New Noob: I want to get gud.

[Sir_Swallow]

Thanks for all the advice, everyone. To clarify, the reason I specified how many HOURS to get to heavensward was to prevent exactly this kind of discussion.

I am watching all cutscenes and MSQ dialogue, but not much sidequest dialogue; sidequests I rush through in general, since they are all of the fetch-quest or kill a few things variety so far. I am going fast, but enjoying myself, not leaving any quests undone that I can find. After 3 days I am ready to leave Gridania as envoy, but I'm gotta clear up a couple more class quests first.

Edit: Oh, another question. What is up with the "Target out of range/target not in range" things that pop up? When it says 'not in range' I can't cast--Ok, I understand. When it says 'out of range' I can cast just fine. It says it all the time with enemies pretty close after I have already attacked them from a distance, so they are definitely in range.

[Lunaxia]

You've already had some sound advice, but I'd actually recommend leveling THM before CNJ. Swiftcast is very important as a healer, and it's better to get it as soon as you can. Also, DPS queues for dungeons can take a lot longer than healer ones - I'd use MSQ/ sidequest XP to quickly get THM to the required level, and then switch to healer.

I can't give you an exact estimate as to how long it will take to get to HW - it depends entirely on how long you play and what you do while you're playing - but I'd say a week or two at the very least. CNJ/ WHM is very similar to (and easier than) AST's Diurnal stance, so use that to practice your healing and get familiarized with it, and just enjoy the experience. You'll soon be on the endgame grind like the rest of us and wondering what you were in such a rush for.

[Taika]

You've already had some sound advice, but I'd actually recommend leveling THM before CNJ. Swiftcast is very important as a healer, and it's better to get it as soon as you can. Also, DPS queues for dungeons can take a lot longer than healer ones - I'd use MSQ/ sidequest XP to quickly get THM to the required level, and then switch to healer.

Yes, if you end up taking White Mage to level 50 first and use it to get to Heavensward and unlock Astrologian, you should also get the important cross-class abilities for it. Most important one is Swifcast (Thaumaturge level 26), as Lunaxia mentioned. Eye for an Eye is also very useful (you can use it to give your tank a buff that has a chance of making enemies hit for less damage), and you get that from level 34 Arcanist (so Scholar or Summoner).

[FunkYeahDragons]

Getting Astrologian will take a while (if you play a few hours a day and focus on MSQ, I'd say HW in ~ 2 weeks?), but playing Conjurer/White Mage until then will help you learn a lot about the healing role. Some features of the jobs are similar so learning one will help you on the other.

If you're ever looking for guides on content that can show you some key mechanics, you can check out Mizzteq's guides on YouTube. Some of them are older and people just push past mechanics now is all.

Edit: Oh, another question. What is up with the "Target out of range/target not in range" things that pop up? When it says 'not in range' I can't cast--Ok, I understand. When it says 'out of range' I can cast just fine. It says it all the time with enemies pretty close after I have already attacked them from a distance, so they are definitely in range.

Try turning on auto-face target under Character Settings. I had this disabled once and I think this was the cause of the problem for me, because the target wasn't in my "line of sight". I could be remembering wrong.

Keep in mind that if there are mechanics in fight where you have to turn away from a boss during a specific spell, if you heal someone between you and the boss you'll turn back towards them.

[Teiren]

First forum lesson off the bat if it wasn't stated before in this thread: Edit Post to make posts longer than 1000 characters. I think that limit is either there to reduce spam or because the forum admins just don't know what they're doing.

I'm pretty sure the slightly different "Target not in range" error message you're seeing is from Auto-attack. If you're playing on controller and press your Confirm button while targeting something without a cross hotbar highlighted, the game will toggle on Auto-attack, but that only works for melee range, so it gives an error. If you're playing on keyboard, maybe right-clicking on an enemy toggles it on? Btw, this is what the Delay stat on weapons means: Every 3.12 seconds, or whatever the weapon's Delay is, you will do one Auto-attack while it's toggled on if you're in melee range. This is useless for Healers and Casters because it's all physical damage, something that they don't do, but they technically can Auto-attack, so there you go.

Others have answered your questions in nice detail, but for fun I'll go through them too:

1. I realized why you asked for hours, but it's hard for me to give even a ballpark estimate of that. In any case, you can access the Astrologian job immediately after Heavensward's intro (which is itself somewhat sizable).

2. It sounds like you've already learned about Swiftcast from Level 26 Thaumaturge and how much it really will help, so that's good. I'd say you shouldn't need to worry about instant Raises until about Level 42. You will have to be Level 50 for ARR's story, so Conjurer Level is irrelevant. You will have to also be a Level 15 Arcanist, so you'll already know Virus, which is good for reducing an enemy's physical damage dealt, but if you take Arcanist to Level 34, you'll learn Eye for an Eye, which is another helpful skill to reduce enemies' damage dealt. It's not that great of a skill because of its very long cooldown, but it's something.

3. Attribute Points are an utterly failed design idea. Primary stats are so strong that there's no serious reason to increase anything but your primary stat, sadly. As a healer, you can make a weak argument for Piety, so you can increase that a bit if you want, but it just doesn't increase max MP enough to be truly worth it. They can be very easily reset from a Grand Company item if you feel you messed up.

4. I don't put much stock into what is a "raiding server" or not. It's that kind of mentality that kills communities.

5. That's already been covered, so I'll give my personal experiences and opinion. Over all the years I've played MMOs, of all the time I've spent "theorycrafting" (figuring out) how all the parts of a game worked, I ended up at the same exact result 95%+ of the time: The correct answer is the one that makes the most sense, so stop overthinking it. That's never been more true than in this game. Just read every word and number of every Spell/Weaponskill and Ability, and just think a little about what makes the most sense about when and how to use each one, and you'll be right. The rest will only come from practice and experience. And most important: Don't be afraid to admit when you're wrong. That doesn't mean always be paranoid that you're doing it wrong, but being wrong is just another learning experience. So in short: Don't overthink things and be adaptable.

6. There's no serious min/maxing in this game. Some people play games with the Critical Hit and Determination stats, but it's all for negligible increases in damage/healing. I will admit that Skill Speed does trail considerably behind those two stats for physical Jobs (Disciples of War), and Spell Speed for Casters and Healers (Disciples of Magic), except Thaumaturge/Black Mage, basically just makes them run out of MP faster, so that also trails behind. But it's not like those stats are 2x or 3x worse than Crit or Determination, so you never have to worry about it because they're good enough. Like I said before, don't overthink things. The only stat that is virtually worthless is Parry, which is only for tanks anyway. You can technically meld materia up to 5 times on some gear to increase select stats enough to make it equivalent or slightly better than gear with a higher item level, but that's very expensive and not worth it.

7. Just have to restate what I said before: Always be learning and don't overthink things. To me, games are always about learning in some form. Even in an MMORPG where you've learned everything about the game, you can still be learning, for example, how to play with the group of people you're currently playing with from the Duty Finder or Party Finder or perhaps how to do the same task more efficiently.