One of us. One of us :DQuote:
Originally Posted by ChaoticCrimson
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One of us. One of us :DQuote:
Originally Posted by ChaoticCrimson
First rule in any new role is... Don't panic. Simple.
Secondly, I say the next part will full respect to the fact that it's a reactionary role, so even the best-laid plans sometimes have to be put aside during emergencies. Nothing is set in stone as a Healer.
As a beginner I'd advocate the rotational concept of: DoTs > Cure > Stone > Cure > Stone. Not literally, of course, but in principle. It is a version of my own motto that: I'm not here to 'heal' you, I'm here to keep you 'alive'.
This is especially handy in lower-level dungeons where tanks simply don't have the health or mitigation to take anything less than moderate-to-high damage, whilst your own heals will be large enough to restore massive chunks of health-bar in one go - yes, even plain old Cure1. Nothing annoys me more than seeing a Healer's approach to low-level content being sheer Cure-spam, when a Cure>Stone>Cure typically does exactly the same thing whilst also helping to kill the target quicker (thus resulting in the need for less healing). After all, you don't need to heal if enemy damage dealers are dead, so don't shy away from contributing some damage whenever you feel comfortable doing so - but ONLY when you feel comfortable doing so.
On that same token, get a feel for your team very early. DPS very low? Squishy tank? Your own gear a bit behind? Well then, your MP could be tested if you're forced into overhealing and/or going ham with damage spells due to the combination of a) Tank taking above-average damage while b) things just aren't dying very quickly and c) you don't have all MP refreshing abilities yet. Of all the playable roles, Healers have to pay the most attention to how smoothly the wheels can turn.
Take some time every 5 levels and at 70 every 10-20 avg ilvls or so to get a feel for how big your heals are. This helps you learn when to start casting a heal and eventually saves you MP and prevents spamming overhealing. Also when you branch out into some special condition heals know the end result of those, like if you decide to try SCH healing know Adloq both without and with Emergency Tactics, or knowing Benefic IIs crit heal value if playing AST.
Find a minimum acceptable spot on your MP bar where you stop using mana on things that don't keep people alive. For me its about 2 heals and a rez. Everyone should know ahead of time what they need to feel comfortable with things going wrong.
Place your focus target hud somewhere easy to see, as you may not be targeting the enemy often. Can also be nice for mechanics where you need to maintain a certain distance from another player whether it be close or far, especially on those pesky lalas, the arrow helps.
Quick runover of agreed points from others...
Feel out your DPS windows every group.
Ease into learning how to weave in damage spells earlier on.
Once you hit the 50 mark, try and get used to using your bindings to select party members (Default F1, F2, etc.). Mechanics are gonna start hitting people aside from the tank, sometimes hard, and sometimes unavoidably, and being able to rapidly swap targets to the person in need and throw them an oGCD before returning to what you were doing isn't strictly necessary but makes everything else a lot easier.
I'll admit, I'm still in the same boat as you, I queue up as Scholar for any story based things I need to do for faster queue times (Still a relatively new player in general), I just remember to take things all in stride.
If I get flustered, I just take a drink of water, deep breath, and chill.
For Scholar specifically, remember that Eos will help a LOT. Not to the point where you can STOP healing, but she does afford you a bit of give on your healing downtime.
Newish to healing here (don't like having to heal by targeting, used to doing it with mouse-overs in other games. So still working that out). Newish in that I did a decent bit in the past but have been off of it for a long time.
- But I've been healing in online games since a 2005 Guild Wars 1 Monk and later also Ritualist.
You will get blamed for a lot of things that aren't your fault and NOT blamed for a lot of things that are... Before you get too frustrated about the first half of that, learn to realize the second half also exists and karma might just be balancing itself... :)
Don't ever brag about how amazing you are and how you never make mistakes and you're all pro and such - the moment a person believes they are at the top, they've stopped learning, stopped improving, and the world passes them by.
The most important thing you can start doing is scroll your camera back and learn good situational awareness. Get to see the entire battle mat - or as much as your current position allows. Follow the action beyond just yourself. In time you'll learn to predict things based on not just fight mechanics - but more importantly... spotting players who are more like to 'get their foot in it'... (I mostly tank in MMOs, and doing this has been very valuable for knowing when somebody will pull adds, something I can often spot 10+ seconds before they do it... just by knowing things like "that healer or DPS is standing back there... and there's a pat coming our way about a minute out... I better have my rotation 'smoothed' in a minute so I can peel all that junk off of them... because they're not getting the clue with me dragging the pull down this hall...)
- Situational Awareness, or lack thereof, is a major issue for ranged casters and healers. I see it all the time where somebody accidentally pulls something. As a tank I need to have this finely tuned to peel things off of that fool... as a Healer I also need to have this awareness finely tuned to heal the person that just made that mistake and added 6 adds to the pull that are stomping them into the ground right now because the tank we got is too hyper-focused to notice...
If you really want to tune up your situational awareness, play a healer in something like Overwatch for a month... Where you will have to learn how to know what's going on 360-degrees around you while looking at the game through a limited FPS viewport... You just 'develop a sense for it' after faceplanting enough times. :)
That said... in an MMO like this... learning situational awareness is actually an easy newbie skill to pick up. You just cam back so you can see behind your character a bit, and watch a wider view of the action.
I can totally understand the nervousness of being new to healing, I felt the same way. My advice is to take advantage of the multiple hot bars if you aren't already. I have one set-up for my standard solo play, and one set up for dungeons that has all my healing goodies, Cure I-III, Regen, etc. In some of the more complex fights it is important to be as MP conservative as possible which is why I have all of the levels of cure and not just the most potent. Something I learned the hard way as well is to keep an eye on HP depleting status effects and be ready to Esuna them once that is available; this will lessen the healing burden significantly.
I appreciate all the continued feedback! I probably should have mentioned in my initial post I'm a PS4 player, so I'm using a controller. Still, things are still going fairly well. I'm at lv36 right now, and did some runs at Brayflox and Qarn last night, which was interesting handling the debuffs and such, but for the most part wasn't bad. I've had a lot of helpful people give me bits of advice and have been getting a lot of compliments too! Also figured out how to set up a simple macro to turn on Protect and cast it before swapping back for Swiftcast, which is currently a lifesaver for the limited role space I have atm. Also going to work on gradually prepping gear for when I hit the cap (I can still apply it to SCH in the meantime, for what that's worth lol). Anyway, tldr everyone's been such a big help and I'm really grateful!
Also a PS4 player, but I can offer no assistance with playing on a controller given that I play Keyboard & Mouse.