Just healed for the first time.

[Estellios]

Estellios, I was pretty nervous throughout the whole thing so helping with damage-dealing wasn't even on my mind. Especially when I saw the tanks HP drop about 5% on the pulls. I did slow down eventually when I realized I was actually wasting Cures at a few points, but even after that I wasn't sure just how much I could leave the tank alone. From the looks of this forum though, I can see that damage-dealing as the healer is a pushy issue...

It's not a pushy issue in-game. Most of the time any sort of thing people take incredible offense to on the forums is not really that big of a deal for normal people in-game. I WHM almost all the time in dungeons since i hop on the healer roulette bonus whenever possible and no one has ever complained about me nuking since I do it while still keeping everyone up.

That said, your mileage may vary and gear makes a big difference in how much freedom you have in a party. If you find yourself spam healing 100% of the time likely the problem is one of 3 things:

1. You need to upgrade your gear. The Magic Damage rating on your weapon makes a huge difference in healing potency!!!
2. Your tank is undergeared or wearing inappropriate gear and is taking way more damage than they should. This tends to happen in lower level dungeons with newer players as they don't tend to have the means of gearing up completely like those that have another job that is already capped.
3. You're being overly cautious and trying to keep the tank topped off 100% of the time

Generally if you and the tank are geared appropriately you can safely let them get to around 50-60% hp before you need to heal. Dungeons do tend to have the occasional large pulls or specific enemies where the incoming damage will be higher than normal so it's best to stay attentive.

Also despite the fact that everyone in the forums says otherwise, Repose is very useful for pre-50 dungeons as long as you let your party know ahead of time that you will be sleeping enemies. It makes a huge difference in how much damage your tank takes and enemies that are slept do not build enmity from your healing.

[File2ish]

Probably the most helpful thing that several mentioned was the color of the icons, which makes sense now that I'm thinking of it.

You can also organize the party list however you want by going into the party members window, so you can have the tanks immediately under you on the party list if they aren't already. There's also a command to auto sort, I think just type /psort and hit enter in the chat box. It really helps to have the tanks in an easily accessible spot on the list.

[Kirinichibon]

/psort moves everyone into order and makes healing tanks easier.

I had no idea. That saves me lots of clicking at the start of every raid - thank you!

[Kazumac]

Welcome to the healing fold! Sounds like honestly you did fine. If medica was needed in that dungeon... Something was going wrong and it probably wasn't with you also it goes a long way to tell the group you are a bit new at healing etc. sometimes they'll help you out a bit or pull less etc.

For the last boss sometimes groups ignore the mechanic and let the adds spawn. Which is kinda rough on a new healer. As you practice more the nervousness gets better and get better at judging damage intake and healing output needed. It just takes some practice.

As for damage dealing... It's up to your comfort level. You should if you know it won't affect your healing duties. But if you are just learning the ropes maybe not just yet. Also SCH is a blast; you'll like it

[Ninster]

So I have both my soul crystals and I'm in a bit of a rut.

On the one hand, my friend that's been running the story dungeons with me says I'm doing fine with DPS, and ACN has been a pretty comfortable class to play as (although I'm constantly learning how to better control my pet).

On the other hand, I'd really like to give SCH healing a shot, but I'm not sure just how. I've tried some fights in the field but I can't really tell anything about what it'll be like from that. And I'm not entirely sure what to do with Eos. How exactly do fairies act in parties? Do I just place it close to the tank? Also, how early do I need to setup macros? I'd like to run a dungeon (thinking of something that's forgiving but also not so early that I get party members that don't know what to do), but I'd hate to wipe a party several times trying to adjust.

[ariaandkia]

So I have both my soul crystals and I'm in a bit of a rut.

On the one hand, my friend that's been running the story dungeons with me says I'm doing fine with DPS, and ACN has been a pretty comfortable class to play as (although I'm constantly learning how to better control my pet).

On the other hand, I'd really like to give SCH healing a shot, but I'm not sure just how. I've tried some fights in the field but I can't really tell anything about what it'll be like from that. And I'm not entirely sure what to do with Eos. How exactly do fairies act in parties? Do I just place it close to the tank? Also, how early do I need to setup macros? I'd like to run a dungeon (thinking of something that's forgiving but also not so early that I get party members that don't know what to do), but I'd hate to wipe a party several times trying to adjust.

Since you seem to really be new, here is my advice as someone who has been healing for years.

A little tip: Join a party as an ARC (preferably something easy like Satasha) after changing up your skills to be mostly a healer setup and ASK the Healer to let you do most of the healing. In other words, they can do a bit of the fighting and a bit of healing while you can focus on healing with a little DPS (a bit of a role swap). Let them know that you are trying to learn how to use a SCH and would like to get some practice in. Many good healers will be more than happy to help you out. And if you get a bad healer, you'll be forced to help out. If you get a good healer that doesn't want to give you a chance to learn, you can always try again after.

I don't recommend setting up macros just yet, but make sure you know where your PLACE and HEEL commands are. You should get into practice of putting your EoS where they will do the best. Think of them as any other pet but instead of attacking, they heal. Put them somewhere reasonably central but also out of the line of fire.

I HIGHLY recommend you get stoneskin from conjurerer side. It helps a lot.

In the early dungeons, your eos will pretty much do all your work for you in terms of healing.

But get some practice as an ARC first so you get an idea of how to heal as an Arc. I've healed 3 player parties as an arc (me as the healer, one dps, one tank) before with no bonus mind. (This is on purpose since I plan to finish the summoner line first (since the int would make the job quests easier) and then switch to SCH-though I am already working on SCH).

Now, once you have the basics down, switch to SCH and start in the easy dungeons again. There is a reason for this: You will notice how much EASIER it is to heal as a SCH and since your job skills will be disabled, you will still need to rely on your basic Physick for healing.

You'll want to work your way back up, doing each dungeon as a SCH. If you get a party wipe, you probably should do the dungeon again.

This will give you some practice so that you can get used to how the game works as a SCH. You won't get much exp this way and won't level as much, but it is good practice.

===

Generally though, I see medica as a "yeah, this party has failed" button with a few exceptions (later missions, medica is a godsend), trying to heal 8 different people takes so much time unless both healers are working well together. I generally focus on the support side rather than healing side since most people prefer the healing side. (aka: buffs, esuna, etc.).

One of the key things though for a healer is positioning. If you have good positioning, it will be much easier to heal. You'll have to move less, dodge less, and will be in a good spot for doing whatever is needed.

However, one of the important things for a healer is to be flexible. The situation is always changing. Adapt how you play to how the party plays. The more you do it, the easier it will become. I've had a few wipes out of greed and out of inexperience (first time doing an 8 player trial, nobody wanted to tell me anything and I was horribly undergeared (I still hate Lalafell and BLMs). When I asked for advice: the advice I got was "Heal" and I didn't know about the fire because our own team was throwing down fire pools (I have a super slow reaction speed (it can be as slow as 9 seconds or more) so I make up for that by gathering information and setting up plans for what to do in various situations)).

My point being: Get used to having to adjust to the party and get used to that you will wipe a few times. It is, unfortunately, all but guaranteed since there is not only no penalty for wiping but actual benefits to wiping and many times, you have players that just can't hold aggro for whatever reason or who overpull or w/e. Sometimes, you can manage to save one person or yourself. Other times, you just can't manage to save anyone because of how things were.

Example: Cutter's Cry. After the second? boss, I needed on an item got the item (actually, I got multiple since I guess the party finally decided to check), told party to hold on. So while I'm comparing the gear to see if there would be any benefit to equipping the new item right then (there was, but only barely-I sacrificed some stats for some better overall stats), the tank decided to start pulling the entire next area.

So after a few seconds of tweaking my gear, updating my gear to the latest and newest, I look over and see that my tank is taking damage. 0_o

So I end up sprinting through an area that I didn't know (this was my first? run) and trying to find the tank. In the end? No deaths. Tank was obviously experienced and held aggro on all the mobs (was spamming flash a bit as well as skills like overpower).

I managed to heal them through using mostly cure 2, shroud, and once the enemies started to dwindle down, regen and repose.

Example: Stone Vigil. Entire run, tank could not hold onto aggro at all. ONE cure I noncrit managed to pull all the aggro off the tank. This includes when we fought like 5 ice sprites and 3 aevins at once. Tank was about to die so I (like an idiot) used cure instead of just letting the tank die. Suddenly, ALL the enemies deaggroed from the tank and went after me. Tank just stood there laughing (yeah, I saw that level 1 weapon in your hand, don't think I didn't notice). DPS well, did their thing. Me? I couldn't do anything cus all my casts go cancelled by the 5 ice sprites. (again, I was also undergeared due to BLMs always needing).

I mean, if I had used medica or cure 2, sure. However, my cure I managed to pull all the aggro off the tank? Yeah...

So depending on your luck, you will see plenty of party wipes.

===

Now, for macros...

I highly recommend that you wait on macros for the most part. Do the first few dungeons first without macros. Once you've done them, make macros based on what you need.

Example:

I have a protect macro that tells the party who I'm casting protect on.
I have a stoneskin macro that does the same.

I have a repose (con) macro that tells the party who I'm sleeping.
I have a macro to tell the party what is attacking me.
I have a macro to tell the party to use LB.
etc.

These are based on what I saw I needed. People kept running from stoneskin. People kept running from protect. (I had one guy go, "Ummm.. I'm not buffed." My response? "Not my problem, I warned you that I was buffing." Everyone else seemed to have noticed and gathered around. I'm not even joking. I LET them die. Just to make it a point that they shouldn't run from protect and no raise (honestly, better for them to walk anyways since if I had raised them, they would've died from the debuff). After, I was like: Maybe next time, you won't run from the buff?)

People kept attacking the sleep targets (to be fair, a few times they couldn't help it since autoattack) so I made a macro that marks the target and clearly states that I'm sleeping them. The targets got attacked much less after.

Tanks kept not noticing that I was being attacked, so I made a macro to tell the tank: Oh hey, btw, your healer is being attacked by THIS ENEMY.
People didn't notice that LB was ready so I made a macro to tell the party: Oh hey, LB is ready.
People would use LB on the wrong target or the wrong person would LB (like the archer would try to LB the boss or the lancer would try to LB an add instead of killing the boss). So I made a macro that tells a SPECIFIC person EXACTLY which target to LB.

My LB was getting boring for DPS, so I made a macro that chants a spell as I'm using LB (plus, it helps to prevent other players from trying to LB while I am since most people don't notice and helps warn the other players to not move the enemies around-but that isn't why I made it)

[Chuk]

Hey Ninster! Just thought I would drop a line here and say yo! Healing can be stressful but I have been working on my own scholar as well. Eos is a little tricky. I tend to give her commands to make sure everyone gets the regen skill she has. It really helps. I also cast adloquium a lot. It's bonus effect of a temp damage barrier equal to up restored helps a lot. Especially since it doubles on a critical hit. But that's my take on it so far. Eos is pretty good about auto healing so stick her somewhere near the tank. Or have her follow you and position yourself where you want her to be. My thought is if you can reach a target with a spell, so can she!

Hope that helps!

[Estellios]

If you want to practice healing on SCH just do anything before Brayflox. Either of the fairies make healing lower level dungeons ridiculously easy to the point where you probably don't need to do any actual healing yourself. You should take this opportunity to practice using Place and Heel as well as putting her in Obey and using skills manually. Eos and her whispering dawn are absolutely important to control - it can cause very nasty aggro issues if you let her use it on her own. Selene's more recent AI tweaks make it so you can probably just keep her in Sic.

SCH's single target healing is much better than WHM's due to Lustrate and the fact that you can make some (very) useful macros that pair Embrace with your single target heals. For AOE damage, you are there for preventing damage with Succor and Sacred Soil while your fairy does the actual AOE recovery.

I don't use any macros aside from the Embrace + Physic and Embrace + Adloquium ones. You can make more than those if you choose but those are the only ones I'd argue are "necessary" and you probably don't even need those if you are able to use Embrace manually without any problems.

[KaerisKlyne]

I'm in your same boat, OP! I'm leveling a CNJ until Stoneskin, then SCH. Two quick questions and some comments:

- I macro for Protect at the start. If anyone runs, they die as a lesson. Not bad healing if that one member disrespects the party by being impatient and getting off to a bad start. No 4-man instance needs to be rushed.

- How do you handle status removal with healing and an inefficient party? I had a BLM in Toto-Rak who stood next to the tank requiring extra healing and poison removal and resulting in a wipe. He refused to sleep the adds that spawn, saying sleep was only for high level speed runs. I'm assuming if low-hp then heal up first then remove status, and with higher hp, remove status first?

- Sometimes Eos doesn't do what I ask via macros. Occasionally she won't Embrace when I cast Physick or Adloquium. Is this a game issue? I've seen a lot of Scholars grumble about this.

Lastly, OP, sounds like you did fine! Good luck

[Dreamer]

Just a quick note, once you get a handle on healing, you can actually cheat a bit on the last boss there. Generally what I've done with good groups is to have them all focus exclusively on the boss, while I spam high threat heals and kite all the adds around the room. Even if DPS is a tad low and you have a flash mob following you, you should be able to stay ahead enough to keep them away from the group and yourself out of danger.