Tips and Suggestions For a Nervous New Healer

So, as the title implies, I've decided to try my hand at some healing. I'm currently leveling CNJ so I can play as a WHM. While I've technically leveled SCH by virtue of having leveled my SMN, I haven't actually played SCH since it doesn't sound much like my style for healing. Basically, I am brand new to the role, and getting ready to try my first dungeon as a healer.

While I have minor experience in assistance with healing support duties as RDM and SMN, like rezzing people, I'm nervous about doing actual healing for other players. So if anyone can give me some input on things I can do to help ease my anxieties, and help me to get my bearings for what to expect in a dungeon/trial setting, I would really appreciate it!

Know your actions, learn to use the party list if your on PC, have fast cast ready, assist with dots only when you feel you can without jeopardizing the party ( remember healing is your main concern ), learn to cancel your casting when your targeted ( better to avoid then get killed ) Have back up Mega ether, just in case they help at times specially if you get resurrected, Be always well geared. ( Food is your friend )

Most importantly have fun ^^

Things to remember:

• Make sure to let the players know you're new to healing but not the dungeon. Being honest and up front about that will mean if simple mistakes happen, people will generally be quick to forgive and keep pushing on.
• Your heals are meaty! The size of your heals are ridiculously large compared to similar staple healer spells from other MMOs. This means you generally won't need a lot to use a lot of resources to keep people tanked up.
• Give yourself a comfort level of "I should definitely start healing at this point". This can be as high as when you see the tank fall below 75% HP. Once they hit that threshold, slap them a Cure and keep doing what must be done. Don't be shy about the overheal at your current skill level. You'll learn how to better manage your resources and play more efficiently as you both gain new tools from the healer kit and understand the limitations of those tools via experience.
• Once you understand the flow and party dynamic (how much damage is the tank taking at a time? Are the DPS dodging AoEs? Etc.), don't be shy to spend a GCD or two tagging things with Aero at opportune moments. Gauging these moments might take a few pulls and don't be afraid to shy away from the DPS buttons until you're self-assured everything will be okay. The nice thing about Aero is that it's instant and thus allows you to move while the GCD is on cooldown do avoid AoEs.
• Have fun :)

Don't get too anxious, FF14 does a great job of increasing the difficulty level as you go. Your first dungeons you will only have a couple of skills so it's very straightforward. Just always stay close to your tank and then spam that cure 1 :p (healing requirement is generally pretty low unless your tank pulls big)

Check your role actions, there's useful stuff in there! (Lucid Dreaming and Esuna as you get them, most groups also like you to have Protect).

Early on, don't worry about overhealing and don't worry about doing DPS. Get a feel for how the healing spells work and how much you can comfortably heal. Once you get the hang of that, you can start adding in Aero and Stone spells when you have healing downtime.

The first suggestion I'd give to a new healer is don't worry too much about other people.

Everyone has opinions on healers and we're usually one of the first to be blamed when something goes wrong. If it's constructive criticism, welcome it. If it's someone bashing you, just ignore it.

In a 4-man setting, you priority is to heal. That doesn't mean you shouldn't help out with dps (you should), but not at the expense of someone dying. When you first start out you'll probably get a little panicky and heal when people just barely take any damage. That's fine.

As you get more comfortable and you get to really feel how much your heals do, you can wait a bit more (70% health, 50% health, etc..).

You'll also learn to rely on your regens more (because you're choosing WHM). New healers have a tendency to treat regen as something to do in advance, but once they see people go down to 50% health, they might panic and use a non-regen healing spell, and thus the regen is wasted. If you're unsure of the fight that's ok, but if it's a fight you know a bit, you should ask yourself if you can wait for the regen or if there's an actual need for you not to wait (like a massive aoe that's coming up in 2 seconds). If you can, let the regens do their job while you help out with dps/mechs.

In an 8-man setting, you have a cohealer, so while you're still supposed to make sure people are alive, you do have help. Learn a little bit about all the healers so you know what you kind of help you can expect from them.

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Originally Posted by ChaoticCrimson

While I have minor experience in assistance with healing support duties as RDM and SMN, like rezzing people, I'm nervous about doing actual healing for other players. So if anyone can give me some input on things I can do to help ease my anxieties, and help me to get my bearings for what to expect in a dungeon/trial setting, I would really appreciate it!

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For the most part, dungeons are pretty gentle, especially early one. There are some breakpoints though, such as Brayflox's Longstop and Dzaemel Darkhold, which can be problematic if you or the tank neglected gear. In any case, you should find keeping up with heals generally isn't too hard. And once you get regen, you can toss that on the tank to worry about them a bit less.

That said, if there's one thing I would caution about... especially when you start getting pressured to DPS... tunnel vision. If you feel really confidence in keeping track of things you can ignore this advice, but generally, I'd suggest moving your party frame closer to the center of the screen. Somewhere where you'll be looking at it a lot.

Even in settings like endgame savage raiding, I've seen players switch to healing and do OK... but then fall into the trap of completely failing to notice that someone in their party failed a mechanic, perhaps even dying. So, for starting, I recommend moving the party frame to ensure you always have good awareness of the party and can react quickly when someone stumbles.

As a DPS main who recently decided to give healing a try, I can 100% relate to that nervous feeling. Something that helped me a lot was reading up on Zyrk's guide to healing found here, which was a pretty good way to get a base as to what I should and shouldn't be doing as a healer. Starting with a CNJ is also a good idea since it'll let you adapt to healing starting from the easier dungeons.

What I do is look up guides on dungeons I may have forgotten, that way I know what mechanics to look out for and when damage spikes may occur, mentioning that you're new to healing a dungeon also helps a lot. Also, if you struggle healing a specific dungeon, run it over and over until you get it even if it no longer gives good exp. I think it's better to get practice healing through mechanics that may give you trouble even if it means a longer leveling process.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say, don't get to hung up on the job title and remember your ABCs (always be casting).

If you want to be cautious at first, its fine but if your spending a majority of the dungeon just standing there waiting for someone to take dmg, bite the bullet and dps. It will get you used to weaving your dps and healing and I feel this is something healers should do from the get go so its not foreign to them later on and becomes natural. This is esp important in early dungeons since there is very little healing needed in them.

In Tam Tara today we had a whm who stood there and didn't even take their weapon out during pulls because no healing was needed and in steps we had one not take their staff out for the first full half of the fight since the other healer had heals covered and then stood there for the rest of it and there is nothing more annoying than that.

Pick up good habits early on and you will have far less stress later.

I find the healing and dps combo extremely easy to manage because I did it early and I find healing overall easier and more fun. The best advice is to read your tool tips, get your hotbar set up so you have easy access to single/aoe cures, esuna and a "oh crap" insta heal (just in case) and just do it. Nothing will make it harder to do than over thinking it.

Thanks everyone for all the responses! I ended up diving in and doing a handful of dungeon runs tonight, and they went pretty well for the most part. I let everyone know ahead of time I was new to healing, though there were actually quite a few newbies running the dungeons too lol. I even ended up getting a fair amount of comms, and a compliment from the last tank I ran with. All-in-all, it wan't as bad as I was expecting, and I really like the near-instant queues compared to waiting 15-20 mins as a DPS.

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Originally Posted by ChaoticCrimson

Thanks everyone for all the responses! I ended up diving in and doing a handful of dungeon runs tonight, and they went pretty well for the most part. I let everyone know ahead of time I was new to healing, though there were actually quite a few newbies running the dungeons too lol. I even ended up getting a fair amount of comms, and a compliment from the last tank I ran with. All-in-all, it wan't as bad as I was expecting, and I really like the near-instant queues compared to waiting 15-20 mins as a DPS.

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One of us. One of us :D

First rule in any new role is... Don't panic. Simple.

Secondly, I say the next part will full respect to the fact that it's a reactionary role, so even the best-laid plans sometimes have to be put aside during emergencies. Nothing is set in stone as a Healer.

As a beginner I'd advocate the rotational concept of: DoTs > Cure > Stone > Cure > Stone. Not literally, of course, but in principle. It is a version of my own motto that: I'm not here to 'heal' you, I'm here to keep you 'alive'.

This is especially handy in lower-level dungeons where tanks simply don't have the health or mitigation to take anything less than moderate-to-high damage, whilst your own heals will be large enough to restore massive chunks of health-bar in one go - yes, even plain old Cure1. Nothing annoys me more than seeing a Healer's approach to low-level content being sheer Cure-spam, when a Cure>Stone>Cure typically does exactly the same thing whilst also helping to kill the target quicker (thus resulting in the need for less healing). After all, you don't need to heal if enemy damage dealers are dead, so don't shy away from contributing some damage whenever you feel comfortable doing so - but ONLY when you feel comfortable doing so.

On that same token, get a feel for your team very early. DPS very low? Squishy tank? Your own gear a bit behind? Well then, your MP could be tested if you're forced into overhealing and/or going ham with damage spells due to the combination of a) Tank taking above-average damage while b) things just aren't dying very quickly and c) you don't have all MP refreshing abilities yet. Of all the playable roles, Healers have to pay the most attention to how smoothly the wheels can turn.

Take some time every 5 levels and at 70 every 10-20 avg ilvls or so to get a feel for how big your heals are. This helps you learn when to start casting a heal and eventually saves you MP and prevents spamming overhealing. Also when you branch out into some special condition heals know the end result of those, like if you decide to try SCH healing know Adloq both without and with Emergency Tactics, or knowing Benefic IIs crit heal value if playing AST.

Find a minimum acceptable spot on your MP bar where you stop using mana on things that don't keep people alive. For me its about 2 heals and a rez. Everyone should know ahead of time what they need to feel comfortable with things going wrong.

Place your focus target hud somewhere easy to see, as you may not be targeting the enemy often. Can also be nice for mechanics where you need to maintain a certain distance from another player whether it be close or far, especially on those pesky lalas, the arrow helps.

Quick runover of agreed points from others...
Feel out your DPS windows every group.
Ease into learning how to weave in damage spells earlier on.

Once you hit the 50 mark, try and get used to using your bindings to select party members (Default F1, F2, etc.). Mechanics are gonna start hitting people aside from the tank, sometimes hard, and sometimes unavoidably, and being able to rapidly swap targets to the person in need and throw them an oGCD before returning to what you were doing isn't strictly necessary but makes everything else a lot easier.

I'll admit, I'm still in the same boat as you, I queue up as Scholar for any story based things I need to do for faster queue times (Still a relatively new player in general), I just remember to take things all in stride.

If I get flustered, I just take a drink of water, deep breath, and chill.

For Scholar specifically, remember that Eos will help a LOT. Not to the point where you can STOP healing, but she does afford you a bit of give on your healing downtime.

Newish to healing here (don't like having to heal by targeting, used to doing it with mouse-overs in other games. So still working that out). Newish in that I did a decent bit in the past but have been off of it for a long time.
- But I've been healing in online games since a 2005 Guild Wars 1 Monk and later also Ritualist.

You will get blamed for a lot of things that aren't your fault and NOT blamed for a lot of things that are... Before you get too frustrated about the first half of that, learn to realize the second half also exists and karma might just be balancing itself... :)

Don't ever brag about how amazing you are and how you never make mistakes and you're all pro and such - the moment a person believes they are at the top, they've stopped learning, stopped improving, and the world passes them by.

The most important thing you can start doing is scroll your camera back and learn good situational awareness. Get to see the entire battle mat - or as much as your current position allows. Follow the action beyond just yourself. In time you'll learn to predict things based on not just fight mechanics - but more importantly... spotting players who are more like to 'get their foot in it'... (I mostly tank in MMOs, and doing this has been very valuable for knowing when somebody will pull adds, something I can often spot 10+ seconds before they do it... just by knowing things like "that healer or DPS is standing back there... and there's a pat coming our way about a minute out... I better have my rotation 'smoothed' in a minute so I can peel all that junk off of them... because they're not getting the clue with me dragging the pull down this hall...)

- Situational Awareness, or lack thereof, is a major issue for ranged casters and healers. I see it all the time where somebody accidentally pulls something. As a tank I need to have this finely tuned to peel things off of that fool... as a Healer I also need to have this awareness finely tuned to heal the person that just made that mistake and added 6 adds to the pull that are stomping them into the ground right now because the tank we got is too hyper-focused to notice...

If you really want to tune up your situational awareness, play a healer in something like Overwatch for a month... Where you will have to learn how to know what's going on 360-degrees around you while looking at the game through a limited FPS viewport... You just 'develop a sense for it' after faceplanting enough times. :)

That said... in an MMO like this... learning situational awareness is actually an easy newbie skill to pick up. You just cam back so you can see behind your character a bit, and watch a wider view of the action.

I can totally understand the nervousness of being new to healing, I felt the same way. My advice is to take advantage of the multiple hot bars if you aren't already. I have one set-up for my standard solo play, and one set up for dungeons that has all my healing goodies, Cure I-III, Regen, etc. In some of the more complex fights it is important to be as MP conservative as possible which is why I have all of the levels of cure and not just the most potent. Something I learned the hard way as well is to keep an eye on HP depleting status effects and be ready to Esuna them once that is available; this will lessen the healing burden significantly.

I appreciate all the continued feedback! I probably should have mentioned in my initial post I'm a PS4 player, so I'm using a controller. Still, things are still going fairly well. I'm at lv36 right now, and did some runs at Brayflox and Qarn last night, which was interesting handling the debuffs and such, but for the most part wasn't bad. I've had a lot of helpful people give me bits of advice and have been getting a lot of compliments too! Also figured out how to set up a simple macro to turn on Protect and cast it before swapping back for Swiftcast, which is currently a lifesaver for the limited role space I have atm. Also going to work on gradually prepping gear for when I hit the cap (I can still apply it to SCH in the meantime, for what that's worth lol). Anyway, tldr everyone's been such a big help and I'm really grateful!

Also a PS4 player, but I can offer no assistance with playing on a controller given that I play Keyboard & Mouse.