Healing a11s advice?

[bounddreamer]

Hi Kairi,

It took our group a staggeringly ridiculous two and a quarter months to clear, for various reasons (holiday schedule issues, replacing members, just plain coming up short at enrage for a month or so) but my advice to you and your group is to stick with it!! It's one of the most difficult fights in the game right now. Make sure everyone concentrates on nailing the mechanics. Look at where the boss percentages are at the end of every phase. Discuss as a group where to make up the differences. We had to replace our support twice, but finally cleared and victory is sweet!

It's a major heal check for the main healer, but your off healer must know when to drop CS and help with group heals and shields or you won't be successful. Seriously though, I thought our main healer was going to blow a vein over the past month. It's incredibly stressful on the main healer most of all. But everyone has to do their job, not mess up mechanics, and if possible zero deaths. Maaaaybe one.

[RubyScarlett]

Raiding without progress can really be hard sometimes, and can take a toll. Trust me, you're not the only one who feels this way and starts to doubt themselves!! But the fight is about the group as a whole. If your DPS are sloppy and collecting Vul Up stacks like they're rare pokemon, then that's nothing on you.

A couple of suggestions:
1. Get up to the Accuracy cap ASAP. ~100 points under the cap means that a lot of your dps is probably missing. You could be pushing phases or ending them early if this wasn't the case. Having a spell miss is a waste of a GCD and MP. Having all your spells and dots and broils and ED's hit is probably that 2-3% that you need to clear, or more. Accuracy V's in all open gear spots and food to cap. If you have the relic, putting full accuracy points into this can really help and allow you to start dropping in some crit materia as well. Looking at your current gear/melds, you're sacrificing way too much Accuracy for minuscule gains in Spell Speed and Vit. Vit melds aren't really needed in 260/270 gear, they were great in crafted 250 gear, but overkill now, IMHO. Not having the accuracy to meet the cap is a waste and a massive DPS loss.

2. Try to understand your % of over-healing. There are tools to assist with this. Look at where you and your co-healers efforts are overkill and where it is falling short. You'll understand better when you need to step things up and when you need to back things off. It's hard to see sometimes in the heat of the fight, so if you have the ability to record a video of a fight, or see the logs, it can really help you see things in a different perspective.

3. Communicate with your co-healer & trust them. Talk to them and let them know at what points you're feeling over-stretched or feel like they are dpsing too much. Learning to trust them and trust in the HoT's can be a hard transition sometimes, but there's plenty of times when there isn't damage coming out for a good while and regen can tick people back up or the fairy can take care of them.

4. Communicate with your group. Don't get in the habit of babysitting people who need to focus on dodging and doing mechanics correctly. This doesn't help you or the group. Have an open discussion about what's causing the problems. Sure everyone messes up now and then, but if you're seeing consistently the same people with the same debuffs in the same spots, then that's a problem that needs to be addressed. Practice runs outside the instance can help people from panicking when you get to a phase you're unfamiliar with. That way you can also plan out what skills you are going to use at what time.

5. Watch other groups. Scour YouTube for POV Scholar clears and see what they're doing and at what points during the fight and how it's different from your fights.

It's obvious that you really care about the group and helping everyone get the clear, but unless people are dropping to unavoidable damage, it really doesn't sound like a healing issue.

[technole]

VIT melds have the best value when capped on ACC, especially when you are progressing in A11S-A12S and don't have a fight on farm. Anyone still on A11S surely does not have full 270 left side yet. Look ahead at A12S as well.

To this day I still thank having some VIT melds back in our first A12S clear. Not all damage is planned, crap happens with missed puddles, and next thing you know you have to heal with things like a healing down stack in the last phase in that fight. All it takes is one save opportunity and you made out like a bandit with those melds. A measly Crit V isn't going to do anything when you are dead on the floor and couldn't be alive long enough to save the raid.

It's a major heal check for the main healer, but your off healer must know when to drop CS and help with group heals and shields or you won't be successful. Seriously though, I thought our main healer was going to blow a vein over the past month. It's incredibly stressful on the main healer most of all. But everyone has to do their job, not mess up mechanics, and if possible zero deaths. Maaaaybe one.

Well it's more of a check of how well a healer duo performs, it's not a sit in cleric all-fight. Like it's pretty crappy if you have a SCH that doesn't Adlo Spread the DPS photon, and help immediately to top off for the upcoming whirlwind. Otherwise that job alone is holding up DPS on EDD and potentially killing them. Fancy mitigation in the right places helps so much. Especially, when you are not skipping Limit Cuts, which adds a damage stack to Cruiser.

[ChiiSoSeriouz]

Vit melds can give you healer privilege. Having a healer die during stressful parts of a fight can be devastating. Like technole said, not all damage is planned. No one plans on the tank spinning the boss around and suddenly hitting the healers with a laser sword, but in the heat of battle things happen. Vit melds give you surviveability, imo that's worth a lot more then the extra crit v.

[RubyScarlett]

Let me be perfectly clear about my Vit statement.

IIRC from looking at the OP's gear on the Lodestone, they have about 4-5 Vit melds on their left side. Instead of full accuracy melds, they have Spell Speed and Crit in many other spaces. They are currently about 100 spots under the accuracy cap.

They are prioritizing HP over damage, on a boss where they are consistently getting to the last phase. The OP's group had A11S down to about 2-3% IIRC. Which could have easily been made up from having full healer accuracy in order to not waste damage from missed attacks.

IMHO Accuracy > Vit to survive > Crit > anything else.

Having a few extra Vit in early progression, valuable.
Having a few extra Vit in 260/270 gear, less valuable if that comes at the cost of you consistently missing attacks.

We're not talking about pushing A12S clears at minimum iLvl. The problems the OP seems to be facing is not from the party still understanding mechanics or random cleaves to the face. If you are not finding that you need the extra Vit to survive, it's a wasted stat at a time that you can be maxmizing your DPS. You can have the whole group up at the final phase in A11S and it won't mean a thing if you can't beat the DPS checks.

[LadyKairi]

The SS you see is most likely my AST. On my SCH, most of my gear is melded in acc now. My crafted boots need to be remelded with higher materia, then the lower tier as over melds. Only my rings don't have acc, and instead have vit on them.

[KarstenS]

Many very good points

Additionally to point 4: Be open to different solutions.

Not every solution fits to every group and playstyle. If something seems to be hard to manage, then try it a different way if available and find the one, you as a group are comfortable with.

[technole]

IIRC from looking at the OP's gear on the Lodestone, they have about 4-5 Vit melds on their left side. Instead of full accuracy melds, they have Spell Speed and Crit in many other spaces. They are currently about 100 spots under the accuracy cap.

You can only meld VIT on right sides in non-forbidden slots. So it's perfectly fine to have some right side VIT V and still cap with full left ACC, food, overmelds, etc.

As Chii mentioned, Healer Privileges. VIT is never a wasted stat after capping ACC.

The SS you see is most likely my AST. On my SCH, most of my gear is melded in acc now. My crafted boots need to be remelded with higher materia, then the lower tier as over melds. Only my rings don't have acc, and instead have vit on them.

Sounds good! Yeah, I too swap some gear on AST vs SCH because of some stats.

[randysquirrel]

I disagree, vit melds were more important when the content was just out, and the early groups were hitting these turns at i250-260, as they only had one or two i270 pieces each. Assuming you are >i260, vit is a bit of a waste imo. as long as the mechs are done correctly and shields when needed, you'll be fine.

I would agree that getting that acc cap is top priority tho

[Judge_Xero]

Definitely in the same boat as Thea, I still find VIT pretty important as well.

I'm i263 with the i255 Weapon, and all i270 Body Pieces other than the Body which is the crafted i250. I still have three VIT5 Melds on my accessories and I still use Food for accuracy and VIT.
Even still there are cases where something happens and I just scrape by with 1-2k HP. (Currently @ 22,800 HP with Food/Party)

I mean, as long as people are meeting the HP values I posted earlier I wouldn't go overboard on VIT melds. But if people don't meet that minimum value then it's highly recommended especially for when A12S Progression starts.