From dps to healer or tank?

Hi guys! I wanted to try something different other than being a dps. I have dragoon, ninja and bard at lvl 60. Would like to know tank or healer will be easier for me to learn. I will learn the rotations by hard but would like to know several tips as well. Thanks! :D

Why not both? Neither are particularly difficult to learn and it's always good to have one of each available.

General tips:
- Untill you learn the ropes, Warrior and Dark Knight are easier to tank with when it comes to AoE tanking.
- If you level Arcanist, you will unlock SCH and SMN, so if you want to heal and get another dps to max level, level Arcanist.
- When healing, if you want to have a easier time healing, go WHM.
- Tanks need Provoke/Rampart/Flash and other defensive skills. Healers need Swift Cast (THM skill) and Protect/Stoneskin/Cleric Stance (CNJ).
- When tanking expect alot of players resisting your leadership, they will pull or ignore marks. You will fail alot, but this is part of the learning proces.

Tank tips:
- Always use defensive skills when they are on a cooldown, wasting them is pointless.
- Always make sure the mobs face away from the group.
- When having issues with keeping agro, do not be afraid and ask players to use CC and Mark the mobs for easier agro management.
- Eat food that increases STR and VIT
- Put all your stat points into VIT
- Learn to rotate between agro building skills and the ones that give debuff/buffs to the tank and mobs.

Healer tips:
- Use the cooldowns like Rouse, Divine Seal etc.
- Learn to know when to use Eos or Selene, the same can also be said for AST cards, learn what they do and which card should be used for which class. Using Ewer for example on DRK is pointless, since Darkside negates the effect.
- Speak up and tell the tank to grab more or less, if you dont say anything, nothing will happen.
- Learn to control the pets, untill level 50 you can keep her on auto, but learning to control her at lower level will make it easier for you.
- When you have more then 80% mana and you know that it will stay like this, put on Cleric Stance and help the group by dealing damage.
- Put all your stat points into Mind.
- Same with tank, when leveling make sure you eat food with mind, piety and spell speed etc.

I hope these were usefull.:p

For one starting as DPS, tanking will be closer to what you know than healing. The principle of rotating weaponskill combos on mobs will be the same as on your NIN and DRG. The only totally new thing to learn is mitigation.

Try both. Level Tank and Healer to lvl 10~15 and enter guildhest. See which one you enjoyed most and take it from there. At least thats what I did.

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Originally Posted by Laerune

- When healing, if you want to have a easier time healing, go WHM.

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I'd have to disagree with this. SCH is actually, by far, the easiest healer to use in the game if you are just learning the ropes. Yes, you have to use CNJ until level 15 anyway, but a SCH is far more lenient with its DPS and healing because of the fairy. So if you are coming from a DPS I would think that the most logical next step, if you want to transition to another role, would be SCH. In the early parts of the game it mostly functions as a DPS who can heal.

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Originally Posted by VanilleFang

I'd have to disagree with this. SCH is actually, by far, the easiest healer to use in the game if you are just learning the ropes. Yes, you have to use CNJ until level 15 anyway, but a SCH is far more lenient with its DPS and healing because of the fairy. So if you are coming from a DPS I would think that the most logical next step, if you want to transition to another role, would be SCH. In the early parts of the game it mostly functions as a DPS who can heal.

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CNJ/WHM is the most straightforward healer though. It's just powerful healing with no extra stuff like pet management or various different rng-dependent buffs.

Healing is like super easy.

If you don't like the responsibility of leading the group as the tank, healing is the way to go. You can just sit back and watch the health bars, and pew pew when you're bored.

I follow VanilleFang SCH is super easy as heal because at early level the fairy do everything and once gain heal power your shield let you pause

Whm is the easiest to learn because you start as bot heal (spam cure until the end of the fight)
And also the most boring because of that.

Ast is hard to learn but once you got it, you're unstoppable and you crush the other heal XD

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Originally Posted by SpiritMuse

CNJ/WHM is the most straightforward healer though. It's just powerful healing with no extra stuff like pet management or various different rng-dependent buffs.

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Yes, but if we're talking about transitioning from DPS to Healer, a SCH is the closest to a DPS class, and it has a huge amount of lenience when it comes to healer, far more so than a WHM. I understand that a WHM is "straightforward", but that doesn't make it the easiest.

I would add, don't dps until you feel comfortable with the flow of damage. Your priority is keeping people alive. The time you will save the group by dpsing can be easily lost if your group wipes because you were stuck in Cleric stance when the tank needed a heal. Also don't waste heals on people that are healthy unless your trying to time the heal to match damage you know is incoming otherwise your just wasting MP and generating threat.

I trust you'll be able to find info about stats and rotations on your own but here are some general tips for the roles:

Healer:

- If you want to get used to the core/essence of healing, start with WHM. No pet, no cards and no gimmicks, just plain old healing. They also get Protect, Cleric Stance and a dispell quite early and those are good to get used to.

- Tip 1: Figure out a good keybind for setting and clearing focus target, targeting the focus target and cycling through enemies. Mine are Shift+F and F and Tab respectively. Also bind Cleric Stance.
- Tip 2: Try not to heal before all the enemy name plates have turned from orange to red. That mean the tank has hit them and you won't draw aggro.
- Tip 3: Avoid overhealing. This is a good habit to get used to. Don't heal the tank to max health unless he/she is going to take a big hit (raids).
- Tip 4: If you get aggro, run to the tank and stop moving. Don't run away because the tank can't use melee attacks on a moving target.
- Tip 5: Prioritize healing yourself, then the tank, then the dps.

Tank:

- This is closer to doing dps. However your priority will be watching enmity bars and rotating cooldowns.
- I would recommend starting with PLD. I know it's the most painful to level with enmity-wise, but it will truly make you a better tank if you learn how to hold aggro with your combos and not just aoe. PLD also has access to Provoke and a good amount of defensive cooldowns early on. They also have the benefit of not running out of resources very easily in dungeons, because their MP is not drained and their aoe resource is different from their single target resource.

- Tip 1: Start with a ranged attack and use aoe attacks straight after if it's multiple enemies. Rule of thumb for me is: use as many aoe attacks as there are enemies. If it's a single enemy, use a ranged attack and start your combo.
- Tip 2: Notify your team that it's your job to pull, to gather mobs and to establish aggro with an aoe skill, and ONLY THEN should the dps and healer go nuts. Also tell them to run to you if they get aggro.
- Tip 3: Face enemies away from group and don't let them hit you in the back.
- Tip 4: If there are caster enemies spread out, use a technique called line of sight pulling. Pull the pack, run back behind a corner and wait for them to reach you. They will all be gathered nicely.
- Tip 5: Prioritize keeping the enemies away from the healer and reducing incoming damage with defensive cooldowns.

I can't speak for tanking and I'm still a healer in training, but I can recommend a few things.

First, you will hear the cnj/whm is easiest. It's so not lol. As sch, your fairy will handle the majority of healing. As whm, you will immediately notice how much more you have to switch in and out of cleric since. However, you may find it easier to patch people up after big dmg.

As for the tanks bane known as cleric. Reactive healing, which is what WHM is all about, will have you start firing off cures prematurely. It takes time, but if you want to be safe, just keep it off and focus on healing until you're comfortable. Spend a few minutes into each instance gauging incoming dmg before switching to dps. Good tanks will sync with you and not pull more than you can handle.

Healing is a lot of fun, but a lot of responsibility. A dps falling probably reduces RoS by maybe 10%? The tank dropping is much higher. But if you KO? I think you get the idea. Always remember to heal thyself!

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Originally Posted by SpiritMuse

CNJ/WHM is the most straightforward healer though. It's just powerful healing with no extra stuff like pet management or various different rng-dependent buffs.

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This is not what is being asked though.

OP wants to know what Healer/Tank is the easiest for them to start as after using Three DPS, not which healer is the most straight forward. With SCH both coming from a DPS class, and having their Fairy, they are both the easiest to level as/use in low level content and the easiest to start with if transitioning to a Healer class from using only DPS classes. Just because WHM is the most "straight foward" does not make it the easiest, and definitely doesn't make it the easiest Healer to use for one who only knows DPS.

Granted they are going to have to Conjurer to pick up core Cross Class skills, but that's a whole other thing.

Just make sure you start with the core classes so you dnt miss essential skills I.e. Conj for protect, Gld for provoke, thm swift cast...and you should be successful playing either or

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Originally Posted by Rivxkobe

This is not what is being asked though.

OP wants to know what Healer/Tank is the easiest for them to start as after using Three DPS, not which healer is the most straight forward. With SCH both coming from a DPS class, and having their Fairy, they are both the easiest to level as/use in low level content and the easiest to start with if transitioning to a Healer class from using only DPS classes. Just because WHM is the most "straight foward" does not make it the easiest, and definitely doesn't make it the easiest Healer to use for one who only knows DPS.

Granted they are going to have to Conjurer to pick up core Cross Class skills, but that's a whole other thing.

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He wants to try something different from dps. If you can fully do damage and not heal until level 30 as SCH that's not different from dps. You don't get used to healing by letting someone, or something, else do it for you. You learn healing by healing. The difficulty curve of SCH is steeper than that of a WHM because you're basically carried by the fairy until you no longer are, and at that point you should have somehow learned MP control, to judge the power and speed of your heals and to estimate incoming damage. WHM introduces core concepts of healing early on and that's good. It makes learning the role easier. The point is not to avoid healing as long as possible, it's to hop right on it and start from the basics so you have them down when you need to learn more difficult things.

I'm not saying he should go all the way to 60 as WHM, but like you said there are cross class skills at the least. Around 34-40 CNJ/WHM has already given a pretty good introduction to the role and at that point I'd say anything goes.