Final Fantasy 14 fan coins the ‘HO’ run while attempting to beat the MMO with a healer-only team in the most punishing way possible

An enterprising Final Fantasy 14 fan has set out to complete the MMO’s story content using only a party of healers, with additional rules thrown in to make the task more difficult. They were quickly made to regret the decision. 

As content creator Kougan explains in the YouTube video below, the rules for the challenge run range from simple to headache-inducing. A new character has to be made for the run, only healers are allowed to join group content, and additional rules to make the challenge more of a pain must be introduced.

As such, Kougan sets dungeon content to the minimum item level to keep damage dealt low and damage received high, and turns The Echo buff off, which essentially boosts damage and healing capabilities if your team wipes. 

It doesn’t take Kougan long to run into some challenges. Doing the story content is a doddle; the real hurdles come when tackling dungeons and trials. Some bouts put you into a split of one tank, one healer, and two DPS jobs, whereas larger content essentially doubles that.

Tanks typically draw the attention of enemies while weathering big damage moves dubbed Tank Busters, whereas DPS players ensure enough damage is done to avoid team wipes on certain battle checkpoints. While healers chip in with damage and keep everyone healthy, booting the tank and DPS out means the squishier jobs have to weather big moves that knock off most, if not all of their health while dealing enough damage to down bosses before they enrage and kill everyone. 

Kougan plunders their way through most of A Realm Reborn without too much issue. Keeping food buffs up helps them and their team survive most one-shot moves, and the rest is down to patience. Most Final Fantasy 14 parties race through content by grouping enemies and dealing area-of-effect attacks before getting to the boss, though that’s not immediately possible for a team of healers – most of them don’t get AoE attacks until later on, and they are not strong enough to survive against crowds that get too large. 

The real challenge comes with the trials and dungeons that end A Realm Reborn’s story offering. Beating Garuda meant respecting the mechanics of the fight and not face-tanking it, whereas the final two encounters took heaps of theorycrafting and near-perfect runs to get over the line. And with that, A Realm Reborn is essentially done and dusted. Just the four expansions and all the content between to go, then. Godspeed, Kougan. 

Elsewhere in the realm of hardcore Final Fantasy 14 runs, this fan spent 240 hours trying to solo A Realm Reborn before they finally accomplished the feat.