Repost from Newbie area -- WHM help needed / When to cast which spells at level 50

Hi all,
Repost to the healer forums as this is where it should've gone first, I guess. Well, my baby WHM is lvl 50 now (i102) but given that I got some new skills recently (and thus haven't really used them), plus that I usually leveled WHM doing lower level dungeons to help out people, I have some questions in regards to when to use certain healing spells. Unlike FFXI where I had a year or so of learning (or more) on the path of lvl 1-90, I had nowhere near that time here. So, my question is when should I use spells other than the normal regen and cure and cure II. I'm thinking mostly the AoE type heals, such as medica, medica II, and cure III. If any healers can give me a few hints and maybe even examples of fights where these would be used that would be great! I want to try healing the old experts and maybe ST someday soon, but don't want to be total fail.

For example, what to use during Fenrir after he does that party wide damage move? Cure 3? Or in Sastasha after someone gets hit with tailscrew -- would that be divine seal + cure 2? Also in ST, there are a few times during some fights when we know lots of damage is coming and so stack on the healers -- during these, I'm guessing it would be medica 2?

There are far too many situations for us to reliably answer you. This knowledge just comes with learning your class and getting better.

But I'll answer the examples you gave.

Fenrir: People will most likely be too spread out for cure 3 so you would use medica, unless they are close together.
Tail screw: People shouldn't get hit by this to begin with if tank/dps doing their job, but if it does happen you want to heal them fast. Cure 2/swiftcast cure 2/even benediction if they have the dot on them when they get hit.
Medica 2: You use this anytime you want to put a HoT on everyone.

I'll help you with some more general stuff, as the query is a bit too vague to answer. So for starters: First duty as a white mage (or healer in particular) is to identify encounter mechanics.
-What are tank killing moves? And how frequent?
-When are raid-wide attacks coming? And how long do I have to top someone/everyone off?
-When are stacking moments?
-When are scattering moments?

And also: What is the other healer doing and does he/she know what I am doing? What are the other players doing?

Since you came from FF11, I'll tell you the first thing you need to know as a white mage from there (ff11) to a white mage to here (ff14). You'll be spending nowhere as much time casting -na spells as here. In Final Fantasy 11 dispelling any debuffs were pretty much essential there. Meanwhile in FF14 some of them can't even be removed with Esuna or don't last long enough to be worthwhile. You may or may not choose to do this, however. That is really up to you. So this brings you back to the mechanic identifying duty: Do you have time to remove debuffs on said person during this moment?

Even if majority of your white mage duty comes to healing mainly, aside from mechanic identification, you still have to think a few steps ahead. Specifically for Divine Seal and Medica II. When do you use Divine Seal? When do you need divine seal? Maybe you can just use it during a certain point during an encounter so you can conserve some MP. Or simply save it for big hits - What some white mages do. Or simply forget about it and be a fairy - What a lot of white mages do, sadly.
So about medica II: This may or may not make the tank's life exceptionally hard. So assuming you're still fresh to the game, the first encounter mid-fight where Medica II may be a hinderance would probably be in Titan Extreme. Competent tanks can easily outenmity you, with or without Medica II up on the group. But it's good practice to make everyone's job as easy as possible, especially for the tanks. So this brings you back to: How long do I have to top everyone off?

Let's answer your requests:
You can easily use Medica II for the party wide damage move. But some may or may not derp around with the icicle charges. So you could choose to use Divine Seal Medica instead. Keep in mind: Medica and Medica II are 15y/20y respectively around you. Unlike Cure III which is 6y around the target.
Tailscrew in Sastasha doesn't instant kill anyone as long the DoT debuff is removed in time. To help you out here: The mechanic is as followed: Tank gets marked for prey, boss uses the DoT move up to 3 players, sucks in the tank, does a move called Impale and does Tailscrew shortly after. In this order: When you see the tank being marked for prey, start cast stoneskin (and perhaps Regen) on the tank. This prepares him/her for the impale move after he/she gets stunned. Once the DoTs go out, it's on anyone but the tank. So pre-target someone and esuna straight away. If you have time before the tank is being sucked in: Cast another esuna. Tank should be somewhat low now after Impale, so depending on the tank's health: Esuna the last player if you need to or heal up the tank first. You have time to heal up the other players, even if they're sitting around 1 HP after tailscrew, as there is no more incoming damage for a while. They may feel uncomfortable for being low, though. So don't wait too long and make them feel the sense of dread - Which is also a part of healing! You mentioned using Divine seal here, which would actually be a good moment for this particular mechanic. But it won't be up for every single tailscrew, so keep that in mind.
For Sircus Tower, you can't expect people to stack up, sadly. It's so messy and chaotic in there and sometimes someone runs astray all over the place. This brings you back to: "What are the others doing?". Try and keep track of everyone's position. Always be somewhere around the middle of everyone so Medica (II) hits as many as possible. There's always the possibility that someone ran off somewhere. But that's not your fault, just keep calm and locate him/her asap and judge whether you can afford the time and effort to find lost player or not.

Bonus material
There's this thing I call Healer OCD. HP bars not being completely full makes you feel extremely uncomfortable. But not healing is actually part of healing as well. If there is no immediate need to have everyone topped off straight away, it's ok to wait a bit.
If you need to top everyone off ASAP: Medica is usually the better pick over Medica II as it has more initial potency, rather than over time. Or even Cure III if the group is stacked up enough.
If you have time to top everyone off: Medica II will do. Just let the regen effect slowly do it's job. But it's also very likely that the other healer will top off others, especially if it's someone you ran into through Duty Roulette. So this brings you back to: What is the other healer doing?

Aside from filling HP bars: Perception, awareness and creativity really helps playing the class. Being perspective helps you identify mechanics and pre-cast your spells. Being aware helps not only yourself, but also your fellow players. That is, if you feel like it. White Mage is possibly the best class to monitor others with, so help others pinpoint flaws, problems and possible solutions. And as for creativity? As weird as it sounds, you can be surprisingly creative with your toolkit. In fact, you have to be. You mentioned using Divine Seal for tailscrew moments. So what other occasions would Divine Seal be good? Or when would Divine Seal be better? Or when is Presence of Mind be good to use?
Amount of variations is limited, sadly. But there are countless situations where you could utilize X ability for Y moment.

Edit:
For future references, it's probably best if you get in touch with some good white mages on your server, rather than to these forums. You'll realise why if you skim through some topics. Especially those about scholar vs white mage or secondary stat discussions.

Thanks Foxy and Lyrica (and wow at all that info), for the advice. I've actually leveled WHM as my most recent 50 since I predominantly play on my NIN or BRD, and sporadically on my PLD. I wanted to be able to fill all four main roles (tank, rdps, mdps, and now heals). Seeing the fights from a healing perspective is really interesting, as I mostly know all of the dungeons from a tank or dps perspective. I'll try to keep all of this advice in mind as I go about attempting to heal -- and yep, healing here does seem quite a bit different than FFXI, where most of my time in the last months before quitting (when cap was 90), was just spamming being main heal for the Abyssea bosses to help those get AF3 +2 [I got almost the whole set on WHM and NIN before getting burnt out]. Thanks again!!

Healing in MMO's is mostly about anticipation and learning the enemy rotations to get the best heal to MP ratio. For a boss like Fenrir in Snowcloak that doesn't have many attacks you should have time to do a lot between heals. The raid wide damage at the start won't do much at all if you start with stoneskin i often dps in between damage phases. Use medica to top the group off and always keep regen up on tank. When you have the group all hiding behind the icecicle that falls down to avoid lunar cry then you have a chance to use cure III,Medica or Medica II whichever you feel will work for you. Regen tank then just DPS or hang out in case somebody takes random damage. If somebody is hit with lunar cry stoneskin and cure II,regen and hope they survive it.

That's just an example of a simple boss there are more complex ones with more rotations and things going on. Just try to get a feel for the fight and when major damage comes to the whole group and get a feel for the group too. See who is getting hit by what and plan ahead to focus on these people. Spamming burst heals all the time is unnecessary and a waste of precious MP so try to learn to only heal those in need and just keep regen up on the Tank. Divine seal is your friend and should be used as much as possible same with shroud.

Just a quick tip on Tailscrew. As long as the Poison Dot is removed from that person, they won't die from Trailscrew ever. In fact they could have 500 HP (tested!) when tailscrew hits them, and they still won't die. Most people die from the poison ticking away at them. I will literally just Esuna off the poison first, wait for tailscrew, and use a Medica 2 + Regen on whoever gets hit by the Tailscrew (assuming your Tank or DPS didn't manage to stun it in time). You can leave people around 2K health total (aside from the tank obviously). Don't feel obligated to leave people topped off for this fight, except the tank.

Lyrica pretty much explains it though. What it really comes down to is experience with the fights and adjusting as a healer. Mana conservation is one of the biggest problems for upcoming White Mages. The key is knowing when not to heal, rather then just spamming heals constantly. In a raid setting (2 healers) you should also be coordinating with your partner so you aren't overlapping each other. But again all depends on the fight.

This is what I do as a tank when dealing with tail screw, keep in mind other tanks may do this differently.

When I get prey'd, I look for the melee DPS and run to them to transfer prey to them. They get stunned and when Tailscrew is being cast, I Shield Bash it. Now one thing to remember is that the party only gets 3 stuns before it's immune. In most parties, we can kill the boss after the 4th tail screw. What I do is let someone eat the first tail screw then stun the next three. By the 3rd tail screw, the boss should be nearly dead.

If there are no melee DPS, I'll look for a BRD if we have one, otherwise I run for a mage. The draw-in and stun won't kill even mages so they can eat a stun.

Having a DPS eat a stun is better in my eyes than me getting stunned and not interrupting a tail screw.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MirielleLavandre

For example, what to use during Fenrir after he does that party wide damage move? Cure 3? Or in Sastasha after someone gets hit with tailscrew -- would that be divine seal + cure 2? Also in ST, there are a few times during some fights when we know lots of damage is coming and so stack on the healers -- during these, I'm guessing it would be medica 2?

---

Pretty much like the others say, most things are situational for healers - but I can offer example situations and their reasonings of things I've learned over time and from others in the forums... and just my general thoughts on the examples you gave. I'm sure a lot of this is probably rehashed, by now, though ._.; Lyrica has some extensive info in there!
It's a cross between 'learn the fight' to know when and when not to do something (and why) and know what things do what in order to react to things going crazy/unexpected.


Fenrir - It's rare that people are bunched up so close - Cure III has a really small range. I'd suggest Medica, unless people just happened to be stacked. This really goes for any room wide AoE - it heals more than Medica II, sliiightly faster to cast than Medica II and has a much larger range than Cure III. Cure III, people seriously need to be close together (and stay there while casting), while that's not the case for Medica.

Tailscrew - I have a tendency to pre-emptively cast Medica II for the HoT because of the poison slime DoT the boss gives soon before tail screw as extra insurance. The debuff needs to be removed asap because, as someone said, the poison tick is what usually kills someone. I've had a medica II tick hold someone just long enough, before (it was a disaster of too many people standing too close together and getting multiple stacks... making it a nightmare to esuna everything and taking forever >_>). It's just an insurance that may or may not always work and you probably won't even need if you're quick enough to esuna. /shrug I tend to be over-cautious... but there's also pre-emptively casting Cure II once you identify who the boss has focused Tailscrew on. Then it's just timing and watching the cast bar.

Medica II (ST) - If you mean Scylla when she does Daybreak and everyone's on the platforms... - until you get used to the fight and know what happens where, I wouldn't advise it because of the adds that spawn soon after, and the HoT on the party would make you look like prime ribs - just the same that regen does. I'd avoid Medica II when you know an add is spawning soon (The sisters in Garuda HM/EX, etc) unless you're confident you can handle the hit or confident in the tanks being able to grab them quickly. It's once again situational - if a lot of HP on a lot of people are missing and people are stacked (and aren't going to run off out of the tiny range...), you could do Cure III. It's also faster to cast than Medica. I'll do Medica II in the Glasya fight right when everyone's sprung onto the outside platforms mainly for when the little stationary adds that drop down. It's not a lot of damage that they do to whomever, but it's also backup if the platforms aren't jumped before the floor becomes a contact-DoT.

The cure III/medica/II - I'll use Cure III when people really are stacked, such as in Garuda EX while inside the spiny plume shield or when healers + ranged are standing in the middle of the stone pillars. Since you can also target people with it, you COULD use it to heal two tanks standing near each other, or stacks of DPS plodding away at a boss or monster, but it's difficult to coordinate that since it's rather hit or miss (with people moving)... it's more miss than hit. It's just another utility of the Cure III spell that can also be a bane if you mean to use it as a medica (over yourself and surrounding people) but happened to be focus targeted on another elsewhere (like a tank. I've done this more than once in attempt to heal stacked people after popping orbs in Ultima HM -_-). You could probably use it if you're stuck somewhere and a bunch of HP-needing people are stacked elsewhere. Titan HM after he jumps I tend to put on/refresh Medica II for the HoTs - as well as Divine Seal + Medica II when he starts doing the longer set of stomps to help mitigate the loss of HP from the multiple room aoes (per stomp) while I'm gearing up to cast again (if needed). I'll Medica if in Snowcloak/Stone Vigil HM and I notice the Aevis/Dove starting to cast their AoE.... their wing flapping motions (after that it's just focusing that Aevis and timing your cast to finish right after their damage goes off).

Divine is also awesome if you have a big puller/SR. Note the tanks behavior/if theres a roadblock and the tank is stopping from pull gathering. pop divine just before they stop and Cure II to top them off (assuming they're getting thrashed from the pull) - then toss a Regen on when you feel they can hold themselves for the cooldown that comes after that... top off and then Cleric + Presence + Holy spam (or Cleric + Swiftcast + Holy if you need).

So many situations x_x
A lot of it is learn-by-doing, knowing the fight (after some experience with it), observing and understanding the effects of the skills it has around you, on you and on others.

Number 1 : Disregard any advice from anybody that says "WHM is about reactive healing".
Number 2 : Please see Number 1.

Joke posts quota of the day reached :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DreamWeaver

Number 1 : Disregard any advice from anybody that says "WHM is about reactive healing".
Number 2 : Please see Number 1.

Joke posts quota of the day reached :)

---

I do want to smack people when they start describing the WHM play style as "reactive." Reacting is what players do when they fail at predicting.

As for Tail Screw, I'd rather allow the tank to be stunned and the Tail Screw go out so that the DPS can continue uninterrupted. The only way that anyone should ever die is if they all hug and share debuffs. Whether the boss gets stunned or not shouldn't matter.