New to healing in FFXIV, looking for WHM help

[Mansion]

I'm really sad to read this. I hope you will carry on and keep playing healer!

Of course, messing up as a healer is far more detrimental than as a DPS (or at least, it is immediately visible). Yet I think Orbonne could be basically healed by one healer in each team, really; meaning that there is not so much relying on you. It's too easy to blame it on the healers when people die for any reason. And mind that this was your first run. I can assure you people did not shine on release day either.

You don't bear the full responsability of your party wipes : you have you own mistakes, but you also have your team's mistakes, you have a co-heal that should power up the healing if they see their partner in trouble and such.

There's only practice that will help you getting better. Maybe practice on 8man raids (although they are arguably harder to heal than 24 man raids). Play safe, at your own pace. Find your strengths and your weaknesses, and balance your gameplay on this. You must learn the fights to know what damge is expected and which tool in your kit is the most useful for it.

And it's a game. Relax a bit, don't put too much pressure on yourself and end up not enjoying playing it, it's not worth it at all

[Insomniaq]

I'm really sad to read this. I hope you will carry on and keep playing healer!

Of course, messing up as a healer is far more detrimental than as a DPS (or at least, it is immediately visible). Yet I think Orbonne could be basically healed by one healer in each team, really; meaning that there is not so much relying on you. It's too easy to blame it on the healers when people die for any reason. And mind that this was your first run. I can assure you people did not shine on release day either.

You don't bear the full responsability of your party wipes : you have you own mistakes, but you also have your team's mistakes, you have a co-heal that should power up the healing if they see their partner in trouble and such.

There's only practice that will help you getting better. Maybe practice on 8man raids (although they are arguably harder to heal than 24 man raids). Play safe, at your own pace. Find your strengths and your weaknesses, and balance your gameplay on this. You must learn the fights to know what damge is expected and which tool in your kit is the most useful for it.

And it's a game. Relax a bit, don't put too much pressure on yourself and end up not enjoying playing it, it's not worth it at all

Thank you for the encouragement. I will keep on playing definitely (even if i sometimes want to just crawl into a corner and cry)

[Styopa]

And take Cure 1 off your bar. You don't need it (unless you're healing leveling roulette, where it can give you some dungeon under level 30).

In which case you're like "shit shit, they all ran off and I don't have a functioning heal spell on my bar!..."

[Styopa]

Thank you for the encouragement. I will keep on playing definitely (even if i sometimes want to just crawl into a corner and cry)

We've all been there. Let me make a few comments, in no particular order. My main is WHM 70, I have an AST at high 60s, and am starting ACN (SCH). Long time MMO veteran, played cutting edge raid content in Vanilla Wow, and everything/game since then, as far as I can tell.

-- yes, it is harder, it is not just you. I found healing up to 40ish effortlessly easy. 40-49 got a little harder but not too bad. 50? Holy god was there a step upward in difficulty. Everything's harder and this is what you're running into: it's not just harder for you (more mechanics, more floor-dancing, harder damage, shorter warnings, etc, it's harder for everyone else at the same time. And guess who, multiplicatively, carries the weight of that? The healer. Every other class has harder mechanics to deal with too, but you as the healer have to cope with both that (for yourself) AND EVERYONE ELSE'S MISTAKES AS WELL. Even if their error is just putting out 10% less dps, that means the fight carefully tuned to exhaust your mana...now goes 10% longer and all you've got left are some crappy 600mp pots, your OGCD abilities, and you're desperately staring at the Lucid cooldown to pass...Keeper of the Lake was a wake up call for me. The Menagerie was even harder.
-- we all fuck up. I hadn't done Gubal Library for weeks and frankly forgot the last boss mechanics. That run we wiped 5 times (first was the DRK sprinting off to gather every mob in the world before I even had Protect cast, I couldn't catch up and he died under about 20 mobs. So everyone was already a little salty. Then we wiped on the book. A little more salt. Finally in the last boss we wiped 3x due mainly if not totally to my stupidity and everyone bailed with some not so kind words (I can't really blame them). I felt terrible. So I went and worked on my ACN because right at that moment I needed some no-skill-required leves. Took me a day or so to come back to healing and in the next 8-man I got 5 commendations.
-- I struggled to get my ilvl up to do the MSQ Mad Kings Trove. Now I have it, and frankly I'm a little intimidated...sort of nervous going back to it, as I've been leveling AST for 66 levels now. Can I still WHM with the best of them? I've sort of told myself that "Oh I'm just waiting for the MSQ xp to matter, when they raise the level cap to 80" but that's not really it.
-- Part of it is gear. We're racing through content that when it was released was for bored level-capped to run again and again and again for tomestones and drops, so we're trying to do these runs without the gear those folks had accumulated.

Don't get discouraged. We are all struggling and your putting yourself out there in the Healer's queue is making it that much easier for everyone else to get runs and have a good time.

[miraidensetsu]

In which case you're like "shit shit, they all ran off and I don't have a functioning heal spell on my bar!..."

I have an bar specially prepared for those situations. /flex

[Insomniaq]

Did all 3 of the raids again last night and I am proud to say that I feel that I have performed really well! After turning off all effects, which has allowed me to see the boss quite clearly, as well as being able to see what is going on around me much easier. Also, I have moved around my UI and made a lot of the elemts smaller giving me more room to see things clearly. These 2 changes have been the single biggest difference in improving my raid!

Rabanastre: Not 1 death on my part, therefore allowing me to keep up the healing. Kept the tank up permanently, most of DPS stayed alive and we cleared the raid in an efficient manner. Was my best run to date!
Lighthouse: Only 2 deaths, silly mistakes on my part though, yet i was up more than enough to do my job as healer. Some silly dpsers that died from not moving out of mechanics that couldn't be saved even with Tetra, others that I just couldn't heal fast enough. The tank only downed once. All-in-all, also my best run to date!
Monastery: Had my best run yet here also, was alive n well enough to heal for more than 90% of the raid. Saved alliance C after both healers had downed, and even got some comms! really happy about all this. I think my phobia about Orbonne has been overcome!

In summary, I think that freeing up more screen space with UI settings and hiding the effects has been a big problem for me previously. Without realising it, I had unknowingly made things much more difficult for myself by not setting my game up to suit the content I have been running! I will happily carry on healing my way into even more difficult content in the future and look forward to seeing you on the other side of my Medica ^_^

[Sylvain]

This is a continuation of the previous post http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4895279

I had people yelling at me, telling me I was useless, belittling me and much worse. All this, compounded with my inability to stay alive, made me unable to think clearly and therefore make even more mistakes.
Happy healing!

That's weird, I've never experience that and trust me I've been with some healer who were hugging the ground the entire battle (to the point we wouldn't even rez them because it was a waste of mp)

Of course, after having all that thrown at me, I have been avoiding Monastery at all costs.
....
I finally did it again yesterday. With the memory of my 1st run flashing before my eyes

Men they really traumatised you x(... (I hope you reported the offenders)

With all this in mind, I could really use some advice for the 3 raids. What are things i need to look out for as a healer, rather than in general, and are there certain mechanics i should be more aware of? Any help and advice would really go a long way to getting my confidence up and improving my ability to not only keep the alliance alive, but actually make a significant contribution to progressing the whole raid.

Well in order I would go this way


1- Watch out for the one shotting mechanic (Falling Pillars+Flame-Charge from the fireboss in Raba, The math question in Lighthouse etc). You just can't fail those. So don't fail them.
If you struggle with a specific one, try to think how you could handle it better.
Taking the flame charge for example. Most of the time it kills range, why? because they're at range and wait for the boss to start the fiery animation, then start moving. If they are on the wrong side (and far) of the arena, they will not make it. We know the boss always destroy either the North part or the South part of the arena.
Solution, stay closer from the middle, and when he jumps just go mid. This way no matter where you have to go, you're only a few step away.
Try having that sort of reasoning whenever a deadly mechanic keep killing you (or that you only survive by sheer luck)

2- Mechanic First heal second dps third
Beside a very few select chain of mechanic, Raid aren't meant to be hard, therefor the boss will never do something requiring to top the raid twice in a quick succession while dodging mechanic.
It's either "Top the raid twice in a quick succession" is the mechanic
Or the boss does Raid damage then a mechanic then nothing for an extensive period of time.

So always do the mechanic first no matter the state of the party.
Taking that Second boss from rabanastre again, at somepoint he puts AoE markers on player + ground marker under other players.
The above marker is unavoidable and will kill player only if they're hit by 2-3 (depending on their gear) of those. However, that shouldn't happen, if they die from that, it's NOT your fault
The ground marker should always be avoided no matter what

After all that crap is resolved, you have a good 15-20s to heal everybody.
So do not stress out, your goal isn't to keep everybody at 100% right off the bat.
First you dodge all the crap AoE
Then you heal
not "omaygod someone is at 10% quick let's start a cure2 and... oh i'm dead I didn't see the ground marker"
Did 4 people die on that mechanic? Well you can't heal one shot, and you can't heal dumb.
If people only take the intended damage, most of the time 2 SCH fairy would be more than enough to keep the raid alive.
So don't panick, people dying is normal, because people fail and get hit by something they shouldn't.

Regarding dps third, there are 24 people so unless your raid group dodges everything and you know the fight very well, you might not be able to push a lot.
Even if you'd push 3k, there are 24 freaking people. It's not your usual 8man where healer dps will make a huge difference.
This is casual content, therefor Bosses have no enrage.
So don't be stressed about dps

3 - Value your own life above others
This is somewhat similar to number 2 but, never put yourself at risk for someone else.
NOTHING should be deadly if people do the mechanic properly.
If someone dies, it is most likely not your fault.
I've never died from a lack of heal.
I've only died from being dumb and not dodging crap.

For instance, most boss will follow a pattern like
dodgable AoE applying weaknesss -> dodgable AoE applying Weakness -> undodgeable AoE with substantial damage
If someone get hit by the two first, they will die on the last one.
If they ever tell you something about that, feel free to reply that you can't heal their mistake. Your job is to heal that last undodgeable raid wide attack
The two first shouldn't hit anybody, if they do and you don't have time to heal before the last one. Well too bad for them, perhaps they could also learn to do the boss right.





Really don't stress, during that bad raid of yours, if really, for real, you were the only player struggling, the other heal should have been more than fine keeping the raid alive.
What I think happened, you were too often dead, and the other players also failed and got hit by everything, and the second healer couldn't keep up with everyone mistake.

But if for real you were the only player failing and dying, I can't imagine how the other healer would have struggled with healing. Everyone one in that party failed, end of the story.

[Insomniaq]

Men they really traumatised you x(... (I hope you reported the offenders)

Yeah I was extremely traumatized, but by the time I had left, I had turned the chat box off and just logged right after. I haven't reported because i was just so ashamed that I left the game immediately. If someone is to do anything like that to me in future I will definitely be reporting and using my PS video streaming to upload it.

2- Mechanic First heal second dps third
Beside a very few select chain of mechanic, Raid aren't meant to be hard, therefor the boss will never do something requiring to top the raid twice in a quick succession while dodging mechanic.
It's either "Top the raid twice in a quick succession" is the mechanic
Or the boss does Raid damage then a mechanic then nothing for an extensive period of time.

So always do the mechanic first no matter the state of the party.

This is exactly how I approached all 3 raids last night and it really made a massive difference. I took the stance that a healer whom is dead, can't heal, therefore keep myself alive first and foremost no matter what any1 else's state is. It really paid off. Most people survived the mechanic even at low hp so myself and co-heal just topped them up as soon as we were safe.

3 - Value your own life above others
This is somewhat similar to number 2 but, never put yourself at risk for someone else.

This is exactly how I am going to approach any content in the future! Mistakes have been made by me because I was too focused on trying to keep a person up, who most times happened to die anyway even after sacrificing myself to heal them. I will rather trust that my party can survive until the end of mechanic and heal them after, than try save a hopeless case. "You can't heal stupid."

But if for real you were the only player failing and dying, I can't imagine how the other healer would have struggled with healing. Everyone one in that party failed, end of the story.

Thank you, I had not thought of this really because i was so stressed out and just wanting to finish and leave the raid, that I really was just far too hard on myself. I will never allow anything like that to affect me in the future again.

Thank you for the input, I am going to strive to get better and becoming an even better healer in the future. The fact that almost my whole party was permanently down is in fact a show that it was not only my fault, yet people still felt the need to throw salt at me. Be assured that i will never allow myself to be treated like that again. I have started leveling my AST also, because I find their play style interesting and I love how much utility they have. I hope that should we ever end up in the same content, we have a good run together! ^_^

[ksuyen]

General rule:
1. If you or tank has hp > 50%, see 2.
2. If dps has hp > 50%, see 3.
3. If your party are in safe zone or not in immediate danger of boss mechanic, see 4.
4. DPS a hell of it.