First time healing in a mmo, need tips

Hello everyone!

I have always been a tank in mmos, so I decided to spice things up and try healing.
The problem is, I think I'm doind a terrible job at it. Low levels were quite easy, but I really had a hard time on hawke mannor (which, as a tank, was a walk through the park).

I was wondering if you had any tips to give me, be it hotbar setups, skill priorities, positionning, when to dps etc...

I also want to know if WHM is a good starting class to learn the mechanics, or if I should go scholar/ast

Thanks!

Your gear may not be up to par to your level anymore, and you see that once you hit 30. Cure will always be your go to spell before you use Cure II. Also until you get more practice with DPSing and "over geared" I would suggest full healing because it is very easy to make mistakes and fall behind with healing. It's pretty difficult to clutch heal without the cool downs you will have in later levels.

When you do get comfortable enough, just assess each encounter when they happen and you can find windows to DPS if the tank isn't getting blown through like a wet paper towel.

Hello, career healer here with a little dabbling in to warrior, paladin, and dark knight now. Hopefully this advice will help translate some of the more esoteric parts of the healing game to you.

It would help us help you if we knew what kind of setup you were using for UI and hotbar tips. For example, whether or not you had a gaming mouse or were using a controller/crossbar.

As for the dungeon, Haukke manor can be tricky if you're not level 30. Most healers don't get their second heal until 30, so you will need to use some extra tricks if you need to burst heal.

At low level, using swiftcast between heals is a good way to quickly bump your tank's hp back up. If you've leveled arcanist, liberal use of mitigation like eye for an eye or virus on the hardest hitting mob is also a good way to slow down that damage.

At level 28, you don't have any sustained healing like Regen or barriers to create opportunities to dps. Just learn to read the fights for now. The timing is similar to how a tank would use CDs (in fact, a tank using CDs often creates opportunities for you to dps longer at low level, so if you know when the tank should use CDs, make sure they're at full hp at that time and then go dps). And when you dps, always apply dots first for a high-hp target. If you need to do burst damage or have low-hp targets, use your damage spells like Stone.

Also, Conjurer and White Mage are good introductions to healing in general. White Mage is definitely better at teaching you the basics of not overhealing, pacing your heals (the WHM's no-mp cure2 mechanic), topping off tanks with Regen, and MP management.

Scholar completely flips the table by teaching you how to dps and burst heal at the same time. It has a lot of tools that let you buff a tank up, switch to dps and unload dots on to targets. For AST and WHM, you do the same thing stacking regen effects, but SCH gives you more safety to practice it (both in terms of healing and MP management, so you can throw out bigger heals if you mess up without worrying about draining your MP).

Astrologian is an advanced class and it is especially hard on MP management. It's cards provide added party utility and dps but it is also a big MP management tool for you. So, there's a double balance of utility and dps, healing and dps you have to handle. Both tools will drain your MP in a long fight, so it requires a lot of knowledge about the fight, party composition, and MP management. I would generally advise against AST for first-time healers (as tempting as it is to start at lv.30).

When positioning as a healer, you generally go with an isosceles triangle between the tank and dps. It gives you access and clear view to both while giving you room to dodge aoes and stay clear of the tank. If the healer steals aggro from something, it doesn't run in to the crowd of DPS and it's still reasonably close for the tank to take it back. Of course, this changes depending on raids and extreme fights, but the basic triangle formation is good for the standard dungeon.

I hope that helps and tell us how your next healing dungeon goes! If you have any problems dealing with derpy dps or tanks who don't use CDs, tell us. We can prolly give you some more tips in those cases.

If you are WHM, Divine Seal Regen the tank and keep a regen on tank at all times. This will make it easier on you. This + Eye for an Eye which you must cross class from Arcanist and you can even DPS without healing. If you are a scholar, please, please do not forget about Rouse. It turns your fairy into a WHM! Also, macroing your physick (and adloq when you get it) to your fairy's embrace together is what almost every scholar does in some form or another.

Are you WHM or Scholar? Also, don't worry. I did the reverse. I'm a Paladin that feels incompetent but I'm already 58... Help me>.< xD

For whm Regen will be your friend, Divine Seal regen will be your BEST friend. You should be noticing how effective cure is on a tank, seeing how much it heals him. If it's healing him for 30% and he drops to 60% consider using Cure II if you think you won't be able to save him with 2 cures. Single Target Healing gives a .5 second window to cushion weaving ogcd so use that to pop Presence of Mind to help catch up. If you don't already have Swiftcast, get it. At learning levels it is an Emergency Healing CD. It continues to be later, but there are better options and it becomes a last resort. Dabble into cleric stance when you're comfortable to push your experience with emergency CD/Non-Emergency and recovery while speeding up the run. Assigning an assist key (I use L3) will help with that. Don't stress out and have fun. xD

Take a breath and look at what is happening. In particular, most people don't know that in Haukke Manor you can run behind the casting bosses to make them stop casting their spells (at least two spells should be able to be canceled this way).
Tell us exactly what throws you off on Haukke Manor in particular. Regular monster pulls? Bosses? Everything? Haukke is a pretty big increase in difficulty depending on the group.

Any of the healing jobs are good to start because they all have a similar healing kit but also have different tools to deal with the same situation, which means that, even if you know a fight as a WHM, you'll have some relearning to do when you switch.

However, I would say that the WHM is the easiest when it comes to learning how to deal with situations because the WHM toolkit is pretty straightforward: except for Stoneskin, all WHM spells and skills are about either healing, dealing damage or increasing your healing/damage output; there's no damage mitigation, no debuffing and barely any shielding. You'll either restore HP or blast the enemy with your spells. For that reason, WHM has a healing/damaging tool to deal with any kind of situation: burst? Cure, Cure II, any spell in the Stone family and Fluid Aura; AoE burst? Medica, Cure III, Holy and Assize; healing/damaging over time? Regen, Aero and Aero II; AoE healing/damaging over time? Medica II, Asylum and Aero III; emergency healing? Benediction and Tetragrammaton; emergency AoE healing? Assize; negative status effects? Esuna; someone died? Raise; need faster casts? Presence of Mind; need more healing potency? Divine Seal. There's no set rotation for healing and you must deal with every situation as they come. Some pointers:

- Cure or Cure II? Cure is more MP efficient and you should use it as your main healing spell. Cure II costs more, but allows you to save time and it must be used whenever you know that you won't be able to afford the time to cast Cure two times or when you know that your Regen ticks won't be enough to keep your party members safe from harm. Also, using Cure often raises your chance to trigger the Freecure effect, which allows you to cast Cure II for free;

- Cure III, Medica or Medica II? Medica II is your most potent healing spell, but it takes 30 seconds for it to reach its full potential (700 combined potency); Medica is your weakest AoE healing spell (300 potency), but it has a nice range; Cure III is your strongest AoE burst (550 potency), but it is harder to use: it affects your target and everyone close to it, which means that it will only be a good option to heal the tank and melee that are close by, or you'll have to ask your party to stack;

- Divine Seal: it has a short cooldown and can help a lot, even with MP management. Your Cure spell will become a lot stronger and your Medica II will reach over 900 potency. Learning the fight is very important to use this effectively, though.

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Originally Posted by TatoRazzino

Medica II is your most potent healing spell, but it takes 30 seconds for it to reach its full potential (700 combined potency)

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Asylum is more potent than Medica 2 with a combined potency of 800. plus it cost no mana and is an instant-offgcd.

use it whenever possible either for aoe healing or just the tank.

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Originally Posted by Tint

Asylum is more potent than Medica 2 with a combined potency of 800. plus it cost no mana and is an instant-offgcd.

use it whenever possible either for aoe healing or just the tank.

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I was keeping the discussion in the spell section, so I didn't mention any of the skills (Asylum is a skill, not a spell). If we were to mention skills, Tetra would be more potent than Medica II and Assize would replace Medica.

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Originally Posted by Rawrz

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Thank you, this is what I was looking for

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Originally Posted by TatoRazzino

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That's great! Thank you for your answer it helps a lot.

I did hawke manor earlier today and everything went better than the last time (and the tank was doing big pulls). I figured that maybe the previous tank was just undergeared. I must admit i've never had so much fun in a while, it is indeed a different experience and it's probably gonna make me a better tank now that I understand it's not an easy job.

If you don't have Swiftcast, get it. Now. No, I don't care what you're doing. Get it.

New healers also have a tendency to focus too much on curing and not enough on their surroundings. Just watch out for this and pay attention to when you do it so you can fix the problem.

Don't hesitate to use Sprint if you think you can't avoid an AOE or a specific attack. Mages are lucky and get to cheat a bit with this, so if you're coming from only playing a tank, then this will be a nice little bonus for you.

Welcome to the ranks. I also tanked before becoming a healer and WHM was where I started and ended up staying. Some of this has been said but I'll just list what I can think of anyway.

-SWIFTCAST: As others have said, super important. At later levels you have several 'ILL SAVE YOU' heals but even then it can be very useful when someone is about to eat dirt if you wait for a cast. Also obviously useful for raising in battle. Once you have it, you can macro your raise to first attempt swiftcast and if not available it will hard cast raise instead.

-Mind your surroundings. It can be easy sometimes to tunnel vision on the tank and step in something or miss a mechanic. If you don't use it already, put focus target on your bar to use on bosses so that you can see cast bars even while healing. I don't have a hard and fast rule about where I stand. Some fights its easier to be in close behind the boss (lookin' at you Vault) and others I stay back. Party composition has a lot to do with it for me.

-Be aware of your party. Paper tanks or DPS prone to standing in cones probably mean you should be careful with cleric. Especially at low levels where you don't have very many emergency heals available. But knowing the party will also help you plan where to position yourself for AoE heals like Medica/Medica II. For big mechanics sometimes people will stack but don't count on it. With all melee you can just run in and cast vs having a melee and a ranged which may require you to find a good halfway point to avoid missing anyone.

-Prioritize. No one likes a party member to die but sometimes you'll have to make a call. The tank and yourself should have VIP tickets for heals always if it seems certain you are going to lose someone. If a dps goes down you can always raise them.

-Sprint. Cyril said it but its still great being able to use this without any repercussions and you should.

-Stutter stepping. There is a bit of 'lag' on abilities where you can actually move just before a heal finishes casting and it will still go off. I got better a this over time but be careful early on tempting fate. I think the most deaths I've seen with new healers are ones trying to get a heal off and waiting too long to get out of the way. Unless its a do or die situation, interrupt the heal and start again once you are safe.

Other little thing you may try and see how you feel: I turn off the setting that turns you to face your target automatically when you attack/cast while I heal. Your DPS moves obviously require you to face the right way but your heals do not. Later fights that require you to face away from the boss during certain mechanics etc were made easier by this and I have less of those moments where I'm trying to cast and run but get whipped around the wrong way.

Overall just don't panic. Personally I think having experience as both main roles helps a lot with the instinct to mash buttons and hyperventilate when everything falls apart but you'll definitely have runs where you do your very best and it still goes wrong. Sometimes, as healer, you can save those runs. Sometimes not. Also since no one has linked this yet, obligatory 'welcome to healing' video: https://youtu.be/2DxS7eT_ky4