New to WHM, Any advice?

[Coltvoyance]

I half expected to see the first post be "Best WHM Advice: Reroll AST"

Glad people have more class than that.

Onto the advice: I don't know if I have anything to add that those before me haven't already posted. But I can relay some personal tweaks and optimizations I use when in fights.

If you got Largesse on your bar, Largesse + Regen on a tank will usually mitigate any damage they're taking sufficiently enough for you to have 15-20 seconds of attacking going on before the tank needs to be touched again. At higher levels, if Largesse is down, Regen + Asylum will also work so you can continue hammering the mobs. Again for higher levels, once you're down to just Regen, and the tank is like 60% toss Divine Benediction (DB) with Regen and see if that will heal the tank up a bit so you can keep attacking. If not, pop Tetra on him and keep pounding. By that point, Largesse should be back up and the process continues.

When it comes to using Holy, everyones favorite eye blinding spell of spam, after the tank finishes pulling I throw on a Largesse Regen then immediately swiftcast the Holy. The tank is gonna take a huge damage spike by the time that first Holy gets off because all the mobs finally catch up to him, but Holy stuns, so he's perfectly safe for like, 4 seconds. This buys a lot of time for the DPS to hammer the mobs and help mitigate the damage to the tank. There's also plenty of time to oGCD a Tetra or a DB and start Hardcasting a second Holy as Regen takes care of him. Then you ramp up into the spam. Just keep casting it until you're out of oGCDs to save the tank in between casts or all the mobs are dead.

It's a bit risk reward. Part of WHM and healing in general is gauging how fast your tank's HP sinks during a typical 4-5 mob pull and if your Healing over Time (HoT) spells are enough for that. If the tank is really poorly geared, or over ambitious, you'll have to cut back on relying on your HoTs and start babysitting their HP bar with oGCD heals.

[CoffeeBuns]

I decided to recently switch healer on my other main and wanted to give WHM a try. I want to thank everyone of their advices and maccros.

[tinythinker]

Before you heal a tank and especially before you use Regen, be sure the tank has aggro. If you Regen a tank as they are starting to pull things or are in the middle of gathering enemies the mobs will aggro on you. At higher levels good tanks can deal with this, even if it's annoying, but at lower levels, with new tanks, or with not-so-great tanks this is a disaster.

But at simplest the priority is:

1. Dodge AOE/do mechanics
2. Cast spells
2a. Healing/shielding spells/buff spells
2b. Offensive spells/debuff spells/weapon attacks

If don't need to dodge or do mechanics, I cast. If I don't need to heal, I cast damage spells. Anything higher on the list than what I'm currently doing that pops up immediately takes priority.

As for an (obvious) general rule I base my actions on how the party is handling things. For example when in DF dungeons:

Level 50: When tank has trash gathered, I prefer to Regen the tank. If the tank seems a bit squishy, I might add on Largesse to make the Regen ticks bigger. I then run near the mobs, cast Swiftcast, then Holy. That stuns the mobs and does damage. If the tank is doing OK, another Holy or three. If not, Cure 2 to top off. If the tank is desperately low I use Benediction, which restores 100% health. If I spam too much Holy or Cure II, I use Lucid Dreaming to get my mana back up.

Level 70: As tank is gathering trash, i use Divine Benison on the tank to reduce damage if the pull is large/takes a while, then the same as above for level 50. Except I have more off-global cool-down heals like Tetragrammton and Assize if the tank starts to get low. I can also use Thin Air to have my spells cast nothing for a short time. This goes well with Presence of Mind to cast faster while doing Holy spam. After the first Holy I might use Aero III to let it start ticking on the trash. I sometimes use the Asylum bubble on trash packs just to give more breathing room.

Below 50 it's mostly just Cure II and Regen and using Stone and Aero on trash and bosses alike.

Between 50 and 70 it's a mix of what I wrote above depending on which abilities are unlocked.

[Raikai]

Also in dungeons trash packs a good tip is to use swiftcast + holy to stun and interrupt a telegraphed aoe attack. Taken that you still have at least 1 second of stun outside of the diminishing returns. Sometimes is also better to space out your holy spams, if the trash pack is too keen on AoEing, so you'll keep them with more downtime.

[EaMett]

I’m surprised at all the negative macro information here. I also find it weird to say macros are delayed and then suggest dps macros when dpsing is 80% (90%?) of your uptime.

Macros for healing are absolutely fine unless you’re aiming for 100% parses (and even then). Macros for dps is doing it the wrong way around since you absolutely want your dps skills to queue.

Also when it comes to macros the general rule is to keep them limited to one action per macro (especially if you spam your actions in a fight). All those macros with multiple fallback targets are poison because the macro will execute instantly even if you’re still on the global cooldown (ignoring some of your target orders). If it’s a dps macro it’ll usually set you back a bit until you execute the macro again, but if you do this on healing macros you’ll just end up healing someone else.

I personally use single action mouse over macros for healing. That way there’s no need to select my heal target and I can keep monsters targeted while I heal. Spamable and the only delay is that of my ping which is unimportant given the fact that you don’t need to heal that much in this game. Plus most of the time you already need to account for server ticks so it hardly makes a difference.

[Matahaari]

Do you mind posting a sample mouse-over macro for me to adapt...am relatively new to FF14 healing but did some in WOW and used mouse-overs then; however I imagine it will be different text.

thanks

[EaMett]

/ac "Cure II" <mo>
/micon "Cure II"