Experiencing new WHM paranoia. Halp!

I am by no means new to MMO's, but I am new to having a healing class as my main. I think I'm doing fine as a healer, having cleared everything up to HM Titan with less gear than was recommended, and with less difficulty than most seem to experience.

In the past I've always been a dps class where my responsibility seemed less - I didn't feel like I was helping children cross a six lane highway. On FFXIV, I seem to experience anxiety when joining groups, because I feel like everyone's life is in my hands. After the fights are over, I am riddled with self doubt about how good my healing was. I guess what I'm saying is: As DD I could parse my damage and see how I stacked against others in my group or guild. As a healer, some of my performance questions go unanswered.

To you great healers out there: am I alone on this? Lol

Maybe I'm just being crazy, but I would love to hear what you all have to say!

Thanks

Ky

I can't speak from a healing perspective, but from a Tanking perspective you are not alone, especially in the environment that this game has created. Most people are completely indifferent exceptional ability or performance, and are harsh and damning regarding sub-par or poor performance. "Perfect" is the absolute minimum that most DPS classes expect from tanks and healers. If something goes moderately wrong, the response usually goes something like this:

You take a CRAPLOAD of damage from a BUNCH of enemies because of a TINY mistake someone made!
Lolz Bard > ...
DoodSummoner 420xx69 > wtf?
Tank/Healer > Sorry guys, I tried my best but things just didn't go right/we had bad luck
Lolz Bard > u suk, noob - l2p
Lolz Bard has left the party!
DoodSummoner 420xx69 has left the party!
Tank/Healer > Sigh....have a good one.
Healer/Tank > See ya later : /

You get over it with time. After healing for years in multiple MMOs I'm pretty indifferent when the group wipes unless I fully know I did something wrong or could have done my healing in another way. Ask yourself: "Did we fail because there wasn't enough healing based on this encounter (AKA did you lose three people to Titan's stomp because aoe heals didn't come fast enough)?" The answer will give you a good idea of how you did healing the encounter.

If you just mean in general, win or lose, that's something you just need time and experience to get over. Use it to make improvements but don't let it become something you're obsessing about before, during, and after the fight because healing is not the end-all-be-all of whether people live or die (believe it or not).

I'm still fairly new to FFXIV's groups gameplay, but I experience the same thing, except it started out as the opposite, I couldn't help but think about how great I was actually performing...until I started noticing that maybe I was doing too much.

This feeling started to transform into self-doubt. Am I doing something wrong? I'm not experienced enough to notice all the mistakes that everyone makes yet so when we wipe I can't help but think it's my fault. Turns out I just get unlucky with less experienced groups. (Not that it's a bad thing in itself, but it does bring up questions about self-performance at times)

To answer your question, you are definitely not alone in this

You must run with some overly serious people! Come dungeon with me. I'll send you a friend request in game. If someone is an ass about my healing abilities, or anything else, they become a waste of mana to heal. It can be pretty hilarious when they become the only person to die in CM over and over. ;) My static party know who's good side they need to stay on!

A lot about healing (once you a reach a certain tier of skill) is about self reflection and thought. If no one complains, you're doing a good job. If someone unreasonably complains, ignore it and move on (this can and will happen, regardless of how well you play).

If you're doing a very poor job, most people will let you know you're doing so and some will try to help you improve.

Unfortunately, there is no straight forward metric to determine how "good" of a healer you are. However, once you get past this point and considered an acceptable player, how you improve is kinda up to yourself. Many times I exit through a dungeon and ask myself how I can improve. No one complained about my healing but I saw a few mistakes that I particularly disliked in my play style and would try to improve on that particular aspect to increase my efficiency. Again, no one complained but it was a task taken upon myself to complete.

People make mistakes, people do stupid things (I've died five times in a single HM Ifrit fight because after my first death, I got so off kilter that it affected my performance for the rest of the fight). Stay calm, take all criticism with a grain of salt, and continue to find avenues of improvement. If no one is complaining to you on a frequent basis, you're doing well for yourself. Now you're on your own to see where you can improve your performance.

well as another healer I never worry bout it .. Its just a game and in by no means something to lose sleep over ... if u all wipe and u tried ur best u did good .. if u made a mistake and someone points it out as the reason just take it with a grain of salt and say it happens ill try not to let it happen again.. people take the game to serious sometimes like they are gonna get a box a cookies if they did something really good just like countless others already have done.. chin up.. eyes forward and do your best to not let others die...

As a veteran healer from XI and in XIV 1.0, when I first started plaing in ARR I was pretty unprepared. The gameplay moves a lot faster and in the blink of an eye a tank or DPS can be killed if your not on the ball, needless to say this srsly affected my confidence when I first started XIV, but I knew it was me(nerves), being terrible for the first few days regardless of being a lvl 50 or not was going to happen, I got pushed off the wall 3 times in my first AK run as whm.

You don't know the fights, the debuffs, or where and when to stand somewhere. But after a few days and a few good runs you get your stride, calm down learn to use the games interface properly and relax. Just relax, focus on "easier" content for a bit till you feel confident then challenge something a little harder. I ran CM for a few days to figure it all out again. Now I do coil runs, just takes a bit of practice. GL.

As a healer main for 10+ years of gaming I always felt that healers have the "Babysit Job".

If DPS doesn't dodge abilities and gets hit, you have to heal them before they die.
If tanks miss a taunt or simply sucks, you have to keep Tank, DPS, and yourself alive regardless.
If you do pull aggro although you used up all "Reduce aggro abilities" you have to also take the role of a tank >_>

There is a very fine line that determines a good healer from a bad one at times, other times its very transparent.
(This will be left alone since there's so much to go into, lol)

As long as you know your priorities in a group, you'll be fine as a healer.
In Titan for example my priorities are:

Myself > Tank > Second healer(if any) > Bards(if any) > All the rest.

If a DPS dies in Titan 99% of the time is their own fault. As long as you're using your Medicas you are doing fine as far as healing DPS goes.

I personally tend to punish DPS by letting them die when they repeat the same mistake over and over again although they were told how the mechanics works. This includes tanks as well (assuming I can tank the content as WHM).
I've completed hundreds of AK runs without a tank since they keep falling to Demon Wall Repells.

Wow! Overwhelmed at all your awesome responses. I feel way better haha. Thanks guys :)

I feel your pain! Despite never being blamed or hated I still feel uncomfortable with my abilities. I feel like I can do better and maybe get certain skills from other classes.

Which is why don't bother with joining fcs or fate groups due to my uncertainty.

count the fact that this is my first mmorpg and I'm using a ps3 kinda adds to my concern.

Luckily the community is quite polit and understanding. Then again I'm no near finishing the story quest

My general rule for gauging success is simple. If everyone's alive, the healing was fine. There will be death occasionally, but sometimes it's out of your hands.

There are situations that are out of your control as a healer, but you simply have to work on what you can do best. A fight that exemplifies this idea is Titan HM. This is a fight where healers are the most important factor (other than overall DPS), and finding your groove and trusting others to stay out of AoE is important. This idea is carried into the fights throughout Coil as well. If someone complains non-constructively, ignore them but try and take away what could have gone better.

As time goes on, you will begin to see how you approach healing and learn what works overall and what doesn't. Also, have fun with it. :D

I can't really say for sure if you are at fault or not, but remember this:
Just because someone dies, it is not necessarily your fault.
A tank can die because he didnt blow a CD, did not run out of certain AOE, etc. (This was happening us on turn 2 around a month and a few weeks ago because our tanks didnt dodge repelling cannons)
80%+ of the time when a DPS dies in hard content, it's his/her fault because they did not dodge or execute the fights mechanic properly.

Realize that you are not a god. You cannot always clean up someones dirty diaper when you have your hands full already. I believe this applies especially in this game, where healers do not have a lot of tools right now to sustain life and clean up after the fails of others compared to other MMO's such as WoW, where a paladin would have Lay on Hands, Blessing of Sacrifice, Hand of Protection, tons of instant spells and HPS cooldowns, beacon, blessing of freedom, extremely low mana costing cleanse, a majority of heals healing from 10% back all the way up to 100%, etc.

Some fights are more unforgiving than others. People dying in titan for example, usually is not your fault. If they get hit by pools/bombs/landslide and die, it's their fault, not yours. Even on table flip, if a tank does not blow anything accordingly, or warn you that they have nothing up, the chance of death rises exponentially.

The best way to diagnose the situation, and find out if your the problem, is to watch everyone like a hawk. Know your fights, know when a tank should be popping CD's to mitigate burst, know where your DPS are standing and if they get hit needlessly by AOE. Generally speaking, I can't give you healing pointers based on your style of play if I haven't seen you heal.

Remember, DPS is a science, while healing is an art. A lot of what we do is based off of what we are feeling in the current situation and how we choose to adapt based on personal experience/preferences. Have some confidence! It's bad to doubt yourself as a healer! Nobody can ask for more than your best effort. Keep trying to improve!

At the end of the day as long and you're clearing content and no one's dying to you not healing well enough, that's all that matters. Healing meters honestly don't matter at all in ANY game.

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Originally Posted by Danfingo

To you great healers out there: am I alone on this? Lol

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the first time running a dungeon yea, my hands shook a bit on first titan run even, but you soon realise that in everything before coil most deaths come from sloppy play, not some lack of madhealingskillz

When I started I felt the exact same and as my mmo plus never actually playing a healing role in anything in I was in self doubt, but as long as you don't get anyone killed too often your a pretty good heal imo. :P

You learn very quickly to gauge your own skill level simply by results. Did anyone die? Was there anything you could have done to prevent that death? Did the situation ever become hectic for you and were you able to handle it well?

Sometimes I forget silly things during my runs, but I always try to take time afterwards to remember my mistakes or things I'd forgotten to do or capitalize on, and try to make sure I do it in future runs, even if I don't need to, just to get accustomed to doing things where they feel natural in critical situations.

What you have to remember though is that, unlike damage dealing and even tanking, Healers have no set rotations or even ideal rotations. Our performance relies heavily on the performance of our teammates, and so our biggest measure of personal skill is our ability to adapt to unusual situations. It also means that sometimes, if enough of your allies perform poorly, or if critical allies perform poorly, it may be impossible for you to save it, and that's okay. A lot of healers get discouraged when they get criticism about their abilities, and sometimes it's not even their faults. The best thing you can do for yourself is learn to take criticism well, but also to not let it discourage you.

It IS hard to build confidence as a healer because you have no way to separate your own performance from that of the whole group. In order to know how well you're doing, you'll need to get facts:

- Run with different people and compare how well the run goes. I've lost count of the times during my leveling days where I'd fail catastrophically in a new dungeon, crumble with self-doubt, but then try again and run it without trouble with three other parties, to finally realize that the problem the first time wasn't with me but the rest of the team.

- Look at the healers who can clear the content with ease. What are they wearing, what are they doing? If you're geared about the same and you don't see anything weird and unexplainable in their playing style then probably you aren't the worst performing member of your party.

Playing a healer is about trying to balance the confidence to decide that it's not your fault people are dying, with the humility to keep improving.


Also, everything Slark said.

i am not a great healer. or at least i don't know if i am, or claim to be.

but to the point. i sometimes derp with my fingers in tight situations, or even when we're doing fine. hitting the wrong keys and making my job more difficult, it's not something i can fix either. so i just have to live with it, and keep trying. but sometimes, as some have said in this thread, it still causes me to lose confidence in myself, and i have to quit playing for a little while or risk getting pretty mad and upset with myself. also, this game is really difficult. i find myself sweating a lot while healing.

everyone can make mistakes. even if your party gets mad at you, and you think you're not healing right, keep trying. it is hard to focus on who's fault it really is, and it is hard for who's fault it is to be blatantly obvious. so there is little point in figuring that out, other than curiousity. keep trying. as tifa in final fantasy 7 ACC said, no giving up!

Because I love healing, I'm almost finished my Relic on my Scholar (While I already have a WHM with +1 and quite a few AF2 pieces). At the end of the day, all you need to understand is there are just some situations you can not heal through, no matter how hard you press that button on your keyboard.

FFXIV, compared to most MMOs is VERY unforgiving on failed mechanics, dodging ground aoe, or whatever it might be. Even a relatively easy enemy like a Dullahan in AK, if a DD class messes up their positioning and gets hit by his cleave 90% of the time it will kill or near kill them. That's not your fault. I am however seeing more people stand in "red shit" in WP because it's an easy instance, well when Tank pulls 6+ mobs the aquatic attacks and such can devastate a class. The tank included too. (Which why tanks feel the need to not move out of avoidable damage is beyond me)

Now if you yourself fail at avoiding, or healing after a recognizable high damage (unavoidable) attack from the boss that dips your tank's health low then yeah, it's your fault.

I'd wager 90% of the time though most deaths are NOT the Healer's fault.

you sound like a great healer, seriously! And don't worry, there are people in the game who act high and mighty.. definitely.. I tell you my hands get cold when I have to heal titan. I hate titan! lol just hang in there, you aren't alone. take a deep breath, ignore the haters, and keep being a baddass! /flex

Whenever I do something new I get a little nervous. Like this week I'm finally in a coil static in timeslots I can do. Even watching videos or whatever, you just don't really know how things are going to work out until you start it.

I've never really done this style MMO before so it's a double thing. (It helped that I ran my BLM though relic before I'd even started healing, so I knew a bit of what to expect)

The worst is when people just can't stay out of the damn red shapes. "Dude, stop standing in the red shapes" to which they reply "LOLwut sorry for making you do your job".
People who respond like that are always one of three things: undergeared, can't hold hate or do crap dps.

I'm a healer, and when a too serious player mainly DPS starts saying bad things about any healer in the party including myself i just say, parley parley! they normally don't say anything after that.

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Originally Posted by Rbstr

Whenever I do something new I get a little nervous. Like this week I'm finally in a coil static in timeslots I can do. Even watching videos or whatever, you just don't really know how things are going to work out until you start it.

I've never really done this style MMO before so it's a double thing. (It helped that I ran my BLM though relic before I'd even started healing, so I knew a bit of what to expect)

The worst is when people just can't stay out of the damn red shapes. "Dude, stop standing in the red shapes" to which they reply "LOLwut sorry for making you do your job".
People who respond like that are always one of three things: undergeared, can't hold hate or do crap dps.

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Let them die.

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Originally Posted by Slark

The best way to diagnose the situation, and find out if your the problem, is to watch everyone like a hawk. Know your fights, know when a tank should be popping CD's to mitigate burst, know where your DPS are standing and if they get hit needlessly by AOE. Generally speaking, I can't give you healing pointers based on your style of play if I haven't seen you heal.

Remember, DPS is a science, while healing is an art.

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Knowing the fights is a great point Slark. I seem to find that with some groups we clear content so easily that I am relaxed the whole way through, but other times I'm watching someone stand in plumes in Titan and it's stressing ME out because I'm the healer and his death will likely look bad for me. But I think the confidence comes in knowing that I dodged everything and watched the other guy stand there and there was nothing I could do about it.


Good stuff!

Always a little nervous, but we have so much to watch for..whenever someone dies it's the healer who gets blamed. And it's not always true.

We have to lead the party, but from a different perspective. It's our job to make sure the party is behaving properly. We're the best at seeing where hate is going because our cures follow that hate whether it's to us, dps or tanking.

You will get nervous, but once you know you have your role down in the run and things still go wrong, it's time to make sure the children know how to play nicely with the mobs.

You'll get "well i did XX runs in a row and played the same.", well that's special..but everyone (including us healers) need to know how to adjust our role to better fit the threshold of hate that is set by the party formation...and we get to let them know that. It's like being a bard in 11 all over again!

I know i will be nervous when running with a party... For this reason I have not joined anyone yet. There is a dungeon (lvl 15 quest i think...), in Limsa Lominsa (spelling, ack) I have stayed away from so far... Maybe one of these days. :p

I will say I am having too much fun running around and leveling.

If the fight has no party wide aoe, and dps are dead. It's their fault. Your main priority should be keeping yourself and tank alive.

If you are wondering how good you are as healer, esp whm, you can try considering this.

1) How soon you can fill up HP lost for your tank/party.
2) How high is your MP wasted on overhealing.
3) How fast can you remove bad status effect.

If you are bore, and want to polish your skill more outside CoB, you can solo heal 8 man content, like Garuda HM, Titan HM.

Lastly, if you stuck to some point that tank keep dying, you can try analyzing combat log to learn from mistakes.

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Originally Posted by gmc

I know i will be nervous when running with a party... For this reason I have not joined anyone yet. There is a dungeon (lvl 15 quest i think...), in Limsa Lominsa (spelling, ack) I have stayed away from so far... Maybe one of these days. :p

I will say I am having too much fun running around and leveling.

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Sastasha is a good first dungeon. Nothing too scary comes up, keep your tank targeted and/or set up macros to make healing the rest of your group easier. Best ones that I had for early dungeons was to assign buttons 1 through 4 to instantly heal party members in those slots without having to worry about targeting them directly. This will serve you until you start running in 8 man parties. I can't remember the exact macro but I will update later with them.

"i didn't feel like I was helping children cross a six lane highway"
This made me lol so hard. I feel your pain. xD

What you're feeling is completely normal for anyone who's trying to be the very best they can be, not just a WHM. Its only human to doubt yourself before you have confidence. Ever heard the phrase "You're your own worst critic"? Experience is the best teacher, but that also means in some cases you will fall on your face...'course that also means sometimes you'll get the pleasant "Awesoem healz" comment. It can be a real challenge occasionally; however, the reward of a job well done is its own reward...but since you've been a healer for a while I'm pretty sure you already know that. =)

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Originally Posted by Imakles

"Awesoem healz"

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What an accurate representation of such comments

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

If no one is complaining to you on a frequent basis, you're doing well for yourself.

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The above I'd like to point out. People will tell you if you are bad, heh trust me. But if no one says anything, then take it as you are doing well. People will complain. They would rather blame the healer or tank for their death when they themselves screwed up and attacked the wrong mob. Stupid I know, but human nature.

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Originally Posted by Aedra

If you are wondering how good you are as healer, esp whm, you can try considering this.

1) How soon you can fill up HP lost for your tank/party.
2) How high is your MP wasted on overhealing.
3) How fast can you remove bad status effect.

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i'd even knock off 1) as completely situational, if a dps is silly and gets himself hit by a small aoe you can often ignore it, down the succubus/whatever and let him heal automatically on the way to the next mobs (as long as you're watching the battle and see that he's not gonna take more hits before the mobs are cleaned up), 0mp used.
and leaving people on 50%hp sometimes makes them pay more attention to what theyre actually doing:)

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Originally Posted by Rbstr

Whenever I do something new I get a little nervous. Like this week I'm finally in a coil static in timeslots I can do. Even watching videos or whatever, you just don't really know how things are going to work out until you start it.

I've never really done this style MMO before so it's a double thing. (It helped that I ran my BLM though relic before I'd even started healing, so I knew a bit of what to expect)

The worst is when people just can't stay out of the damn red shapes. "Dude, stop standing in the red shapes" to which they reply "LOLwut sorry for making you do your job".
People who respond like that are always one of three things: undergeared, can't hold hate or do crap dps.

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My answer to that is: "My job is to heal damage, but I have no spell that can heal stupidity, not even Esuna."

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Originally Posted by Niadissa

Sastasha is a good first dungeon. Nothing too scary comes up, keep your tank targeted and/or set up macros to make healing the rest of your group easier. Best ones that I had for early dungeons was to assign buttons 1 through 4 to instantly heal party members in those slots without having to worry about targeting them directly. This will serve you until you start running in 8 man parties. I can't remember the exact macro but I will update later with them.

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Thank you Niadissa for your reply. Yeah, Sastasha is the dungeon I was thinking about.

Made two macros (/ac "Cure" <t> & /ac "Cure" <tt>) so far. Only have used the <tt> macro once on a player that was taking on a FATE npc, and managed to use a ton of MP while healing when needed and switching to Cleric mode to do dps. Will admit noob'n it so far.

Macro /ac "Cure" <x> x = me, 2, 3, or 4 to assign to butons 1 thru 4. Will probably use this to heal party members.