Just healed for the first time.

A bit of background: I have ACN at lvl 31, and plan on going SCH for endgame first, then maybe picking up WHM as time goes on. I lean towards support roles if only because I have no leading capability whatsoever.

So I went to level my CNJ to 15 from 14 and ended up actually going overboard and hit 18. So I figured, why not try out getting adjusted to healing. And the first thing I think of is Sastasha. So I queue up and find that the instance is ready almost immediately.

First, this is my first time actually using Duty Finder on my own, ever. A friend's been helping me through the story to this point, so he always queued up me and him as a duo. This is my first time healing (thread title). This was my second time to run Sastasha, with my first being several months ago.

Party composition: me, tank(no clue what class), ACN, PUG

So I was incredibly nervous on the first dungeon. And things went rougher than I expected.

Immediately I noticed that the party rushed the first mobs, meaning I had to figure out who the tank was (lucky guess on my part, especially since it ended up being a tossup with the DPS that took hate) and start healing. For the most part I kept the tank topped off, but it wasn't until the clams that I realized that I hadn't put up Protect and that I was unsure just how much time I had to cast it between (or during) pulls. Managed to get it off without trouble.

After the second encounter with the captain is where things took a bit of a turn. Tank nabbed the loot while the PUG took off and left us. And he was down by the time the three of us caught up, despite me trying to save him. And I just barely reacted enough to get back on the tank.

The last mobs before the boss were a mess, and it's at this point I have questions. I'm not sure what happened, but apparently tank either failed to grab everything or lost hate from one of the mobs, because me and PUG ended up taking damage. At this point I panicked and tried to Medica to keep everyone alive, but before I knew it I was down.

Having never had wipes occur in my time as ACN, I was a bit confused about mechanics here. I warped back to the entrance, then I hesitated because I wasn't sure if party was going to wipe (in which case I should've waited?), but after a few seconds of seeing health bars stay stable, I took the shortcut back and realized the rest of the party was still there. So... did ACN cover for me or what? Again, this is confusing, so I apologize if anything I say here comes off as dumb or common sense.

Anyway, the boss... well, my friend showed me how the adds spawned (and how to prevent them) but that was as ACN, so I was confused the entire fight. All I could figure to do was keep on the tank even as 6-7 adds spawned. It looked like he was trying to take care of the spawn points, but was that supposed to be my role? At any rate, apparently the party focused on bringing the boss down while I tried to hold things together.

So overall, it was a success, but I'm just disoriented overall due to how rushed it felt. I tried to explain in party chat but no one said anything until the end. The tank admitted he was new, but the others said nothing. I was hoping to take this as a learning experience that would help adjust to SCH when I get it but I'm not sure just WHAT I learned, if anything. All I felt like I could do was Cure spam and hold on for dear life.

I hate it when the party rushes off before I can put protect up :/

but it sounds like you did alright for your first solo attempt. The MNK shouldn't have run off so that wasn't your fault, and as a healer its pretty helpful if you can grab one of the grates in the final fight as the boss doesn't hit that hard. Don't stress about it though as, as you saw its possible to heal through a few adds plus the boss

Everyone learns at some point :) good luck in the future


OH! tanks are marked with a blue colour in the party list if that helps. (also they either have an axe or shield on them lol)

Don't worry, it'll get easier with practice! The first time I tanked/healed in a dungeon I had no idea what I was doing and it went terribly, but the more you play the game (even as a DPS), the more you will understand about how to do things effectively.

I would advise that you make use of the party list as a healer. You can sort the order of players in the party window, which maybe isn't so important in lower level dungeons, but in 8-person content it's really helpful to have the tanks and other healer at the top of the list, I find, since they're generally priority for healing. I pretty much only use that to keep track of other people's HP and select them to heal. That way you won't get confused about which party member is which.

In early dungeons, with new and/or lower level players, there will be a lot of things going wrong. Just focus on keeping everyone alive as best you can. It's the tanks/DPS job to take care of the enemies at this stage.

Just a rule of thumb, you can tell what role each person in the party is by the color of their icon in the party list. Green is a healer, Red is DPS, and blue is a tank.

In any fights where something has to be clicked on, typically it is safe for you to click on these objects if the tank isn't taking too much damage, so this is solely at your discretion and if you feel you can leave the tank alone for a few moments. This is more viable when you get the fairy or Regen. If you can't handle leaving the tank alone, the DPS will have to cover it.

Aside from healing, when you are comfortable it can be worthwhile to practice turning cleric stance on and off and adding some extra damage. This will take some getting used to so you might want to practice without cleric stance to get a feel for how long the tank will be ok without you keeping an eye on them. If you are in the duty finder I find it's best to wait for an enemy pull or two to see if the tank will be high-maintenance or if you can nuke through most of the dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Ninster

The last mobs before the boss were a mess, and it's at this point I have questions. I'm not sure what happened, but apparently tank either failed to grab everything or lost hate from one of the mobs, because me and PUG ended up taking damage. At this point I panicked and tried to Medica to keep everyone alive, but before I knew it I was down.

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Just as a tip, especially in the early dungeons but it stays true for the whole game, spamming AoE heals can and will easily drag aggro to you unless the tank is paying attention, since it's a pretty high enmity spell. You did do the right thing if everything was going to hell, but it's still something to keep in mind.

Thanks for the tips, everyone. I'm hoping to run a few more dungeons with CNJ to see if I can get some practice in.

Ilenya, I actually am somewhat familiar with this in XI so I'm not surprised it's the same way here. I'm not too sure if I could've kept my cool and waited for the tank before I resorted to Medica, but that would've required me to not panic in the first place. =(

Estellios, I was pretty nervous throughout the whole thing so helping with damage-dealing wasn't even on my mind. Especially when I saw the tanks HP drop about 5% on the pulls. I did slow down eventually when I realized I was actually wasting Cures at a few points, but even after that I wasn't sure just how much I could leave the tank alone. From the looks of this forum though, I can see that damage-dealing as the healer is a pushy issue...

Probably the most helpful thing that several mentioned was the color of the icons, which makes sense now that I'm thinking of it.

/psort moves everyone into order and makes healing tanks easier.

WHM/CNJ = Cure I spam!
That's the most effective way of healing you can do. When you unlock Cure II, it's useful, but costs more mana than it's worth!

As you unlock Regen, you start to become a lot lazier. :)
Stoneskin & Regen and just hang around.
When you hit 50 though, the laziness intensifies!

Stoneskin, Regen, Medica II. All the HoT's!
(Like someone said though, HoT's/Medica II cause tonnes of aggro)

Best of luck sir!

If you're looking for either SCH/ACN or WHM/CNJ tips, don't hesitate to ask!
We all like to talk about ourselves.

relax, take advantage of a good position to have an overview about what is going on and most important:
do_not_panic

Especially in the lower dungeons you will be able to tank a few hits, so don't immidiatly spam cure on you - it will just give you more and more aggro making it harder or impossible for the tank to grab that mob back.

You seem to be doing ok, there is no greater trick to it you are missing, just relax and things will get easier as you stop beeing nervous.

One thing to always remember is that first and foremost you are there to heal. Anything else is gravy. If no one is taking much damage, then by all means dps or help with mechanics but never, ever put healing second. It can feel very overwhelming at times, especially when things don't go exactly right, but once you get in more practice those situations will become easier to control. It's always important to keep your head when all those around you are losing theirs, lol. It gets easier when you get the feel for cast times and how much damage the tank can take before you need to heal. That really helps with aggro. Knowing the encounters and what to watch out for helps you to anticipate incoming damage. It just takes practice. In each MMO I've played I always start out with easy dungeons then work up to the harder ones. That way you get the feel for everything. This game is so much easier cause you can start in low level ones then work up. Don't give up, healing really is a blast. :)

I just want to say thanks for the thread.

I plan on going with Scholar for the end game and ran my first dungeon as a ARC just the other night so there is plenty of helpful advice on this thread!

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Originally Posted by Ninster

Estellios, I was pretty nervous throughout the whole thing so helping with damage-dealing wasn't even on my mind. Especially when I saw the tanks HP drop about 5% on the pulls. I did slow down eventually when I realized I was actually wasting Cures at a few points, but even after that I wasn't sure just how much I could leave the tank alone. From the looks of this forum though, I can see that damage-dealing as the healer is a pushy issue...

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It's not a pushy issue in-game. Most of the time any sort of thing people take incredible offense to on the forums is not really that big of a deal for normal people in-game. I WHM almost all the time in dungeons since i hop on the healer roulette bonus whenever possible and no one has ever complained about me nuking since I do it while still keeping everyone up.

That said, your mileage may vary and gear makes a big difference in how much freedom you have in a party. If you find yourself spam healing 100% of the time likely the problem is one of 3 things:

1. You need to upgrade your gear. The Magic Damage rating on your weapon makes a huge difference in healing potency!!!
2. Your tank is undergeared or wearing inappropriate gear and is taking way more damage than they should. This tends to happen in lower level dungeons with newer players as they don't tend to have the means of gearing up completely like those that have another job that is already capped.
3. You're being overly cautious and trying to keep the tank topped off 100% of the time

Generally if you and the tank are geared appropriately you can safely let them get to around 50-60% hp before you need to heal. Dungeons do tend to have the occasional large pulls or specific enemies where the incoming damage will be higher than normal so it's best to stay attentive.

Also despite the fact that everyone in the forums says otherwise, Repose is very useful for pre-50 dungeons as long as you let your party know ahead of time that you will be sleeping enemies. It makes a huge difference in how much damage your tank takes and enemies that are slept do not build enmity from your healing.

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Originally Posted by Ninster

Probably the most helpful thing that several mentioned was the color of the icons, which makes sense now that I'm thinking of it.

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You can also organize the party list however you want by going into the party members window, so you can have the tanks immediately under you on the party list if they aren't already. There's also a command to auto sort, I think just type /psort and hit enter in the chat box. It really helps to have the tanks in an easily accessible spot on the list.

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Originally Posted by UlricCraft

/psort moves everyone into order and makes healing tanks easier.

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I had no idea. That saves me lots of clicking at the start of every raid - thank you!

Welcome to the healing fold! Sounds like honestly you did fine. If medica was needed in that dungeon... Something was going wrong and it probably wasn't with you :) also it goes a long way to tell the group you are a bit new at healing etc. sometimes they'll help you out a bit or pull less etc.

For the last boss sometimes groups ignore the mechanic and let the adds spawn. Which is kinda rough on a new healer. As you practice more the nervousness gets better and get better at judging damage intake and healing output needed. It just takes some practice.

As for damage dealing... It's up to your comfort level. You should if you know it won't affect your healing duties. But if you are just learning the ropes maybe not just yet. Also SCH is a blast; you'll like it :)

So I have both my soul crystals and I'm in a bit of a rut.

On the one hand, my friend that's been running the story dungeons with me says I'm doing fine with DPS, and ACN has been a pretty comfortable class to play as (although I'm constantly learning how to better control my pet).

On the other hand, I'd really like to give SCH healing a shot, but I'm not sure just how. I've tried some fights in the field but I can't really tell anything about what it'll be like from that. And I'm not entirely sure what to do with Eos. How exactly do fairies act in parties? Do I just place it close to the tank? Also, how early do I need to setup macros? I'd like to run a dungeon (thinking of something that's forgiving but also not so early that I get party members that don't know what to do), but I'd hate to wipe a party several times trying to adjust.

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Originally Posted by Ninster

So I have both my soul crystals and I'm in a bit of a rut.

On the one hand, my friend that's been running the story dungeons with me says I'm doing fine with DPS, and ACN has been a pretty comfortable class to play as (although I'm constantly learning how to better control my pet).

On the other hand, I'd really like to give SCH healing a shot, but I'm not sure just how. I've tried some fights in the field but I can't really tell anything about what it'll be like from that. And I'm not entirely sure what to do with Eos. How exactly do fairies act in parties? Do I just place it close to the tank? Also, how early do I need to setup macros? I'd like to run a dungeon (thinking of something that's forgiving but also not so early that I get party members that don't know what to do), but I'd hate to wipe a party several times trying to adjust.

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Since you seem to really be new, here is my advice as someone who has been healing for years.

A little tip: Join a party as an ARC (preferably something easy like Satasha) after changing up your skills to be mostly a healer setup and ASK the Healer to let you do most of the healing. In other words, they can do a bit of the fighting and a bit of healing while you can focus on healing with a little DPS (a bit of a role swap). Let them know that you are trying to learn how to use a SCH and would like to get some practice in. Many good healers will be more than happy to help you out. And if you get a bad healer, you'll be forced to help out. If you get a good healer that doesn't want to give you a chance to learn, you can always try again after.

I don't recommend setting up macros just yet, but make sure you know where your PLACE and HEEL commands are. You should get into practice of putting your EoS where they will do the best. Think of them as any other pet but instead of attacking, they heal. Put them somewhere reasonably central but also out of the line of fire.

I HIGHLY recommend you get stoneskin from conjurerer side. It helps a lot.

In the early dungeons, your eos will pretty much do all your work for you in terms of healing.

But get some practice as an ARC first so you get an idea of how to heal as an Arc. I've healed 3 player parties as an arc (me as the healer, one dps, one tank) before with no bonus mind. (This is on purpose since I plan to finish the summoner line first (since the int would make the job quests easier) and then switch to SCH-though I am already working on SCH).

Now, once you have the basics down, switch to SCH and start in the easy dungeons again. There is a reason for this: You will notice how much EASIER it is to heal as a SCH and since your job skills will be disabled, you will still need to rely on your basic Physick for healing.

You'll want to work your way back up, doing each dungeon as a SCH. If you get a party wipe, you probably should do the dungeon again.

This will give you some practice so that you can get used to how the game works as a SCH. You won't get much exp this way and won't level as much, but it is good practice.

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Generally though, I see medica as a "yeah, this party has failed" button with a few exceptions (later missions, medica is a godsend), trying to heal 8 different people takes so much time unless both healers are working well together. I generally focus on the support side rather than healing side since most people prefer the healing side. (aka: buffs, esuna, etc.).

One of the key things though for a healer is positioning. If you have good positioning, it will be much easier to heal. You'll have to move less, dodge less, and will be in a good spot for doing whatever is needed.

However, one of the important things for a healer is to be flexible. The situation is always changing. Adapt how you play to how the party plays. The more you do it, the easier it will become. I've had a few wipes out of greed and out of inexperience (first time doing an 8 player trial, nobody wanted to tell me anything and I was horribly undergeared (I still hate Lalafell and BLMs). When I asked for advice: the advice I got was "Heal" and I didn't know about the fire because our own team was throwing down fire pools (I have a super slow reaction speed (it can be as slow as 9 seconds or more) so I make up for that by gathering information and setting up plans for what to do in various situations)).

My point being: Get used to having to adjust to the party and get used to that you will wipe a few times. It is, unfortunately, all but guaranteed since there is not only no penalty for wiping but actual benefits to wiping and many times, you have players that just can't hold aggro for whatever reason or who overpull or w/e. Sometimes, you can manage to save one person or yourself. Other times, you just can't manage to save anyone because of how things were.

Example: Cutter's Cry. After the second? boss, I needed on an item got the item (actually, I got multiple since I guess the party finally decided to check), told party to hold on. So while I'm comparing the gear to see if there would be any benefit to equipping the new item right then (there was, but only barely-I sacrificed some stats for some better overall stats), the tank decided to start pulling the entire next area.

So after a few seconds of tweaking my gear, updating my gear to the latest and newest, I look over and see that my tank is taking damage. 0_o

So I end up sprinting through an area that I didn't know (this was my first? run) and trying to find the tank. In the end? No deaths. Tank was obviously experienced and held aggro on all the mobs (was spamming flash a bit as well as skills like overpower).

I managed to heal them through using mostly cure 2, shroud, and once the enemies started to dwindle down, regen and repose.

Example: Stone Vigil. Entire run, tank could not hold onto aggro at all. ONE cure I noncrit managed to pull all the aggro off the tank. This includes when we fought like 5 ice sprites and 3 aevins at once. Tank was about to die so I (like an idiot) used cure instead of just letting the tank die. Suddenly, ALL the enemies deaggroed from the tank and went after me. Tank just stood there laughing (yeah, I saw that level 1 weapon in your hand, don't think I didn't notice). DPS well, did their thing. Me? I couldn't do anything cus all my casts go cancelled by the 5 ice sprites. (again, I was also undergeared due to BLMs always needing).

I mean, if I had used medica or cure 2, sure. However, my cure I managed to pull all the aggro off the tank? Yeah...

So depending on your luck, you will see plenty of party wipes.

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Now, for macros...

I highly recommend that you wait on macros for the most part. Do the first few dungeons first without macros. Once you've done them, make macros based on what you need.

Example:

I have a protect macro that tells the party who I'm casting protect on.
I have a stoneskin macro that does the same.

I have a repose (con) macro that tells the party who I'm sleeping.
I have a macro to tell the party what is attacking me.
I have a macro to tell the party to use LB.
etc.

These are based on what I saw I needed. People kept running from stoneskin. People kept running from protect. (I had one guy go, "Ummm.. I'm not buffed." My response? "Not my problem, I warned you that I was buffing." Everyone else seemed to have noticed and gathered around. I'm not even joking. I LET them die. Just to make it a point that they shouldn't run from protect and no raise (honestly, better for them to walk anyways since if I had raised them, they would've died from the debuff). After, I was like: Maybe next time, you won't run from the buff?)

People kept attacking the sleep targets (to be fair, a few times they couldn't help it since autoattack) so I made a macro that marks the target and clearly states that I'm sleeping them. The targets got attacked much less after.

Tanks kept not noticing that I was being attacked, so I made a macro to tell the tank: Oh hey, btw, your healer is being attacked by THIS ENEMY.
People didn't notice that LB was ready so I made a macro to tell the party: Oh hey, LB is ready.
People would use LB on the wrong target or the wrong person would LB (like the archer would try to LB the boss or the lancer would try to LB an add instead of killing the boss). So I made a macro that tells a SPECIFIC person EXACTLY which target to LB.

My LB was getting boring for DPS, so I made a macro that chants a spell as I'm using LB (plus, it helps to prevent other players from trying to LB while I am since most people don't notice and helps warn the other players to not move the enemies around-but that isn't why I made it)

Hey Ninster! Just thought I would drop a line here and say yo! Healing can be stressful but I have been working on my own scholar as well. Eos is a little tricky. I tend to give her commands to make sure everyone gets the regen skill she has. It really helps. I also cast adloquium a lot. It's bonus effect of a temp damage barrier equal to up restored helps a lot. Especially since it doubles on a critical hit. But that's my take on it so far. Eos is pretty good about auto healing so stick her somewhere near the tank. Or have her follow you and position yourself where you want her to be. My thought is if you can reach a target with a spell, so can she!

Hope that helps!

If you want to practice healing on SCH just do anything before Brayflox. Either of the fairies make healing lower level dungeons ridiculously easy to the point where you probably don't need to do any actual healing yourself. You should take this opportunity to practice using Place and Heel as well as putting her in Obey and using skills manually. Eos and her whispering dawn are absolutely important to control - it can cause very nasty aggro issues if you let her use it on her own. Selene's more recent AI tweaks make it so you can probably just keep her in Sic.

SCH's single target healing is much better than WHM's due to Lustrate and the fact that you can make some (very) useful macros that pair Embrace with your single target heals. For AOE damage, you are there for preventing damage with Succor and Sacred Soil while your fairy does the actual AOE recovery.

I don't use any macros aside from the Embrace + Physic and Embrace + Adloquium ones. You can make more than those if you choose but those are the only ones I'd argue are "necessary" and you probably don't even need those if you are able to use Embrace manually without any problems.

I'm in your same boat, OP! I'm leveling a CNJ until Stoneskin, then SCH. Two quick questions and some comments:

- I macro for Protect at the start. If anyone runs, they die as a lesson. Not bad healing if that one member disrespects the party by being impatient and getting off to a bad start. No 4-man instance needs to be rushed.

- How do you handle status removal with healing and an inefficient party? I had a BLM in Toto-Rak who stood next to the tank requiring extra healing and poison removal and resulting in a wipe. He refused to sleep the adds that spawn, saying sleep was only for high level speed runs. I'm assuming if low-hp then heal up first then remove status, and with higher hp, remove status first?

- Sometimes Eos doesn't do what I ask via macros. Occasionally she won't Embrace when I cast Physick or Adloquium. Is this a game issue? I've seen a lot of Scholars grumble about this.

Lastly, OP, sounds like you did fine! Good luck :)

Just a quick note, once you get a handle on healing, you can actually cheat a bit on the last boss there. Generally what I've done with good groups is to have them all focus exclusively on the boss, while I spam high threat heals and kite all the adds around the room. Even if DPS is a tad low and you have a flash mob following you, you should be able to stay ahead enough to keep them away from the group and yourself out of danger.

it felt like all you were doing was curespam because thats all you were doing

at level15 there's not much else to do

not your fault


for the last boss part yea as a healer you can easily knock one of the bubbles off each time, if you have sprint up you can get 2, but dps have to help if theres 3

As someone suggested. You need to get a good overview of the fight. As I started with bard I'm used to that(stand away and be able to observe everything while still DPSing just fine) so now that I'm a white mage have yet to panic. At most I go into enrage healing(aka spam whatever cure you have at hand until stuff stabilizes) - you'll get to this when you hit upon tanks in bad gear. You need to do triage as is mentione somewhere else on the forum. Keep yourself alive and tank first then the DPS - some DPS will have their own self cure(either native or crossclass) and can heal up a bit.

And before you hit level 50, try to squeeze up leveling THM up to level 26, Swiftcast is really a life safer in end game raids/dungeons(actually it's must for healer to have it :) )

I've gotten my CNJ to be 36 (and have been Granite-skinning everything that moves outside of dungeons) an am starting to get to the more mechanic-heavy dungeons. My question is, when should I feel pressured to be in heal spamming, and when should I just kind of sit back or DPS if mobility isn't a huge issue?

Reason I'm asking is is because I tend to heal people as soon as they get damage, even when I have Regen on them and they only too 50~120 damage. As a result, I come really close to burning through my mana for when I actually need to heal quickly, causing me to light a candle and pray for a freecure. How do you balance being #proHealz and knowing when to be less trigger happy?

I found the best way to do it is to, when you start a dungeon, take note of how much your first Cure actually heals the tank for. Say it gives you 300 (random figure out of the air). Then you know you don't need to bother using Cure until the tank has lost more than 300 health.

Now I've been healing for a long time though, I just watch the bars - when someones HP bar hits 75% or less, I pop a Cure. That's a personal thing though and wouldn't advise doing it unless you're pretty sure that method would work better for you =P
What my family refer to as OCD-healing is something you really need to avoid as a CNJ/WHM. It goes against everything I know to be true, but healing someone if they take a tiny bit of damage is actually counter-productive in almost all situations.

Just a note to the OP, but CNJ/WHM functions slightly differently from SCH healing. Many of a Scholar's skills also give the target an effect called "Galvanize", which for a brief period of time shields for the same amount of damage as the skill healed.

Example: Adloquium heals for 300, Galvanize will then shield 300 points of damage for that party member.

Because of this, Scholar has a bit more of a "proactive" approach to fights than Conjurer/WhiteMage's "reactive" healing. Now, I'm not super awesomely knowledgeable about all this but basically what it boils down to is that SCH and CNJ/WHM have different play styles. If you plan to take SCH, then you'll probably get more out of practicing with it rather than CNJ.

Like Rynia stated, healing after every hit is counter productive as a healer and actually increases the chance that aggro can switch onto you at the start of the battle. My advice is to watch out for the amount of hp everyone has at the start and how much each set of hits cost. [Ex. if a tank has 4000 hp and gets hit with an average of 300, you know that they'll be able to live for a while on their own and the danger zone would be somewhere in the 2000s-2500s, ect.] Then you can heal accordingly while not completely overcuring them, but this also counts for how much mp you have and how much you can heal for on average. The goal isn't to keep them at 100% 24/7, but to be able to survive through the whole dungeon and have that extra pool of mp that you can lean on whenever the going gets really tough and you need that boost of healing power. [I'd say keeping them above 50% and around 85% is a good range, though that varies from person-to-person] When you cast regen on someone, if they aren't taking too much damage, let the regen do the work for you so you can recover some mp while they're healing, and heal when they get too low. My advice is to trust that your tanks and some of your dps will be able to take a few hits and not die on impact (unless we're dealing with 1 shot mechanics, but that's for a later time).

Additional Tips:

On the party section of the screen there are bars under everyone's job, when it fills up with yellow that means that they have X amount of aggro, so when you see your yellow bar fill up as a healer, be very cautious. I believe you can see this without having to target the mob, but correct me if I'm wrong.

When you put regen on the tank, make sure they aren't trying to grab new mobs while it's still active or else the mob will switch their aggro to you

If you're dealing with boss mechanics, you can hit Shft+F to focus on them and see if and when they cast a hard hitting skill

Later, when you reach lvl 50, you'll get a skill called Shroud of Saints that drops aggro to 1/2 AND recover mp

And if you get spun around while moving and targeting, on PC go to character config>>target>> uncheck auto face target [check it back on again when going in as close ranged melee]

Lastly, have a fun time :D

Thanks for the advice, Sameldi and Rynia: after some more dungeon runs and better gear, I seem to be better at managing mana as well as being less wasteful. Regen helps with the compulsive healing a lot, and Shroud of Saints keeps me from getting into tight spots too often.

I think part of the problem that, and I'm sure others, have is that if I'm not healing, I feel like I'm just leaching. I do DPS whenever possible, and I took Virus with me and cast it on large targets, but I guess I'm just trying to overachieve even if it's more detrimental than helpful.

There is a very important mindset as a healer in Random Groups, you will die out of stupidity, not yours but from the group, it's not the game's fault, it's human nature.
You will be playing with players with a tank class but that never tanked and think that tanking resumes to just hitting that one mob very hard... and that's it.
That will result in firing one single heal and all the other mobs that your tank forgot existed starting to swarm you, heck, I was the tank in some runs due to the complete lack of skill from the tank.

General rule of thumb, the more you heal (or overheal) the more you will gain agroo/animosity, small focused heals are less aggressive than party wide heals. And it this your first time as a healer in a MMO, for the love of god, change class and roll a damage dealer! Healing is this game is a huge bore!

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Originally Posted by Rusubandenwa

Thanks for the advice, Sameldi and Rynia: after some more dungeon runs and better gear, I seem to be better at managing mana as well as being less wasteful. Regen helps with the compulsive healing a lot, and Shroud of Saints keeps me from getting into tight spots too often.

I think part of the problem that, and I'm sure others, have is that if I'm not healing, I feel like I'm just leaching. I do DPS whenever possible, and I took Virus with me and cast it on large targets, but I guess I'm just trying to overachieve even if it's more detrimental than helpful.

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I'm actually okay with this, within reason - better to try to stretch your limits than just get by. It might cause some short term wipes as you find where your boundaries are, but in the long run you'll be a more effective group member if understand how the game mechanics work and if you try and maximize downtime than if you just waited for damage and then started healing. When you get into raids and fights become longer and more difficult, it will become more important to know where your limits are, but it will also be important that you can reach more of your potential. Please don't feel like you are a burden on the group if you aren't healing- when MP gets tight in raids, you will NEED to sit on your hands every now and again, and that's okay - but wanting to assist the group in non-healing ways is by no means a bad thing.

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Originally Posted by Kirinichibon

I had no idea. That saves me lots of clicking at the start of every raid - thank you!

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I didn't know it either, but it does beg the question - why is this command there in the first place? Why doesn't the party list just automatically sort by default into an actual structure, and then have the commands exist if someone wants to select a different sort order. And why can't we save our "favorite" default sort option? This is so tedious to type in or manually change every. single. dungeon.

Ah well, maybe another suggestion thread! Still good info, thanks for the tip!