Needing some help with positioning & awareness

Hey everyone. I just got to level 50 on my WHM and this is my first time healing in this game. There are a couple of things I find myself always having questions about and can't seem to find a good answer on youtube guides. These are mostly related to UI and positional awareness.

What is the best way for me to remain aware of who needs heals? I tend to find myself staring at the party list a lot and healing from there which takes away attention from the actual fight on screen. I do try to heal from the actual battle by clicking on player avatars when they need heals, but with big pulls it can be difficult to see everyone's health bar and I also miss dots that I should remove with esuna unless I'm looking at the party list. So how do you guys tend to keep track of everyone? Should I be trying harder to keep an eye on where everyone is or is it more efficient to focus on everyone's status via the party list? Also is there an optimal positioning for the camera? I tend to zoom all the way out, I have seen some videos where the healer is zoomed all the way out and positions the camera to an aerial view of the right. Any opinions?

Also as far as the skill bar goes, does anyone have any tips on how to organize it? I've currently got it broken up into single target heals/group heals/attacks.

Thanks from a new healer

I keep watch on the party list all the time when healing and click on their names to target them using the list. For the camera I keep it zoomed all the way out. Here is what my stuff looks like when in a duty.

https://imgur.com/SzGsb68

A few things

With your camera zoomed all the way out doing mechanics becomes much easier.

In boss fights, try to be near the boss, at melee range if not slightly further so your heals can reach everyone. This goes for casters and ranged dps too, there's no reason to stand in China unless a mechanic necessitates it.

Keep your party list in a spot of ur UI where it's easy to look at it constantly and actually be able to see the fight. Move it around till you're comfortable. Seeing the party list should be enough to keep track of players hp

Lastly in pulls you don't need to heal dps unless they get really low or the mobs have cleaves, the only person who should be taking unavoidable damage is the tank and if you spend your heals on a dps that stood on an aoe or got aggro at the beginning you're wasting your resources. ogcds you get later on will heal the dps collaterally anyways (assize, asylum) and if you really must heal them, Medica 2 is the equivalent of a cure 2 on the whole party, that way you're also healing the tank.

Zoom out your camera and move your party list next to your hotbars somewhere in the middle of the screen closer to the action. Moving all of your combat info bars like enemy health bar, focus bar, party list, enemy list, etc. to an area close to the action around your character lets you use your peripheral vision a lot more effectively to manage multiple things.

Clicking on a player to target is not ideal since it's slower and requires keeping an eye on your mouse cursor. I recommend using the function keys to target 99% of the time. Most of the time you'll only need to be using F1-F4 which are in easy reach. If you need to target a dps then the occasional click to target them is okay since most of the time you'll only be AoE healing them and shouldn't need to target them.

I also recommend focus targeting the boss rather than the tank which I've seen some healers do. This will let you see what the boss is casting even if you have a player targeted for healing which can go a long way towards being able to avoid some mechanics. Making it second nature to keep an eye on it will help across all jobs.

Here's my layout with all of my relevant combat stuff just in this small area below my character model (LB bar is just above the pet bar but doesn't show because I'm not in an instance atm):

https://i.imgur.com/2tSxTvg.png

I'd suggest turning off other players effects and turning on hp bars so they show when any player has less then 100% hp.. that was you can pay attention to the combat going on and still see who needs topped off during encounters

As WhM I mouseover macro'd my ST heals and have never looked back. I'm normally dead against combat macros, but this just clicked for me and lets me react faster than without. I keep the boss targeted the entire fight, my mouse near the party list and if someone needs healing I can hover over their name, tap the heal key and continue dps'ing.

Worth noting it's not for everyone and macros can't queue, so it's a fraction worse than someone who can react fluidly without them.

Zoom out your camera to always have a better overview over what's going on. Wouldn't recommend aerial view though.

Put your party list in a size that's comfortable for you either to the left or right off centre. You need the centre free of UI elements to better see what's going on directly around you but if your party list is too far at the side you'll lose sight of it easily.
Put all other information somewhere clumped together where it's easy for you to see. Some people tend to always look at the top of their screen, some to the right etc.; I tend to look down so that's where my important stuff is.
Things like your own buffs, debuffs and target's debuffs. The more your eyes need to scurry across the screen the harder it will be to keep track of everything.
This is my current healer UI on WHM:
https://i.imgur.com/XfANg5Y.png

I have my list of buffs directly under my list of the target's debuffs and both are arranged over my job gauge and hotbars with my 'more important' skills that I use on a regular basis. So see my buffs, my remaining dot time, my job gauge and my cooldowns at a glance.
On the right side above my hotbar are my own debuffs.

I strongly recommend targeting via party list. As soon as people start moving around or a lot of effects are on the screen you will have trouble targeting them by avatar alone.
You can also focus target your tank and bind 'target focus target' to a hotkey as crutch while you get used to healing via party list but try to get rid of this habit soon. Focus targeting the boss is generally prefered.

How to organize your skills is a bit difficult. There are a myriad of ways and some depend on your hardware. I'd try to organize skills by use.
I have my dps skills, my ST heals and my AoE heals clumped together and all easy to reach while my buffs are on keys that are more or less comfortable and easy for me to reach, depending on how fast and often I use them.
E.g. Surecast is a bit harder to reach for me but I use it 1-2 times per fight at most and I always know in advance when I have to use it so I could even click it(though I'm an avid defender of hotkeying everything and not clicking).

Once you found a way that works for you, keep it the same on every healer. Meaning 'same' skill (WHM Cure II = AST Benefic II = SCH Adlo) on the same key. Arrange the rest around it.

I did basically what others already said, zoom out as far as possible and i put the partylist on the right/middle of my screen, so i can reach it better and still can see the fight.

Usually you will miss mechanics the first time you do a fight, thats normal.

What helped me, when i got started, was a hint another player gave me: Take a quick glance at the Party HP bars every now and then, while keeping your tank as focus target. Since, for the most part anyone but the tank doesnt need much healing anyway, you can just let natural hp regen do its work unless you see a lot of white bar missing somewhere. With the tank, you can just take a guess about how much he generally looses during any encounter and adjust accordingly.

I dont know if that helps you, but if you played MOBA games like LoL for example this might be a familiar playstyle.

One thing I highly recommend is having party battle effects set to limited, and focus your attention on the boss during a fight. The animations can tell you a lot about who got hit, and if you have overhead health bars you can see the tank's HP as well (as they should be right next to it). You only really need to look at the party list when you see an AoE go off, and I'll actually usually toss out my own AoE heal in response to their AoE attack, THEN look at the party bar to see if I need to deal with debuffs or toss out a second one. Likewise if you see them charge up for a bit and then do a beefy looking hit on the tank, toss them an equally beefy heal on reflex.

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Originally Posted by Veer

Hey everyone. I just got to level 50 on my WHM and this is my first time healing in this game. There are a couple of things I find myself always having questions about and can't seem to find a good answer on youtube guides. These are mostly related to UI and positional awareness.

What is the best way for me to remain aware of who needs heals? I tend to find myself staring at the party list a lot and healing from there which takes away attention from the actual fight on screen. I do try to heal from the actual battle by clicking on player avatars when they need heals, but with big pulls it can be difficult to see everyone's health bar and I also miss dots that I should remove with esuna unless I'm looking at the party list. So how do you guys tend to keep track of everyone? Should I be trying harder to keep an eye on where everyone is or is it more efficient to focus on everyone's status via the party list? Also is there an optimal positioning for the camera? I tend to zoom all the way out, I have seen some videos where the healer is zoomed all the way out and positions the camera to an aerial view of the right. Any opinions?

Also as far as the skill bar goes, does anyone have any tips on how to organize it? I've currently got it broken up into single target heals/group heals/attacks.

Thanks from a new healer

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It might not be all that obvious at lvl 50 but generally speaking it's better to heal through rather than Esuna dots. Keep Esuna for the debuffs you need to dispel like doom, or in some cases heavy.

When it comes to awareness, practice will make a huge difference. If you develop a good amount of muscle memory with your heals and become more familiar with the content, you'll have more time to look around and be more aware.
Generally speaking, putting your party list towards the center of your screen (near your character) is the way to go. The party list is where you live as a healer so you want all the important info around it. Placing and using the focus target info bar near your party list will also allow you to keep an eye on the enemy cast bars. That way you have your party list, your enemy info and your character all in one spot.

On top of that, turning off other party member's effects down one notch helps a lot. And of course zooming out as much as possible. Don't worry too much about what your party members are doing, that will come with time. Just keep an eye on the party list and yourself.

Since we’re discussing everyone's UIs... Do you use the Enemy List at all? I’ve never turned it off, but I’ve also kind of got it shoved out of the way and seldom pay attention to it.

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Originally Posted by Baxcel

I'd suggest turning off other players effects and turning on hp bars so they show when any player has less then 100% hp.. that was you can pay attention to the combat going on and still see who needs topped off during encounters

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Emphasising this incase it was missed.

I'm not a fan of staring at health bars instead of the field in any non trivial content. Setting the health bars to only show when party members are less than 100% hp gives you a much more obvious cue that they've taken damage, and watching players themselves rather than some bars makes it easier to preempt incoming damage and/or mistakes.

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Originally Posted by AduroT

Since we’re discussing everyone's UIs... Do you use the Enemy List at all? I’ve never turned it off, but I’ve also kind of got it shoved out of the way and seldom pay attention to it.

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It's actually really useful in quite a few higher end raids, allowing you to keep tabs of more casts than you might be able to do easily with just Focus targeting. Shinryu EX's wings are a great example of that.

Thanks for all the help guys. Been adjusting my UI to your suggestions and I've gotten a bit better, especially after making changes to my skill bar and party list positions. still have a long way to go. I'm gonna take the advice and turn down other player effects as well since that seems to be a common theme.

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Originally Posted by AduroT

Since we’re discussing everyone's UIs... Do you use the Enemy List at all? I’ve never turned it off, but I’ve also kind of got it shoved out of the way and seldom pay attention to it.

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I use it quite often, particularly when doing AoE dps to make sure any of my single target abilities are hitting the target with the most HP. It's usually easier to target a specific mob by clicking on the enemy list than it is to tab target through a pack of 8 mobs.

This is how I have mine set, tried to keep it clean, with areas for oGCDs, GCDs and "boosts"

https://imgshare.io/image/1DiPw