Disheartened healer annoyed with Shadowbringers' difficulty

Healing will get easier as players over gear the content we are running. If its not fun currently, give healing a try again in 5.01 after people are in raid gear. The game has awful level sync, so things are generally easier the further into the patch cycle we get.

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Originally Posted by Zoberraz

Um, hi everyone! I'm very apprehensively posting this. I kind of expect to get verbally mauled for it.

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I think you are too much obsessed and focus too much on one things at once, you should try to relax a bit more there are always 2 healer :P

I dont get this, my whm casts more glares than heals in both dungeons and ex, maybe your tanks suck and arent using their defensive cd's properly. I'm mad because they gutted our buttons but still didn't give us anything to do in the 70% downtime.

edit: tank cooldowns matter more now, its is readily apparent when they don't use them properly

If you're struggling to keep the party alive, stop dpsing. You're a healer, do your primary role first. Honestly every tank should be pulling so much you don't have time to dps.

Like others have said.

The content isn't much harder than what SB had to offer on launch. The forum had similar complaints back then too.

Some tanks outright suck. I've run dungeons with tanks that didn't mitigate a single thing. Not even TBN... So clearly not always on you.

It's also possible that you're rusty and/or haven't found your healing rotation yet with the new skills. Don't forget to place solace on your bar (I did). Holy gives you a fair amount of time with no healing required. Basically DB, regen, asylum, assize, Holy stun, Bene, tetra, solace are enough options to allow you to holy spam like crazy. Holy spam will also help things die before your tank runs out of mitigation options. Because if he does you'll be chain healing the bugger for sure.

Eventually things will get easier with gear. Already, the extra skills you get make the later dungeons easier imo than the first few. Don't despair!

I can not stress this enough: tell the tank to pull less if you feel like there is an issue with his or your gear or even his or your or the DPS's ability to get the mobs down fast enough. Pulling large groups is faster if everyone does AoE but dying even once will probably negate this already.

Its almost certainly due to the xpac being new and thus everyone is having to play catch up on gear, as well as getting used to skill changes/new jobs in the case of GNB for tanks. A lot of tank players feel like they are fine enough pulling to the wall in the leveling dungeons and it can be real stressful compared to even the current EX dungeons. Finished getting my WHM to 80 today and it really did feel at times like tanks need to slow down a bit.

Funnily enough things did tend to feel a bit better after Dohn Mheg even though at 75 the only change was better single-target dps for WHM and 76 was a new group heal which 80% of the dungeons didn't matter since DPS shouldn't be taking damage usually outside of boss encounters. Though I think that was more a combination of most of the GNB tanks I saw were in Dohn Mheg (and they have the least powerful mitigation) and that some tanks would not use interrupt on the pulls prior to the first boss resulting in certain mobs hitting even harder.

EX dungeons meanwhile feel much closer to the usual "pull to the wall", a little more heal intensive but once Phantasmagoria tomestone are available it'll only get easier.

Healing hasn't been harder for me. The only difference is that we're more dependent on a good tank and DPS that doesn't slack when doing wall to wall pulls which I think has more to do with it being a new expansion and not outgearing dungeons than changes to the game in itself.

If a tank does wall to wall just forget the dps until there is maybe 3-4 mobs left. Depending on the tank i have to either spam heals or i can get a couple of holys in. But if I see the tank not using CD's and mobs dying slow i stop DPSing because I'm not about to get cursed at when they die.

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And now, I'm back to my White Mage. Healing since Shadowbringer is just so difficult!

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Not being funny but this is a total inverse of my experience.

As one of the most DPS-aggressive WHM's who makes a conscious effort to heal only when necessary, including casual double/triple pack pulls, I have yet to even be challenged by Shadowbringers. 75% of my time in dungeons is spent casting Holy. This was the same when levelling as it is for me in Expert at 80, and even the new trials (where 80% of my time farming EXTania was spent casting Glare on repeat). Whether it was levelling content, dungeon content (which I spammed incessantly thanks to instant-queues), or EX, the result was the same. Heal occasionally but have the freedom to be a DPS monster.

Don't believe me? I stream pretty regularly. Failing that, I could make some simple videos of me healing dungeons. Unless a tank is wearing tissue paper and/or being a mitigation scrooge, all you're going to see is holy explosions 24/7 with the odd Heal thrown in. Worse case scenario is DPS being asleep and mass-pulls going on forever, to a point where a tank eventually gets low enough to render you into cure-spam territory, which is quite easily remedied by oGCD's if you have them, but can (eventually) become a problem with enough damage and no backup buttons.

On the flipside, I'm sick to death of getting AFK Healers and Over Healers whenever I stop playing WHM and swap to my tanks. My last dungeon involves H.Switch with a White Mage who spammed Medica II over, and over, and over, and over, often even before pulls and constantly throughout them, to the point where I got to enjoy the sight of my first WHM with actual MP problems for many expansions. Joke is, we still wiped on a trash pull despite this sort of drivel, with a tank in full 390 (with materia) and constantly cycling mitigation buttons.

Instant DoT are for mid-pull (aka "the gather"). Make sure Benison and Regen are up upon approach to the final pack. You can make use of a Swiftcast Holy on a group before the last if they can otherwise keep up with Sprint. If necessary, and ahead of the tank, you can also pad on a Medica II just before the last group is engaged, so long as it doesn't delay your Holy onto all the grouped mobs.

Know your tanks' invulns. With a GNB, they will often expect to be allowed to drop like a rock at first so they're not wasting HP on their invuln (which reduces them to 1 HP). Same with WARs. DRKs will expect Regen over and a Benediction at the end of Living Dead. PLDs will likely wait for Holy spam stuns to wear out before using Hallowed Ground.

Most tanks, if they see the rest of the party keeping up, will do every nth pull on the backs of just invuln and your nuke CDs alone. Others will attempt to time the refresh of Rampart or their 3-minute CDs to another pull by opening with those instead. Many will use their short CD (usually 25 seconds) as not to waste CDs in overlap when they're unsure what you'll do.

Make use of your instant casts to weave. If you're not confident you'll finish the fight before you'll need a direct heal, then you can make fairly liberal use of Regen (so long as it isn't already up) to weave in oGCDs. You're cutting out a little over a third of the time it takes to cast a regular Spell (GCD) each time you clip an Ability (oGCD). I'd recommend keeping one Lily heal to spare for this purpose as well.