mana management

So, I've been sort of playing around with different ways of healing and for the most part sticking to just using my cure I to single target heal, moving to II when it procs (or if someone's taking a lot of damage), and III also if it's proc'd and I need a party heal. Medica I really don't use often at all, and generally use seal before that. However I also find myself pulling aggro really easily after this.

While it's pretty easy to manage on trash and most boss fights, there are a few times I really just run into a lot of trouble dealing with recovering mana. It could just be my bad luck with parties, but I think it's a bit of a combination. Primarily pugs when I'm not with people I'm familiar with, but a lot of the dps don't seem to know how to move to avoid aoes, so I wind up having to go in with aoe heals where it shouldn't be necessary.

Suggestions on saving a bit?

I never use Cure III. I've never found it useful in any situation. Ever.
Use Shroud of Saints when you reach 60% of your mana.
Use Divine Seal whenever it's up.
Use Stoneskin, Regen and repose.

1st step remove Cure III from your skill bar and forget about it :)
And you don't always need to cast AOE heal when multiple ppl are hurt, if you know BOSS's skill rotation, most of time you can just put a Regen on your tank and take you time to cast Cure on the dps.

I agree with the Cure III being just taken off your bar. I've never used it. As for mana management, I only have a problem if someone screw up in a raid and i'm forced to Medica or Medica II alot.

I also run with a bard 90% of the time and hes pretty good at putting up ballad when i need it.

I agree, take cure 3 off the bar. That will help a lot of your mana issues.

Use Divine Seal every time you have it up and available.

It's all about knowing the incoming damage and read your party. Even in DF groups it's possible. I hardly ever have mana issues even with groups that are not really ready for AK dps wise.
One thing that you need to get a feel for is if the whole group takes damage do you really need to cast a Medica II or is it ok to throw regen on the additional party members. Most AoE comes in waves and is predictable.

Also, as the others have mentioned: I never use Cure III, ever..I think I cast it once to try it out in Ul'Daahl..on myself :p

Cure I carries you nicely through everything trash with the odd Cure 2 thrown in on procs.
Stoneskin is nice to get a bit of buffer before a fight and using Virus on a boss or hard hitting mob can also lower pressure on your MP :)

Use SoS early on so you have it available again as soon as possible if you know you might get into trouble.

It's sad, but I agree on the Cure III thing =(

I can imagine unrealistic situations where people bunch up and stop moving for 5 seconds so I can use the spell, but then I remember that most people are constantly spread out and moving between casts of their own spells/skills.

The radius of the spell needs to be expanded to about 10 before it would become useful (or approximately the distance from the tank to the melee DPS behind a boss)

Medica whenever 3 or more people need healing, it is more efficient than 3 Cures.

I would go so far as to say use Shroud whenever you lose any meaningful amount of MP. I tend to use it in boss fights at around 80% MP so that it prolongs the time until I need to use it out of necessity (it would be up again by then anyhow) and an early hate dump can be helpful to allow for Medicas as needed.

Also, Stoneskin is very inefficient when cast on a non-tank while in the middle of a battle. It is usually better to top them off if a Cure will do the trick, but if you know a big hit is coming or have MP to spare then throwing out Stoneskins is fine.

I'm only lvl 23 and I run out of mana a lot when I get to bosses, with Duties and with NPC.
I equipped Ether to my hotbar but I still run out of mana.
Is there an item I can use to restore mana other than ethers?