Final Fantasy 14 player is so sick of one particular healing spell, they've built an entire website to explain why you shouldn't use it: 'I finally have had enough'

A healer looks mournfully towards the camera, hand outstretched, as she topples into the bowels of the Tam-Tara Deepcroft in Final Fantasy 14.
(Image credit: Square Enix)

Final Fantasy 14 is a game with, for the most part, solid job design at endgame—Dawntrail's had some bumps in the road but, for the length I've played, class balance has typically been more-or-less decent with only some minor variance and snafus. Outside of the endgame, however, it's all over the shop.

Jobs are assigned AoE attacks at complete random, some like Dragoon don't get their proper kit until level 50—arguably 60—and newer jobs, like the Pictomancer, completely tear apart at the seams when level synced to older content. One such quirk is the existence of lower-tier healing spells like Benefic and, to the chagrin of Reddit user BakaDango, Cure.

"Last night, after a 30+ minute Alexander [raid]," BakaDango writes, "I finally have had enough of dealing with Cure 1 [White Mages]. At this point, I can recognize the Cure 1 jingle from a mile away and every time I hear it, I feel great pain. Rather than try to explain this over and over or convey this in a macro, I decided to make this site."

While this might seem petty on the face of it, as a FF14 player myself—they're right. They're absolutely correct to have made this thing and to be distributing it, and Stopusingcure1.info is now one of my favourite FF14 websites on the internet. "This information is presented with good intentions", a disclaimer reads, before providing several tabs addressing frequently asked questions.

In case you're unfamiliar with the quirks of FF14, let me break it down for you:

  • White Mages get access to Cure (dubbed Cure 1 for illustrative purposes) at level 2.
  • At level 30 they get Cure 2.
  • When cast, Cure has a chance of giving you "freecure", which makes your next casting of Cure 2 cost no MP. This is a trap.

As the site outlines, while Cure 2 is technically less cost-efficient than Cure 1—giving a 800 potency heal for 1000 MP (instead of a 500 potency heal for 400 MP) the fact remains that Cure 1 is slow. FF14 lives and dies by something called the global cooldown (or GCD), which limits you to one "on-GCD" action every 2.5 seconds.

Essentially, it's always more worth it to spend 2.5 seconds pumping a Cure 2 into your tank before using your next GCD to deal some damage, than it is to spend 5 entire seconds on healing. Even if you do need to spam heals, Cure 2 will outpace Cure 1. Here's some actual maths courtesy of BakaDango, if you want to see the raw numbers:

(Image credit: stopusingcure1.info)

That's the same amount of healing with 3 GCDs, or 7.5 seconds, to spare. While Cure 2 costs a bunch more mana, Lucid Dreaming (and out-of-combat MP regen) more than cover you for most purposes.

It's hard to blame new White Mages, though—FF14 basically never tells you this, and someone just going off their ability descriptions will very reasonably think: Hey, Freecure seems like a good thing to fish for. "Unintuitive" is the word. I wonder if, when Yoshi-P and co. turn their sights on job design in the expansion after Dawntrail, if Cure 1 will be banished to the pit where it belongs. Until then, Stopusingcure1.info is there.

Harvey Randall
Staff Writer

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.

Read more
The Cloud of Darkness (Chaotic) in Final Fantasy 14.
Final Fantasy 14's chaotic alliance raid lives up to the name by swapping around 2 wrongly labeled attacks an entire month after everyone's already learned them
Honey B Lovely
Final Fantasy 14's battle designer admits they went a little overboard on streamlining fights, especially for melee: 'Our policy of reducing gameplay-related frustrations was sometimes taken too far'
The boss of Dawntrail's 4th raid, Wicked Thunder, holds an Electrope cube to the air and floods it with levin.
'It's simply impossible to make a difficulty level that's just right for all players': How Final Fantasy 14's lead battle designer has been playing a precarious balancing game for Dawntrail's dungeons and raids
FF14 Dawntrail
Not only did FF14's controversial chatter Wuk Lamat rank 1st for words spoken in Dawntrail, 'Wuk Lamat' was the most-used phrase by the characters in 2nd and 3rd place, too
Tifa
Every prestige blockbuster game should have Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's fast-forward option
Believe it or not, this is a screenshot of World of Warcraft Classic, though it's rendered completely incomprehensible by over 3,600 UI addons.
'Game has become mahjong': WoW Classic player installs over 3,600 addons in a bout of eldritch madness, somehow only needs to remove 20 to get it to 'work'
Latest in Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy 16
Final Fantasy 16 is the latest game to be freed from the shackles of Denuvo, though its 7-year-old predecessor still remains in DRM jail
Pint, a lalafellin mage, looks towards the sunset sky and closes his eyes in gracious defeat in Final Fantasy 14.
FF14 streamer yields to the MMO's bounciest catgirl, after inspiring them to beat his new speedrunning record 3 times before he could finish making a video about it
A Vanu Vanu munches on a soft taco
Final Fantasy 14 is, you guessed it, still making bank for Square Enix as Dawntrail rakes in the big bucks, though it might not be all sunshine and tacos
The boss of Dawntrail's 4th raid, Wicked Thunder, holds an Electrope cube to the air and floods it with levin.
Final Fantasy 14 promises crackdown on stalking exploits with actual solutions now, rather than politely asking the plugin creator to stop
A hyur in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail looks amazed, standing in a gorgeous forest city-scape.
In a sea of bad videogame clothing, I've already fallen in love with Final Fantasy 14's upcoming collaboration with BlackMilk
Image for
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth debuts to the highest peak concurrent users of the series on Steam—except for the MMO, naturally
Latest in News
The TikTok app with Donald Trump ranting behind it.
Trump says the United States is already talking to potential TikTok buyers: 'We're dealing with four different groups, and a lot of people want it ... all four are good'
Corsair launches Custom Labs in Europe
Corsair's Custom Labs is now available in Europe, allowing you to make your gear as cute or ugly as you want and no-one will stop you
A masked man with an axe in the woods
Rebellion CEO seems kind of awed by major studios making massive videogames: 'How do you organize a game that has 2,000 people working on it?'
A young witch watering a smiling mushroom in a magic garden
Here's a roguelite dungeon crawler Steam reviewers call 'a botanical Diablo' and 'like Cult of the Lamb' except you manage a mystical garden
Destiny 2 Rite of the Nine: The Emissary, massive, ominously standing at the edge of a water basin.
Oops! Bungie rolled out Destiny 2's Rite of the Nine event three weeks early, and new loot is already dropping
Chatacabra from Monster Hunter Wilds
The latest Monster Hunter Wilds event quest gives piles of Armor Spheres for hunting a Chatacabra, making this a very bad week to be a frog in the Forbidden Lands