[Kitalrez]

Originally Posted by Aksannyi

I noticed that, too ... and I thought it was strange myself.
Does the "thanks" actually do anything on this forum, anyway, besides let people know if you're helpful or not?

I wish I could tell you the answer to that one. I mostly use it for trophy collecting. For instance, I've been thanked by Murphie, Caspian, Icemage, and Grizzlebeard before. All of these community members I respect, and am at least slightly proud that I finally said something they thought was useful.

On the other hand, we no longer have a way to rate a post down. So, there's no real feedback option to tell people when a poster is "full of hot gas". Given the length of many of my posts, any poor miserable fool who wades through one of my posts can only benefit from the inclusion of one of these buttons.

[Karinya]

With Parade Gorget, I think PLD is a viable choice for healer now. Max MP isn't as important as MP regen, and the combination of auto-refresh plus up to 2/tick in gear refreshes is quite nice.

I haven't seen a BLU healer, but... although they can get some nice job traits including auto-refresh, I kind of doubt that they could match the effectiveness of WHM, RDM or SMN. Like SMN, they have 0 base enhancing magic making their bar spells very weak, and they get only half-leveled protect and shell. They also get only half-leveled -na spells and don't get Erase until very late (although this goes for RDM too and is irrelevant against some monsters). They can't haste anyone but themselves. They can't raise until 50 and can't raise 2+ ever. Unlike SMN, they don't have Shining Ruby, Aerial Armor, Spring Water, Lunar Cry, Ecliptic Growl, Ecliptic Howl, Noctoshield and Dream Shroud to make up for it. (They *do* have Earthen Ward, sort of.) Instead they have a weaker curaga that costs almost as much as the real thing.

[Shinhiryu_Kage]

BLU/WHM is a very effective healer. Magic Fruit coupled with a Cure 3 + a Light staff can cure you of upwards of 800+ HP and much more in just several seconds. When I was playing NIN and doing fire crawlers in Mt. Zhalyom, I was hitting red several times due to fire damage and the BLU/WHM was able to bring me back to fully rather quickly. I liked it.

There is only 1 more job that can perform healing very capable and that would be Chemist. Now, I would love to play a Chemist because then I could shoot a gun and do DD and also main heal as with items. If SE brings out that job, I will be estactic like a little school girl in pigtails.

If SE brings out Geomancer, making it the definitive solution to most people's request to have a nature based job in the line up, its possible GEO/WHM would become another effective healer. Geomancy in the past FF11 games have had AoE cures and stuff. Not sure about anti- spells though..... anyway, that possibly would prove another type of main healing job.

[Elenim]

I've played blu/whm from lvl 1-34 with 1 level in there of blu/rdm to see how the en- spells would work out. From 1-30 they make a competant backup healer but once you get wild carrot you can hold your own for awhile. At 34 my wild carrot in full str/dd gear heals for 143 HP at a cost of 37 MP or 3.86 HP/MP. Cure III maxes out at 180 HP at a cost of 46 MP or 3.91 HP/MP. So at this level if i add a few more MND I could easily put my ratio over that of maxed efficiency of Cure III. So MP for MP I heal as well as anyone out there at this level.

[Ruz]

Originally Posted by Elenim

I've played blu/whm from lvl 1-34 with 1 level in there of blu/rdm to see how the en- spells would work out. From 1-30 they make a competant backup healer but once you get wild carrot you can hold your own for awhile. At 34 my wild carrot in full str/dd gear heals for 143 HP at a cost of 37 MP or 3.86 HP/MP. Cure III maxes out at 180 HP at a cost of 46 MP or 3.91 HP/MP. So at this level if i add a few more MND I could easily put my ratio over that of maxed efficiency of Cure III. So MP for MP I heal as well as anyone out there at this level.

The only problem with this is that BLU doesn't have the damage reduction that other healers have, Protect with RDM and WHM, and Shining Ruby + Protect with SMN. Yet I do agree that with wild carrot BLU makes a good healer, does anyone know the caps of its healing spells?

Anyway on topic I would play another healer if SE introduced it to the game, I think that chemist would be great with the ability to do back line DMG and heal + buff with items. Though it would have to have a drawback like increase enmity or longer recast timers then WHM.

It would be really awesome if the gun equiped had an effect on the speed of the items used, as if the chemist had to shoot items as well as bullets. It could get a scatter shot job ability for -aga type spells and different guns could increase its skill in different ways. Instead of spells it could get recipies (not unlike COR's dice, or NIN's ninjitsu) and the use of them would take consumables.

Well I got a bit excited up there but I would really like to see a new main healer (by any stretch of the word).

[Saren]

1. Healing Magic skill is a pain in the butt to raise on any job. The skillup checks are all made against things already near our level, (other players in party), meaning we get less chance to skillup like a BLM casting a nuke on something 6 levels higher or more. Let's also not forget that several of the jobs who can heal don't even have native healing magic skill, which means you get stuck levelling as main heal with a skill rating that isn't even capped for a subjob.
2. There's no real benefit to playing main heal. When all you're concentrating on is casting Cure spells, your other spell skills suffer, as do your melee skills.
3. For most mage jobs, meleeing at all is not an option, further reducing any possible fun derived from the situation, unless you really love mashing macros repeatedly.
4. Since when does anyone invite the healer into a party as the highest levelled job? Sure, these people might like you now, but they're going to pull out of your exp level range very quickly unless you have a longer playtime than they do. There's an awful lot of having to meet new parties and then having to prove yourself all over again.

Kitalrez


O.K. I am only level 20 so I really can't talk about high levels but......

1. Healing skill caps without any real effort from me so far. When I am capped and level in a party, I am normally only about half way to my next level before it caps again. Spam curing myself (the only time I did this was level 1-14 when I was capping myself ready to go to the Dunes) got me a point of healing skill every 15-20 minutes or so. According to the somepage skill calculator, skill addition for a level only ever goes up to 5 points and given that you are always going to be casting on people around your level I am assuming it doesn't get any/much harder to cap?

2. I do a lot more than just heal. I buff a lot too which keeps my enhancing at/close to cap and spam barspelling myself boosts me up if I ever need that. Right now I am also enfeebling quite a lot which I am sure will slack off a bit at higher levels but that's nearly capped at the moment. The only magic skills I am having trouble keeping capped are Divine and enfeebling and enfeebling isn't far off. As for melee skills, sure, mine are not capped right now but skill up parties/levelling another job (thf looks useful if you are planning to farm a reasonable amount and aparently nin is later on for soloing, I am sure there are a few others) should sort that out.

3. Whm is fun! It's challenging. Whm is a very strategic job as they all are I think to an extent if you are playing them well. I don't just switch off my brain and spam cure the tank. As soon as a monster is incoming I have to get the correct short term buff(s) up on the party to minimise the damage and then make sure I am in the right position so I don't catch AoE damage but can still cast on everyone. Right now squeezing in enfeebles without letting anyone get problematically low hp is adding to the fun. I have to keep an eye on what the monster is doing, who has hate, after an AoE who can I get away with not healing right now, does anyone have a status ailment, if so is it going to be more efficient to ignore it for the time being, what has everyone else cast on the mob and the other party members and what are they casting now? You have to keep analysing constantly. If I cast cure II now I will probably get hate but the tank could really do with one, but the tank should provoke in a second, o.k. there is the provoke, cast now....etc. I don't hit anything sure but playing whm is lots of fun for me.

4. I can't talk about high level because I am not remotely near. If the invites drop off as I level up...blah. I play whm because I love the job not for any other reason. Blm seems to have the same problem (undesirability due to down time etc) when you get to higher levels but people get round it. If whm is truely not useful in most situations at high level then a few tweaks would be welcome but if it's just that there are a couple of area's where whms struggle to be useful (as I am sure is true of all jobs) then I don't think anything needs changing. As for proving yourself to your party, unless you know the people you are partying with isn't that true of every job in every party? Even the most useful job can get a party killed if the player behind it is bad, right? I think most people would rather have an unpopular job played by a smart player than a popular job with a 'lolz i aggrod gobs' player.

As for soloing, I have read that it gets harder to kill monsters that check the same as you level but I got the last 400 exp of level 19 yesterday, soloing DC+ and one EM+ mob for 75-100 exp a fight using my party club because I hadn't bought one for soloing with. It took me about an hour (with lots of sitting around and chatting inbetween fights), not great exp but that's nearly as good exp as I have had in some of my dunes parties. Gave me a couple of levels of club and evasion and one of divine magic too

[Pawkeshup]

BLM doesn't main heal for most of the game for one very important reason: We wear paper armor with no vit backup. A WHM can take a hit or two to the chin, BLM crumples after that.

In the end game it's more viable with Black Cloak/Stoneskin combo. But I think any /whm mage can main heal in a pinch. What we need is another main healing job. There's 18 jobs... and only 1 main healer job.