The healing jobs in Final Fantasy XIV are an integral part of the game. They provide a variety of different ways to play and contribute to the success of your party.
The ffxiv endwalker healer changes is a preview of the healing jobs that will be implemented in Final Fantasy XIV.
Let’s face it, the Endwalker expansion for Final Fantasy XIV was always going to make healers feel like “Sage and the other three.” Sage is the first new healing profession to be introduced to the game in a long time, and on top of that, he has an instant aesthetic cool factor that only the Edgiest Job Ever could hope to equal. The idea is that Sage was going to be the first thing on everyone’s mind… which makes me a little sorry that I didn’t get as much playing with Sage as I did with Reaper on the media tour.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t play around with it and get a sense for what it has to offer, and it seems to be a fun mix of powers and gimmicks, despite some notable flaws among healers. So, let’s take a look at all of the healing professions in Endwalker and see where they stand, from minor tweaks to major overhauls and whole new entries.
White Mage is a powerful spellcaster.
Going into Endwalker, White Mage hasn’t altered all that much, which is probably unsurprising. You receive two charges of your barrier spell plus an improved version of Glare and Holy, which is great. Apart from that? It’s White Mage, after all. It largely operates the same way it has in the past, and it is still the lineup’s most aggressive and damage-oriented “pure” healer.
Lilybell, the new marquee ability, seems to be a little overdesigned and unusable. The following is how it works: When you suffer damage, you plant the tiny healing flower, and it pulses with healing to all surrounding party members. When the effect ends, a smaller pulse of healing will occur for any leftover stacks of the buff. Although it may be helpful in certain circumstances involving party-wide damage, it does not seem to be nearly as effective as just casting Medica II again and weathering the issue.
The fact that the job hasn’t received much in the way of change is perhaps an indication of how strong the White Mage kit is. It’s not weaker in any way, and the new AoE and single-target damage improvements are nice, but it’s not much better than before.
Scholar
Scholar seems to have adopted the role as the more supportive of the two barrier healers, and it hasn’t altered much since its Shadowbringers form. That may seem to be an issue, but I believe partly of that is due to the fact that having an Astrologian and a White Mage in a full party instead of a Scholar is a viable choice. What the work does have is good, though a little less spectacular than it might be.
Scholar, for example, receives a buff to its primary damaging spell and its AoE ability, ensuring that it remains the only healer with a viable damage option while traveling. Adloquium and Succor become more potent barriers as a result of their healing improvement feature. The job may also increase a target’s maximum HP and provide additional healing, making a tank more resilient in the face of tankbusters and the like.
Expedient, the main event ability, has already become a joke since it’s essentially simply Sprint and a small damage shield when triggered. However, it also lasts for 20 seconds (which is a long time in any case), reduces damage by 10%, and is ideal for any scenario in which players must stack after being spread out or spread after a stack to divide damage. It’s one of those talents that looks ridiculous at first, but after you think about it, you can see how useful it can be.
I don’t blame Scholar players who believe their profession might use a bit more flare and boost, but Scholar is better than it was in Shadowbringers, and it’s still a good job in Endwalker. It’s a shame it doesn’t receive anything truly spectacular in the way of a showy ability, but it’s still good.
Astrologian
So you’re undoubtedly aware that Astrologian has undergone a major overhaul. It now only receives barriers from Neutral Sect and Celestial Intersection, and its card interaction has been somewhat altered. You’re accumulating symbols for the self-buff Astrodyne, not for Divination; you also have somewhat more buttons to utilize the lesser arcana cards along the way, which I’m not a fan of. To put it another way, more buttons to accomplish the same things.
The job’s new abilities include a single-target damage cut that works as a mini-Excogitation after the effect expires, as well as another boost to the effectiveness of the job’s AoE and single-target damage spells (still weaker than others). Meanwhile, the huge headlining ability is intriguing, functioning similarly to Wildfire but for healing; damage is piled and then a portion of it is repaired after the effect expires, making it handy for absorbing large bursts of damage or phase transitions.
In practice, most Astrologians are more likely to notice the card changes than anything else; for a long time, the majority of AST players have favored the Diurnal sect. The work is still the most supportive healer, as it should be, but it has lost a little flexibility along the way.
Sage
So here’s a quick overview of Sage: It’s a healer that heals a little amount by inflicting harm. This isn’t very uncommon in and of itself. Every healer is supposed to do a lot of damage in between healing and have some kind of passive heal during pulls, with the Astrologian and White Mage utilizing regen effects and Scholars using faeries. Sage has the worst passive healing in this respect, since it is limited to one target and (in this build) has a lesser potency than faeries. However, it still provides you a sense of what the work entails. It’s the barrier healer that’s “aggressive.”
The job’s primary feature is selecting a victim to get healing pulses as you do damage and using Eukrasia, a special action that functions similarly to Dark Arts in principle. Eukrasia converts your primary damaging spell to a DoT, your main heal to a barrier, or your main AoE heal to a barrier AoE heal. When your barrier is completely eaten, you get a resource that you may use to cast additional damaging spells, thus there’s an ethos of striving to keep your barriers up as much as possible and swapping with Eukrasia as required.
Sage also has a number of damaging abilities with corresponding heals, as well as numerous quick heal effects that require Addersgall, a resource that accumulates similarly to White Mage flowers (slowly over time). You also receive a dash to a specific party member or opponent as required, as well as a number of intriguing pulsating barrier effects that apply a barrier and then re-apply that barrier until all stacks are consumed or the time runs out. You may also tear down your walls to heal in an emergency.
Weaknesses? Outside of the Addersgall heals and role actions, Sage has no tools for mana recovery, and its passive healing is the lowest among the healers based on potency at a glance. It will also be the most dependent on switching targets and coping with shifting situations, with a range of damage choices and an aggressive overall playstyle to balance things out.
In a nutshell, it seems to be a lot of fun. Players that want to be as helpful as possible will definitely dislike it, but if you prefer technical classes with a strong healing component, you’ll probably like it.
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The endwalker sage is a healing job that has been released for Final Fantasy XIV. It is the first time that the game has had a new healing job since its launch in 2010.
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