Healing help

So back in 2.0 I mained Arcanist. SCH was where my time went. I played SMN some but that\\'s not the point here. I was a healer main all through ARR, when HW launched I healed for a bit, but I quickly found that the content scared me out of healing. My performance wasn\\'t meeting the desires of HW parties. I would love to go back to being a healer primarily SCH/WHM. I would really appreciate some tips on a way not to feel overwhelmed by the recent content patches, what stats to prioritize, when to use certain skills. Anything will be of help ^^ thanks!

I actually posted a rather lenghty thing on reddit on this exact subject a few days ago, so I'll edit it slightly for you and repost here. Here goes:

I use these macros to summon my pets:

Code:

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/micon "Summon"
/ac Summon
/hotbar pet "Whispering Dawn" 3 1
/hotbar pet "Fey Covenant" 3 2
/hotbar pet "Fey Illumination" 3 3
/wait 2
/petaction Obey
/wait 4
/petaction Obey

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And

Code:

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/micon "Summon II"
/ac "Summon II"
/hotbar pet "Silent Dusk" 3 1
/hotbar pet "Fey Caress" 3 2
/hotbar pet "Fey Wind" 3 3
/wait 2
/petaction Obey
/wait 4
/petaction Obey

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These summon the pet, set them to Obey, and maps their relevant abilities to your hotbar (in this case, hotbar 3). You change which bar and slot the skills end up on by changing the numbers at the end. I do have controller versions of these macros available if you're interested, though they're not too different.

Only other macro I use on SCH is a simple Raise macro to let my co-healer know who and when I'm raising so they don't try to raise the same person, and a "/p Swiftcast is NOT available <se.7>" macro to let my co-healer know that I probably won't raise that scrub who just killed himself in a 24-man.

Micromanaging Embrace with cancel macros and so on is really not necessary if you're not doing Savage, and perhaps not even then (opinions vary). So just let your pet do its thing and pop its cooldowns when you want.

Selene is very useful when you know there'll be lots of debuffs, like Ozma's bleed. Cleansing everyone with one button press is glorious. She's also good when a specific mob attack needs to be canceled and the scrubs in your party have made the mob stun immune. The 3% speed increase from Fey Wind isn't that much of a DPS increase though, so often Eos will be a better choice since her healing mmph lets you stay in Cleric Stance longer. Experiment for yourself, though.

In dungeons, always Adlo the tank right as the last mob of the pull dies. Be careful with Adloing right at the start of the next pull, because chances are the tank isn't done pulling yet and everything will try to murder you.

Always use Stay on your pet for a pull, or Place it if you prefer. If it's on Heel, it'll follow you around everywhere instead of healing the tank, which is bad. A dungeon pull for me usually goes like this (with Adlo already up from before): Stay > Bio II > Miasma > Bio > wait 0.5 seconds > Bane > run in and Miasma II if there are many mobs > Broil something until tank is nearly dead > drop Cleric Stance > Lustrate > Adlo > go back into CS if things aren't dead, or keep healing if necessary. Again, when the last mob is dead, Adlo the tank again so he's shielded for the next pull.

As for attribute/stats, Crit is your best friend (after Mind of course, which is your main attribute). A crit Adlo on a tank basically means you don't need to heal him for the next 10+ seconds in many cases. If you want to get serious about doing EX trials and/or Savage, you'll need to get LOTS of accuracy (about 592), so meld your gear with accuracy or get a relic and pump it full of it. If you're only interested in dungeons and 24-man raids, max Crit and then Spellspeed, since over half your DPS comes from DoTs and Spellspeed increases DoT damage.

You should also get used to managing your Aetherflow. Keep the stacks and use them as necessary for healing (Lustrate for single target, Indomitability for a strong AoE heal). If you still have stacks when Aetherflow is nearly off cooldown, blow the remaining stacks on Energy Drain, which deals damage and restores your MP.

SCH is a busy job. I have around 38 keybinds on mine, I think, and there's always something to press. That's part of the fun, though.

What exactly makes you feel overwhelmed? I'm just asking to know how to give out advice. In reality, Scholar has some of the best emergendy healing tools in the game, so even when you feel like shit is hitting the fan you have more than enough to get a party back up from the brink of death by yourself. Also always remember to manage your fairy CDs! Specially Eos. Eos is incredibly powerful, and she can solo heal a lot of shit on her own, with literally no healing input from you at all.

But do say, why do you feel overwhelmed?

Healing in this game. Definitely takes some getting used to. Especially when every dungeon is a speed run from day one these days. What exactly is getting you down. what level? what ilvl? what kind of content? group healing tank healing? There are plenty of general guides but without details there is not much advise people can give outside of that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

But do say, why do you feel overwhelmed?

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Just a guess from my side. Back when HW launched and then Gordias Savage happened, I saw that many statics just stopped. The DPS requirements were quite high back then and even A1S was quite scary back in the days with minimal gear(which was the only thing we had at the time). And A1S was one of the easier turns. If you struggled on A1S then A3S would have completely destroyed you. I think that's also where SCH really got pushed into the DPS/Heal situation it is in now. It started mostly on Turn 9 back in the days, that's where the SCH DPS meta started to take over but since Gordias, SCH DPS was actually even required and SCH has even more so become a DPS/Support job than a healer job.
I can very well imagine that OP was just too stressed out about Gordias Savage and it's craziness back then. I was so scared joining a new static as a DPS because I was afraid of not hitting the DPS requirement since I used to play SCH prior in Savage. (I actually wanted to keep healing, actually wanted to WHM originally even but I joined a friends static as BLM)

The fights are a complete joke now with all the nerfs and gear but it always drove me CRAZY when people called Gordias "easy" but never beat it themselves.

Hey there thanks for the replies! As for what exactly makes me feel overwhelmed, it's the fact that all the dungeons have been speed from the start of HW. I can't keep up it seems I'm not sure when and how to manage my skills without overhealing, and also how the healer is expected to help with DPS (not a bad thing, just can't keep up) I don't place enough trust in my faeries as a SCH. Just need to learn when and how to mitigate properly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VampericKitteh

Hey there thanks for the replies! As for what exactly makes me feel overwhelmed, it's the fact that all the dungeons have been speed from the start of HW. I can't keep up it seems I'm not sure when and how to manage my skills without overhealing, and also how the healer is expected to help with DPS (not a bad thing, just can't keep up) I don't place enough trust in my faeries as a SCH. Just need to learn when and how to mitigate properly.

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Sounds to me you just need to give it more time, to be honest. :) The leveling dungeons (16-47, 51-59) usually have a much lower pace, because people can't outgear them nearly as much as the 50 and 60 stuff, so maybe doing a few runs of those while experimenting with positioning, skills, faeries, etc would be a good idea.

Like I said in my (perhaps too long) post above, SCH is a busy job, but it's very rewarding once you get comfortable with it. I haven't played WHM myself, but from what I've seen it might be an easier starting point since you don't have to worry about pet management.

Muscle memory also helps a lot, and that goes for all jobs. Just taking some time to re-arranging your hotbars, trying out some DPS spells on a dummy if you feel up to it, getting used to Heel/Stay/Place for your pets... Just doing stuff like that while not having to worry about anything else can go a long way to freeing up your brain to focus on what's happening in actual battles. Hang in there, and know that by asking these questions you've already done more to improve than many, many players ever do.

personally not a fan of scholar myself. As for trusting your fairies. Dont. If you manual cast thier heal instead of waiting for auto, you dont need to worry about the fairy waiting for some low threshold of health that is often too late.

Mass pulls are typically this

Tank pulls everything they can while it eats through shield. Put up any hots or shields your can to help heal while you cleric. Use your healing cooldowns
go cleric
Get up your dots and aoe, if sch do NOT stop manually spamming fairy heals into tank. that is your "hot".
pop out of cleric when tank gets low enough to scare you and drop your instacast oh crap heal on them immediately. rcover and repeat as needed.


Personally I play with my whm. Do pop cooldown/regen and even a medica 2 depending on size then aoe my ass off. Having bene and tetra to fall back on lets whm really play a dangerous game with tank health

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VampericKitteh

Hey there thanks for the replies! As for what exactly makes me feel overwhelmed, it's the fact that all the dungeons have been speed from the start of HW. I can't keep up it seems I'm not sure when and how to manage my skills without overhealing, and also how the healer is expected to help with DPS (not a bad thing, just can't keep up) I don't place enough trust in my faeries as a SCH. Just need to learn when and how to mitigate properly.

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It might be an ilvl thing as well.

One thing I would say is that if you aren't really comfortable with SCH at the moment. Then the last thing you should worry about is overhealing unless you run out of mana regularly. Which I feel is hard with SCH if you use your aetherflow as soon as it's available (and ED with whatever stacks are left).

Actually as side note, overhealing is way overrated. It's only bad when you run out mana or when you could be DPSing or healing something more urgent instead.
Both of these are easily dwarfed by knowing fight mechanics and/or better gear.
I'd argue that, if you can afford it, overhealing in many instances is a good thing. From covering for unexpected random damage to using aspected heals (succor/medicaII) exclusively for their side effects on a full hp party. All of these provide benefits that outweigh "not overhealing and finishing a fight with 10%+ mana". Or simply outweigh having people die.

Anyways... back on topic. I found that the most painful part for me was leveling 50-60 with SCH. Didn't know the encounters, mechanics, damage. Everyone was geared up while I wasn't and replenishing bars was really tough.
Don't be afraid to tell your tank to chill because you can't keep up.

A few things that helped me during that were:
- Use eye for an eye on large pulls. That's where it shines.
- Alternate adlo and benefic + Keep Eos on obey and spam embrace on the tank while your character is casting. (keep the embrace spam up in cleric as well)
- Most tanks will cooldown appropriately if they get in the 20-40% hp range, take advantage of this. This is actually true of everyone in your party. It's amazing how well your group starts playing when they're all at 30% hp!! Makes you wonder.
- Rouse is your friend in cleric. If large pulls are a struggle, use it and whispering dawn as often as you can, it does wonders for staying longer in cleric.
- Right as the last mob of each pull dies, place stoneskin if you have it and adlo on your tank. This plus spamming embrace means that you can start all the large pulls in cleric. Place your dots and Bane at the very least before having to switch back and heal
- Don't be afraid to use swiftcast + stoneskin in the middle of pulls to get extra time in cleric (or if stoneskin falls off during the running phases of large pulls)
- Use your aetherflow stacks. Get a few more cleric stance CGDs in by letting your tank go lower in hp and then spam lustrate to up them. That's also an option.

A lot of this I'm sure you're aware of having played SCH before. I also don't claim to have extensive knowledge as I'm a new SCH player myself. I just thought I would be somewhat extensive with how my own experience went.

Cheers.

Thanks all for the tips. My ilvl is definitely an issue at the moment. Working on that currently ^^ Generally when is Emergency Tactics and Dissipation used? And as for AoE healing when is it best to use a stack for Indomitability? Should I save my stacks or just burn through them constantly? Not for endgame play, just like dungeon content. My stat priority for just dungeon content is crit/spspd?

Also Edewen: thanks for the tips even though you personally prefer WHM, I'll gladly take tips on WHM play as well ^^ I wanna learn both healers again.

I usually use Emergency Tactics as a sort of "backup" Indomitability after really big hits (like the 24-man raid-wide attacks that puts everyone at really low health). Usually it goes: attack hits > Indomitability > Emergency Tactics > Succor. If the other healer pops at least one AoE heal as well, that puts mostly everyone at full health.

Dissipation is only really useful as a DPS tool (use it during the start of a fight to freely blow three Energy Drains on the boss) or during real emergencies where you really need an Aetherflow stack for Lustrate/Indomitability. I don't use it much, really, but it can be handy.

Indomitability is best used right after big hits, if everyone is stacked up. It has a pretty short range, unfortunately. If you don't have many stacks and have to choose between Sacred Soil before the hit and Indomitability after the hit, Indomitability is usually the way to go since it's a rather strong heal (for a SCH anyway, it still pales in comparison to Cure III). As I said above, save your stacks for when you need them, but if you still have stacks when Aetherflow's cooldown is nearly finished, just blow the remaining stacks on Energy Drains so you get extra MP.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VampericKitteh

Thanks all for the tips. My ilvl is definitely an issue at the moment. Working on that currently ^^ Generally when is Emergency Tactics and Dissipation used? And as for AoE healing when is it best to use a stack for Indomitability? Should I save my stacks or just burn through them constantly? Not for endgame play, just like dungeon content. My stat priority for just dungeon content is crit/spspd?

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As far as Emergency Tactics go. Often times before you gear up properly (in 4 man) on some larger pulls you'll feel like the [Adlo + Benefic] rotation isn't enough to raise your tank's HP. Depending on the situation, instead of panicking and using stacks on [Lustrate], you can add a [Adlo + Emergency Tactics + Adlo] rotation. Other uses are when you have a low group overall as covered above.

I won't say anything about Dissipation as I don't use it much (yet) Just feels like something I would keep for a "Holy s*** I need stacks and lots of them" moment.

Otherwise I make it a point to use my stacks up even if it's just for "trivial" healing. If aetherflow is up or nearly up again and I have stacks left I just dps and then use those stacks to top people off after. But this really depends on my knowledge of the encounter. If it's a pretty high damage encounter that I don't know much about I might be less inclined to just spend my stacks unless I really need to.

As far as WHM goes I feel the gameplay is more straightforward and a little less situational. I feel like [Divine Seal] (if available) + [Medica II] (even if the group is topped up) + [Regen] will get you through any encounter. At that point it's just a matter of mana management. So basically use [Shroud of Saints] as soon and as often as possible. Also use [Assize] in the same fashion, even if the heal/damage goes to waste, if delaying a few seconds means your healing actually benefits the group then by all means wait it out.
[Benediction] has a long cooldown but you can use this while in cleric stance so that greatly increases the amount of time you can spend DPSing.
Also during large pulls, if you [Stoneskin] then [Divine Seal + Regen] the tank when he has the aggro you can [Holy] the mobs in cleric stance. The stun from [Holy] will let your [Regen] tick a couple of times giving you more time to DPS. Also feel free to [swiftcast + Stoneskin] in cleric stance.

Also, Elixirs and Ether pots are you friends when your gear is crappy. Especially as WHM. Use them like you would any other mana refreshing cooldown. As soon and as often as possible.

PS: Noticed you're on Faerie. Lets play together =D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VampericKitteh

Thanks all for the tips. My ilvl is definitely an issue at the moment. Working on that currently ^^ Generally when is Emergency Tactics and Dissipation used? And as for AoE healing when is it best to use a stack for Indomitability? Should I save my stacks or just burn through them constantly? Not for endgame play, just like dungeon content. My stat priority for just dungeon content is crit/spspd?Also Edewen: thanks for the tips even though you personally prefer WHM, I'll gladly take tips on WHM play as well ^^ I wanna learn both healers again.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by VampericKitteh

Hey there thanks for the replies! As for what exactly makes me feel overwhelmed, it's the fact that all the dungeons have been speed from the start of HW. I can't keep up it seems I'm not sure when and how to manage my skills without overhealing, and also how the healer is expected to help with DPS (not a bad thing, just can't keep up) I don't place enough trust in my faeries as a SCH. Just need to learn when and how to mitigate properly.

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Aah, I see.

I had the same issue for a while, of feeling like I couldn't completely trust my fairy, but tbh, you can 100% trust her so long as you learn where to place her to reach the tank with every possible healing option and CD, and how to time Rouse and other abilities.

Let me try and get all these ideas more organized.

1) There's really nothing wrong in overhealing when you're learning content that is new for you, and not DPSing too much when that's the case too. It sounds like it's out of your comfort zone, but you're trying to push those boundaries, so the fact that you have this mindset is already a win for you and the first step! :) DPSing as a healer is actually relatively easy once you start getting to know the size and attack power of the pulls on each dungeon, so every time you run a dungeon, the first thing you should do in the first pull is gauge how well the tank is playing: look at their CD bar, look at how much time it takes them without your input for them to start dropping. You can usually put a little DPS in this time, since the tank will be at full HP, so throwing in your DoTs and using Bane is a good use of this time, even if you have to swap out of Cleric Stance soon because the tank is bad or undergeared.

After you assess the tank, take a close look at how much damage the tank is taking and at what speed, and do this during every pull. This will give you an idea of how hard each pull hits and you'll know how to manage your big healing Cooldowns for these measures. Managing them throughout the entire dungeon and not throughout each individual pull is a very important part of healer efficiency.

TL;DR for point 1: getting familiar with the content is the first step to feeling more comfortable and less overwhelmed by the pressure of the healing role! At least, that's how it works in a game like FFXIV.

2) Know your toolkit. Specially on Scholar, as someone else mentioned earlier, there are far more buttons to press than other classes. Not only do you make use of all 5 cross-class skills (unlike WHM and AST to a lesser degree), but you also have between 3 and 5 additional fairy skills to manage. That said, the only waste on your hotbar is Sustain, and thanks to Scholar's playstyle being more gated towards healing -that is, their bigger healing power is locked behind cooldowns and only available a short amount of times within a minute- you must know the toolkit like the palm of your hand to make the best use of it. I'll break down what are the (in my opinion) most important healing abilities on Scholar, and I might touch a bit on WHM afterwards too, since you mentioned you play it. Take note, of course, that this applies only for dungeons. If you ever intend to do more intensive raiding your toolkit becomes even broader, but let's go on! Also, apologies if you already know a bunch of this stuff, but it's important to touch on, I think!

2.1) Fairy cooldowns. These are literally the most important CDs a Scholar brings to the game, as it's literally what sets the job apart from the other two. In your fairies you have a powerhouse of healing, even in Selene, who is slightly more limited. Both of them can give you enough time to DPS through every pull as they solo heal, but as the pulls get bigger, specially in new content, it would do you well to understand how to use Eos efficiently. Of course, the higher your IL becomes, the more powerful she will be, and the less direct input from your own healing she'll need to do the job!

Eos has some of the most powerful healing abilities in the game. First of all, you have Rouse, which increases her healing potency by 40%. This is massive. Then you have Fey Illumination, which increases it (and yours) by 20%. If you combine these two with Whispering Dawn, you get one of the most powerful regens in the game, which is also combined with the buffed Embrace spam on the tank. When a super buffed Whispering Dawn is active and Eos has Fey Illum and Rouse on her, the amount of healing is almost equivalent to a WHM casting Cure II every 3 seconds on the tank. Just let that sink in and you'll realize that when these abilities are up, you don't have to do almost any healing at all. Now, this speaks only of trash pulls, but remember that Whispering Dawn is a party-wide regen, so you'll generate a lot of overhealing, but any stray hit on a DPS or a party-wide hit will also be taken care of passively. The best part about this is that you don't even need to stop casting to make all of this work, since Fey Illum and WD are completely independent abilities.

You also needn't necessarily use Fey Illumination right away, since it's on a way longer CD than Rouse+WD. However, Rouse and WD share the 1 minute CD, so it is VERY likely you'll have both of them up for every pull in the dungeon. Remember what I said before about knowing the dungeon to know when to blow out your more powerful CDs? That's what you do with Fey Illumination. Finally, there's also Fey Covenant, which has a more limited use because the pull needs to have casters. If you see mobs casting magic, then pop it. It will always help, even if it's overkill. You can save it if you know the pulls are particularly punishing, though, like the big ass pull in Great Gubal (HM).

Now, don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean Eos is absolutely necessary for every dungeon. For most of lvl 60 dungeons, using her to heal is overkill, and you and your party benefit more from Fey Wind so long as you keep Selene roused, but if what you want is to grow your trust in your fairy, I would suggest getting used to micro managing Eos and seeing how powerful her regen and healbot spam on the tank can be. There'll be scary moments when you see the tank's HP drop under 30 or 20%, but if you give it the time, WD+Embrace will pop them back up to around 70% in an instant. The more comfortable you get, the more you'll let the tank's HP go low without worrying too much. Just pay attention to Whispering Dawn ending (this can happen if DPS is too low) when the pull is still mostly alive, which is then that you have to bring out your own healing tools.

2.2) Mitigation. Following into the whole managing your CDs through the entire dungeon deal, Eye for an Eye, Virus and Adloquium all fall into this. Use E4E while the tank is pulling if you know this pull has a lot of heavy hitters. The mitigation is not much, but it will definitely add up when the tank is getting hit by 6+ mobs again and again. This is specially useful if you're using Selene, to give her a hand with her less potent healing. Also, always try to Adlo the tank between pulls, even stopping to refresh it as the tank is running to the next. If you manage to get a Crit, deploying that is a good choice, since then you can just Sprint into the pull's end and begin casting and you usually won't take damage even as the tank takes hate off you. You also can forget about DPS stealing hate and getting hit if you do this. Just be careful not to pull hate if he didn't use AoE enmity gen. I recommend not bothering with Stoneskin, since you'll get more mileage out of Blizzard II in dungeons. With the combination of your DoTs, Bane and Blizzard II on 4+ targets, you are doing more damage than Gravity and Holy spam. Keep that in mind too!

2.3) Aetherflow stacks and Emergency Tactics. I know you were having trouble knowing when to hold on to Indomitability, and weren't sure when to pop Emergency Tactics, but these two skills don't really see that much use in dungeons unless things really start to go south. Dungeons don't usually have too much AoE damage that happens too constantly to be fatal, so you can use Whispering Dawn to deal with most of that. If you're using Selene, you can just let the party's damage add up a bit before popping Indomitability in-between Aero or Bio casts. Indomitability is an incredibly powerful skill. Emergency Tactics has a much more limited use, and you won't find yourself using it in dungeons almost ever, save for the rare occassion in which you get a Dark Knight who uses Living Dead and needs potent healing, in which case you should use ET+Adlo on them. Other than that, ET is better reserved for party wide healing when the party already has a shield (from either Succor or a Deployed Adlo) and is still not topped off, or if healing potency is more needed than mitigation.

Other than that, about Aetherflow stacks the only input I can add is that if you're still feeling insecure about your healing, you should hold on to them for now, at least until the timer on Aetherflow is around 15-10 seconds to be up for use again. Once you see Aetherflow is about to come up, you can either use it to Lustrate the tank if they're low, or just use it all on Energy Drain. Always remember to have at least one stack up at the start of every pull, though, since Bane is one of the most important skills for Scholar in dungeons. If you're new in a Duty, it's also fine to hold onto AF stacks, just remember to use them before the CD resets, since sitting on them for longer than that is a waste!

2.4) Dissipation. This skill gives everyone mixed feelings. From the looks of it, it makes it sound like they intended to give Scholar an "emergency" button in case they run out of AF stacks and there's a lot of raidwide damage going on, or the tank is in desperate need of Aetherflows, etc. However, you will hardly ever run into this situation in dungeons unless the content is 100% new and the tank is both undergeared and not very good at mitigating. In dungeon runs, you won't use this skill much because you benefit much more from your fairy being alive and healing the tank through pulls while you DPS than from the extra stacks and healing potency buff, but once you get more comfortable with the class and the content, a good use for Dissipation is blowing through your Aetherflow stacks when a boss is close to dying, making sure you use your fairy CDs went off (like Fey Wind), and dissipating her to get three extra uses of Energy Drain to burn the boss down. If you see the boss is well about to die and Aero/Bio aren't a good option, just use Ruin II to weave in Energy Drain inbetween casts. It's a small gain, but a gain nonetheless. Other than that, there's not much use for Dissipation in dungeons, other than maybe using that 20% healing bonus for a bigger shield? IDK, it's very unnecessary in casual content.


3) Don't be discouraged!! Even if you feel anxious about starting to heal, which is totally understandable due to the pressure associated with the job, I think you'll find that pushing your skills to try and be more optimal is very fun, and it's interesting to play as a healer in FFXIV because of how unique it is for its kind of game. Healers here are incredibly powerful in their healing toolkit, so taking advantage of that and using your non-healing time to DPS is a good use of your time and it's incredibly satisfactory when you finally get the gist of it. If people give you shit for a mistake or two, try to ignore the bad feeling that comes from it and see their PoV. They might point something important out, or they can just be spewing non-sense. You'll have to use your criteria to judge which one of those holds true :P

4) About White Mage! My knowledge about WHM isn't as in-depth as Scholar, but WHM is very, very good for dungeons because of the amount of DPS they bring to the table, and their crazy healing abilities can help them stay in Cleric Stance for longer than AST.
With WHM, Divine Seal is your equivalent to Rouse. You have it up every minute, so there's no point in not using it on every pull. Pop Divine Seal and Regen on the tank, and bam, they can hold off on their own for a long, long time. That's when you Swiftcast Holy, pop Assize, and then begin the hardcast Holy spam. Just... watch your MP! Remember that Benediction is a rather bad emergency tool, and its use is much better when it is controlled than when it is improvised because of its weird delay. The most important thing about Benediction, however, is that you don't need to get out of Cleric Stance for it to work :P. Save it for those big-hitting pulls and go ham! Since Holy doesn't require a target, you don't even need to re-target the tank to use it. It's awesome.

IF you don't have Benediction up and the incoming pull is big, you can also use Divine Seal+Regen and throw Assylum on the tank. The two HoTs together provide ridiculous amounts of healing. You can think of Assylum as your equivalent to Eos's Fey Illumination :), with the added bonus of it taking care of melee DPS taking stray hits to the face!


Aaah, I'm sorry for my very long winded response XD. I get somewhat passionate about some of these topics, and I cannot pass the chance to help a returning player out, specially when they're so open and eager to learn and become better! Wish you all the luck, and remember, don't be discouraged. And most importantly, always trust your fairy ;)

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

That's when you Swiftcast Holy, pop Assize, and then begin the hardcast Holy spam.

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While I agree with most you say about whm, this one I would suggest a change. Get aero 3 up. Save your swiftcast. The slightly faster holy is not worth sacrificing your wipe protection. No one is perfect. Accidents happen and Id much rather have the swiftcast raise ready to cast and kite.

Also, dont under-estimate the power of a medica 2 for the really big pulls. Simply wait to cast it until after DS regen so the tank has gotten solid threat. Combining can really help.

No need to bother with pet management in dungeons till you get used to your other spells Scholar is quite a fast healer with lustrate and indom. Keep adlo on tank, and use succor for group damage. When you feel safe enough to dps you can get a macro to spam embrace on tank if necessary. Crit is aways the first secondary stat to go for. To save time as well, selene is good on auto to take first status off party. Not as efficent as manual management, but saves you having to think about all status effects for one time at least .

I know some people don't like this idea but I macro all my cast time dps spells (not my instants) with my faerie's heal focused on my target's target. That way whatever I am dpsing, the faerie is healing its target. I also macro phys and aldo with the faerie heal on my mouse over so that when I am focus healing someone, so is my faerie and if I cant finish a cast due to movement, she will still heal them. It works well for me.

I know I'm going to get blasted by the people who believe the faeries need to be macroed, but the easiest way for me to manage the fairy is to just place the fairy, use rouse, and let her be. Eos will use Whispering Dawn during the 20sec of Rouse (that makes an extremely strong regen). Then, Rouse and WD are close to same CD, so just pop Rouse before WD comes off CD. I never have a rough time healing like this.

How battles go:
Place fairy near tank, use Rouse on her, use Adlo on tank (if crit or a big pull, Eye for an Eye and deployment tactics), then use all dots in CS. From there, I wing it if it is a new place for me, or I go through the motions if I know it (succoring before party wide hits, using Emergency Tactics, Quickspell, and succor after, or an Indomitability).

Tip: Use Aetherflow on CD after you use up all previous stacks, too. (Energy Drain is great)

That's the best I can think of right now, but I hope it helps ease you into Sch again.

Fairies at the start of HW felt really weak in comparison to the end of ARR, so I felt like I had to be on top of healing a lot more. Now that ilvl has flown up, my fairy does 99% of the healing in dungeons.. so yeah, ilvl improvement should help out a lot.

There's been a lot of good advice here, so I don't think I need to say much.. My personal use of indom outside of savage is mostly an "oh sh--" heal after people have ate some mechanics. DPS stood in goo and now everyone's critical? Ok, I'll do an aoe burst heal so the fairy doesn't ignore the tank too much.

Thanks everyone for the amazing advice you've given me. It's much appreciated and I feel like it'll help me regain my footing with a class that I've loved since the launch of 2.0. I've slowly began healing in certain situations again, and with the help from everyone here I felt that it's gone really well ^^

You might find white mage better while you're learning the newer content. It's much simpler IMO. I find on a large pull I just keep up all HOTs and heal bubble and spam big heal skill (cure 2). DPS only when confident and comfortable doing so.

I find it's nice to play other roles as well as heal. Having a break From the high responsibility is refreshing.