Newb Healer - Question(s)

You are NEVER required to fight in parties and especially the raids.

Please do not blow enemies out of the group for 'more damage'. The only time pushing enemies will save ya'll from damage is if it's stop the enemy from casting something like Mist, or to subsequently cast repose to effectively put them out of the fight. The former is normally handled by the tank or DPS, or evade it entirely. You'll have to trust the party to do this, unless they've shown time and time again that they cannot interrupt or escape it. The latter is normally not needed.

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Originally Posted by RiisWolf

...or to subsequently cast repose to effectively put them out of the fight.

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To the OP: It's better not to do this. Pretty much ever.

I can imagine some bizarre, desperate situation in low-level play with crazy random people that might make you try this as a hail mary, but generally speaking this is a tactic that inexperienced WHMs use that is meant to be helpful but is actually incredibly annoying.

It's basically all of the bad of shoving a mob out of the tank's ability to build hate and the entire party's short-range and AoE damage options with the added insult of keeping the mob immobile for even longer, assuming your tank or a DPS doesn't veto your foolishness by immediately attacking to bring the mob back to where it belongs.

Well, while Fluid Aura to knock away and then reposing isn't good, I have found it useful to use Repose all on its own. Granted, this is explicitly in low level content where people aren't AoEing, combined with a tank marking a kill order and DPS who follow it, but it can make some tricky rooms easier to manage (One or two optional rooms in Stone Vigil come to mind...)

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

To the OP: It's better not to do this. Pretty much ever.

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Originally Posted by RiisWolf

... The latter is normally not needed.

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YES it's better not to do it! >:U

you can use Fluid Aura to push ranged monsters to the tank. ranged monsters will not move close to the tank, so a group with meele and ranged monsters, or two ranged, is more difficult to tank and you can't aoe them all. pushing the ranged monster to the tank will solve such problems.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

Just to add on about Fluid Aura, it is absolutely the bane of party play if you use it incorrectly. Do not use it even to interrupt casts unless the ability that's winding up really, really needs to be stopped.

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I think you're giving bad advice to a newer player. It's an instant 150 potency attack thats off the gcd. He should be using it frequently, every time its off cd. I don't really care about this stigma that you and others hold for the knock back effect of it, then rage when you see a whm using one of his best dps abilities in a dungeon.
OP, yes you can use it to interrupt enemy cast and aoe, i recommend using it on large circular aoe's that would otherwise make the whole party move. Get in the habit of using it when the enemy is close to a wall. Get in the habit of using it like a "mercy stroke" to finish the enemy off. Using it like that will be efficient.

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Originally Posted by ChiiSoSeriouz

I think you're giving bad advice to a newer player. It's an instant 150 potency attack thats off the gcd. He should be using it frequently, every time its off cd. I don't really care about this stigma that you and others hold for the knock back effect of it, then rage when you see a whm using one of his best dps abilities in a dungeon.
OP, yes you can use it to interrupt enemy cast and aoe, i recommend using it on large circular aoe's that would otherwise make the whole party move. Get in the habit of using it when the enemy is close to a wall. Get in the habit of using it like a "mercy stroke" to finish the enemy off. Using it like that will be efficient.

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Discouraging the party-disruptive use of Fluid Aura isn't the same thing as saying that there are no useful applications for it.

I choose to believe that the new player can sort through all of this advice and appreciate the difference between "good" and "bad" uses of Fluid Aura. Training new players to maximize their use of it before they fully appreciate its applications is less wise IMO. No, that 150-potency attack on a 30-second CD is not worth it if it slows everyone else down.

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Originally Posted by RiisWolf

YES it's better not to do it! >:U

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I just wanted to emphasize how very, very rarely anyone should consider that option. Remember that we're responding to a new healer :)

You have to decide on a case-by-case basis on whether or not to use Fluid Aura. If the enemy is knock-back immune, sure you can use Fluid Aura as much as you want. However if the enemy can be knocked back by Fluid Aura, make sure the enemy you push away will die soon.

If your party is trying to AoE a group of mobs and you Fluid Aura an enemy that can be knocked away, your 150 potency Fluid Aura is a potency loss for your group. If you happen to knock away the target your Black Mage was targeting with Flare, that is a severe DPS loss. You can cause caster DPS to be line of sighted (LoS) which a large DPS loss. If you knock away an enemy, all melee jobs will lose DPS.

Fluid Aura can be helpful for mechanics such as interrupting casts, but you have to weigh the pros and cons. For example, using Fluid Aura to push the Green Golem in Second Coil of Bahamut Turn 4 raid to interrupt his AoE Demolish cast is good. However, using Fluid Aura in Midas Savage A5S to push the pigs back into the Minotaur will cause a party wipe.

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Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

Just remember, as a healer your first priority is to deal as much damage as possible while healing the absolute bare minimum to survive. Don't fluid aura unless you can keep the monster in range of Holy.

As a WHM yours is the only dps that actually makes a difference. Army of one indeed.

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Yes and no. Either way, the way you word it can potentially turn away an aspiring healer.

OP, every healer has their own comfort level when it comes to their incoming damage threshold, and it can change depending on said healer's knowledge of the fight. Having said that, we quickly learn that trash pulls become pretty standard and I already know that wanting to effectively cast fluid aura is part of wanting to maximize your DPS.

However, casting FA every time it is up doesn't mean you are using it effectively. When it is up, you look for your first opportunity to use it effectively. If this does not happen before it would otherwise be off another CD, then so be it. Do not use it if would otherwise disrupt the flow of your party in any way.

Basically when I use FA, I have targeted a mob for destruction. Think of it as an invisible tether mechanic. Like another poster stated, it is like using mercy stroke, assassinate, or any other high crit damage at low health abilities. You don't necessarily have to kill the mob with FA, but focus it down after you use it to take stress of the tank. Which means don't use it if you have to use up a lot of gcds to take it down. Most tanks will let go a near death mob that they lose hate from as there is no point wasting a gcd taking it back.