Tips for new (and some not-so-new) healers

[Cynfael]

Agreed. I have the problem now that because I am WHM all other healers think it is fine to let me solo heal without even asking....They stay in cleric the whole time. When people sometimes wipe I am blamed : ( So I too wish healers would know when to dps and when not to.

That's good point, too. As bad as lazy healers who don't DPS during downtime are, the healers who tunnel vision on DPS are usually worse.

Healers are powerful and versatile. Being able to predict the flow of a fight and use the right skills at the right time, both healing and DPS, makes a truly great healer.

[Ashkendor]

Agreed. I have the problem now that because I am WHM all other healers think it is fine to let me solo heal without even asking....They stay in cleric the whole time. When people sometimes wipe I am blamed : ( So I too wish healers would know when to dps and when not to.

That's tantamount to admitting that Scholar doesn't bring as much to the table as White Mage as far as healing goes (which it totally does). Even in dungeons where I'm in cleric stance a lot for DPS, I swap out and Succor fairly often as well as abusing the hell out of the fact that Lustrate is unaffected by the penalty from CS. I mostly DPS on bosses as there generally aren't as many surprise moments of damage there (I generally only DPS on fights I already know). Many of my skills are macroed to work "through" the tank so to speak by casting on my target's target; tanks that swap targets often make Bane not very useful for me in trash pulls. Sure, I can target the mob and DoT/Bane, but if the tank takes a big hit I then have to switch back to them quickly. In a lot of cases I find it better to just avoid that and use my Aetherflow stacks on Lustrate instead.

[Kelya]

Another tips to come back to the subject, is as a healer you should learn to trust your healer partner and work with him. It doesn't apply on DF and PF where you don't know the other healer that can appears to be lazy or very bad, but if you're going to discover some HL content with a static/frequent party, then you should heal by always keeping in mind the idea that the other heal is doing stuff as you do !

Look at his cast bar a lot, don't hesitate to interrupt your spell to use another (or nothing depending the situation). The worse thing to get is loosing your Benediction as WHM if the SCH has already Lustrate Benediction should ONLY be used if you don't trust your SCH partner or if he informs you he doesn't have any Lustrate up.

Things like this will happen a lot so the best thing you can do and must do is communication. Communicate with your partner so that you both don't overheal or loose big CD for nothing. Doing this, you will see that most of the time, you WON'T need to use Cure II (unless it is a proc) and save a lot of MP as WHM.

For example if your tank is at 50% HP suddently, always think the other heal will want to heal him just as you will. So rather than Cure II him, just Cure I is enough, added to the Cure I/Physick of the other healer, the target will be topped correctly, and you or him will not be overhealing.

Being a good healer also means sharing healing stuff correctly and efficiently with your other healer (only apply on HL content though, with ppl you often play).

[Ashkendor]

Benediction should ONLY be used if you don't trust your SCH partner or if he informs you he doesn't have any Lustrate up.

You could always look to see if the SCH has Aetherflow stacks, but it can be hard to think of things like that when things are just starting to hit the fan. I know I sometimes end up tunnel visioned on damage control and neglect things like my mana or what the other healer is doing.

I blame the fact that I'm not a healer main, honestly. >.>

[Kelya]

Yeah sometimes we're on tense situations and we just "do I bene or noooooooooot ?????". I just prefer my sch partner telling me either something like "I got it" or "I do not have any lustrate up" rather than having to look at his buff among all his other buff each time I'm worried. Besides, sometimes Aetherflow is not up but it's going to be up a fraction second after you looked at it, so you would still loose your CD

[Ashkendor]

Yeah sometimes we're on tense situations and we just "do I bene or noooooooooot ?????". I just prefer my sch partner telling me either something like "I got it" or "I do not have any lustrate up" rather than having to look at his buff among all his other buff each time I'm worried. Besides, sometimes Aetherflow is not up but it's going to be up a fraction second after you looked at it, so you would still loose your CD

True true. I know there's times when I'm eyeballing my Aetherflow cooldown going COME ON MOVE IT D:< cause i really really need Lustrate like yesterday. It's always kind of a facepalm moment when it finally comes off cd and I blow 2 lustrates on someone at the same time the WHM snaps off benediction. >.<

[Kelya]

Well I guess we need these some facepalm moments to learn healing better !

Finally, I would say knowing the fight a lot really helps to heal correctly (above all to manage MP for the WHM). This prevent you from using a benediction (my favorite example, I know ) on your very low dps if you know you can just Cure him because no incoming damage will happen instead of loosing your CD because you get panicked. Same for any others situations, if you know the fight, you won't use the same spells at specific moments than you would have the 10th first times. In fact, knowing the fight more and more completly change your approach. You'll know when you can DPS, when you can just doing nothing for 3 s, when you can precast some spells like SS or Medica II, ect.