New to healing in FFXIV, looking for WHM help

[Insomniaq]

Thank you to everyone that has offered me some advice! I will defo take it all into consideration as I continue on my way to becoming a better healer.

That being said, I see most people adjust the skills to suit their own play styles, as no general consensus can be reached regarding cure 1. With that in mind,it seems to me that I must just find something that works for me. Being relatively new to the game (only 3 weeks total) knowledge of each instance will mean just practicing (rinse, lather, repeat), because from what I can see, that has a bigger impact to the party than the skills that I choose to use or will have to use in the situation at hand.

Last night i didn't do too badly, however when too many HPs were dropping, I started panicking and that just made matters worse as I wasn't able to make a rational decision on what needed to be done. I will just need a lil more time to gain that confidence in my own abilities, for which I am grateful to the many members of my FC whom have been helping me through the learning of playing WHM. I will continue monitoring my runs and if I have any more questions, i will ask again ^_^

On a last note, this has been by far the friendliest and most helpful community I have encountered in any online play. Makes me feel tons better about still being a new player and having people support me. Thank you all <3

[Dmhlucky]

Glad you are feeling welcome! Its not always like that.
If you are that new still, don't minimize your options by removing Any tools you have. Cure 1 is your more efficient cure, lowest cost, and even in higher content you can effectively heal with Cure 1 and regen. (everything is situational)

For the most part, DPS shouldn't be taking too much damage, nor should you, unless the fights are AOE heavy, or non main target targetting bosses. Just keep regen up on everyone at all times(when you can), will also help with the stray hits. And will help you manage emergency situations better. Once you hit 50, keep medica 2 up also, for the same reasons.

Don't regen or heal between battles, its not needed usually, Esuna, yes depending on the Debuff. But one of your first actions in any fight, once the tank pulls hate is to regen them. Then you can sit and throw Aero/stone at the monsters if you want, and cure as needed.

Your cures should restore anywhere from 20-50% of a tanks HP, even at low levels. As silly as it sounds, if you aren't familiar with how much you cure, when not in a dungeon, just cast a few on yourself to get more familiar with the numbers. Back to what i was saying before, "know the fight" Know your tools.

It all comes with time and patience too. If they see you are trying, they are more likely to work with you, give pointers etc, then just flaming you and leaving.

[Ilyrian]

I really don't want to be one of those healers that people dread playing with as im really hoping to make this my main job.

Learn the fights - obviously this comes with practice.

Watch the enemy cast bar - learn to precast. FFXIV is relatively slow in comparison to other MMOs so finding that rhythm is part of your job. There's a definite 'feel' to it - effected by latency, GCDs etc.

Get a thick skin. Don't take any nonsense. (Try not to give any either )

It will click eventually and I hope you find you enjoy it

[Dmhlucky]

And a few more things i forgot to mention. Keep up to date with gear and Job quests if you aren't already. It seems common sense, but i've ran across plenty of players who this is their first MMO and or RPG in general, and had no idea they had to upgrade gear, they just thought they had to grind to get better stats.

Even doing things as simple as the leveling roulette, will just help you get more comfortable with healing. Everyone starts out somewhere. Personally, i had the benefit, in that literally Every game ive ever played, even going back to Final Fantasy 1, i am a healer. Final Fantasy 11, the first MMO i played, Whm was my main job. It was a much more community based game back in the day, and Screwing up with a debuff removal could spell the difference between a successful kill or a wiped party. And there were much steeper penalties for messing up, ie a lot more hostility, and it was a lot more complex. There was literally a spell for every different status removes, poisona/poison, Paralyna/paralyze, slow/haste(erase), blindna/blind, viruna/virus/plague, silena/silence, you get the idea. Here we get Esuna which removes basically everything.
There were 6 single target cures, 5 AoE heals, 4 tiers of regen, situationally defensive spells, "barspells" which gave you a resistance to a stat or an element, boost spells which raised your stats. Also gear, in 14 you have a gearset. There is no need to change gear mid battle, in fact, you can't. In 11, as a mage, you used to have to carry 8+ weapons for the different elements.

Basically what i am saying, is you'll get used to it with time, and you'll look back on where you were now one day and see your progress.
On the other side, getting to 61 in 3 weeks is fast, So that may not be helping yourself.
You are doing more difficult content without the background knowledge and experience. You can and should also watch videos of the dungeons you plan to do. They often give pointers and things to look out for. When new instances come out, thats what most people do.

[Jukebox12]

cure 1 is only good if your really low on mp but cure 2 is still a better gcd usage on healing (non HoT). I got nothing to say

[LiliRune]

A small thing that can make a huge difference is to focus target on bosses, especially in trials/raids. This allows you to see their cast bar even if you are currently targeting a player. Especially until you know a fight well, this helps you see that tankbuster or other cast before it can sneak up on you!

[Gemina]

That being said, I see most people adjust the skills to suit their own play styles, as no general consensus can be reached regarding cure 1.

Cure 1 and Cure 2 need to be consolidated much like Stone Mastery for WHM. Right now, you do need to keep it on your hotbar/crossbar due to level sync. But if it was consolidated, trust me not many WHMs are going to miss it.

You don't need a consensus to know that Cure 2 is more GCD efficient. This is indisputable. Over healing isn't necessarily healing more than maximum HP will allow; it can also be used to describe unnecessary healing as would be the case when you are restoring more HP to the tank than they need to survive.

Your threshold for when it is time to drop some hard casted heals on the tank should not be constant. It is going to fluctuate based on your overall experience, on the duty, your familiarity with it, and who is tanking it. In something like 50/60 roulette, you can let your threshold fall as low as 30% and your tank might not even get that low throughout the entire encounter if you're optimizing your regens and ogcds. For a high-end duty you're doing your first time, it is probably best to raise that threshold since you don't know when a tank buster is coming, or if your tank will mitigate incoming damage.

In short, using x2 gcd Stone and x1 gcd Cure 2 will still bring the tank back above your threshold. If you use x3 gcd Cure 1, then you just lost out on 500 potency to the enemy @lv64. The faster things die, the less healing needed.

[Ghishlain]

@Cure versus Cure II discussion - you want to keep both on your bar.

Cure II is the better choice for GCD efficiency.

Cure is better for MP efficiency. At the end of the day, no one is a perfect player and being able to keep your more MP efficient heal on your bar will serve you well if you end up dying and no one's MP tools are available to assist you. Being able to snow ball a Cure into a Freecure will also allow you maintain party / raid health.

It's also not like WHM is dying for hotbar space unlike SCH, so might as well keep both at that point.

[EaMett]

To touch on macros. Multiple line macros have an issue in that it will execute the first line then the second then the third. It's perfectly possible that the first lines give errors because you're still waiting on your gcd or don't have the mana, are out of range, and the later lines execute once you're off gcd, or if you just happen to get enough mana or come into range etc..

The only way to leverage macros properly is to keep them as single liners. If you have a tendency to spam macros. Like say a rez macro, you can adjust it so you only send the text to chat once by adding /wait 1 between the action and the text.

[Insomniaq]

Once again, thank you all for replies!

Nowadays i seem to be doing OK with 50-60 dungeons and raids, having little to no trouble keeping people alive and at decent HP levels. The same is mostly true with trials but some of them can be a bit a challenge (I read somewhere that you can't heal stupid, which i think applies to most of these situations) but i always make sure that the tank stays up. I am definitely becoming more confident in my abilities as a healer now, and it shows in my play style. With a bit more time and practice I think that I will be able to stand up as a good healer.

Last night I reached level 70 and I am nearly finished with the SB msq's. I am yet to complete my level 70 job quest as it happened quite late and I was pretty tired. Tonight I will start moving towards end game gearing and focusing on learning to deal with the higher content. There is, once again, a big jump in the learning curve again on the SB dungeons and trials... The Pool of Tribute is going to give me nightmares for days! None the less, I don't think I did too badly in dealing with it, all things considered, but I found myself overwhelmed with keeping the DPS up most of the time. Once again, I will carry on practicing and learning the fights ^_^ Thank you to all the patient people out there who have helped me get through the basics