2 questions, really.

[Deleted]

the 1st one being, im really enjoying the game & playing a WHM & am gearing up quite nicely in the 2 months ive been playing (238 ilvl) & was wondering if its worth trying to join a raid FC or just carry on doing higher ilvl dungeons at this late stage of the xpac to get more experience healing?
the 2nd question kind of carries on from the 1st.
i appreciate i'll be playing catch up until stormblood comes out, but is it a level playing field with a new FF xpac & everyone starts afresh & previous gear goes out of the window, as i would like to see end game content at some point when stormblood arrives.
im not in any real rush to raid, like its a matter of life or death, but it would quite nice to know as someone new to FF what to expect with a new xpac.

[Kazgrel]

Regarding first question, you'll want to continue running dungeons and normal mode raids for now, but that's not to say you can't find a FC that wouldn't be able to bring you along for raids. For Savage Creater (A9S-A12S), though, groups probably wouldn't want anything less than ilvl 250 at this point, and that may very well be inching closer to 260 at this point.

Second question: People with savage raid gear will be a little bit ahead of the curve for leveling, but by the time everyone is level 70, the "playing field" will even out a bit, if Heavensward was any model for how Stormblood's PVE progression will work. The first batch of gear wasn't gated behind a weekly tomestone; you could go ham and have a whole set of gear done in a week if you didn't mind running Fractal or Neverreap (shudder) until your eyes bled.

I think it was at least a month or two into Heavensward before the first limited tomestone (esoterics at the time) became available.

[dope_danny]

Honestly with stat changes coming in large updates the only reliable upkeeps are meant to be the 275 relic and even then its basically just going to be a flashy weapon to use till like lvl.67/8 according to interviews.

[Binaris]

1st. FCs in this game are not like in wow. FCs are a much more social aspect of the game. When you get to the point where you want to raid, typically that is when you join a "static" which is normally managed via linkshell. Some require joining the fc but not many, especially now that we have a cross realm PF. Statics are being formed and managed via discord and you don't even need to be on the same server. So yeah, find an fc, but find it for the reason of liking the people. You are not necessarily going to raid with them.

2nd. Yes it is like we start fresh gear wise. For example, the top ilvl gear from raids in 2.0 was outgeared at the latest lvl 58 when HW came out. You would still want to get higher gear and give a shot at some of the learning partys for the trials and raids. Ive noticed FF statics put a strong emphasis on previous experience due to the nature of the fights. It helps ti stay with the curve of the learning parties because if you miss the window, you may never get a kill. For example, the latest trial Zurvan just released 2 weeks ago, every week there are less learning parties and more "no bonus farm" parties. Another 2 weeks and you will find things very hard to find a learning group.

Raiding in Final Fantasy differs greatly from wow. The groups are smaller and every fight is very scripted. IF you have experience in wow, Mythic Thogar train boss comes to mind. Every fight is memorization. Mechanics and maximizing dps are huge. As a whm you can expect to be the main healer while your partner, either a sch or an ast spends most of thier time dpsing. Damage is very predictable so precasting and knowing when you don't need to heal is key. Learning to heal while dpsing is the name of the game and something to work on constantly. It is a bit to get used to but it is far more engaging than the typical wow fights that require healers to maximize hps the whole fight where splash damage is there simply for the reason of giving healers something to do.

[Deleted]

thanks for the answers guys.
as a former wow healer of just over a decade, its nice to get a heads up on what FF is all about as with only 2 months experience, ive only just started to scratch the surface.

[dope_danny]

Well it never hurts to remember its a bit less stressful here where you can get spam frontlines, go buy the new garo pvp set and have an okay 245 set in a day and just know you can swap to any healing job. I love AST healing but if i want i can hit a hotbar button to swap to WHM or SCH and most of the gear is the same. Same for the tomestone stuff from Idyllshire.
The thing you gotta remember is each new X.0 like 2.0, 3.0 and so on starts off giving everyone "artefact gear" which is NOT multi job gear but instead straight WHM robes or a SCH outfit for example. Right now its not going to be a bother till lvl.70 5 odd months from now but worth remembering, but till then for the most part you can heal as whatever you want and the gear all counts bar weapons.