Advice for an Anxiety-Ridden Healer

[OceanWilds]

Haha... the title says it all. But I need help. I love running dungeons.

Light parties? Great! I can do this.

Standard parties? Ok... 8 people... I can do this....

24 player parties? WHAT IS GOING ON. I CAN'T SEE. HAVE I GONE BLIND? WHO AM I HEALING?!

Yeah... It gets nerve wrecking when most of my screen is taken up with health bars and there are so many mobs and players on my screen. It kind of takes the fun out of running dungeons. But I know that it should not.

So, I need help? How does a Healer (WHM) on a PS4 keep up with it all? How do I stay the amazing healer that I know I can be, without going crazy over what to do?

This is a call to all the Healers out there? How do you cope with it? Do you have any tricks of the trade? Any advice for a PS4 user (AND NO. Saying get a PC is not an option. Yes yes.. master race and all that but... no)? I think this is a good place to post this (IE the Healer Roles forum) but still...

HELP?!

[HyoMinPark]

The easiest way to make 24-mans easy and not overwhelming? Experience.

I remember my first 24-man; I hated it, and I never wanted to do another one. It was utter chaos, and I wasn’t even a healer during it. Now, I enjoy them; I especially enjoy healing them. For me, queuing into them more often and getting comfortable with them was what made them less anxiety-ridden. On all three roles. Having friends there with me also helped, as they would take up the role of my co-healer or of the tank to try and make things a bit easier on me as I adjusted to 24-mans. After a while, I no longer needed them to necessarily heal with me or tank for me.

For the screen clutter, there are options to turn off some of the noise from Alliances besides your own:
Under Character Configuration > Display Name Settings > Others, you can choose from a variety of options to try and make things not so cluttered on your screen. For example, I generally do not display the names of players in other alliances unless we’re in combat. This gets rid of useless noise that I don’t need to see between bosses. You can choose to completely hide the names and HP bars of other alliances if you so choose. I simply choose not to because I may need to raise one of them, or help out with healing if the healers in that alliance are struggling.

I would also recommend moving around your HUD—particularly the Alliance Lists. I find them in the way in their default position. I keep mine directly under my Party List, which is moved slightly from the default position, just so all health bars are in one spot. But you need to figure out whatever works well for you with regards to your HUD layout and settings.

[Cheremia]

Always focus on yourself first and foremost. You stay alive first, then healing the tank, and then the dps.
Focus on the mechanics. Don't bother about others maybe doing it wrong. YOu may do them wrong, happens, don't beat yourself up over it.

Is the tank your tank or the one of another alliance in a 24 man? If from another alliance, their healers should heal him. If yours, it's just like in 8 mans.

If you happen to be new: Tell your party or the whole alliance, at least one person hopefully will tell you basic mechanics.

Some people might be mean about it but if you do not feel comfortable with dpsing, don't do it. Tell them clear as day, you want to know what's going on first so you're concentrating on healing.

ALWAYS focus target the main boss. Always. There are a lot of times you do not target the boss and therefore would not know what mechanic comes next. And that leads to confusion on your part, if you see it, you can react to it. If not, it comes out of nowhere.

Play around with your hud.
Where do you see your party members the best?
Where is the best for boss/team healthbars?
Where should your focus target be so you can always see what aboss does?
Where to put your castbars?
I do think it makes a lot of difference if you don't have to search all over the place to get those informations fast.
You can also make them smaller if they're too big for you

Take a deep breath.
Everybody dies but the tank is alive and so are you?
Swiftcast raise the other healer
Keep the tank alive.
Keep yourself alive, like mentioned before.
Mostly might end up in a wipe but keeping people alive> instantly needing to res them. If you have time to hardcast res? Fine, do it. If not, then don't, you're not a miracle maker.
But don't let anybody tell you you're doing something wrong by not instantly ressing them and all.

Try to get used to things at your own pace. Tell your team that you may be abit slow sometimes(maybe?) but do your best.

Just don't let yourself be pressured by others, not everybody is a walking godhealer out of nowhere and there are things you can not prevent.

[Brightamethyst]

Try turning down (or off) particle effects for non-party members. Character Config > Control Settings > Character. That helps a LOT to reduce screen clutter in alliances.

[Lynesse]

You cope with it by forgiving yourself when you make a mistake.

It's that simple. You're going to make mistakes until you learn the content. Accept this, and it'll be easier to laugh about it.

Last night, my WHM girlfriend had to do Lakshmi. I hop on RDM thinking, "Yep, I'll help out." I die before anyone else because I forget to use Vrill a second time. The rest of the party wipes because both healers stack, but no one else does -- healers explode. We all feel like idiots.

People are worried, everyone's scared that they messed up. You know how it goes. I say: "No one remembers this crap. I haven't done it since Stormblood's release." Two player commendations.

Forgive yourself -- forgive others -- make sure to console people when mistakes are made -- everyone has a good time.

[Jellybums]

Hey there, PS4 player here, too. The most common problem we run into in 24-man raids is the HUD taking up half the screen. Resize everything, even move some boxes closer to the edge of the screen. Like Brightamethyst said, turn off particle effects from other party members. I think I even removed seeing the names of non-party members, too, can't recall exactly how but it helps a lot.

Where's the best place to stand? Between your tank/melee and row 4 range DPS, occasionally your AoE heals will miss a derp bard or two but don't worry about it. You'll get the hang of it eventually and even be able to raise non-party healers.

[MoroMurasaki]

The vast majority of advice given so far has been spot on so I don't want to just repeat things. Some other stuff I think can be relevant...

24 mins (like anything) will get a lot easier with practice. I think healers in 24mans tend to see a bit more of a need to move for mechanics because mechanics tend to target the tank or some of the rest of the alliance where as in 8mans some mechanics tend to land more on dps. Be ready to move when you don't know what is coming next.

Recognize attack names so you can precast the appropriate heal to land when the attack hits. Something quite a few bosses do is (attack that needs healing)+(mech that will effect at least some healers) to delay your ability to heal.

I tend to burn Swiftcast a lot more in 24mans than other content. I pop it for everything. Saving it for deaths can be nice if someone dies but if I can prevent that death from happening by using Swiftcast I come out better off on the other side of things.

If you can without it being much of a pain (I don't know I haven't played on controller in a long time) toss a Regen on the main tank sometimes even when they aren't your tank. You'll learn to recognize the bosses that are a bit rougher to heal through and it's just nice to help out. I know as far as early on things I love when people do this for the first boss of World of Darkness as his laser beam hits hard and if tanks don't dodge the floor color mech on top of it they can drop fast.

Lastly just remember to have confidence. You've completed a lot of content to get to your level, be proud of it!

[Risvertasashi]

As cold as it may sound, healing is a matter of priorities. This is ultimately true regardless of the content.

First, do mechanics. Even if others need healing. You can't heal anyone if you're dead.
Then heal the tank. (Well, in a 24 man, can skip this unless they're MTing).
After that, heal the DPS, those that are in range with priority. Party/AoE healing also has priority - don't let the party die because 1 person ate something and got low. If people start dying, rez those that can also rez first.

Your party's in good shape? Ok, now you can start worrying about the other alliances. Rez dead healers as a priority and honestly, you can (and probably should) pretty much ignore the rest of the alliance after that.

[Erakir]

Others have mentioned the UI - I can't stress the importance of customizing your healer UI to work for you. There's a lot to see, and consolidating it in a way that makes sense for your eyes will ease the stress of looking around everywhere and getting lost. This takes playing around - and if the PS4 Alliance bars are indeed huge like Jellybums mentioned above, shrinking them might help a lot! I know my own are smaller than default on PC.

I also agree with turning down others' particle effects if you haven't before. There are settings to show limited or no particle effects from others in your party/alliance and not in your party. With 24 people tossing Flares and Bahamuts and holies and magical sword rains, it's just even more visual clutter that can overwhelm. Sometimes this makes it hard to see things a boss is doing that you need to be able to see. I've also turned off non-party names and shortened the party names I do see to First name, Last initial. It's simply more clutter for me.

As a mouse/keyboard player I don't know what the default for targeting other alliances is. There might be better ways to scroll through them? Others with gamepads / PS4 usage can probably shed some light.

Risvertasashi is also correct in the sense of priorities existing. With how healing is designed in this game, your priority is your party, so go in with a similar mindset that you'd often have with other 8 mans. From running a lot of 24m raids, I think most here will agree with me that cross-alliance healing doesn't occur that often, even when it comes to the MT. It's always welcome to see that benediction go off on the DPS you can't reach on the other side of the arena, but I wouldn't count on it. As such, the healers in the other groups aren't expecting you to heal their groups, so it's okay to not keep an eagle eye on the other two alliances at all times and focus primarily on your own party. Try to keep an eye out for which alliance you are (A, B, C) as sometimes people will put markers for those respective groups and you might be confused why everyone is running around.

Of note, if you do see healers dying in other alliances, particularly if both of them in one alliance are gone, raising one of them is a good idea if you have the time.

It will always help to run something with people you're comfortable with. Friends, FC members, linkshell members - if you've got any of those, that can take off a lot of stress since you know that person isn't gonna jump at you for making a mistake. I'd consider putting some party finders up, maybe even with just another healer slot to mention that you're a little new and overwhelmed and are hoping to do a run with some relaxed or experienced players. You may find someone; I don't know how often people check for things like that but I know there's good Samaritans out there that don't mind lending a hand.

People are doing to die and do dumb things in 24 man content. It's just how it goes. Try to remember that 24m is designed to be very forgiving and friendly. Try to remember it's okay if people fall over in the content and do your best to pick them up when it seems viable. I know that doesn't help anxiety much in the heat of moment, but try to keep that thought back there that it's okay, and you're here to help fix it.

--

As for general healing anxiety? It helps to run with people who you know are more relaxed and aren't going to flare up at a mistake if you have the option, and like all things it will take practice. It can suck to be thrust into something when you feel everyone else has already seen it. If you're okay with spoiling yourself, you can always look at some guides online for brief overviews. While it will still take time to get used to fight timings, you'll feel a little more comfortable studying up on fights beforehand. That's really a personal preference thing, as I'm not going to demand anyone go watch videos for content they've never experienced before should they not want to, but it is an option available to you that may decrease some anxiety of the unknown.

[OceanWilds]

Thank you all for the advice!!

I never really thought about the HUD and I had NO IDEA you could turn off particle effects. That will make things so much easier.

And I appreciate the confidence boost I will definitely put these into effect and report back!

I can do it!!