Healing Advice Needed for the Visually Impaired

Hello. I've been playing FF14 for about 2 years now. I'm a little color blind and light sensitive. In the harder raids I have to turn off most of the effects so I can see. However that's made it difficult to tell when the other healer is casting Swiftcast.

I'm looking for macro or setting suggestions to help me track when swiftcast has been used. Or ways to keep a better eye on the other healer if/when people start dropping? Would hate for the other healer or myself to waist time or a spell.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Torlee

I'm looking for macro or setting suggestions to help me track when swiftcast has been used.

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I can only speak to the macro side of things, which is to say that there isn't any kind of macro I'm aware of that will help you detect what your allies are doing. Broadly speaking, macros can only help you do new things with your character; anything involving other characters tends to just be reporting on information you already have access to, like their name or their HP.

That said, if you are playing with a friend who is willing to use their own macros to make your life easier, they can make their own Swiftcast macro like this:

/macroicon "Swiftcast"
/macroerror off
/p Using Swiftcast! <se.12>
/ac "Swiftcast"
/ac "Swiftcast"
/ac "Swiftcast"
/ac "Swiftcast"
/ac "Swiftcast"
/ac "Swiftcast"
/ac "Swiftcast"
/ac "Swiftcast"
/ac "Swiftcast"
/ac "Swiftcast"
/ac "Swiftcast"
/ac "Swiftcast"

This macro will cast Swiftcast while also making a party chat message with a sound effect. Personally I find the sound effects to be a bit quiet, but by trying different numbers (replace se.12 with se.5, etc) you can hopefully find one that your ears can pick out of the rest of the noise.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Torlee

Or ways to keep a better eye on the other healer if/when people start dropping?

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My only idea here is that you could Focus your co-healer so you can more easily see their castbar. You can make macros to set your Focus target, or you can right-click your target and Focus them at the beginning of a fight. You can customize your HUD so that the Focus information is at a location and size that works for you.

However, since Swiftcast is instant cast, it will never appear on their castbar, so I'm not sure if that would really help much. At best it would let you know they haven't used Swiftcast if they are casting a spell that requires a castbar. Maybe that's helpful?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Torlee

Would hate for the other healer or myself to waist time or a spell.

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I don't have any impairments to my sight, but even I can't generally parse what's going on in a fight from visual effects and pop-ups; I pretty much rely on the list of party members on the left side of my screen. So when it comes time to Raise, I'll often wait a few beats before using my Swiftcast, just to see if the other player is going to do it first. If it's been a few seconds and I don't see the Raise symbol next to a dead player on the left side of my screen, that suggests to me that they probably aren't going to Raise and I'm good to use mine.

Though even that won't save you from a Red Mage with infinite Swiftcasts! ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Torlee

I'm looking for macro or setting suggestions to help me track when swiftcast has been used.

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Unless the other healer is in the same boat as you, why not ask them to track your Swiftcast usage and hardcasts? In some sense, they defer to you and adapt as necessary.

Thank you all so much. This helps a lot!!

Do you have other player's sound effects on? Swiftcast makes a very distinct sound when used.

As above, I tend to listen for Swift Cast usage rather than look for visual cues, it's sound is pretty distinctive.

To be fair, if only I could mute everyone else's sfx and keep my co-healer's sound only, I would gladly do it in a heartbeat. :D

General rule of thumb is that the healer with the better MP economy will always take priority. If a certain time passes and the KO'ed player is not raised, assess if there is a mechanic taking place that raising is not feasible. If there's none and your co-healer is too busy recovering from a raid wide, especially as a shield healer, you will always sacrifice your MP to do the raising. A perfect example of a healer that is almost always exclusively doing raise duty is AST. It is literally swimming in MP.

In case you are with a SGE co-healer, they have it worse so you better be prepared to Swiftcast + Raise.