, it is a very hard hitting job. The DPS you can reach as a White Mage is theoretically higher than what the other two healers can do, all the while maintaining impressive healing outputs. Although the WHM’s AoE DPS skill, Holy, is very mana expensive, it’s also one of the only two Stun healers have, which makes it a good damaging ability as well as a very decent way to reduce damage received by tanks during dungeon pulls.

The White Mage is easy to pick up, as everything does exactly what you expect it to, and does it well. It is fairly friendly to beginners, but truly mastering it can take some time. If you’d rather have a “simple” healer that still does very well, this is the one for you.

Simply start as a conjurer and work your way up !

2. Scholar

If you want a pet, you’ve come to the right place. The Scholar is a healing job that focuses more on preventing damage than raw healing, compared to White Mage. The main tool you will have will mostly be healing spells that also grant a shield equal to the healed amount. In the case of Adloquium, the shield even double if you crit, making it ridiculously powerful, sometimes allowing to completely ignore incoming damage on the tank and/or party for a few seconds. Your second main tool will be the Aetherflow mechanic. If you’ve played Arcanist or Summoner, it is the exact same thing. For those who don’t know : it’s a skill you can use once a minute that gives you back 10% of your maximum MP, and gives you a set number of Aetherflow stacks to use (Up to 3 at lv 40+). These, in turn, grant access to new skills that will consume one stack upon use. Skills requiring a stack are all instant, oGCD, and have a fairly low cooldown time. These inlude Lustrate, an instant and rather powerful healing ability, Indomability, a very powerful AoE heal, and other incredibly useful spells. All of this combined with the later ability to spread your single target shield to nearby allies, making it a powerful AoE shield, potentially doubled if critical, makes the Scholar excellent at preventing party-wide damage and tank death from hard hits.

Meanwhile, you’ll have a Fairy pet by your side. In fact, you have two that you can freely switch from and to, for some MP and a GCD. By default, they’ll follow you around and heal anyone once their health drops low enough (something like 85%). Each fairy has her own set of skills : Eos focuses on healing and increasing magic defense, while Selene increases attack speed and (tries to) cure status aliments. Legends has it Selene can also silence, but it’s unlikely you’ll actually use it on purpose during any dungeon / raid run.

As for DPS, Scholar is the job you’d expect to see DPSing the most out of all 3 healers. The impressive kit of instant oGCD abilities it has combined to the fairy always helping on her own with healing makes it the perfect job to squeeze in as many damaging spells as possible while still helping your party. The Scholar’s DPS is mostly based around DoTs, and spamming a single skill before reapplying those DoTs. Bane, an Aetherflow ability, allows you to spread any ongoing DoT on an enemy to nearby targets, making it extremely easy to apply your diseases to every monster in a pack for very little MP costs. At higher levels, it also brings a very interesting Critical Rate increase to the party, making it even better than it already was.

If you’re looking for a healer that plays like a DPS and protects the party rather than relying on raw healing, this one is the one for you ! Micro managing the pet can feel overwhelming at first, but isn’t as hard as it seems, trust me.

To become a Scholar, start as an Arcanist. Two quests will be available at level 30 instead of one for other jobs : one leads to summoner, the other to scholar. Of course, it’s FFXIV so you’ll be able to do both.

3. Astrologian

Last job of the healing triad, the Astrologian unlocks once you reach Heavensward, thus requiring completion of the ARR storyline to unlock. It also starts at level 30.

The AST is weird is it’s own way : contrary to the other two jobs, it’s purpose in a party isn’t defined until a “Sect” is activated. What is it, you ask, and what the peck does it do? To put it simply, the Diurnal Sect mimics the White Mage, and the Nocturnal Sect mimics the Scholar. Activating one or the other will change the effect of certain spells to either give Healing Over Time effects, or Shielding effects. However, it does their job a bit differently and sometimes not quite as well, the true strength of the Astrologian lies in it’s main gimmick : cards. That’s right. You’re now playing Yu Gi Oh.

Every 30 seconds, an AST is able to draw a card from 6 possible outcomes. Each card, upon use, grants a unique buff for a set duration. However, further leveling gives access to new options : burning a card to give a bonus effect to the next card, keep a card on the side for later use, redraw the card you’ve just drawn… There is a lot to think about, and a lot to manage when it comes to cards. You’re basically handling healing with a quick decision making layer on top of it, that translates into powerful advantages for your party.

The possible effects an AST can grant are : increased damage dealt, lowered damage received, MP regeneration, TP regeneration, increased critical rate and increased attack speed. With the card burning on top of it, these buffs can either be single target but more powerful or longer, or half as powerful but AoE, which is huge in party play.

DPS wise, it used to be the weakest of the three and still is, but a recent buff made it a lot stronger. This, in addition to the buffs it gives the party, makes it a very valuable asset. However, the cards can be overwhelming at first and take some time to memorize, get used to, manipulate and get comfortable with. It is probably the hardest of the three to master, but is extremely rewarding when played properly.

If you love buffing your party and like quick thinking and decision making, this is probably the right healer for you. Get access to Ishgard, and you’ll be able to start your journey as a Lv 30 Astrologian !

Do note that buffs are heavily impacted by luck, and are de facto inconsistent. This job is also pretty complex, making it the hardest of the three healers to master in my opinion.

4. Red Mage

I just wanted to take this opportunity to state how much I hate Red Mages that heal themselves or, even worse, other party members. Yes, you have a healing spell… However, there are healers in the party that are already taking care of that, and the reason you were taken in the party is most likely because there was nobody else available or because you can insta-raise, but a summoner can also do that and they won’t throw Physicks at people because they know they’re better off DPSing their way to victory. Heal yourself and I’ll let you die. I hate you.

Kisses.

Disclaimer : I only hate those RDMs that throw VerCures everywhere when someone’s missing 2000 HP. By all means, do use it during downtime and to save my ass if things go wrong. Just don’t take my job when it’s not needed. This was more of a joke than a real complaint. Don’t boolly ;A;

V – Role Actions

Whilst individual job skills will be covered in each jobs’ specific guide, Role Actions are common to every healers and pretty generic. Patch 4.4 might bring the number of available slots for Role action up from 5 to 10, so this section will be updated as needed when the time comes.

Quick note : After Lv 48, including when running lower level content, you will only be able to pick 5 Role Actions at any given time, which you can swap around as much as you want, as long as you’re not engaged in battle and the Role Action you want to remove isn’t currently on CD. Most of them have some kind of use. Which one you pick will vary – in 8 man content for example, there is no point in having both healers with Protect.

Role Action slots unlock at level 12, 20, 32, 40 and 48.

Patch 4.4 might make it so you don’t even need to pick which ones to use anymore, if they do indeed bring the number of slots to 10.

1. What’s good, what’s bad ?

Cleric Stance : 15s Duration ; Lv 8 ; 90s Cooldown

This is a nice CD to use when you’re gonna be able to do a bunch of damage. Applying DoTs while it’s active will have them benefit from the bonus for their entire duration, no matter how much time was left on the buff when they were applied. Spamming Holy or Stones also works well enough with this. It is only a 5% upgrade, but it can mean a lot when combined with crits or buffs from allies. It’s good overall, but is only meant for damage.

Break : 50 Potency ; Lv 12

Inflicts Heavy for 20s. You’re better off picking other Role Actions. The damage is ridiculous. The slow can help you run away if you really need it, but you shouldn’t. No raid requires this as of now either. Don’t pick.

Protect : 30m Duration ; Lv 16

Increases Defense and Magic Defense. Should always be up on everyone. Can be reapplied in combat if needed. Has a 3s casting time, but costs no MP. Usually, you apply this once and never use it again unless the run goes very slow or people die. Both those scenarios shouldn’t happen. You can either pick it, apply it, and immediately remove it to pick something else, or you can keep it for safety sake if you feel like people might die and need it again after raising. It is possible to run content without Protect on people, as the one who benefits the most from it is always going to be the tank, but the damage reduction from it is always welcome regardless.

Esuna : 600 MP ; Lv 20

Dispels debuffs. Do note, only debuffs with a white bar on top of their icons can be dispelled. This should only be picked in content were significant debuffs will be applied, and is unnecessary otherwise. Some debuffs, such as low damage dispellable poisons, can be ignored or healed through so easily that picking this may not be necessary to deal with them. Know if the content you run requires it, and pick accordingly.

When duo healing, it might not be required to have it twice.

Lucid Dreaming : Potency irrelevant ; 21s duration ; Lv 24 ; 120s Cooldown

Absolute must have. This is your MP regen ability. It also halves the current aggro you have on enemies, making aggro management in some situations way easier. The regen isn’t instant, it’s over-time. It doesn’t matter much though.

Use pretty much on CD, except on very specific situations if your mana is somewhere around 80% or less.

Swiftcast : 10s duration ; Lv 32 ; 60s Cooldown

Your best friend. You have a lot of best friends. The next skill you cast during the effect of this spell will become instant. For example, raise normally takes 8 seconds. It is now instant. It’s more or less a must pick, but swiftcast is really situational. It’s useful for instant raises, but can also be used for rather long casts (Medica II, Holy) without losing mobility, or simply DPSing while moving. Use it to your convenience.

Eye for an eye : 20s duration ; Lv 36 ; 180s Cooldown

Puts a buff on the targeted ally. Then, when they take physical damage, it has a 10% chance to give a 10s debuff to the enemy, which reduces the damage dealt by said enemy by 10%. You cannot use this on yourself, either. This can be good to reduce incoming auto attack damage on fights and big packs in dungeons, but is very situational and most times won’t be used a lot, if at all. The CD is also pretty long for what it does. Do note it’s based on a probability of activation, so it is totally possible to use this and have no proc.

Largesse : 20s duration ; Lv 40 ; 90s Cooldown

Increases your heals by 20% for the duration. As for DoTs, any HoT that is applied during the buff effect will be buffed for its entire duration, even if Largesse expires. However, the healing bonus only applies to GCD spells. Cooldowns do not benefit from it.

Surecast : 5s duration ; Lv 44 ; 30s Cooldown

Allows you to cast without being interrupted, and also makes you immune to pulls and knockbacks. It’s useful on some content, such as O4/O4S, O5/5S, O7/7S… It allows you to negate a knockback and continue casting through it. You can pick it on these fights if you know it’ll be useful to you. Other than these, it can be ignored.

Rescue : Lv 48 ; 150s Cooldown

Pulls the targeted ally to you. It’s so situation specific that it’s almost never useful. Several fights in the game can make use of this, but you’re almost never gonna use it. Generally used for very edgy min-maxing.

2. General Picks

Most dungeons and raids would look something like this :

()

Remove or if you want to keep . If you’re confident people will not die, don’t keep protect.

Dungeons or raids where you need to dispel could look like this :

()

()

Remove or if you want to keep . If you’re confident people will not die, don’t keep Protect.

3. Specific Picks

Pick on fights like Shin Ex and O4/5/7/8S, to avoid being Knocked back on specific mechanics (Tidal Wave, Vacuum, Kefka’s green ball from the statue thing, and so on ).

One healer should have on Shin Ex to dispel paralysis if Judgement Bolt comes up. You can be greedy and be lucky, though. It is also required in O4 (not savage) to dispel doom during P1.

is so specific I can’t even think of a good example where you’d really want it. It apparently makes moving/attacking after melee LB3 a bit faster, but it’s negligible.

can be picked for raids if you want to optimise DPS. A bit less damage means a bit more time to DPS.

Example picks :

Brayflox Longstop at Lv 32 : – replace by for the last boss.

→ It’s also possible to have or instead of , as long as you cast Protect at the entrance. After reaching 48, all 5 slots will be available anyways, so it won’t matter as much.

O8S 1 :

O8S 2 : ( or , you get bumped twice at most and the timing isn’t that bad)

Shin Ex dispeller :

Some speedkills where you don’t need ? :

Hey bois i’m drunk :

VI – Healing, the actual main topic of this shit

About damn time, I thought you’d never get to this part !

A. The basics of basics – an overview of priorities and DPS

First off, let’s remember that the ~~green dps~~ Healer job is to keep the party alive. Then, when the opportunity arises, we can add some damage. Ergo, your thirst for blood must never come at the price of someone’s death by lack of healing, unless they’re so bad it would be a literal waste to use even one GCD/oGCD to save them, but that’s still rude.

Because of the nature of healing, it’s hard to speak of a “rotation”, as the damage received by the team will vary greatly for many reasons. Healing works more on a priority-based system, where you just constantly ask yourself what to do. Here’s an example of this :

95% accurate chart. Of course some stuff will change on solo/duo healing and whatnot. This just gives you a rough idea of how you should be thinking.

Healing priorities are usually straightforward, and require a bit of knowledge of the fight. The gist of it is :

Make sure the tank has a regen applied (WHM/AST). Shielding Pre-pull is always nice for scholars. Do not have a shield active at all times, it’ll be way too expensive. Do shield before strong hits as necessary, however.
Always heal the tank first unless more AoE damage will hit the party very soon. If needed, throw one of your instant healings at the tank while using AoEs for the party.
Use your CDs wisely. Not using them is bad, wasting them is also bad. Just like tanks have cooldown rotations, you should be able to know what to use at some points in the fight and coordinate with your tanks and co-healer. Pairing Benediction and Holmgang for example is very basic but works wonders. Healing tank busters using one specific instant so you can keep DPSing is also nice, and so on. Using CDs to save GCDs and DPS more is good, too.

Being a healer makes DPSing fairly simple, because we have very few spells to dps with. As with all classes, it is also possible to use a potion of the corresponding main stat in order to get a nice damage boost for a few seconds. The current potion, for healers, is the Infusion of Mind. Potions being somewhat expensive, I recommend only using them on Raids. Right before pull is a rather good place to use your first potion. Depending how you use your CDs and what free time you have in between spells, it can also be used within the first few GCDs. Next potions should be used when you feel like you will be able to DPS for an extended amount of time, and most of your and your allies buffs and CDs are ready.

AoE DPS is very simple but mana expensive. Be sure to manage MP correctly when doing so, you wouldn’t want to be out of mana when it’s time to heal again.

Important Note : In this game, Damage Over Time (DoT) as well as Healing Over Time (HoT) ticks every 3 seconds. If a spell indicates a potency of 50 and a duration of 30 seconds, it means it will tick for that 50 potency every 3 seconds, for 30 seconds, which amounts to 10 ticks. Thus, the real power of that ability would be its base potency (if any), plus the over-time potency multiplied by the duration, divided by 3. For example, Extra Medica has a 200 base potency, and a 50 over-time potency for 30s. That means it’s a 200+(50 x (30 / 3) ) = 700 potency.

B. Precasting and Overhealing

Precasting : When going through a fight, you will often see the boss casting an AoE or a Tank Buster. At these times, you may encounter healers waiting for the damage to come, doing nothing at all in the meantime. However, casting times are long enough for us to be able to start incanting our heals before they are actually needed. Why do that, you ask ?

Let’s take an example. We’re fighting a boss, and his big damaging AoE is being casted. We could either throw a damage spell and heal afterwards, or wait and heal (don’t wait please, throw some damage at least). Depending on what is coming after that AoE though, we might want to heal through this damage rather quickly to prepare for what’s coming next. This is where precasting truly shines : if you start casting your AoE heal slightly before the boss is done casting (like, if the boss is at 80% of his cast, more or less), your healing spell will heal people right after they took the damage, instantly allowing you to go back to DPSing or to heal some more if required. Compared to waiting around until the damage has been done to start casting, this is a full cast worth of time saved for the same result as far as healing people goes – but on the GCD you would have used to heal if you waited for the damage to hit, you can now do something too. You basically gained a GCD, hurray !

In case you were going full-on DPS mode before the boss’ AoE, it is very likely that you will also be casting a DPS skill while the boss is casting. That’s perfectly fine, finish your cast and then precast. If you’re a bit early, you can choose to wait a little or use one last DPS skill before healing. Just make sure to not start casting your heal too soon, as that would be a complete waste. I’d say it’s okay to wait for the right moment to precast a healing spell if you’re going to be waiting for less than 0.5 second. Unless you’re doing Ultimate, you’re most likely going to be fine if you throw a damage spell instead of waiting that tiny bit.

An example of precasting would be something I used to do on O4S :

→ Boss starts casting “Grand Cross Alpha”. It is called “Croix Supreme Alpha” for me, as I use the French Client.

→ Everyone will be confused, and must place in the middle of the map to ensure not falling off. It’ll deal quite big damage, and is followed by even more damage a few seconds later. Although the confusion should break my cast, I know that it happens after the damage and that there is a 0.3ish seconds delay on about everything in the game. Given previous tries, I also know that if I start casting Medica II when the boss’ cast bar reach the last “e” in “Supreme”, my heal will hit people after they have taken the damage and while we are confused.

→ Precasting successful ! I saved time for when we won’t be confused anymore.

Overhealing : As a healer, this is your worst enemy. For those unaware of what overhealing is, it is every HP you give to someone that goes above their max HP. If someone has 100 HP, their max is 110, and you heal them for 70, you did 60 overheal, 60 too much. Of course, too much is “better” than not enough, but do remember that the only HP that truly matters is the very last. Being at 100% at all times it far from being a necessity.

Overhealing is bad for the simple reason that it is wasted mana. With the above example, it would have been much more efficient to wait for that person to lose more health before healing them, as the spell had most of it’s potential wasted. Overhealing translates into two things : MP waste and bad CD management. Spells that are largely overkill to top someone’s life are spells that would have been more efficient used differently.

One of the most common overheals you can see is a White Mage throwing a Medica II and a Scholar rushing in with Indomitability to top people off instantly. What happens then is Medica II ticks are going to be useless for the full 30s of their existence, meaning the WHM wasted one gcd and a significant amount of MP for nothing. Likewise, the SCH wasted his Indom and an aetherflow stack instead of letting Medica II do the job.

The only exceptions to overhealing are VERY hard hitting AoEs / Tank Busters that require people to be topped or high HP to survive. Sometimes, having a HoT on the party before damage happens is also acceptable, but certainly a LOT less than you see it on your daily PF party.

Overhealing percentages shouldn’t go above 30ish%, and it’s preferable to aim for 25% or lower as possible. As low as you can, in fact, so long as you don’t become mingy. Just communicate with your healer buddy, it’s not that hard. If you have MP issues and don’t understand why but you’re overhealing is around 40%, then you know why.

C. The Dungeon healer

Dungeon healing is a fairly simple job. At lower levels, you won’t be able to contribute much to damage and won’t be expected to anyway. Damage from healers is usually seen as a very nice bonus, and works well if you want people to love you, granted you don’t get them killed for the sake of your own dps. The game starts picking up after reaching Lv 50, at which point it becomes frequent to see tanks pulling multiple packs of mobs, and everyone spamming AoEs as it is faster to do so, when done properly.

Whilst small packs are really straightforward and easy to deal with, big packs can be pretty hard depending on your gear, your tank’s gear, CD usage, and if DPSes are bad at killing monsters at a decent pace. If your tank pulls big but does not use defensive cooldowns, you should yell at them for being bad. Proper cooldown usage from everyone involved make big packs a breeze, and healers can actually pull off very impressive numbers on those, often doing more damage than some DPSes. Summoner will still win though.

D. The Raid/Trials healer

Healing in Trials and Raids means you will have a co-healer, unless you are solo healing for any reason. This means the whole job isn’t yours anymore, you share it with someone else. The most important thing about duo healing is trust. It defines a lot of things in how you will heal or DPS, because you may or may not throw some heals depending if you trust your co-healer to help you or not. Communication is very important because of this. Make sure you have an idea of how to deal with certain things.

Of course, Raids and Trials are much harder than dungeons. Thus, what you have to do and when you do will vary greatly from a fight to the next. Usually, though, after some experience and with knowledge of the encounter, you should end up with a sort of “healing rotation” for the encounter. If you find yourself thinking “Alright, this boss is going to cast this spell, so I need to use Medica II now”, then you know what I’m talking about. Your co-healer should have some kind of rotation too, according to his job, and both should combine to make the team survive. Everyone have different habits, so you may have to change a few things on the fly. Your knowledge of the encounter should still be the most helpful part of defining how you heal, when you heal, what spell you use, and when you know you can DPS.

This is the place where precasting helps the most. It takes some training, but with time and experience, you’ll be able to precast more effectively and save time, which in turn results in safer runs and / or more DPS time.

Other than that, healing in raids pretty much follows a simple pattern. React according to the answer to those questions, and you’ll already be on the right track to getting good :

→ Is the tank fine ? If yes, move on. If no, react accordingly and keep the current fight’s strategy in mind. Beware, a tank can be fine without being at 100% health. It depends on what is coming next and what your cohealer is doing, which is why knowledge of the fight and trust are important. You may want to heal both the tank and the party at once if the fight requires it.

→ Is the party fine ? If yes, move on. If no, does the tank needs to be healed before the party ? If yes, react accordingly. Same thing as tank. Midlife with regens can be “fine”, it just depends what is happening soon.

→ Is a tank buster coming ? If no, move on. If yes, give your tank a shield if you can, and (pre)cast some healing if it seems necessary. Sometimes, you’ll also just deal with it using CDs, so you can just keep on doing something else and deal with this between two GCDs.

→ Is a big hit on the raid coming ? If no, move on. If yes, prepare shields a few seconds before the hit. (Pre)Cast any AoE heal you need. Sometimes, you can keep on DPSing and let your cohealer deal with the rest, or maybe Medica II is still ticking.

→ You made it this far ? DPS time ! Don’t sit around doing nothing, you lazy ass !

E. Stats, melds, food

As I said earlier, healing is very feeling-based. It depends greatly on what you like doing, how you feel comfortable, and how things are going during gameplay. As of such, Stats for healers are quite debatable, and the stat weight (efficiency of a secondary stat compared to a class’ main stat) or BiS (best possible equipment for each piece of gear) notions that apply to other classes may not have as big of an impact on healing classes. Nonetheless, choosing your secondary stats and melding your gear will help you dealing with content more efficiently. As a reminder, the only two main stats of a healer are Vitality and Mind. Piety, Critical Hit, Determination, Spell Speed and Direct Hit are secondary stats.

This will share my personal stand and thoughts on stats. It is not a bible. Disagreeing is perfectly normal and is neither wrong or right.

By order of importance :

Vitality : A good healer is alive. Better safe than sorry, you’ll never be mad you had too much HP but will be if you don’t have enough. Whilst most content will not have a strict HP requirement, some fights such as O4/8S will hit very very hard and will either require you to meld some Vitality to have enough HP, or spam shields and hope you do not die. As far as savage is concerned, I recommend having at least two accessories melded with Vit VI materias. You can also just meld all 5 with Vitality. If you don’t run savage, you likely won’t ever have to worry about this.
Weapon Damage : It is the base of everything and what will have the most significant impact on your healing and damage outputs. As with every stats, the amount of Weapon Damage increases with item level, and gaining even just one point, considering it means gaining some Mind and secondaries too, is very likely to be worth it. One single point in this would be equivalent to 10ish points in Mind.
Mind : Slightly less important than Weapon Damage, this is your Main Stat. It affects your healing and damage, too. The more you have, the better you’ll be. You can consider a single Mind point about as important as 8-9 points in any secondary stat.
Piety : Your MP reservoir, as a caster and especially a healer, is extremely important. When it runs out, you are useless and it may just mean game over for the whole party. Having some piety is important, but you don’t need some on every single piece of equipment. Find your own balance, see what feels comfortable to you. You will likely have more MP by the end of an expansion than you had at the beginning of it because of ilvl increases alone, but your mana costs won’t change. I currently sit at 1283 Piety, which gives me 18277 MP. This works fine for me, but it may not feel like it’s enough for you. Experiment, find what you like. I wouldn’t recommend melding any though.
Critical Hit : The best secondary stat in my opinion. Critical Hit gives you both Critical Chance % and Critical Damage %, although very little for each point. Getting critical heals can save you a cast from time to time, and that means MP saves or more time to DPS overall. Each tick of your DoTs and HoTs can also crit individually, making the nice nicer. Because it affects everything you do, it’s great – sadly it is still random. Unlucky runs can lead to a lack of crits, but it’s rarely an issue at all. This is the stat I look the most forward to on equipment, and I meld as much as possible of it when possible. However, do not EVER rely on crits for life or death situations. Plan everything like you will have 0 crits, and if you crit good for you.
Determination : A stat increasing everything. The effects of determination are rather hard to notice, because it pretty much acts as a lower version of your main stat. It seems good, although it’s hard to know exactly how good. It has been a good choice for DPSes and healer in the past, and likely is still the same. It’s my second choice as a secondary stat.
Spell Speed : The most pointless healer stat in my opinion. If you know the encounters and know your casting time, you should not ever need more of it because you will already be dealing with mechanics fast enough from precasting and eventual subsequent casts alone. Unless the fight requires you to heal faster than you currently cast, which is unheard of. Spell Speed also has a minor effect on DoT and HoT ticks, but I find it too small to be worth going after, especially since 4.0 reduced the amount of DoTs healers could use. (rip Aero)

Of course, more Spell Speed means more total casts over the course of an encounter, but the is the amount of SpS needed to gain a couple GCDs worth the loss of other stats ? I’m not sure. I like the other stats better.

Direct Hit : A DPS / Tank stat, healers can still meld Direct Hit and use this stat. It will only affect DPS spells though, which means any point in DH rather than another secondary will have no effect at all outside of DPSing. I’ve been melded fully into Direct Hit for a very long time, and it has worked just fine. I was able to down everything, didn’t feel like I lacked any other secondary stat ever, and was able to enjoy some very hard hitting Direct Hits, or even Critical Direct Hits. Getting a 20+k Assize is pretty amazing, to be honest. I cannot say this stat is either good or bad. It is excellent for DPSing as a healer, but does nothing for your healing abilities. As much as I’d like to say “go for it !”, I can’t say yes or no when it comes to DH. To use with caution.
Fire resist : ?!

Personal Melding recommandations :

→ Non savage or log/speedkill runs : Crit > DH >= Det > SpS

→ New raid progression / ultimate : All 5 acc VIT. Crit > DH >= Det > SpS

→ Memelord : Fire resist / Tenacity.

Notes :

→ Main stats are always capped when they are on a piece of equipment. Do not meld Mind or Vitality, it will give +0. Vitality only works on accessories (right side gear) because these have no base Vitality on them. This does not apply to STR on Tank accs, but we do not care about tank gear ‘cause we’re not tanks (yet).

→ Every piece of equipment will have 2 secondary stats on them, one of which will be higher than the other. The highest one has the maximum amount of a single stat this piece of gear can have. Thus, trying to meld Crit +40 on a 340 lost allagan ring of healing will result in the materia only giving +35, because the stat will reach it’s limit. I consider this meld to still be viable. If a piece of gear has, for example, 253 Piety and 177 Crit, you won’t be able to meld any Piety on it but can meld up to 76 more Crit, because 177+76 = 253. Thus, the second +40 materia would only give +36. Other stats such as Det can be melded without limitation as they have a base of 0 in that case.

→ Only crafted gear can be overmelded (have up to 5 melds, regardless of green slots). Keep in mind it is impossible to overmeld main stats, such as Vitality, and only the first overmeld slot can be a rank VI materia.

Last but not least is food. Usually not required, it is still a very nice stat bonus, is affordable, lasts for 30 minutes (more with FC / squadron buff) and persists after death. Food choice for healers is extremely simple.

→ Ask yourself what your favorite stat is.

→ Ask yourself what your second favorite stat is.

→ Find the food that gives the most of your favorite stat, and if possible some of your second.

→ If leveling, just eat anything for the 3% exp boost.

My current food is Carmin Cider. Gives a nice amount of Crit, Vit, and DH. Again, I do love DH, but healers can only have so much of it even fully melded so getting a DH-heavy food isn’t worth it.

Food should always be active on Raids. It is also a nice bonus for Extreme primals, but isn’t quite as important on these. Using food in dungeon would be a waste.

VII – A Job Detailed : White Mage

The Healing Powerhouse

A. White Mage Skills : what are these buttons for ?

Note : All displayed MP costs are Lv 70. Skills are not in the order you get them, but instead sorted by categories such as: Single target, AoE, Over-Time, Cooldowns.

1. Healing skills

Cure : 450 potency, 600 MP ; Lv 2

Your best friend from kindergarten. It’s cheap and pretty efficient if you only need a small heal. It can also get your next Cure II to be free, and grants you a Lily. More on Lilies later.

Cure II : 700 potency, 1200 MP ; Lv 30

Double the mana but not double the potency. It’s a very strong healing spell, and is the one you will probably use the most. It’s useful on raid bosses, primals, big pulls, or just to cast one healing ability rather than two Cures. It also grants a Lily.

Cure III : 550 potency (AoE), 2280 MP ; Lv 40

An extremely potent healing spell, but expensive. It heals in a rather small (6y) radius around your target for a huge amount. It’s very useful to get the team back up when everyone is packed, and if you need to do so rather quickly. Because it is AoE, it will also give a stack of Confession on healed people. For Confession stacks, see Plenary Indulgence.

Medica : 300 potency (AoE), 1680 MP ; Lv 10

The basic AoE healing spell. This will heal anyone around you in a 15y radius, and that’s pretty big. Being AoE, it’ll grant a confession stack to anyone healed.

Medica II : 200 potency (AoE) + 50 over-time (30s), 2040 MP ; Lv 50

With a total potency of 700, this healing spell is an AoE Cure II. It has a 20y radius, making it even bigger than Medica, and is probably the spell you’ve seen spammed the most by other white mages. It needs 30 seconds to be fully efficient though, so a double medica or a Cure III might be more efficient if you can’t wait for the regen ticks. As every AoE, it grants a confession stack to healed allies. Do note it has a 3 seconds base cast time. Keep in mind this skill generates a lot of aggro. /!\ Using it before a pull allows you to have some little extra regen ticks on the tank, but can make it hard for less experienced ones to keep the monsters’ attention, and is usually useless outside of Extreme Primals or Savage content. Use it as a prepull for DPS purposes mostly, and with caution. It’s a greedy technique and even then it’s not that useful.

Regen : 150 over-time (21s), 1050 total potency, 840 MP ; Lv 35

Ya boi. Regen is an instant cast that grants a HoT and cumulates to 1050 potency. Cheaper than Cure II and healing better than Cure II for barely more MP than Cure, it is the best single-target healing of White Mage, if you can afford waiting for ticks… And often, you can.

Asylum : 100 over-time (24s), 800 total potency, ground AoE ; Lv 52 ; 90s Cooldown.

Free, instant, AoE, and off Global Cooldown, Asylum is a very potent HoT you are able to place wherever you’d like, and will create a nice little white 12y across dome healing anyone inside. It is a very nice ability with a rather short CD (90s) and should be used to help your party recover when needed. It can also be used on tanks, as it provides a much appreciated extra regen on them !

Benediction : Lv50 ; 180s Cooldown.

Free, instant, single target, off Global Cooldown, and no potency. This spell does one and only one thing : it restores the target’s health to 100%. It is the kind of spell you use to make your life easier, whether this means an emergency save on someone, a planned instant recovery for a tank that used a cooldown such as Living Dead or Holmgang (1HP CDs), or more time to DPS because you’re too lazy to cast a heal (story of my life). It takes 3 minutes to be usable again, so be careful and plan when to use it carefully… But don’t be too afraid to use it either.

Tetragrammaton : 700 potency ; Lv 60 ; 60s Cooldown.

Free, instant, single target, off Global Cooldown. This spell is basically Cure II, except oGCD. It’s a very nice ability to use when you need to pop a quick heal on someone, when some extra healing is required, or if you want some more DPS time. It has a pretty short cooldown too, making it very easy to use and abuse.

Plenary Indulgence : 150/300/450 potency ; Lv 70, 60s Cooldown.

Remember those “Confession” stacks granted by Medica, Medica II and Cure III ? This single ability is why they exist. When using this, allies within 30y (it’s very big) of you will recover HP according to how many stacks they have : 150 potency per stack, up to 3 stacks. Two things worth noting : it is impossible to have more than 3 stacks, and stacks will disappear 10s after the last time stacks were applied. Generally speaking, it is a nice ability if you need that little extra AoE heal to help the team recover, but is quite situational. There aren’t many situations that require careful planning to use this skill, but they exist. On most content, you can use it without risk of regretting it later. Plus it’s free.

Divine Benison : Lv 66 ; 30s Cooldown.

This isn’t an healing ability per se. Instead, it’s the only shielding ability WHMs have. This ability is single-target, instant, oGCD.. Using this spell will grant a shield to the target for 15% of their maximum HP. It will last for 15 seconds, or until it breaks. Use this to prevent damage, of course, generally on tank busters or packs of monsters. It comes back very quickly, so it can even be used on auto attacks pretty often.

Assize

The Hybrid One.

300 potency ; Lv 56 ; 60s Cooldown.

Assize gets such a dramatic display because it deserves it. It is the only hybrid ability of WHM, and is also probably one of the best CDs they have. It is an AoE spell with a 15y radius, that will heal allies, damage enemies, and recover 10% of your MP. Think of it as a medica that also happens to be your best damage spell and loves your MP bar.

All in all, it’s godlike. You should use this ability very often, and as much as possible while being in range of both damaged allies and enemies. If you can pair it with Cleric Stance, a NIN’s trick attack and those kind of bonuses, it’s even better. If you can use it right after a raid-wide AoE, it’s also very good. If you use it purely for DPS ? Heck yeah, it’s still good. Use it. Abuse it. Work it. Enjoy it. I love this spell.

2. Damage skills

Stone : 140 potency, 480 MP ; Lv 1

Your first spell in the game is a damage spell. Isn’t this a proof you’re a DPS with a green icon ?!

Single target, it’s your GCD damage spam ability. You just pew pew things with it, they die, you’re happy, they’re not. Or rather, they can’t be anymore.

Stone II : 200 potency, 600 MP ; Lv 18

Automatically replaces Stone in Lv 18+ content. Guess what it does ?

Yep. It pewpews enemies to death. Well guessed.

Stone III : 210 potency, 600 MP ; Lv 54

Such upgrade. Very stronger. Much pewpew. Wow.

Stone IV : 250 potency, 600 MP ; Lv 64

Who would have guessed ?

Aero : 50 potency + 30 (18s) , 230 total potency, 480 MP ; Lv 4

Look at that ! Lv 4 and you have more damage abilities than healing abilities again.

Alright, I’ll stop with that joke.

Single target DoT. Apply it first, reapply it when it disappears or when it is under 2s remaining. Do note it is an instant cast. Hurray for mobility !

Aero II : 50 potency + 50 (18s), 350 total potency, 600 MP ; Lv 46

The upgrade for Aero on Lv 46+ content. It does the same thing, and is used the same way. It’s just a bit better, and slightly more expensive.

Aero III : 50 potency + 40 (24s), 370 total potency, 720 MP ; Lv 58

This is, for once, not an upgrade. Aero III is a casted AoE DoT. Thus, your target and anything in a 5y radius of it will take the damage, and that’s great ! It is also worth using in single target situations, as it has a better potency than Stone spells, and it does not replace Aero II. They stack. Having Aero III and Aero II active on a target is a must for proper DPS. It’s good.

Holy : 200 potency, stuns, 2400 MP ; Lv 45

Your only GCD AoE spam ability. The Stone of AoE. This spell is a huge mana sink, but has actually more use than just damaging lots of monsters at once. Because it stuns, it is arguably one of the best spells to use during big packs : not only do you do tons of damage per cast, but you also prevent the monsters from attacking for the next 4 seconds. This means you get a free GCD to either heal, or cast another one. Two things to note though : first, the damage it deals decreases for each enemy you hit after the first, 10% by 10% up to 50%. Second, Stun is an alteration that builds resistance. Your first stun will last 4s, the second 2s, the third 1s and then enemies will resist stuns for a bit. If you use it specifically for stunning, use it with caution. It should not be the primary reason to cast it, though. Do also note it has a 3s cast time. It is slow.

Don’t forget me.

3. Passives and buffs

Presence of Mind : 15s duration ; Lv 30 ; 150s Cooldown

Decreases auto attack delay, casting time and GCD by 20%. This basically means you’re 20% faster at casting, you can ignore the auto attack part. This CD has, in my opinion, very little to absolutely no use as a healing CD. It works very well as an offensive cooldown. Apply Aeros, pop this and spam away ! It’s great for both Stone throwing and Holy disco parties. If you need to use this to keep people alive, something’s very wrong.

Thin Air : 12s duration ; Lv 62 ; 120s Cooldown

Makes your spells free while active. This is an amazing CD, as it allows for exceptional MP sustain if used properly. 12 seconds allows you to do some crazy stuff, including but not limited to : Raising 2 DRGs (one casted, the other swiftcasted) for free, casting 4 Holys for free, casting several AoE spells for free. Use this when you know mana is going to melt away, and you’re already on the right track to using this efficiently.

Secret of the Lily I & II.

This passive ability, obtained at level 52 and 68 does two things.

The Lv 52 passive allows you to generate Lilies every time you use Cure or Cure II, up to 3 stacks. Using Asylum, Assize or Tetragrammaton will then consume all of your current Lilies and reduce the cooldown for that ability. 1 Lily is a 4% reduction, 2 is 10% and 3 is 20%. Usually this will happen without you managing it too much. Think of it as a free CD reduction for playing WHM.

The Lv 68 upgrade gives you an extra bonus : each critical healing from Cure or Cure II will have a 20% chance to reduce the cooldown time of Asylum and Assize by 5s. It’s not a big chance, and it requires a crit. Don’t try to spam heals to crit to proc it, it’s not worth it. If it happens, it’s good, if it doesn’t, it’s not an issue. Sadly, this “upgrade” happens to be pretty much useless.

4. Useless trash that exists for some reason

Fluid Aura : Lv 15 ; 30s Cooldown

Pushes back an enemy 15y and binds it for 6s, preventing movement. You may find some use for it in open world PvE on rare occasions, or pushing a mob into the pack if your tank can’t pack them properly. Other than that, you can just delete it from your bars.

Repose : 960 MP ; Lv 26

Legend has it we can sleep monsters in this game. Like Fluid Aura, it’s probably one of the spells you will never ever use. Plus, it’s casted.

Raise : 3600 MP ; Lv 12

Tell your allies to stop dying.

Jokes aside, I didn’t really know where to put this. It’s pretty obvious how you should use it, but just in case : this spell is extremely expensive and also has an 8s casting time. Either swiftcast it to make instant, or make sure you are able to stand still for those long 8 seconds. Also, do make sure that you tell the other healer you are doing it, or who you are raising in case of multiple deaths. Double raising someone is a total waste of a huge amount of mana, and of casting time. Likewise, you should be mindful of your mana and your co-healer’s mana in 8 men content. It is recommended to raise people whilst under the effect of Thin Air, so that you do not have to suffer the huge MP cost. Red Mages and Summoners can also help out with raises – be sure to communicate with your team on who raises first.

As a WHM, I usually don’t mind raising first if Thin Air is available, but it doesn’t mean I always do. Communication is key when it comes to raises.

B. Healing priorities : overview & tips.

Single target usually is pretty simple : Regen should be up on the tank most of time, if not always. You can help yourself by throwing in Largesse to make it stronger, and add Asylum to get the HoT even higher, up to 250 potency per 3 second. It’s often more than the average healing you need on dungeon bosses, for example.

Whenever health starts to drop, you can start casting Cure or Cure II, or maybe just throw a Tetragrammaton and keep on DPSing. Knowing the fight and what’s coming next will most likely tell you what the better option is. It is also quite important that you know how much your heals heal for, as the choice between Cure and Cure II can save you some MP. It’ll also allow you to estimate the time you have to DPS better.

Benediction should be used mostly along with either Holmgang from a Warrior, or Living Dead from a Dark Knight, after they take the hit reducing them to 1HP. It is also possible to use it during big pulls if your other CDs are reloading and the tank will die without immediate help, or just to DPS some more if you’re not going to need it soon.

While it’s not an “healing” ability, Divine Benison should be used to prevent damage. If you now a big pull or a big hit is coming, it’s a good idea to give it to your tank.

AoE healing is fairly simple and can be solved with a few questions :

Do I need to heal the tank(s), or the party first ?

→ The Tank(s) ? Cure II (or , or , or ) them first, and then deal with your party as you’d normally do. If you have to heal two tanks at once, you can consider using Cure III if they’re packed, or Tetragrammaton on one and Cure II or Benediction on the other. Adjust as needed, it all depends on what is coming next. Assize can help, too. Be sure not to use it if you’re gonna need a lot of AoE healing very soon, though, and try to hit enemies with it. Divine Benison can also help minimizing damage while getting them back up, or preventing some damage on big hits.

→ Someone else specifically ? Same thing as for tanks then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

→ The Party ? See below !

Do I need to heal the party fast ?

→ No ? Medica II will do. Don’t panic, let it tick. If you’re unsure, add a Medica or use Plenary Indulgence, but keep in mind that restoring the group back to full life with remaining time on Medica II’s regen effect means wasted healing. The more time wasted, the worse. It becomes really bad when wasting around 20 seconds, as a Medica would have saved you some MP. It only takes 3 ticks to make Medica II heal for more than Medica.

→ Yes ? Cure III if everyone is packed around you, Medica otherwise. Pick according to how much healing is required as Medica is cheaper, making it a better choice if it’ll heal enough. If extra healing is needed, you can always cast them once more and also pop Plenary Indulgence. Help from your co-healer in Raids or Trials is most likely going to happen in those scenarios. Communicate with them as necessary.

For this one, you can also add Assize to the mix. Just make sure you can also hit enemies if possible. If you can’t, you have the right to be sad about it.

C. Welcome to the Dark Side : DPSing as a White Mage

Last but not least, the DPS rotations. Being a healer makes this fairly simple, because we have very few spells to dps with. Our entire DPS kit is, at 70, made of Stone IV, Aero III, Aero II, Holy, Assize, Cleric Stance, and Presence of Mind. As with all classes, it is also possible to use a potion of the corresponding main stat in order to get a nice damage boost for a few seconds. The current potion, for healers, is the Infusion of Mind. Potions being somewhat expensive, I recommend only using them on Raids. Right before pull is a rather good place to use your first potion. Next potions should be used when you feel like you will be able to DPS for an extended amount of time, and most of your and your allies buffs and CDs are ready.

As for AoE DPS, you can and should use Thin Air to save tons of mana.

Big Pulls Rotation Recommandation :

→ Wait for tank to be done with pulling. Healing before they’re done will usually result in some monsters coming for your booty. can be used though.

→ (because he took damage while pulling usually)

→

→ add as necessary (not in this specific order). Keep up the AoE rotation if not needed.

→ Reapply Aero III as necessary. Keep on spamming Holy until monsters are either dead, or both Thin Air and Lucid Dreaming are in cooldown. It is advised to use these two one after the other, preferably not on the same pack of monsters. Remember to throw some heals if necessary, and watch your mana if you spam for an extended amount of time. Keep some for healing.

→ As Holy applies a stun, using it early in a pull can help mitigate a lot of damage, as no monsters will be able to do anything for a while.

Bosses Rotation Recommandation :

→ (, depends on boss) before pull, around -5s

→ , start at -3s :

→ Assize should be used while under the effects of the potion, and the NIN’s trick attack. If the boss uses an AoE very early into the fight, it can also good to save it for said AoE.

→ This pull works on most content. Sometimes you may have to improvise a bit and switch some stones with healing spells. It will depend how fast and mean the boss is.

Single Target priority : > >

→ Sometimes, it can be worth waiting before reapplying Aero II, as it’s an instant cast and will allow you to move without losing damage. It can be useful when you are adjusting your position in preparation to something, or just dodging an AoE. You can also swiftcast Aero III or Stone IV if you’re confident you are not going to need it during the next minute.

→ add healing as necessary.

Generic Recommandation :

→ Do mechanics.

VIII – Heavenspet : Scholar

You’re the Fairy’s pet

A. Scholar Skills : Buttons to press while Eos heals

As with White Mage skill, all displayed MP costs are Lv 70. Skills are not in the order you get them, but instead sorted by arbitrary categories.

1. Aetherflow

Aetherflow : Lv 6 ; 60s Cooldown

This is the main mechanic for Arcanist, Scholar and Summoner. Given it’s already available while you’re still leveling arcanist, you become familiar with this fairly quickly, but here’s a quick explanation of what it does for those who somehow have no idea :

This ability restores 10% of your max MP and grants you Aetherflow stacks. Those stacks do not expire unless used or killed. They allow you to use specific abilities. You start with one, and leveling up will give you a couple upgrades to get a few more. Scholars also have a passive allowing them to reduce this skills’ cooldown by 5 seconds upon use of a stack.

2. Fairies and their skills

Upon reaching lv 30 and becoming a Scholar, both summoning skills acquired will trade Carbuncle for fairies.

Summon : 1200 MP ; Lv 4

Summons Eos, the healing focused fairy. Your best friend, she’ll basically carry you at all times and is the true healer. You’re just a DPS pretending to heal, sssshhh.

Whispering Dawn : 120 potency over 21s, 840 total ; Lv 1 ; 60s Cooldown

An instant AoE Regen in a 15 yalms radius around Eos. An extremely interesting and powerful asset, it has many uses and is probably one of the best skills available.

Fey Covenant : Lv 20 ; 120s Cooldown

An instant AoE 20% Magic Defense buff in a 15 yalm radius around Eos that lasts 20s. A powerful defensive tool for raid-wide magic damage. Pretty useful.

Fey Illumination : Lv 40 ; 120s Cooldown

An instant AoE 10% Healing Magic increase buff in a 15 yalms radius around Eos for 20 seconds. Yet another powerful tool, it’s like an on-command mini AoE Largesse.

Summon II : 1200 MP ; Lv 15

Summons Selene, the… “dps” focused fairy. Less used because her kit isn’t as good, she still has a place at least pre-pull thanks to her attack speed buff.

Silent Dusk : Lv 1 ; 40s Cooldown

Selene silences the target for 1 second. It’s… nearly never useful. You may find one or two dungeons where you might be able to use it, but even then you’d probably be better having Eos out instead and have someone else use a silencing ability.

Fey Caress : Lv 20 ; 60s Cooldown

By the power of gentle headpats, Selene removes one detrimental aliment on every party member within a 20 yalm radius. You probably won’t ever use it either, sadly. Everyone loves headpats, but they’re just not useful.

Fey Wind : Lv 40 ; 60s Cooldown

Selene makes party members within a 20 yalm radius attack 3% faster for 30 seconds. This ability is nice, as it’s a free DPS increase that lasts for quite a while. It is a bit similar to an Astrologian’s AoE Arrow, except a bit weaker. Whilst good, this skill is mainly used before a pull, and only once in the whole fight. If you find ways to properly heal a fight without ever having to use Eos, it can be a great speedkilling tool.

3. Healing skills

Physick: 400 Potency ; 600 MP ; Lv 4

~~Once again a proof that your healing spell isn’t the first thing in your kit and you should be hitting !~~ Your base healing spell. It’s correct. It does what it says. It thanks the bus driver.

Adloquium : 300 Potency ; 1560 MP ; Lv 30

Creates a shield negating incoming damage for the amount healed, or for 30s. Should your heal be critical, the shield will be doubled. This monster of a healing spell is the single reason why there should be not a single debate about the Scholar being a fully CRIT melded job. It can outright make you ignore some mechanics. It might be a bit costy, but it’s way too good to complain about anything.

Lustrate : 600 Potency ; Lv 50

An instant, MP-free, oGCD, single target ability. It requires one Aetherflow stack to use. This will be your favorite skill, most likely. It’s very strong, faster than Sanic, spammable as it has a 1 second cooldown, and is just super great.

Excogitation : 800 Potency ; Lv 62 ; 45s Cooldown

Requires an Aetherflow stack to use. Single Target, oGCD, MP-free.

It grants the target a 45 second buff, that will trigger the skills’ healing should one of two conditions be met : the target’s life falls under 50%, or the buff timer reached 0. This extremely strong skill can be used as a better lustrate on an already low HP target, or as a delayed better lustrate on your tank before they take a big hit for example. One of the nicest additions from Stormblood.

Succor : 150 Potency ; 2040 MP ; Lv 35

An AoE Adloquium with a twist. This time around, the shield is equivalent to 150% of the healed amount (i.e. if you heal for 100 you shield for 150). Getting a critical hit on this spels DOES NOT double the shield. It’s expensive, but useful. Because of the low potency, using it for AoE healing is a bad idea unless using Emergency Tactics. You’d better ask Eos otherwise.

Indomitability : 500 Potency ; Lv 52 ; 30s Cooldown

An instant, oGCD, MP-free, AoE healing ability that requires one Aetherflow stack to use. It hits in a 15 yalm radius around you. This skill is also great, and fixed many issues the Scholar had with AoE healing when it came out. It’s still one of the best additions to SCH ever made.

Aetherpact : Lv 70 ;

An instant, oGCD, MP-free, single target ability. This one is quite weird : it links your fairy to the selected party member, preventing any movement or other ability from the fairy while linked. The link heals the target for a Potency of 480 per tick, and consumes a resource called Fey ether, of which you gain 10 every time you use an Aetherflow ability. It’s best used for strong healing on a single target when the fairy’s buffs are in cooldown. Can be cancelled at any time by using the button again. It has a 3s cooldown time, making it negligeable.

Sacred Soil : Lv 45 ; 30s Cooldown

An instant, oGCD, MP-free, ground targeted AoE damage reduction ability that requires an Aetherflow Stack to use. It places a 8 yalm radius dome on the ground in which allies will take 10% less damage. It also has 20% chance to make your next Succor free, which is a nice bonus when it happens. Just don’t count on it too much.

This ability is a nice tool for preventing high damage on the party. It can – and does – save lives on occasions and can be use to mitigate big raid-wide hits. Because it takes a stack however, it can be acceptable to not use it and take the extra damage. Talk with your co-healer / party members to see when to use it or not.

Deployment Tactics : Lv 56 ; 120s Cooldown

An instant, oGCD, MP-free, single target ability. Spread any active Adloquium and Eye for Eye on the target party member to nearby party members in a 10 yalm radius around the target. Why is this skills great you ask ? Well, if you have a critical Adloquium on your tank for, let’s say, 16 000, and use this, the doubled shield will be applied to the whole party as long as they’re in range. That’s 32 000 damage denied on the whole party for the MP cost of one Adloquium. It’s super powerful, but requires decent knowledge of fights to be used properly. Think of it as a shielding version of Bane.

Emergency Tactics : Lv 58 ; 20s Cooldown

Grants you a 15s buff that transforms the next shielding effect of Adloquium or Succor into a regular healing. Do note that the “double shield if crit” from Adlo still applies, which means that an adlo that would hit for 100 and shield for 200 would instead heal for those amounts. This spell does quite well what it says : you use it in a emergency, to heal more instead of protecting. It can help with AoE healing in dire times.

And of course you have a Resurrection for 3600 MP.

4. Damage Skills

Ruin : 100 Potency ; 240 MP ; Lv 1

Pew pew.

Ruin II : 100 Potency ; 480 MP ; Lv 38

Pew pew except it’s instant. Also you can use it while still having your other pew pew on your bars as this one does not get replaced with upgrades. Useful for moving around and keeping uptime.

Broil : 190 Potency ; 720 MP ; Lv 54

Replaces Ruin in Lv 54+ content. Now with added explosions.

Broil II : 230 Potency ; 720 MP ; Lv 64

Replaces Ruin and Broil in Lv 64+ content. Now with added pewpews.

Bio : 40 Potency over 18s, total 240 ; 480 MP ; Lv 2

Throw some nasty diseases. On the plus side, it’s instant. Always apply. Reapply around ~3s.

Bio II : 35 potency over 30s, total 350, 720 MP ; Lv 26

Diseases made nastier. Still instant. Always apply. Reapply around ~3s

Miasma : 20 potency + 35 over 24 seconds, total 30 ; 600 MP ; Lv 10

Another type of infection to slowly murder your enemies. Your second main DoT, this one isn’t instant and should be casted before Bio / Bio II for that reason, as the instant will allow you movement afterwards. Reapply around ~3s.

Miasma II : 100 potency + 20 over 12s, total 200 ; 1680 MP ; Lv 46

This one is a 5 yalm radius AoE around you. It’s costly, but it’s your main “spam” AoE and it’s also instant. It can also be used in single target if you’re near the boss and need to move away, as a mean to keep damaging the boss while moving with a better potency than Ruin II. Because of the high mana cost, it might sometimes be better to use Ruin II instead. Adjust as necessary. I wouldn’t recommend trying to keep it up. It’ll suck you dry in a minute.

Shadow Flare : 50 Potency over 15s, total 250 ; Lv 50 ; 60s Cooldown

Free, instant, oGCD, ground-placed AoE. It deals nice damage in a 5 yalm radius. The additional slow effect isn’t useful at all, but it’s there. It’s a good instant, but ground targeted AoEs can be a pain to place at times.

Bane : Lv 30 ; 10s Cooldown

MP-free, instant, oGCD, “single” target, requires one Aetherflow stack to use. DPS version of Deployment Tactics, it spreads any active DoT on the targeted enemy to nearby ones in a 8 yalm radius. Each enemy after the first receives 20% less damage however, capped to 80% reduction. It’s still super good, and is the single best AoE tool as you can effectively get your DoT on every single monster of a pack by casting them on only one of them. It also has a 15% to reset the remaining duration of spread DoTs, but that’s not really important.

Energy Drain : 150 potency ; Lv 6 ; 3s Cooldown

MP-free, instant, oGCD, single target. Requires one Aetherflow stack to use. Deals decent damage and restores some HP & MP. It’s a very nice filler ability to deal some extra damage when you don’t need your stacks for anything else. It’s also pretty useful to dump leftover stacks quickly before using Aetherflow again, and the fact it regens MP helps sustain yourself throughout fights. Yet another 10/10 ability.

5. Passives, Buffs, Others

Sustain : 600 MP ; Lv 18

Almost instant. It puts a regen for 9 seconds on your pet, which restores 8% of the pets’ HP per tick for a total of 27%. It’s more of a Summoner skill given Fairies are able to heal themselves if needed… But it’s there in case you’d somehow need it.

Rouse : Lv 42 ; 60s Cooldown

Instant, MP-Free, oGCD. Grants your fairy a 40% healing boost for 20 seconds and makes them immune to Stun, Sleep, Bind and Slow. Use for strong kisses, additional sustain and semi-burst healing from the pet.

Dissipation : Lv 60 ; 180s Cooldown

Instant, free, oGCD.

Ruthlessly murder your fairy in exchange for 3 stacks instantly. Also grants you a 30 second buff that increases your healing by 20% for the next 30 seconds. However, you are unable to summon your fairy during that time.

I would say this skill is debatable. I personally do not know a single Scholar that uses it, and I do not use it myself. I would say it’s good for that extra tiny amount of damage if you don’t need the fairy for the next 30 seconds, or if you ran out of stacks for some reason and absolutely need one right now. That second scenario shouldn’t happen unless something went terribly wrong though. Trading the fairy just doesn’t seem worth it to me.

Chain Stratagem : Lv 66 ; 120s Cooldown

Instant, free, oGCD, single target.

Puts a 15s debuff on your target that increases their chances to receive critical hits by 15%. Basically a 15% crit buff for your team, this skill is very powerful. It should be aligned with other important buffs (1st and 3rd Litany, Battle Voice…) as much as possible, so communicate with your team.

B. Pet choice and pet management

Choosing a pet is rather easy : currently, Selene is pretty bad at healing and two of her abilities are rather bad. Her damage buff can be amazing, but Eos is just so useful that you usually will swap Selene out before pulling. The general idea is to use Selene and ask her to use Fey Wind around 5s before pull while summoning Eos so that the party benefits from the buff without having to actually use her in battle.

Micro-managing the pet can seem like it’s going to be hard or be a chore, but it’s really not. A few patches ago, pets were made immune to a lot of ground AoEs making it a lot easier to deal with, and placing your pet at a specific spot is not different than placing an AoE somewhere. It can also be considered part of your rotation in certain fights, where specific placements are taken at specific times. The three important buttons to manage your pets are : Heel (follow), Stay and Obey.

Obey is, by far, the most important one: if you do not order your fairy to do what to tell her to, she’ll throw all of her buffs almost instantly when anyone’s health drops to something like 80%… Which is sort of ridiculous. Instead, when in Obey, the Fairy will only use Embrace on her own. Other skills will have to be asked for, in the same manner you ask your character to use abilities. Thus, placing your pet’s skills in your own skill bar is useful.

Because of this, there is one and only one macro that I would recommend using:

Given Rouse and Whispering Dawn have the same Cooldown, it is possible to use them in tandem every single time. The Cooldown of Fey Illumination is twice as long as the other two, but also works very well with them. What you can do is create a macro that makes it so that using also asks the pet to use if available. This way, every time you buff your pet, she’ll try using Fey Illumination as well, but will only be able to do so every other Rouse. All that’s left to do is ask her to use the regen next. Keep on a separate slot for that purpose.

The default movement mode for your pet is Heel. Whilst it’s fine for the most part, it means you’ll have to be careful of your own movement when using the fairy’s buffs as it’s possible she’d be out of range for some people if you’re standing somewhere far. Placing the fairy is especially handy if you know in advance where people are going to go next, or if there is simply no reason for the fairy to move at all. Knowledge of fights and experience are the most helpful tools to deal with pet positioning.

C. Healing priorities : overview & tips.

Contrary to WHM and AST that are able to do things with regens, SCH has to be more aware of incoming damage because the bulk of their healing comes from effectively preventing damage rather than getting the HP bar back to full.

Single Target :

Adloquium before the tank starts pulling, be it in raids or dungeons. Either spread it to the rest of the party, or keep that for later and use succor instead. If paired with an AST, a Nocturne Aspected Helios is better than Succor, but not better than a Spread Adlo.

As a Scholar, Adloquium will be your best tool to prevent big hits on the tank. Most of the healing should then come from Eos and your co-healer. Physick does exist, but it’s better to actually avoid using it too much : you have a tremendous amount of instant skills you can use to heal better than Physick would, all while keeping on DPSing. The list includes Lustrate, Excogitation, Indom (Very rare in raids, mostly for dungeons packs that aren’t heavy on raid-wide unavoidable damage), + and even Eos’ regen. Having a good estimation of how much damage the tank is going to receive is important and, when duo healing, knowing what your co-healer can handle without your help. Fey Covenant can also help mitigate a bit, but is more often used for AoE situations.

AoE :

The Scholar job is more about limiting incoming damage than restoring lost HP, even though it is able to do that well enough. Most of the time, Succor will do a good job at absorbing a good chunk of damage. A Spread Adlo is an amazing defensive tool and can negate most dungeon AoEs with ease. A crit can even negate most Raid AoEs, including some Ultimate ones. In the event of magic AoE damage (which is common), Fey Covenant will also do a great job at reducing incoming damage. Sacred Soil can also be added on hard hitting AoEs to further increase the party’s defense.

Indomitability is going to be your best friends in situations where a big fast heal is required. Emergency Succor can also help you top people up if needed.

When you’re not in a rush, it’s the fairy’s time to work: that sweet combo will easily heal through a lot of AoEs thrown at you with very little to no help. Not only that, but the fairy will keep on spamming Embrace on anyone who’s health is low enough (~85%) anyway, which means small quantities of missing health can and will most likely be healed passively. In case it’s not enough, you can cast another succor or two, but it will be expensive. Discussing how to heal AoEs with your co-healer will help a lot, as your role here is to help them with strong bursts and protections while they take care of the rest.

D. Welcome to the Dark Side : DPSing as a Scholar

The DPS capacities of a Scholar are not to be taken lightly. The job itself is built around fast oGCD heals and Eos carrying you so you can keep hitting the enemies while providing very good utility. However, because you have to constantly watch DoT timers, it also makes it a fairly more complicated job to manage, compared to the other two.

Big Pulls Rotation Recommandation :

→ Prepull, again when pull is done, and throw a maybe.

→

→

→ add as necessary (not in this specific order). Keep up the AoE “rotation” if not needed.

→ Remember to throw some heals if necessary, and watch your mana if you spam for an extended amount of time. Keep some for healing.

→ Replace by for a mana friendly solution.

Bosses Rotation Recommandation :

→ or ~10s before pull. at around -5s

→ start at -3s :

→ Reapply at ~3s. If you have extra stacks around 10s before Aetherflow is available again, you can add some to make it come back faster and do extra damage. Act according to mechanics. Keep spamming if everything else looks good.

→ Align with other buffs when possible.

→ add healing as necessary. Instant or via fairy if possible, see with your co-healer.

Generic Recommandation :

→ Do mechanics.

IX – Stormcards : Astrologian

You can do it, Yugi.

A. Astrologian Skills : A Deck full of nice things

As I did with previous jobs, everything is sorted by arbitrary categories rather than level acquisition.

1. Sects

Unique to the Astrologian job is the Sect system. A Sect is a buff you simply use once, and it stays active forever until you use it again or use the other Sect. They grant you a few neat bonuses, but their most important use is the additional effect they give to “aspected” skills. You cannot cancel or change sects once in battle. However, if you forgot to activate a Sect after entering battle, you can still do so. Of course, using both Sects at once is impossible. Which Sect to pick will be discussed in section XI – B.

Diurnal Sect : Lv 30 ;

Increases healing by 10% and gives a regeneration over time effect to “Aspected” skills. It also reduces aggro generation.

Nocturnal Sect : Lv 50 ;

Increases healing by 15% and gives a shielding effect to “Aspected” skills. It also reduces aggro generation.

2. Healing skills

Benefic : 400 Potency ; 480 MP ; Lv 2

The most basic healing spell. At Lv 36, it will also have 15% chance to grant your next Benefic II within 15s a 100% critical rate. A nice bonus, but a free cast would have been better.

Benefic II : 650 Potency ; 1080 MP ; Lv 26

The strong single target GCD healing spell. It does its job well, and is less expensive than the White Mage equivalent. Thanks to the Sect healing buff, it is just as powerful even with lower potency.

Aspected Benefic: 200 Potency ; 1440 MP ; Lv 34

The first Aspected spell is a single target one. With no casting time, this spell is extremely useful and will have an additional effect according to your active Sect :

→ Diurnal Sect will add a 140 potency over time regen effect that lasts 18 seconds, making this spell cumulate a total of 1040 potency. Do note that the total potency is 10 inferior than that of WHM’s Regen, but it has an initial potency meaning it’ll heal for a bit right away whereas Regen requires a tick to start doing so ;

→ Nocturnal Sect will add a shield negating damage for 250% of the amount healed. If your target is healed for 100 HP, they are also immune to the next 250 damage they will take. However, this shield effect cannot be stacked with a Scholar’s shield, and they will override each other no matter how strong.

This is probably the single most spammed healing spell of the Astrologian job, as it emulates either WHM’s Regen or SCH’s Adloquium.

Helios : 300 Potency ; 1440 MP ; Lv 10

The main AoE spam heal. It’s exactly like WHM’s Medica, but a bit cheaper. I told you Astrologian was emulating other healers, didn’t I ?

Aspected Helios : 1800 MP ; lv 42

The second AoE healing ability. Depending on sect, it will either be similar to WHM’s Medica II or SCH’s Succor.

→ Diurnal Sect : 200 potency, with an additional 40 over-time for 30 seconds, for a total of 600 potency. Much like Medica II, this is a powerful healing tool that requires a bit of time to truly shine. It needs 9 seconds to be better than Helios, so keep that in mind when healing up after mechanics. You may want to use Helios instead of this one if you need immediate healing, or if people will be back to full health in less than 3 ticks of the HoT effect.

→ Nocturnal Sect : 150 Potency, with an additional shield that negates subsequent damage for 150% of the amount healed. While this is better than a SCH’s succor, the only reason for you to use this when playing with a Scholar would be for shielding people before pulling, if the scholar is not using a Spread Adloquium. Other than that, it’s basically Succor.

Essential Dignity : minimum 400 Potency ; Lv 15 ; 40s Cooldown

Quite similar to WHM’s Tetragrammaton with a shorter CD, this spell is an oGCD, free, instant healing ability that will actually heal more the less HP your target has. It gains 6 potency for every 1% HP missing on your target, meaning the potency goes up to 1000 on a 1HP target. It is a very good, almost spammable instant healing, but you shouldn’t wait for your target’s HP to drop too low before using it, even if it can be tempting as it’ll heal for more. Think of it as your main tool for fast recoveries, just like Tetragrammaton and Lustrate.

Earthly Star : Ground AoE ; Lv 62 ; 60s Cooldown

A very original skill with variable potency, healing allies within range and hurting enemies inside, similar to WHM’s assize without MP recovery. Upon placing this on the ground, you will receive a buff that lasts 10 seconds. When this buff expires, the Earthly Star will grow stronger and give you another buff for 10 seconds. If that second buff expires, the Earthly Star will activate automatically – using the Earthly Star skill again when it is placed on the ground will also activate it. Thus, this skill has two possible potencies :

→ During the first 10 seconds : 540 Healing potency, 150 Damage potency.

→ During the last 10 seconds : 720 Healing potency, 200 Damage potency.

This skill’s forte is the ability to place it wherever you want, make it activate whenever you desire, and the ability to place it preemptively. If you know big AoE damage is coming in around 10 seconds, placing this on the ground will usually allow your party to fully recover as it is extremely powerful. Getting foes inside of the circle is also a nice bonus and isn’t too hard as the skill’s range is quite nice, but it is much more of a healing spell that Assize is. I recommend you do not use this as a DPS skill, but do try to benefit from its damage while healing as possible.

Lady of Crowns : 500 Potency ; Lv 66 ;

The only way for you to use this skill is to first draw a card, and for some reason decide to sacrifice it by using Minor Arcana (See below). The Minor Arcana skill might then become this, and using it will restore HP. It’s instant, oGCD, and MP free.

3. Damage skills

Malefic : 150 Potency ; 480 MP ; Lv 1

Should I use the “Lv 1 is a dps skill, proof you’re a dps class” joke again ? :thinking:

Malefic II : 180 Potency ; 600 MP ; Lv 54

A small upgrade is always better than no upgrades. Automatically replaces Malefic in Lv 54+ content.

Malefic III : 220 Potency ; 600 MP ; Lv 64

Another upgrade. Automatically replaces Malefic II in Lv 64+ content.

This is your main spam single-target DPS spell. A great thing about it is it only takes 1.5 seconds to cast, but the normal base 2.5s GCD still applies. What that means is that you have a full second of free time to move around and use oGCDs without clipping GCD, which is very nice. Just don’t double weave unless you feel it’s necessary.

Combust : 40 over time potency (18s), 240 total ; 480 MP ; Lv 4

A very simple DoT spell. Keep applied when DPSing, refreshing at ~2 seconds remaining.

Combust II : 50 over time potency (30s), 500 total ; 600 MP ; Lv 46

A welcome upgrade. Keep this up at all time when DPSing, and refresh at ~2 seconds as usual. It is acceptable to refresh it a bit earlier when needed, to make room for healing without losing DoT uptime for example.

Gravity : 200 Potency ; 1920 MP ; Lv 52

Your main AoE Spam. As many AoEs in the game, this ability does reduced damage on additional targets.The first one will receive full damage, and each one after that will receive 10% less, up to 50% max. It is still worth using on 3+ monsters though, but mind your MP. The casting time is 3 seconds, which is quite long.

Lord of Crowns : 300 Potency ; Lv 66

Exactly like Lady of Crown, but for DPS purposes. This is the other possible result from the Minor Arcana Skill (see below). Instant, oGCD, MP Free.

4. Cards, buffs, card manipulation

Lightspeed : Level 6 ; 10s Duration ; 120s Cooldown

This buff is AWESOME. It reduces casting time by 2.5 seconds and halves MP costs for the next 10 seconds. That means almost every spell in your kit is instant and costs barely anything, allowing you to run a bloody marathon while healing your friends and killing your foes. Gravity won’t be instant, but with the game’s 0.3s base lag and your own latency, it’ll most likely feel pretty much like it is. This skill is great both for mobility and MP Management, and should be used as much as possible. Kind of like WHM’s Thin Air, it might be worth considering not using it immediately if you know a MP-intensive phase is coming up, and saving mana by using it then. At Lv 68, using Essential Dignity will also reduce the remaining cooldown on this skill by 10 seconds.

Synastry : Gives the Synastry buff to a party member and yourself, although the fact it’s on you is actually not important. The party member with the Synastry buff will receive 40% of the HP recovered by the target of a single target GCD spell : Benefic, Benefic II, Aspected Benefic. It does not work with AoEs or oGCDs.

That means two things :

→ If you give Synastry to someone and heal them, they will receive the heal and an additional 40% of that amount.

→ If you give Synastry to Person A and heal Person B, the Person A will receive 40% of what Person B was healed for.

It makes this ability an extremely useful tool for healing two tanks at once, or healing a single person a LOT. It can also be helpful to heal someone without having to actually target them when you need to your tank, for example. This skill is nice, but requires some planning to use properly.

Time Dilation : Level 56 ; 90s Cooldown

Another awesome CD. This increases the duration of buffs you casted on a single party member by 15 seconds. That means card buffs, regens, shields (even though extending a shield would make no sense…) and Collective Unconscious.

There are two main ways you can use it : either focus on getting strong card buffs last longer on a powerful team member, or use it to extend the duration of regens on your tank. While the first is pretty obvious, the second can feel like it’s a “wrong” way to use it, but hear me out : if you use Largesse to buff your healing output, use Collective Unconscious and give your tank an aspected benefic (and maybe even aspected helios) while under Diurnal Sect, you will find yourself in front of a monster with 10k+ regen ticks for 30 seconds. It is very likely you won’t need to worry about this guy’s like for quite a while, meaning you can peacefully murder monsters.

In raid situations, I would recommend using this to make cards last longer on DPSes. You can still do the healing thing, but Collective Unconscious is usually used at specific times during raids, which means you’d have to delay using this skill, which isn’t too good.

For dungeon runs however, throwing buffed regens and extending them is ridiculously good and will make your life so much easier you’ll wonder why you didn’t think of it earlier. If you already knew that though, props to you ! You probably love it as much as I do.

Collective Unconscious : Level 58 ; 90s Cooldown

I’ve been talking about this guy quite a lot in the previous skill, so what does it do ?

Well, it created a small dome centered around your character. Moving or casting another spell will cancel the dome however, so be careful about that because simply pressing the button isn’t enough !

This skills does two things :

→ It places a HoT effect that lasts for 15s, with a potency of 150 on anyone inside the dome. HOWEVER this buff is only applied during server ticks. That means pressing the button and moving right away will most likely not apply the buff. As server ticks happen every ~3 seconds, you may have to wait anywhere from 0.1s to 3s to get it applied to people in range, which is annoying to be honest. This regen effect is the single most important thing about this skill, as it makes in a free 900 potency AoE heal. It’s super good.

→ It reduces damage taken by 10% while inside. This is the part you don’t really care about. It’s nice it’s here, but this isn’t the best thing it has to offer. Because of server ticks for both activation and deactivation of the damage reduction effect from the dome, you’ll usually be fine cancelling the dome once the regen has been applied and still be protected when AoE damage happens, if you moved before it. Do not wait around for AoE damage to hit the party thinking you need this extra protection unless maybe you’re on ultimate. And even then, you’re better off using the SCH’s dome for that purpose. One the HoT is applied, this skill has done its job and you can go back to playing Yu Gi Oh.

Celestial Opposition : Level 60 ; 120s Cooldown

A very fancy looking skill. It increases the duration of buffs you casted on party members and yourself by 10 seconds. Unlike Time Dilation, this one is AoE, which is very nice. It also stuns enemies in range for 4s, meaning you can use this skill during big pulls to not only stun enemies and cancel any damage output for 4 seconds, but also to increase the monster regens I was talking about earlier on your tank by an additional 10 seconds. It’s super nice. And it looks good.

This spell is best used after using AoE cards to improve their duration on allies. You should also try to use Lucid Dreaming right before, to extend its duration too. It’ll make MP management better.

Alright. Now that we’ve made it here, it is time to tackle the big beast of AST : cards.

Cards are an essential part of playing AST, because you’d be a lesser WHM/SCH without those. Think of cards as a decision making mini-game that allows you to give you and your party very potent buffs. Before getting into cards themselves though, let’s take a quick look at how the AST Job HUD looks like and what it tells us.

Ew French text.

So, what do we see here ?

→ The text on top tells us what additional effect the next card we use will have. Here, the duration will be doubled. These effects are gained by using Royal Road after drawing a card, and there are 3 possible effects.

→ The picture on the left side is the card we have in stock. Upon drawing a card, it is possible to use Spread to keep that card for later use. Using Spread again will cause the skill to go on cooldown, and will use that card.

→ The picture in the center shows us what card we currently have in hand, including how many seconds are left before it vanishes forever. Upon drawing a card, you have 30 seconds to do whatever you want with it – however it is better to not wait around too long, as the Draw cooldown will only start once you empty your hand.

→ The picture on the right shows us what Minor Arcana we have in stock. There are only two possibilities here, and most of the time this space should be empty.

All good so far ?

Now onto the cards themselves and their related skills.

Draw : Level 30 ; 30s Cooldown.

Draws a random card between 6 possible outcomes. You then have 30 seconds to do whatever you desire with it. The skills’ cooldown will start once you used that card. The 6 possibilities are :

→ The Spire : Grants a TP regen for 15 seconds.

→ The Ewer : Grants a MP regen for 15 seconds.

→ The Bole : Grants a 20% Damage taken reduction buff for 30 seconds.

→ The Arrow : Reduces GCD and auto-attack delays by 10%.

→ The Spear : Increases Critical Hit Rate by 10% for 30 seconds.

→ The Balance : Increases Damage dealt by 10% for 30 seconds.

All of these are, by default, single target buffs. Cards used this way will benefit from any Royal Road effect you have. You can get rid of a card by using Undraw, or right-clicking it in your buff list.

Royal Road : Lv 35 ; 15s Cooldown

This skill allows you to return a card to your deck and enhance the next card you will be using. The enhance effect depends of which card you used Royal Road on :
→ : The next card will now be AoE, but its effect will be halved.

→: The next card will last for twice as long.

→ : The next cards’ effect will be increased by 50%.

Do note, you can only have one Royal Road effect active at a time. You can also get rid of your current Royal Road effect by right-clicking the buff in your buff list, using Empty Road, or using Royal Road on another card to overwrite the current effect.

Spread : Lv 40 ; 30s Cooldown

Allows you to keep a card for later use. This skill becomes the icon of the card you used it on, and using it again will use that card. The cooldown only start once you use the card you stocked. Cards used this way will benefit from any Royal Road effect you have.

You can also discard any stocked card by Right Clicking the icon in you buffs, or using Undraw Spread.

Redraw : Lv 45 ; 30s Cooldown

Allows you to redraw the card in your hand. It cannot give you the card you are currently holding, and it cannot be used on Spread cards.

Minor Arcana : Lv 66 ; 5s Cooldown

Allows you to convert your currently Drawn card (doesn’t work on stocked cards) into Lady of Crowns or Lord of Crowns randomly. Useful for ditching trash cards, but quite situational. Using this skill again will use any Minor Arcana in your possession.

Sleeve Draw : Lv 70 ; 120s Cooldown

Fills any empty space on your HUD. This means it’ll give you a random Draw card, Royal Road effect, Spread card, and Minor Arcana but will not overwrite any of these currently in your possession. It does not care about the cooldown time of those abilities, and given most of them go on CD when you use the card they correspond to in your current situation, it means you can draw more cards than you’d normally be allowed to. It is very useful but is so random that it can be godlike or trash. It is tricky to use. I would recommend using this skill as often as possible, and if possible with an empty Royal Road, an empty Minor Arcana, a good Spread card, Draw on CD and Redraw available. A good Royal Road, empty Minor Arcana, empty Spread, Draw on CD and Redraw available is also a decent strategy. More on that in section IX – C.

And that’s it for AST skills ! Congratulations for making it through, cause there was a lot to cover.

Oh, I guess you can raise too, using Ascend and 3600 MP. Yeah, that’s also similar to WHM and SCH. Anyway, moving on !

B. Which Sect is “the best” ?

The sect topic is something that can be up to debate when it comes to dungeon runs, but is very easy to deal with when playing with another healer, so we’ll address that first.

If you’re playing with a White Mage, pick Nocturnal. If you’re playing with a Scholar, pick Diurnal. If you’re playing with another Ast, leave the party because managing cards is going to be a pain… You still want to play with them ? Well, you pick one, they pick the other. Simple as that.

Now, back to a more “solo play” oriented answer. When playing in 4-people content, it doesn’t really matter which one you pick because they will both work. However, Diurnal has the upper hand and makes things more comfortable to deal with. Here’s why.

The ability to switch stances freely so long as no monster has enmity towards you means you can shield your tank between two pulls, and go back to Diurnal Sect right after. Nocturnal Shields are really strong, but you have to remember that you’re not a Scholar, so you’re missing an essential thing they have and you don’t : passive healing. The scholar has a fairy that can put and AoE Regen on the tank / party, and will spam embrace constantly. That means the Scholar still heals without requiring active casting from him for that purpose, something the AST has to work for. While it is true you could also apply regens pre-pull and switch back to Noct immediately, you cannot waste shield timer unless actively waiting for them to dissipate on their own. However, you can waste Regen ticks.

Add to that the fact the AST possesses wonderful buffs such as Collective Unconscious, Celestial Opposition and Time Dilation that all combine very well with Aspected Benefic to create incredibly powerful regens, and you’re pretty much as good as the other two healers when it comes to dealing with big pulls.

To give you some math behind this, with the same item level, a Nocturnal Aspected Benefict will heal for ~6000, which means it shields for 15000. It is big. On the Diurnal end, using the extended regens technique (same MP cost), you get about ~10000 health per 3s for around 50 seconds on your tank and even more if they use convalescence. This is equivalent to using a Nocturnal Aspected Benefit every 3 GCD… Except you don’t, so it saves you the mana and the active healing time that you can now put to better use. Combining this with Earthly Star and Essential Dignity for quick adjustments if needed will grant you the ability to DPS with more ease than you would when relying on shields alone. Of course, you could still get some regen going on while in Nocturnal by using Collective Unconscious, but you’d only get ~4k per 3s of passive healing, which hardly changes how often you will need to reshield the tank.

From experience, Nocturnal Sect ASTs I’ve seen had a harder time healing dungeons than Diurnal Sect ASTs, due to regens being extremely powerful tools.

If all this isn’t enough, you can also just look at the raw potency of aspected spells in each stance. Aspected benefic and Aspected Helios have a potency of 1144 and 660 respectively in Diurnal Sect, taking in count the +10% healing buff from the sect and the complete duration of the HoT. As far as Nocturnal is concerned, those potencies are 805 and 431. Diurnal is just superior, and has to be because of regens.

Because of this, it is also theoretically fine to play Diurnal no matter who your cohealer is. So long as you don’t require shielding to survive any hit in the fight, Diurnal will be superior… And by “surviving”, I mean a hit actually dealing more damage than your maximum HP if not shielded.

With that said, I’d like to talk about one specific team composition : White Mage + Noct Astrologian.

This team is fine on paper : you have the raw healing and the shielding. However, you’re lacking the Fairy. Collective Unconscious does a rather good job at emulating Dawn Whisper, but doesn’t have the same range which makes it trickier to apply to everyone, and requires you to stop moving and acting for a moment. Likewise, your team loses the Scholars’ Critical Rate buff. Excogitation is another preemptive tool the SCH has and that an AST cannot replicate. In that situation, the AST usually takes the main healer role and let the WHM DPS more, which partially compensates for the active DPS time a scholar would have compared to an AST when dealing with AoE healing. All in all, this party composition works, but I would say is the least safe of the 3 possible duos. Pairing an AST with a SCH, however, is a buff heaven. WHM and SCH is still the safest bet, but loses card buffs that are more or less compensated by the raw brutal DPS of WHM.

Again, all this is from what I have been able to observe while playing in parties, be it dungeons, raids, trials, with a static or with pugs, and I’ve seen from friends’ statics healers or various logs.

C. Card management and priorities

This is where the true Yu Gi Oh part begins. We have cards, we know what they do and about how to get them, but what should we really aim for ?

To put it simply, damage is what matters the most in the game. That makes the Balance the single best card in our deck. However, are also fine and should be used when available. Balance being a better option doesn’t mean the other DPS increasing cards should be ignored. Royal Road allows us to give an extra boost to our cards, and making use of it is important. are trash cards by themselves. They are rarely ever used on their own, because their effect is usually unnecessary and every job has some way to manage their resources. That said, Royal Road’ing them allows us to get the AoE buff, which happens to be the best one : getting a 5% balance on 8 party members will always be better than getting a 10%/15% balance on a single person. As for 4 player content… Who cares. Just throw things at people.

Before pulling, you’ll want to try having an AoE Balance ready. Ideally, you’d also have Draw ready so you can get another card in hand before pull, and do something with it within the next 10-15 seconds. Your Minor Arcana doesn’t matter much, but I like King of Crowns better.

The decision making loop with cards should look something like this :

Draw
- ? Keep it. Use if AoE Ready.
- ? Burn it.
- ? Reroll for if you feel greedy / lucky and don’t have AoE ready. You can consider stocking those. Using on single target is also possible if you have a stocked card and are looking for the AoE buff, but rerolling gave you one of those instead. It might even be useful to get rid of an unwanted Royal Road effect.
- or unneeded ? Reroll it, or Minor Arcana. If you have a stocked card and the AoE buff, using that stocked card to buff the party will allow you to burn and get the AoE buff back instantly.
Sleeve Draw
- Will fill remaining slots with random things.
- If you got above, you’ll have a random Royal Road effect, a random card in hand, and a random Minor Arcana.
  - If your Royal Road effect is AoE, try to get your in-hand card to be . Having the in-hand balance means you can use that one and keep your stored card for later, while having the other mean you’ll be able to use your stored balance and get the AoE effect prepared immediately for later. If you’re unlucky… Well, Minor Arcana.
- If you didn’t get above, hopefully you have the AoE effect, and you get a random stored card, drawn card, and minor arcana. There is a 50% chance your stored card will become a bad one, so feel free to discard it.
  - If you had the AoE effect : try yo get your in-hand card to be .
  - If you didn’t have the AoE effect :
    - Try getting if your stored card is .
    - Commit Seppuku if you’re screwed.

The general idea is we always aim to get AoE Balance. AoE Arrow and Spear are okay too and should be used. Any card you cannot do anything with, like when you already have the AoE effect ready and no good card in stock to throw, should become a minor arcana. Sleeve Draw should always be used when available and during Draw’s CD. When using Sleeve Draw, make sure to have either a good stored card, a good Royal Road effect, or nothing at all. It’s fine using single-target cards to make some space as necessary when you’re about to use it. Sleeve Draw should always fill at least 3 empty spots in your job HUD. Just use any Minor Arcana you have before using it, it’s free.

Another thing worth noting is using during the opener. It’s not too good, it tends to mess a bit with people openers. Avoid if possible. The Arrow is a weird card in the sense that some jobs will like it more than others, so if you have to use it in single target situations, do mind who you give it to : a BLM will love you forever, if anything. You can use it freely at any other time, I would just recommend avoiding openers with it.

Using on yourself of your co-healer if mana management becomes tough is acceptable. Preferably you don’t have to, of course, but it can (and already did) save lives. Better that than not being able to cast. You most likely won’t ever use even if your DPSes die though.

Last but not least, the best timing to use your cards will always be during your NIN’s Trick Attack. If you can get a card in between and have a new one ready for the next Trick Attack, go for it. Else, it’s probably better to wait for the right timing. If you don’t have a ninja in your party, well… What kind of party is that ?!

PS : Above “decision making loop” is mostly accurate, but is missing details. Getting into every possible situation and how to deal with them would take an entire book. Experience will help you a lot when it comes to dealing with cards. Just keep playing, and eventually you’ll get used to shuffling your deck so fast that even Seto Kaiba won’t want to duel you anymore.

D. Healing priorities : overview & tips.

This section is going to be very similar to what WHM Healing priorities where. As discussed above, unless paired with a Scholar or in need of shield to survive some hit in the fights while at max health, you should be playing in diurnal because it’s simply better.

Single Target :

Aspected Benefic plays the role of WHM’s regen, and should be up on the tank most of the time. It is more MP expensive than Regen though, which makes MP management tougher in raid situation and makes it acceptable to have a lower uptime on this than you would on Regen. Because of Essential Dignity’s very short CD, on-the-fly adjustments are possible more often and can compensate for a lower HoT uptime to save MP. Keep in mind what’s coming next when using this.

Collective Unconscious is an excellent AoE healing tool, but can also be used specifically on the tank in Dungeons. Trust me, just do this : , and enjoy taking a nap while your tank is in god mode.

Earthly Star is another extremely powerful AoE healing tool, with bursts going above 20k like it’s nothing. It should be used often, both for healing purposes and added bonus damage on the boss / enemies. While it’s fine to use it as a DPS tool in dungeons, usage of this spell in raids should be exclusive to healing the tank(s) and/or party members.

Use Benefic or Benefic II as needed, the former being a mana saver when you only need to restore smaller amounts of HP. The critical proc is pretty much pointless, but can save a cast once in a while. Just don’t count on it.

Lady of Crown exists, but you can’t really count on it either.

Should your tank take incredibly high amounts of damage, like during super big pulls in dungeons or something, using Synastry will make healing a breeze. Combined with Largesse, you can reach burst heals so stupidly high that your hotbars could be nothing but Benedictions and you wouldn’t notice a difference.

AoE :

AST AoE being 95% similar to WHM’s, I’ll copy & paste the WHM’s AoE healing part here and edit a few things to make it seamlessly transform into an AST AoE guide.

AoE healing is fairly simple and can be solved with a few questions :

Do I need to heal the tank(s), or the party first ?

→ The Tank(s) ? Benefic II (or , or , or/and ) them first, and then deal with your party as you’d normally do. If you have to heal two tanks at once, you can consider using Earthly Star, or Essential Dignity on one and Benefic II or Aspected Benefic on the off-tank. Adjust as needed, it all depends on what is coming next. Synastry is also useful here, as it would allow you to burst heal the tank(s). Throw it on the off-tank and heal the main tank to heal both at once.

→ Someone else specifically ? Same thing as for tanks then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

→ The Party ? See below !

Do I need to heal the party fast ?

→ No ? Aspected Helios and/or Collective Unconscious will do. Don’t panic, let it tick. If you’re unsure, add a Helios or use Earthly Star, but keep in mind that restoring the group back to full life with remaining time on Aspected Helios’ regen effect means wasted healing. The more time wasted, the worse. It becomes really bad when wasting around 20 seconds, as a Helios would have saved you some MP. It only takes 3 ticks to make Aspected Helios heal for more than Helios.

→ Yes ? Earthly Star. Make them walk into the stars, and see them go back to full health instantly. Add another AoE as required. Help from your co-healer in Raids or Trials is most likely going to happen in those scenarios. Communicate with them as necessary.

You can also add Collective Unconscious to the mix, but Earthly Star will definitely be your best bet.

E. Welcome to the Dark Side : DPSing as an AST

With even less spells to worry about than the White Mage, AST DPS is probably the simplest DPS in the history of the universe. No, seriously. Hello Kitty Online probably has harder rotations.

Big Pulls Rotation Recommandation :

→ Wait for tank to be done with pulling. Healing before they’re done will usually result in some monsters coming for your booty.

→ . Do it.

→

→ add as necessary (not in this specific order). Keep up the AoE “rotation” if not needed.

→ Remember to throw some heals if necessary, and watch your mana if you spam for an extended amount of time. Keep some for healing. This is one of the few situations where you can actually use a single target on yourself.

→ As applies a stun, using it early in a pull can help mitigate a lot of damage, as no monsters will be able to do anything for a while.

Bosses Rotation Recommandation :

→ before pull, around -5s

→ start at -2s :

→ Reapply at ~3s. Should the potion expire before this, refresh it earlier as it will benefit from the potion buff for its complete duration.

→ With this, and will come back together. It’s a bit overkill of a mana regen that early in a fight, especially since Lightspeed is also active. Feel free to remove if you don’t like.

→ add healing as necessary.

Generic Recommandation :

→ Do mechanics.

X. THE END.

GO AHEAD MY SON.

MAKE ME PROUD.

← Nah sadly that’s not me

What ? It’s the end, there’s nothing else here. Go away.

XI. CHANGELOG

October 28th 2017 : Version 1.00.

October 30th 2017 : Version 1.05.

Tiny corrections.

August 2nd 2018 : Version 2.00.

Huge modification of the document’s structure. Added AST and SCH jobs.

August 3rd 2018 : Version 2.01.

Minor edits here and there. Added RDM section Disclaimer because people thought I had RDMs but I don’t. I’m also not trying to tell them how to use their job during downtimes. Pls no boolly.

I – Preface

II – The “Muh job is to heal not to dps” debate

III – Abreviations

IV – Which Healer should I pick ?

V – Role Actions

VI – Healing, the actual main topic of this shit

VII – A Job Detailed : White Mage

A. White Mage Skills : what are these buttons for ?

B. Healing priorities : overview & tips.

C. Welcome to the Dark Side : DPSing as a White Mage

VIII – Heavenspet : Scholar

A. Scholar Skills : Buttons to press while Eos heals

B. Pet choice and pet management

C. Healing priorities : overview & tips.

D. Welcome to the Dark Side : DPSing as a Scholar

IX – Stormcards : Astrologian

A. Astrologian Skills : A Deck full of nice things

B. Which Sect is “the best” ?

C. Card management and priorities

D. Healing priorities : overview & tips.

E. Welcome to the Dark Side : DPSing as an AST

X. THE END.

XI. CHANGELOG

FFXIV Striking Dummies Guide FF14

FFXIV MC Blue Mage Carnivale Guide 2023

You may also like

Leave a Comment