Shadowbringers is looming ever closer. You are working hard to cross the final items off of your bucket list before the patch hits. One of those things is to finish leveling the jobs you want to get to 70. All of them. What better way to level than to simply run your roulettes every day? And I might just happen to have some rather interesting tales from the duty finder to tell you all about!

After raid I decided to jump on my tank to knock out a leveling roulette before finally calling it a day. Loading into the Vault I did not expect much – just the usual, smooth dungeon clear at an adequate speed. However, something seemed amiss. The enemies were dying rather slowly, even though everyone was casting their skills and using their cooldowns. I checked my gear – maybe I would find it broken or outdated for the dungeon, but none of that was the case.

It wasn’t until I noticed a familiar sound which seemed out of place that I ended up understanding what exactly was happening. I double-checked my red mage’s casts to see that he was weaving casts of Vercure in between his Scatters. A red mage player casting Vercure on the paladin as soon as he dropped below around 80% of his health. I’m not sure if he was unaware of the present healer, did not trust him or just wanted to be a healer with unnecessary long queue times. It was almost cute, and I’m sure the healer enjoyed the change of pace as well, as he started spamming Gravity just a few seconds later.

Don’t get me wrong – I love a player being aware of their class’s potential, helping the healer out when he is struggling to keep up. But sometimes you simply have to trust them to know what they are doing. When the tank is dropping to low health your healer might still have some cooldowns prepared to save the day!

• 

• 

I am sure that we have all been there. The dungeon run is a bit slower than you wish it would be, the tank maybe stops for five seconds after a group of enemies and somebody in your party is getting a little bit impatient. They start running ahead of the group – maybe straight into the next pack of monsters, or to simply pull more because they think that the tank and healer can handle more! Don’t be this guy. You’re nothing more than annoying to the tank and healer just because you have a need to get out of the instance maybe thirty seconds earlier. If you’re healing and decide to pull more, know that you can handle it – and know that you might stress out the tank a little.

Let the tank play at a pace that they are comfortable with. It won’t kill you to get out of the dungeon two or three minutes later than you normally would. Wiping would just take longer than letting the tank do small pulls.

• 

• 

For some reason unknown to me, in the German localization of Final Fantasy XIV, the spell Esuna is called Medica. I am not sure if this is where this player’s confusion about the skill came from, but it is the only somewhat logical explanation I have come across to date. It was in Cutter’s Cry where I encountered this player. A white mage around level 40 using a rather unorthodox method to try and keep the party alive.

I noticed my health dropping really low on the first group of enemies, to the point where I started to use some potions I’ve had from running Heaven-on-High just to stay alive. It turns out this person was spamming Esuna on me – GCD after GCD, barely ever changing to a random Medica or even a Cure II if I was lucky. Don’t get me wrong – I tried to explain to them, but they did not notice my message in the chat box. It turned out to be a rather exciting time in the dungeon: fearing death on nearly every group, the healer even dying a minute into the final boss fight and having to actively use Max-Potions to stay alive.

They would not use Esuna to cleanse the DoT debuffs on the players – they would instead desperately spam Esuna on the tank in an attempt to keep them alive. It was quite the entertaining dungeon run and definitely a unique experience, spicing up a roulette in a way I never expected.

• 

• 

I’ve got a little question for the healer players I meet out in the roulettes. Is it really enjoyable to stand around, sometimes for maybe a minute or two, doing absolutely nothing? Are you chatting with your FC while your fairy or co-healer does all the work? Do you, maybe, just hate pressing buttons?

When you’re new to healing, your first trial can definitely be overwhelming. There’s a lot of things to keep track of, and you might rather prefer to stand still for a second while preparing for the next mechanic. This is nothing against these players who are just getting into healing.

If I’m loading into an Alphascape raid, maybe even a savage version, or the “newest” alliance raid and I see healers standing in a corner, doing nothing and waiting for the tank to drop to half HP so they can finally grace us with their presence and start casting that one healing spell before going back to sending instagram stories to their friends, I have to question why you are doing this to everyone.

Do you hate playing the game? Would it kill you to maybe only get your DoTs on the boss? Could you not just do everyone a favour and speed this whole thing up, so everyone can get their tokens and be done until next Tuesday? But I get it. Neither do I pay your sub, nor are you a DPS. Why would you use damaging casts at all when you’re a healer, right?

• 

•