Experiencing new WHM paranoia. Halp!

I feel your pain! Despite never being blamed or hated I still feel uncomfortable with my abilities. I feel like I can do better and maybe get certain skills from other classes.

Which is why don't bother with joining fcs or fate groups due to my uncertainty.

count the fact that this is my first mmorpg and I'm using a ps3 kinda adds to my concern.

Luckily the community is quite polit and understanding. Then again I'm no near finishing the story quest

My general rule for gauging success is simple. If everyone's alive, the healing was fine. There will be death occasionally, but sometimes it's out of your hands.

There are situations that are out of your control as a healer, but you simply have to work on what you can do best. A fight that exemplifies this idea is Titan HM. This is a fight where healers are the most important factor (other than overall DPS), and finding your groove and trusting others to stay out of AoE is important. This idea is carried into the fights throughout Coil as well. If someone complains non-constructively, ignore them but try and take away what could have gone better.

As time goes on, you will begin to see how you approach healing and learn what works overall and what doesn't. Also, have fun with it. :D

I can't really say for sure if you are at fault or not, but remember this:
Just because someone dies, it is not necessarily your fault.
A tank can die because he didnt blow a CD, did not run out of certain AOE, etc. (This was happening us on turn 2 around a month and a few weeks ago because our tanks didnt dodge repelling cannons)
80%+ of the time when a DPS dies in hard content, it's his/her fault because they did not dodge or execute the fights mechanic properly.

Realize that you are not a god. You cannot always clean up someones dirty diaper when you have your hands full already. I believe this applies especially in this game, where healers do not have a lot of tools right now to sustain life and clean up after the fails of others compared to other MMO's such as WoW, where a paladin would have Lay on Hands, Blessing of Sacrifice, Hand of Protection, tons of instant spells and HPS cooldowns, beacon, blessing of freedom, extremely low mana costing cleanse, a majority of heals healing from 10% back all the way up to 100%, etc.

Some fights are more unforgiving than others. People dying in titan for example, usually is not your fault. If they get hit by pools/bombs/landslide and die, it's their fault, not yours. Even on table flip, if a tank does not blow anything accordingly, or warn you that they have nothing up, the chance of death rises exponentially.

The best way to diagnose the situation, and find out if your the problem, is to watch everyone like a hawk. Know your fights, know when a tank should be popping CD's to mitigate burst, know where your DPS are standing and if they get hit needlessly by AOE. Generally speaking, I can't give you healing pointers based on your style of play if I haven't seen you heal.

Remember, DPS is a science, while healing is an art. A lot of what we do is based off of what we are feeling in the current situation and how we choose to adapt based on personal experience/preferences. Have some confidence! It's bad to doubt yourself as a healer! Nobody can ask for more than your best effort. Keep trying to improve!

At the end of the day as long and you're clearing content and no one's dying to you not healing well enough, that's all that matters. Healing meters honestly don't matter at all in ANY game.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Danfingo

To you great healers out there: am I alone on this? Lol

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the first time running a dungeon yea, my hands shook a bit on first titan run even, but you soon realise that in everything before coil most deaths come from sloppy play, not some lack of madhealingskillz

When I started I felt the exact same and as my mmo plus never actually playing a healing role in anything in I was in self doubt, but as long as you don't get anyone killed too often your a pretty good heal imo. :P

You learn very quickly to gauge your own skill level simply by results. Did anyone die? Was there anything you could have done to prevent that death? Did the situation ever become hectic for you and were you able to handle it well?

Sometimes I forget silly things during my runs, but I always try to take time afterwards to remember my mistakes or things I'd forgotten to do or capitalize on, and try to make sure I do it in future runs, even if I don't need to, just to get accustomed to doing things where they feel natural in critical situations.

What you have to remember though is that, unlike damage dealing and even tanking, Healers have no set rotations or even ideal rotations. Our performance relies heavily on the performance of our teammates, and so our biggest measure of personal skill is our ability to adapt to unusual situations. It also means that sometimes, if enough of your allies perform poorly, or if critical allies perform poorly, it may be impossible for you to save it, and that's okay. A lot of healers get discouraged when they get criticism about their abilities, and sometimes it's not even their faults. The best thing you can do for yourself is learn to take criticism well, but also to not let it discourage you.

It IS hard to build confidence as a healer because you have no way to separate your own performance from that of the whole group. In order to know how well you're doing, you'll need to get facts:

- Run with different people and compare how well the run goes. I've lost count of the times during my leveling days where I'd fail catastrophically in a new dungeon, crumble with self-doubt, but then try again and run it without trouble with three other parties, to finally realize that the problem the first time wasn't with me but the rest of the team.

- Look at the healers who can clear the content with ease. What are they wearing, what are they doing? If you're geared about the same and you don't see anything weird and unexplainable in their playing style then probably you aren't the worst performing member of your party.

Playing a healer is about trying to balance the confidence to decide that it's not your fault people are dying, with the humility to keep improving.


Also, everything Slark said.

i am not a great healer. or at least i don't know if i am, or claim to be.

but to the point. i sometimes derp with my fingers in tight situations, or even when we're doing fine. hitting the wrong keys and making my job more difficult, it's not something i can fix either. so i just have to live with it, and keep trying. but sometimes, as some have said in this thread, it still causes me to lose confidence in myself, and i have to quit playing for a little while or risk getting pretty mad and upset with myself. also, this game is really difficult. i find myself sweating a lot while healing.

everyone can make mistakes. even if your party gets mad at you, and you think you're not healing right, keep trying. it is hard to focus on who's fault it really is, and it is hard for who's fault it is to be blatantly obvious. so there is little point in figuring that out, other than curiousity. keep trying. as tifa in final fantasy 7 ACC said, no giving up!

Because I love healing, I'm almost finished my Relic on my Scholar (While I already have a WHM with +1 and quite a few AF2 pieces). At the end of the day, all you need to understand is there are just some situations you can not heal through, no matter how hard you press that button on your keyboard.

FFXIV, compared to most MMOs is VERY unforgiving on failed mechanics, dodging ground aoe, or whatever it might be. Even a relatively easy enemy like a Dullahan in AK, if a DD class messes up their positioning and gets hit by his cleave 90% of the time it will kill or near kill them. That's not your fault. I am however seeing more people stand in "red shit" in WP because it's an easy instance, well when Tank pulls 6+ mobs the aquatic attacks and such can devastate a class. The tank included too. (Which why tanks feel the need to not move out of avoidable damage is beyond me)

Now if you yourself fail at avoiding, or healing after a recognizable high damage (unavoidable) attack from the boss that dips your tank's health low then yeah, it's your fault.

I'd wager 90% of the time though most deaths are NOT the Healer's fault.