SCH: What to do when Fairy catches aggro

I am a pretty new healer. I have a 52 Scholar, but I've only been healing since about level 42.

I am doing levelling roulettes as a way of educating myself as well as gaining XP. In general, I feel that I'm doing a pretty good job, but I have noticed one situation in which I get distracted and I have let people die.

That's when my Fairy gets aggro, and she's being whacked on. I have no idea what do do in that situation. I have tried running over to the tank, but I can't see if she's following, and I don't know what to do about her situation.

I appreciate any useful help.

Thanks,
Mantu

Depends on what your doing. Some mobs will agro it if they see it other based on their actions. I normally dismiss if I'm sneaking around or set it to obey when in group and pulling to prevent enmity based on auto actions. Once pull is over I just set to auto or keep it in obey being I rather administer actions my self. It really varies by your play style.

Note any regen on tank cast by you or fairy will auto gain enmity when tank pulls.

If I'm solo, I just place my fairy at a static spot and run away out of range. When she unspawns, they normally ignore me.

In a party, I just normally move her beside the tank. Either he'll get aggro off her or she'll die and the tank aoe aggro will grab them when he does his rotation.

just let the fairy take the hits while you're rezzing the DPS/keeping the tank alive. you can cast sustain then return to healing the party.
fairy should be able to take care of itself, and it's a good distraction when things go awry. tank should be able to aggro the mob back.
if you just need to move your fairy near the tank then use place. you should always take advantage of place esp during boss fights.
if the fairy dies you can always summon it back, a bit of a setback but not impossible to recover from.

Okay, thank you all. Dumb question: How do you move the Fairy? I have been just using the default settings, which I guess means she's following me around?

;)

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Originally Posted by Mantu

Okay, thank you all. Dumb question: How do you move the Fairy? I have been just using the default settings, which I guess means she's following me around?

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There should be a skill called "Place" I believe. It's in the pet toolbar. Just make sure you tell her to "Heel" after the fight, or she will stay there as you move farther till the distance limit is reached and it auto desummons. (This also applies to SMN pets as well)

Tell the tank to Flash/Overpower/Unleash more.

Also use Place. Useful macro for Heel/Place so you don't need two buttons:

Code:

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/pac Heel
/pac Place
/micon Place pet

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Tell the tank to Flash/Overpower/Unleash more.

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This. The Fairy is not a tank. If the fairy is catching aggro you have two solutions:
1. Tell the tank to use flash, or use the right combos to keep enmity. Eos will otherwise generate more enmity than the tank can create if they're doing it wrong.
2. Unsummon Eos and use Selene. Selene is more useful for her AoE debuff removal, but that's rarely needed in most content, hence players use Eos. Eos's party heal generates enmity from the HoT in the same way casting Medica II/Aspected Helios does, thus she will cast it needlessly and draw all the aggro to her.

If you switch fairies mid-battle, you'll transfer the enmity to the next person on the enmity list AFAIK, which will likely be you if the tank wasn't good at generating enmity.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mantu

That's when my Fairy gets aggro, and she's being whacked on. I have no idea what do do in that situation. I have tried running over to the tank, but I can't see if she's following, and I don't know what to do about her situation.

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Congrats. You got yourself a bad tank. Let her take the hits and rez her when she dies. The only time you should reasonably see this is with new tanks in the first couple dungeons (in which case it's not a big problem because the fairies can tank in those dungeons just fine.) If you see it in higher level dungeons, they aren't doing their job.

Your fairy shouldn't be grabbing aggro. Leaving the Fairy on Auto Pilot is bad habit that you will want to break as soon as possible. Selene can run around on Sic no problem but Eos has very very very strong skills and you will want to make sure you use them at the correct time because nothing is worse, especially in low level dungeons, than having no options to heal the party because the fairy blew all her cool downs before anyone ever needed them. If you are using her to heal in the right situations she will almost never grab aggro from the tank and tanks will appreciate it.

By the time my fairy is taking hits, she's usually done for, so I usually just get ready to summon again. It's usually in alliance raids when this happens.

On a more important note, you should definitely try running the fairies in obey mode. They will still auto-cast embrace, but you control when they use their long cooldown skills.

Are you playing mouse/kb or controller?
If mouse/kb, I would assume the pet hotbar just shows up whenever you've summoned the pet. If you don't like that layout, place the pet skills somewhere more useful in another hotbar.
If controller, you need to enable WXHB & Expanded Hold Controls in the character configuration menu. That'll give you an extra hotbar for double tapping triggers, & one for pulling both triggers with the one pulled first deciding which side of the hotbar is used. You can then just map the pet hotbar actions to one of these extra hotbars. pressing r1/rb to cycle hotbars is much less convenient.

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Originally Posted by IsbellDL

Are you playing mouse/kb or controller?

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Thanks for your message. I'm playing on Mouse/KB. However, honestly the replies on this thread, and another Scholar thread are making me question my choice of Scholar. I originally started my Scholar because I had a Summoner going, and the Scholar was basically free. But when I read about extreme Button Bloat, and the idea that I then need to take manual control of the Fairy on top of that, I really don't know that I want that. I'm leveling a White Mage now.

Thanks,
Mantu

For what it's worth, you really only need to worry about 5 pet control buttons. The rest are there just in case. The ones you need are the 3 long cooldown actions, place (to position the pet), & heel (to have the pet follow again). The rest are rarely used, & you can have the pet switch to obey automatically when summoned with a simple macro. It's a fun class, & in low level content you can just let Eos do all the healing while you pretend to be a DPS. If you want to try WHM, go for it. Just don't give up on SCH so quickly.

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Originally Posted by Alisi

Congrats. You got yourself a bad tank. Let her take the hits and rez her when she dies. The only time you should reasonably see this is with new tanks in the first couple dungeons (in which case it's not a big problem because the fairies can tank in those dungeons just fine.) If you see it in higher level dungeons, they aren't doing their job.

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Totally agree. Don't let it put you off healing either, it really is the tanks fault for not taking agro back. In all honesty, I haven't seen this for a while though, so it might just be something that is common in lower levels.

Is she getting agro during the pull? If so it could be whispering dawn ticks considering like how a whm places regen on a tank that is mid-pulling and gets hate. Something to try to avoid doing just before a pull begins. (put her on obey)
Another issue you can do to handle that situation is drag(move/place) her to the tank, while healing her. Before the start of a pull I adlo the tank and then run behind them while hovering over Place. That way I can Have Eos already be at the tank when he stops and then hit pact up -> healing up -> whispering dawn. Eos should be okay to handle tank while I throw up dots, and then I can start healing.

But if the issue is Eos pulling hate after the tank has stopped and begun damage on adds then your tank is at fault. In these cases there's nothing you can really do - you can just heal eos, because she can tank or let her die and hope your not the next target. But I shrug.

Use her as disposable HP and start summoning the next one? There's an infinite supply of Fey cannon-fodder. The only usual problem is finding a party bad enough to let the fairy tank in the first place.

There are a few things you can do depending on your own playstyle.

- You can let her be Beefos, and just tank the mob while you cast sustain on her. If she dies, you can resummons and she will have no enmity until she takes an action.

- @60+ you can do the same as above, but use dissipate right before she hits zero HP.

- You can place her by the tank. It does not matter if you do not know if she is following you or not. When you place her, she will go to where you tell her. However, more often than not during trash pulls, the fairy will have enmity on a ranged mob the tank did not pick up.

- You can place a priority marker on the mob your fairy is tanking. Typically when a priority marker goes up, everyone stops attacking their current target and switches to the priority one. I actually advise against this option under most circumstances since switching targets can potentially lead to an overall DPS loss, and you can easily keep up your fairy on your own. But I would not dismiss the opportunity should you feel it is the optimal choice for the current situation.