WHM Role Skills?

[dragonseth07]

As Cynfael has mentioned, your mileage with Lagresse is dependent on spending your GCDs to heal. My own personal experience is my healing partner in my static loves pushing HPS so I'm left to essentially Regen, use my oGCD heals, and occasionally GCD spot heal. This puts Largesse pretty low on the scale for my on a personal tier list.

The reason I see everyone use it because Regen is still a spell. Largesse+Regen is enormous. You may not use Cure much, but you use Regen a LOT.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

I disagree with Largesse being low priority for WHM, as it takes effects on HoTs and Cure III which is where WHM's main source of healing comes from. It's much more useful than something like Esuna that is only useful in very few situations, 99% of them requiring your party members getting hit by things they shouldn't. My personal picks are: Protect (if my co healer isn't carrying/for dungeons), Cleric Stance, Swiftcast, Lucid Dreaming, Largesse, Surecast (swap protect for this after cast).

For non Extreme / Savage content, although Largesse is useful, I don't really need it per se. That said, if I end up running into a fight where I do require it I'll toggle off on the skills I don't require like Protect (after casting).

Lucid Dreaming is not optional. It's the most mandatory cross role skill a healer can take.

So essentially I didn't catch the "Refresh" bit a few months ago so that is why I haven't been using it because I misread. When I decided to recheck all of the Role skills the other day I saw that and said to myself "So that's where my MP restoration went to".

Funnily enough, however, I was able to get by just fine using Assize and that one ability that let's you cast freely for a short bit. This'll just assure I always have MP.

[Raminax]

Snip!

I'd imagine that regularly playing with the same co-healer and thus learning to complement each other makes those kinds of shenanigans possible, along with having extensive knowledge of the fight in question.

Looking at some of the top spots on FFLogs in the Combined Healer DPS category, you can see that the top White Mages have more than half of their healing coming from Abilities for Alte Roite and Catastrophe. It does fall off for Halicarnassus and Neo Exdeath, but most of the time they're still pretty close to half of their healing being done by Abilities still.

Obviously, as mentioned, this requires flawless play from the rest of your group, a deep trust for your co-healer, a good feel for the damage flow of the encounter and a pinch of mad skills. Very few are blessed with all four, probably.

Personally, I use Largesse all the time, but less for emergency/healing worries and more for further enabling my DPS. Not that I'm a god or anything, but I try. :x

[Tridus]

It also depends on what you're doing. Triple pull in an expert where the DPS is slow killing stuff is going to require more GCD healing, since stuff is alive longer and there is no other healer to help out. Contrast that to O2N where you can go full minutes with the only GCD heal you cast being Regen and it's more than enough when paired with Tetra, Assize, Embrace, & Indom (last two are from your co healer of course ).

Using as few GCDs to heal as you can is a good goal, since it encourages optimum use of oGCD heals instead of saving them all the time and frees you up for more other actions. But it's not a baseline, as we can't realistically all do it on every encounter. It depends on what you're doing and who you're doing it with, among other factors. That makes Largesse awesome for some people and weak for others. For me, it's firmly in the "awesome" camp even if I don't press it as often as I should. YMMV.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

Yeah, I should just do the macro thing. Like, it's essentially Divine Seal and that's something I've been using since FFXI days. I do know how useful it can be.

[Deceptus]

I macro swap Protect and Esuna. Both have no CD.

I run

Largesse
Swiftcast
Lucid Dream
Esuna
Eye for an Eye (mitigation is mitigation)

[TitaniaYaerem]

In dungeons I run the following:

Cleric Stance
Swiftcast
Eye for Eye
Lucid Dreaming
Protect

Savage and Ex primals it varies, I still always run Lucid, Swiftcast, and Cleric regardless. O1S-O3S I tend to run Eye for Eye and Largesse, Exdeath I use Surecast and Rescue, and lastly Neo I run Largesse and Rescue(Rescue is taken just to increase PLD DPS since they don't have a gap closer when they get knocked back).

[Kacho_Nacho]

*snippers*

I use the protect swap macro below to effectively have both Protect and Surecast at the same time. It also tells the party I'm casting Protect, which has proven extremely effective at stopping people from running away from it. (Doesn't work in combat.)

/macroicon Protect
/macroerror off
/aaction Surecast off
/aaction Protect on
/p Casting Protect, please stay close!
/ac "Protect" <me>
/wait 3
/aaction Protect off
/aaction Surecast on

Thank you, Tridus!

/hug

Let's see...

I use Esuna, Lucid Dreaming, Protect, Largesse, and Swiftcast. I've been looking hard at Rescue; but, I'm not sure if people would appreciate me using it, even if I pulled them out of a certain death AoE. I'd love to hear other healer's experiences with this spell. Do non-healers like it? What uses have you found for Rescue?

(Rescue is taken just to increase PLD DPS since they don't have a gap closer when they get knocked back).

Clever!

[Tridus]

Thank you, Tridus!

/hug

I've been looking hard at Rescue; but, I'm not sure if people would appreciate me using it, even if I pulled them out of a certain death AoE. I'd love to hear other healer's experiences with this spell. Do non-healers like it? What uses have you found for Rescue?

I had Rescue, but I found it hard to use because it's rather slow in activating. So, I'll see someone needs it, I'll target them and cast it, it picks them up and starts moving them, but the effect goes off while they're moving and they still take the hit. That happened a fair bit. Actual saves with it were pretty rare.

This is in DF and occasional PF content.

[Kacho_Nacho]

I had Rescue, but I found it hard to use because it's rather slow in activating. So, I'll see someone needs it, I'll target them and cast it, it picks them up and starts moving them, but the effect goes off while they're moving and they still take the hit. That happened a fair bit. Actual saves with it were pretty rare.

This is in DF and occasional PF content.

Well, that stinks. Hopefully, if enough players make some noise about it, Rescue will be corrected. No use having an ability which doesn't work. Heck, just giving the target 100% immunity to damage while Rescue is moving them would help, from what you say.