Hello this is my first time posting on a forum. I have just started doing PvP this week as a whm and I am enjoying it. I was just wondering if anyone had any tips or strategies besides run for my life.
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Hello this is my first time posting on a forum. I have just started doing PvP this week as a whm and I am enjoying it. I was just wondering if anyone had any tips or strategies besides run for my life.
Part 1 of Team Siren's WHM guide. Written by one of our proven Healers.
"I will be editing and updating this guide. It is by no means complete. For now I will cover the basics on how to heal as White Mage during the first 20-30 seconds of battle. The most critical time. This guide will be focusing primarily on lvl 50 pvp. I will be creating a 30/40 bracket healing guide soon.
One thing to understand about PVP healing in general is there is no definite “win all” strategy you can turn to and use every match. This is what makes healing in PVP very difficult, especially difficult in FFXIV PVP. If you tunnel vision trying to spam sleep for example, your teammates are probably dying at the cost of sticking to your sleep plan. The chronology of every match varies and therefore your strategy must keep changing to adjust to the situation at hand, although this is true for all classes, as a healer, you have a very tiny margin of error, if you don’t shift to the correct strategy your team member (or you )will die and your match will be lost.
Healing PVP is similar to PVE in the sense that you are playing a reactionary class, focusing more on defense than offense, although a WHM can be a force to be reckoned with in an offense position, the times you will be free to pump out some damage will be rare. (More on that later). Aside from being a playing a reactionary role, there are things you can do preemptively to help your survival as well. (Virus, Stoneskin, Stone 1, more on these later) Using these preemptive skills at the right time can mean life or death. For the most part try to keep focus on simply reacting to the battle, rather than have the battle react to you. Once you find your stride and you have a good team who understands your plan and play style, you can actually be the one leading the charge into battle.
Your best teacher, your best training exercise is pugging. Yes, we all hate pugging, but if you plan on becoming good, it’s not going to happen 3 manning with an uber tank and dps that is killing the opposing healer in 5 seconds while you maybe throw off a heal or two. As painful, frustrating and hopeless pugging may seem, there is no better environment to experience it all and thus learn as much as you can. Think of pugging like going to the gym, this is where you will build your strength. I’m not saying to never form premades, I encourage that as well, I rather run in a premade any day, what I’m saying is, if you can’t form a premade go ahead and grind the pugs. They’ll teach you more than you realize.
“But I’ve lost the last 20 matches pugging in a row, I’m frustrated, and fed up getting teamed up with people that have no clue what they are doing. “
20 losses you say?, that’s about 400 XP right?.. better than nothing right?
If you plan on hitting rank 30 and beyond, realize you will be doing anywhere between 1500 – 2500+ matches. You aren’t going to win them all, but you won’t be losing them all either. There is an easy solution to erase the frustration of losing: Stop caring about winning or losing. Even if you win or lose you are inching ever so closer to Rank 30. Just accept it. Take a deep breath and keep queuing.
Having this mindset is key early on for a WHM because let’s just be brutally honest, you are going to probably lose 90% of your matches while you are rank 1-10 or so. It’s not that that you aren’t any good, it’s simply because you are lacking PVP abilities and of course gear ( which is why it is recommended you try and focus on getting a twink gear set for the 30/40 bracket. More info on that here:
teamsiren.freeforums.net/thread/3/level-40-bracket-twinking?page=1&scrollTo=60
First things first, grind losses (or wins if you are fortunate enough) and get these skills:
Once you hit rank 3 get the Purify skill.
Once you hit rank 6 get the Attunement skill
Once you hit rank 9 get Equanimity or Divine breath ( the choice is yours)
Once you hit rank 12 get Equanimity or Divine breath depending on which one is missing.
Once you hit rank 15 either upgrade your Equanimity to 20 sec. ( you can skip the first upgrade and go straight to Enhanced Equanimity II) or get sacred prism or upgrade your divine breath to rez your teammates at 50 % HP and 50% MP. You have three choices here, and arguments can be made as to why you need X over Y over Z, but ultimately you will know what your play style will benefit most from.. Remember you can always reset but it costs Wolf Marks. Choose wisely
Lets begin with preparation. While in the starting cage, make sure everyone has stoneskin ( yeah it’s obvious but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve forgotten about SS and I realized it when there was 5 seconds left. While you have stone skin up you cannot be interrupted! (because you are not taking damage.) If you are late stone skinning because you were alt tabbing on your web browser or putting on your PVP soundtrack at least make sure you have stone skin. Cast Protect? Believe it or not Protect only enhances defense against PVE enemies, but most pugs won’t know this, so go ahead and just cast protect regardless, it will at least give your team more confidence instead of arguing with them that it makes no difference; it’s costs 2 seconds of your time. More buffs = more confidence. Just do it and avoid an argument. In addition there are a number of abilities that randomly remove a buff from you, having protect up helps by being a possible buff that they can waste their buff removal cooldown on. At the 10 second mark begin to cast medica II, followed by a regen on everyone starting with the tank, then the melee, ranged and finally you.
For now let’s not be worrying about “a plan” chances are when you are pugging ( and even in a premade) your DPS will make a mistake, or any number of factors will derail your plan, so let’s focus on the flow of battle for now. The flow of battle is the series of choices you will make depending on what direction the match is being steered to. Making the right choices hinges on one skill, and it’s not a skill you can buy with marks, this skill is situational awareness.
WHM Healing 101: Situational Awareness.
Situational awareness is simply knowing what’s going on, and there are many many things are going on. You may not see them all at first, but when you spend enough time PVPing your awareness will grow. As you progress through your matches you will learn to discipline yourself to not become tunnel visioned. Most of the deaths that happen on your team won’t be because the other team is better, it’s because you lost track of what was going on. Remember you are the foundation of your team, the pillar, DPS can be unaware all day, but the few seconds you become unaware, your team loses.
There are a ton of things to keep track of, and the more things you can keep track of, the better healer you will be. So with that said, lets cover some of the basic things you need to be aware of as soon as that gate opens up.
Number one, if you do not have your camera zoomed at the max distance as soon as the match starts, you are wrong. The more you can see, the more you can be aware of. There really isn’t a situation when you will want to zoom in while you’re healing. Zoom out.
Number two: Where is the enemy team going and what is the enemy doing during the first 20 or so seconds? 20 seconds is an eternity in the Wolves den, and the first 20 seconds are the most critical of the match, this is a time when your enemy, and your team has all their cooldowns; during this first 20 to 30 seconds somebody on your team is going to get focused and bursted down. How do we identify this? Once match starts the safest and best area to go as a healer is to run over to the wall to the right of you, and tilt your camera over you to where you can see the middle of the arena, keeping track of where the enemy tank, DPS AND the healer ( if it’s another WHM) are heading. Why be aware of where the WHM is going you ask? Because if he is sprinting towards your side of the arena, he is going to swiftcast-sleep you then most likely follow up with a surecast -sleep or an equanimity-sleep, then it's GG (We'll cover how to counter this later). Lets focus on where the DPS is heading. So the match just started you are now behind the wall looking to the middle of the arena, the enemy tank and DPS will generally be doing one of the following:
They are all ignoring your team's DPS and heading straight for you towards your left side (down the middle of the arena) or they are all coming in from the right.
They are all ignoring your team's DPS but you have the tank and dps split up coming at you from both sides. which means they are planning to flank you.
The enemy tank is coming after you and the enemy DPS is beginning to focus one of your team mates. .
The enemy tank and the enemy DPS is focusing one of your DPS
The enemy tank and the enemy DPS are all on different targets which may or may not include you.
You need to identify and asses these situations as quickly as possible.( 3-5 seconds) This will take practice. Remember it's a grind. You'll literally have thousands of chances to get the feel of what's going on.
So let's cover the first situation, They are all ignoring your team's DPS and heading straight for you towards your left side (down the middle of the arena) or they are all coming in from the right. When you realize that both the tank and the DPS are going to focus you, coming in from the left or right, the best course of action is sprint away to in the direction opposite to them making sure to slalom between the pillars . When you zig zag between the pillars as you run away you increase the chance of line of sighting your enemies ranged attacks, especially DOM attacks that have cast times . Always try and line of sight your enemy at every opportunity. In a situation where they are all focusing you they are going to eventually catch you (most of the time.) The key here is to try and postpone them catching you as much as you can, while your DPS focuses on either CCing one of them, bursting one of them down or bursting their healer down. Simply having your DPS CCing one of them goes a long way. Create a macro that you can spam that tells your team to CC one of the enemies chasing you. Make sure to use the sound effect function on your macro for those short attention span pugs. You preferably want to have the Bard CC'd if there is one present , so include that in your macro. A bard is a healers biggest enemy, they can continuously interrupt you with little effort from far away, leaving you no choice but constantly keep line of sighting them behind the walls at the cost of you line of sighting your heals that your team members may need. In addition a good Bard can put out constant deadly damage and is difficult to get away from. Oh and they have silence. As you are sprinting away from the DPS the fight can sway a multitude of directions, we can't cover all of them because it is simply impossible, what we can do is cover evasive maneuvers and what to do once they have caught up to you. We will cover that later in this guide. For now we are done with this situation.
In our second situation your team's DPS is being ignored but you have the tank and dps split up coming at you from both sides which means they are planning to flank you. What you want to do here is start sprinting towards the direction where there is only 1 enemy, be it a tank or DPS. Naturally you want to go where there are less enemies. In this situation you will be crossing that single enemies path, you can choose to sprint past them staying as far as you can while you cross their path, or you can choose to run right through them. Why would you want to run right through them? Because as you run through them you want to hit them with fluid aura and at least have 1 dps CC'd for a few seconds as you begin your cat and mouse game, in addition once you fluid aura them, use your macro we talked about earlier informing your DPS to CC one of the enemies chasing you, in effect CCing 2 enemies right off the bat giving you a window of opportunity to cast a stone 1 possibly debuffing their healer with a 20 second heavy . In this window you can also choose to sleep or slow the third DPS that has not been CC'd. This will in result in a total of 3 CCs in the first 20 seconds derailing their focus plan. From here on out they will regroup and most likely continue to chase you and eventually catch you, again we will cover evasive maneuvers and what to do when they've caught up later. Now keep in mind there is an exception to this strategy and that is you never want to go towards the direction of a BLM at the beginning of a match. Most likely if a BLM is heading towards you the enemy DPS and tank will be focusing one of your teammates and you can naturally head in the direction where there are no enemies; if you are being flanked by a BLM along with a tank and DPS, you are probably going to get woken up by the DPS because they obviously are not paying attention to the BLM's plans and they are also coming after you. More on BLMs later.
The enemy tank is coming after you and the enemy DPS is beginning to focus one of your DPS. This situation is alot less stressful on your survivability than the previous situations, but it has a smaller margin of error. In most cases, DPS just runs headlong into battle not caring what kind of trouble they get themselves into; leaving you responsible for them. They won't start to run away until it's too late and when they do run away, they are going to most likely be line of sighting you like crazy. Your biggest concern here is the enemy tank's initial 6 second stun ( assuming you have no stun materia, we'll cover materia.. you guessed it, later. ) When you identify who is being focused and you have the tank headed your way with his stun button ready, you have no choice but to fluid aura them before they stun you. In this situation you have the advantage because fluid aura cannot be interrupted and it is ranged, although it is a small range, it's enough for you to be able to hit them before they hit you. Once you fluid aura the tank follow up with a sleep ( if you can ). You will need to gauge how powerful the burst they are inflicting on your teammate is and whether or not you have time to sleep the tank. You may have to quickly begin to spam heal your team mate and forget about sleeping the tank. You have to make this evaluation in about 1-2 seconds (sometimes less) This takes experience and much practice. Ideally you will want to be standing near the edge of your wall while this unfolds because you want to bait the tank in and try your hardest to fluid aura the enemy tank in the direction behind the wall where the pillars are. By sending the tank behind the wall you will line of sight him, bind him for 6 seconds and give you an opportunity to freely spam heal on the opposite side of the wall leaving the tank unable to interrupt you with ranged attacks. In addition, if you are successful in sending the tank behind the wall and line of sighting him, you can also sleep one of the dps which will de-synch their burst, and then quickly target your team member and top them off. While this is going on beware of the enemy healer if he is a WHM, if your DPS isn't putting forth enough pressure forcing the enemy WHM to heal or run, he will have the opportunity to sleep you. Again, this is all boils down to situational awareness. Don't get caught in a tunnel vision spam healing your team mate because next thing you know you are slept, or out of nowhere the tank appears and drops a 6 second stun on you because you failed to see he purified out of his fluid aura bind. Again, from this point forward the fight can take any number of forms, you may get focused, they may continue to focus your dps etc.. in any case, you survived the initial burst and that is good.
The enemy tank and the enemy DPS is focusing one of your team mates. You should be able to quickly identify this situation because you will notice right away nobody is coming after you. The trade off is, your team member can die within in 2 seconds if the enemy tank and DPS time their burst correctly. I have had team members die during my global cooldown while I was freely spam healing them. How can you evaluate if you will have this kind of situation where they can die during your global cooldown? GEAR. Evaluate their gear and your team members gear. Is their tank a fully geared rank 30 MAR being assisted by 2 fully i70 Warwolf geared DPS while your team member is wearing half i70 warwolf and half darklight? You can be sure they are going to drop your teammate no matter how much you spam heal them. So what can you do? You have a couple options. The very first thing you need to evaluate who is your softest target before the match even starts. This is something you need to do in advance every match. For example when I have a BLM on my team I mark them with a shape so I can easily find them. I know for a fact if I don't get focused, the BLM sure is. Once you see that the enemy team isn't going to focus you; you need to immediately cast Eye for an Eye (before the burst starts )on your squishy member, followed by Virus on the most geared enemy who benefits from STR or DEX, and immediately begin to spam heal your teammate. Another option cast Eye for an Eye on your squishy teammate before the burst starts, followed by Virus on enemy who benefits from STR or DEX but this time instead of switching to spam heal your teammate sleep one of the DPS, do not sleep the enemy with the VIRUS debuff because then it's just a waste. Sleeping one of the DPS or tank will de-synch their burst, and will most likely force them to use purify (because they don't want to miss the burst window) and you can re-sleep them. Then begin to spam heal your teammate. You still have more options, you can skip casting Virus and Eye for an Eye and move in close enough to drop Sacred Prism under the area where your teammate is being bursted, this will give them 40% damage reduction for 18 to 30 seconds (depending on whether you have upgraded it to 30 sec) One thing to note about this is at many DPS begin to panic and try and run away, wasting your Sacred Prism. This option is most effective in mitigating damage, but also requires your teammates to know not to panic and run away. (remember having Stone Skin + medica II + regen on everyone out the gate? It definitely helps in this situation) Once again, let's talk about situational awareness... where is the enemy healer during all this? Is it a WHM? watch out for that sleep! Ideally if your DPS and tank is doing their job, you shouldn't have to worry about getting slept much by the healer, but you can't rely on this, you need to always be situationally aware.
The enemy tank and the enemy DPS are all on different targets which may or may not include you.This is probably the rarest opening you'll encounter, but it can be deadly if your opponents out gear your team significantly and everyone becomes spread out. The enemy team will choose to do this when they out gear your team, pressuring you to heal multiple targets, while you yourself may be getting targeted. To make matters worse this causes chaos and makes your team become to be spread out, making it very difficult to heal everyone. Furthermore to effectively counter it you need the cooperation of your DPS, which in a pug, or even a premade doesn't always happen. First identify who is being attacked, are you being attacked? If you are being attacked you should know it and see it coming before they reach you. This means you need to have your fluid aura ready and follow the strategy discussed earlier by sending your enemy behind the wall, ( or at least try to ) binding and line of sighting them. This will give you the opportunity to top one of your DPS off, provided they aren't line of sighting you themselves, if they are line of sighting you there isn't much you can do but to run to them and heal them, but if this is happening, you are probably on your way to losing, in this case, your DPS should know better by staying within your line of site unless it's absolutely necessary for them to sprint away and line of sight you. A macro helps tremendously in this situation, your macro should instruct your DPS to say in the open area of the middle where you can heal them. As discussed earlier cast Eye for an Eye on your squishy team member and virus on their attacker if they benefit from STR or DEX. Additionally you can also drop sacred prism instruct them (via macro of course.) to enter the safe area so they can wait out the burst. Hopefully your team has not gone blown though it's burst yet and you can quickly retaliate once they blow their load. Do not forget to watch out for that enemy WHM sleep. Situational awareness!
Well that's pretty much covers the first part of the guide. The first 20-30 seconds of a match from the perspective of a White Mage. There is plenty more to cover, the mid fight, the end game, which PVP abilities to upgrade past rank 15, macros, putting out DPS as WHM, much much more. I will update the guide as I can periodically and include diagrams, maybe even some videos as well. "
Sorry I'm not familiar with that.
Run for your life until it makes sense.
Wow great guide! I am having a great time winning and losing. I'm sort of kicking myself for waiting so long to try out the PvP. Is there anything a whm can do to defend themselves against a opposing sch?
Group up with people from your server, find people who can keep the sch busy enough to not have time to deal with you.
You have been a excellent help Kantei. Thank you very much!
An easier guide that requires less effort.
You\\'ll need to:
-Upgrade sacred prism so that it lasts longer.
-Upgrade equanimity so that it lasts longer.
-Stack pvp vit.
-Wear full tank accessories and eat vit food.
-have access to swiftcast or sure cast.
-purify!
So once you have all this you can play super defensive.
Once the match starts try to bait the tank and melee dps into harassing you. After they start attacking you put sacred prism behind the wall so that you\\'ll be seperating the dps from the other healer as the enemy healer tries to do the standard kite.
Have 2 of your buddy dps burst down the ppl spamming attacks on you. Chances are they\\'ll be tunnel visioned and will try to kill you regardless of them dying.
While sacred prism is up, start the stoneskin chain with surecast stoneskin-> PoM stoneskins.
If u get interrupted, switch to equanimity and spam from there. You got a good 20secs of pure tank action as a whm before you pop attunement.
Works well in DF!
Q30 = replace stoneskin with cure spam then mana draw in sacred prism.
A good tank is suppose to hold the enemies in place so that the dps can burst them down right?
Well this is what u could do of you wanna play the tank of the team. As we all know that in pvp, the healer is truly "the heart of the party".
Wow! Great responses I can't wait to try out these tactics. Whm tanking sounds fun. Back to rearranging my hot bar 8)
@ Kantei
Really good guide !
Being new at PVP as WHM, I was looking for a pertinent analysis of the various situations that may be encountered, and I finally got it with this guide.
It helped me a lot, so thanks you for having posted it and thank your WHM for me :)
That was a good read. I never thought about a fluid aura from the start. I typically use them in emergency cases. I also never thought about Medica 2 & Regen from the start. I typically just Medica 2.
For me as a WHM my main goal is to outlast the other healer. Also I run. I run alot. Typically the tank and one or both dps are on me like no other. The more time they spend trying to take me out the more time my team has to take out the other healer. It's a bit of a catch 22. If they are beating up on me then they aren't beating up on my team which means the only person I need to heal is myself. I can not stress the importance of Atunement. Once the match get's to 4 vs 2 I switch to offense and help out. :)
If i fight versus a healer who only run, i change my target to one dps and force the healer to heal, and then, change again my focus and attack the healer.
A lot of healers are able to heal himself but unable to heal another members if they are the main target or being attacked.