Belghast the Healer

Lack of Rundowns

Over the last few days the whole post rundown concept has simply not been sustainable.  As I said yesterday I have had a whole bunch of technical issues with my two primary machines, leading me to be super late with my blog post.  As a result the whole rundown thing just hasn’t been in the radar.  At this point since I am having to edit them back in later, I am wondering if it really is sustainable for me to keep doing.  My morning blogging ritual gives me thirty minutes to an hour of time to work in a blog post.  The verification and retrieval of the links takes almost that long as well because ultimately I end up reading the posts as I go.  So on the week days I simply do not have enough time to keep up the practice.

The first few days I simply edited the list in at work over lunch, but the problem is my work world has gotten significantly busier as well.  All of this frustrates me since I want to find a way to showcase all of the awesome posts other than my ubiquitous retweets.  What I really want to showcase is the fact that out of the 45 or so participants…  35 of those have not missed a single day.   Then we have another batch that is also awesome of bloggers who started late but have been faithful ever since.  My biggest hope is that this spirit of community and shared purpose extends past the month.  I know the Newbie Blogger Initiative as it has run on, has gotten to be that way… in that I am still in regular contact with a lot of the people I mentored during the month.  I posted awhile back about the lack of community out here in the non-game-specific space… but hopefully we are changing that one blog at a time.

Running for Grand Prize

Began Late but Not Missed a Day Since

 

Belghast the Healer

ffxiv 2014-08-06 14-41-38-651 Yesterday I managed to get to level 16 on my conjurer, the required level to start the Duty Roulette process.  Now you have to realize that I have not really healed anything in years, at least not a dungeon.  Probably the last time I regularly healed was during the Burning Crusade on my Paladin in World of Warcraft.  That was roughly seven years ago, and it is a role that I tend to shy away from.  The reasoning is my very first MMO experience was as a Cleric in Everquest, and it pretty much burned me on the role from that point out.  That said I like to always have at least a healing option in my stable of alts, and since I now have every possible role other than healer… I figured it was time to do something about that.  So I channeled all of my bravery and queued for the Duty Roulette…  there is honestly something about that name that is so much more fitting than “finder”.  When you hit the button you really are taking a huge chance on what exactly you are going to get in the process.

ffxiv 2014-08-06 14-45-58-060 Thankfully for my very first dungeon I got an amazing group.  I seriously probably could not have assembled a better “starter” dungeon group than I ended up with.  We had dps that never pulled aggro, and a tank that managed to pick up every single add without fail.  There was never a point at which I drew healing aggro on anything, and I literally did not have to heal anyone other than the main tank.  In the back of my mind I knew this was a rarity as far as random dungeon groups went, but I was thankful to have it as my “breaking in” period.  For the most part everything went smoothly and we made it to the end of Tam-Tara Deep Croft in what felt like record time… without skipping any content in the process.  I was thinking to myself that yeah, I could maybe do this healing thing.

Reality Sets In

ffxiv 2014-08-06 15-13-03-480 So if I got the idyllic situation for my first run, my second run was the absolute worst possible situation.  We get started and the tank is the only one of us not communicating at all.  Like people tend to be pretty friendly and I open every dungeon run with a simple “Hey Folks, How Goes It?”, which usually starts up some chatter as we do the dungeon run.  The tank was completely silent, and sat there for a few minutes and then suddenly lurched forward without warning and pulled.  My immediate thought was console player, since they tend not to respond to anything… ever… or if they do they respond in very short single character replies.  It was a gladiator tank and he proceeded to start beating on a single target, and ignoring everything else in the pack.  The moment I cast a single heal it all magnetized to me and I essentially became the main tank at that point.  Problem was that the target he was on… he wasn’t really tanking either and the first time a dps started attacking it they would pull it off of him.

ffxiv 2014-08-06 16-44-12-862 After a few pulls like this the tank proceeded to AFK, at which point the group kicked him and we cleared the way to the first boss without a tank at all.  It was me, a thaumaturge and a pugilist and I healed through the damage.  When we got another tank it this one was wearing most of the relic armor set, so my hope was that she would do all of the things that the other tank wasn’t.  Turned out that she was an extremely competent tank and the rest of the run went smoothly.  By the time group three had rolled around I was starting to feel my wheaties, and thought I could take on anything.  I didn’t really struggle last night until I encountered my first group wanting to use weird tactics at the expense of the healer.  In Halatali on the final boss, there are these adds that need to be killed before they get to the fire in the center of the room.  If you don’t catch one it does an AOE burst on the entire party.  My group ignored these completely and as a result I had to heal through constant AOE burst damage… Medica was my friend.

More Chill Than Tanking

The major reality check that I was not quite prepared for was the fact that it is so much more relaxing to heal than to tank.  Granted that might just be a me thing, but I feel like I am constantly having to watch everything and make sure I have aggro on it all as I play a game of “bejeweled” making sure all of the gems are bright orange squares.  Healing on the other hand is more like playing whack a mole, and that invokes so much less stress.  I have to make sure I am not standing in shit, and then I have to make sure all of the bars are full.  That’s it, that is my only focus and I feel like I can relax considerably.   Sure there are moments where you have to work hard to top everyone off, but that isn’t “every single pull” where I feel like as a tank you are constantly struggling to maintain threat over your party.  At this point of course I have only healed the first few instances which admittedly are much easier than the ones to come, so we will see if I change my opinion significantly as I go.

ffxiv 2014-08-06 22-13-56-942 The long and short is that I am embracing this new role and enjoying myself.  In the video at the beginning of this block I heal three different dungeons and all of the groups go relatively smoothly.  I am glad that my party cannot hear my stream of consciousness commentary, because it would likely piss a lot of them off.  Ashgar was talking about getting commendations so much faster as a healer, and I can see that to some extent.  During one of the dungeon runs I got three commendations, meaning that I got every one available.  However there are multiple dungeons I have walked out of without a single one, which is something that is super rare for me as a DPS.  I feel like tanking is the flashy job that everyone appreciates…  not dying is significantly less tangible.  As a tank I have always appreciated my healers, because they are the lifeline that allows me to do the batshit crazy things I do.  I feel like there isn’t as much appreciate for healers from the general public.  You only notice the healers when they are doing a poor job.

Writing Prompts

I’ve been stressed and busy the last few days and as a result I have not added any new prompts to the stack.  However as I have seen a few people dipping into them I thought I should add a few more to the pile.

  • What is the most thankless job in gaming?  I am trying to keep this broad on purpose because I am not meaning the holy trinity.  There are so many roles from ore farmer, to sniper that are played in various games.  What one gets the least credit?
  • What is your favorite appearance item or set of items?  Everyone has something that they keep in their inventory just because they love the look of it.  What is yours?
  • What does MMO mean to you?  This term gets used broadly, but doesn’t really have a firm definition.  What does it mean to you and where do you draw the line between traditional online games.

#Blaugust #FFXIV #Conjurer

9 thoughts on “Belghast the Healer”

  1. I miss the days when the tank was not the puller. When the puller cold go grab the mob and then just drop it at the tank. EQ Monk Feign Pull FTW! a long lost and much missed mechanic

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