Struggling as Healer on Wall-to-Walls

[MikuMitsuko]

(Sorry if there's a better place to put this)

I'm having a hard time with wall-to-walls on all 3 healers in ShB dungeons. Everyone says it's easy, they can do it undergeared and still dps etc etc but even with okay-ish gear I end up blowing my oGCDs and having to resort to GCD spamming 85% of the time. Especially SCH, I have to GCD spam almost every single time on it because I'm so bad at managing Aetherflow.

I even looked up the Balance guide for wall pull healing (for SCH) but I still struggle. And it's not the tanks' fault, either - they have good gear and use their cooldowns correctly most of the time.
Is there a guide on healing wall pulls? Or a video of someone doing it the right way?

And my gear is ilvl 437-ish on my SCH and WHM. I can't find a gear guide for anything that doesn't involve savage/EX gear (which I don't have because I'm bad) so I'm not very optimized, either.

Apologies if this is really noob-ish, I've only been playing for a few months and the community in-game is honestly not very helpful.

[AphraelAmarantha]

M

(Sorry if there's a better place to put this)

I'm having a hard time with wall-to-walls on all 3 healers in ShB dungeons. Everyone says it's easy, they can do it undergeared and still dps etc etc but even with okay-ish gear I end up blowing my oGCDs and having to resort to GCD spamming 85% of the time. Especially SCH, I have to GCD spam almost every single time on it because I'm so bad at managing Aetherflow.

I even looked up the Balance guide for wall pull healing (for SCH) but I still struggle. And it's not the tanks' fault, either - they have good gear and use their cooldowns correctly most of the time.
Is there a guide on healing wall pulls? Or a video of someone doing it the right way?

And my gear is ilvl 437-ish on my SCH and WHM. I can't find a gear guide for anything that doesn't involve savage/EX gear (which I don't have because I'm bad) so I'm not very optimized, either.

Apologies if this is really noob-ish, I've only been playing for a few months and the community in-game is honestly not very helpful.

It’s not just you, I have the same issue with whm. A lot of people here are very very very skilled and so they look at things from a kind of looking down from their high place, thus warping their perspective, forgetting that not everyone has their skill level.

Personally, I wouldn’t worry about it. I just ask the tank to do smaller pulls. If they want to be a jerk, I just leave the instance, healer queues are short enough to make the penalty moot.

[Numenor1379]

Here are some tips to help as a WHM:

Regen + Benison is an excellent combo for covering general damage the tank takes, so make sure to keep these up during a pull.

Holy is a GREAT mitigation tool. The stun you get will give 4-7sec of zero damage when used back to back.

Afflatus skills should be your Go-To first use abilities when you have them. Combo them both with Plenary Indulgence to get an added 200 potency. Also note that PI is a buff and doesn't dissapear after it's first activation.

Assylum, Assize and Temperance all mesh extremely well together. I tend to alternate pulls when using Assylum and Temperance given their C/Ds.

Tetragrammaton is excellent to use when you do not have an Afflatus skill available.

Benediction should not be kept as a panic button. It is the most potent, single target heal in the game. Plan your use of it. Doing so lets you save other resources for future pulls.

[AphraelAmarantha]

Here are some tips to help as a WHM:

Regen + Benison is an excellent combo for covering general damage the tank takes, so make sure to keep these up during a pull.

Holy is a GREAT mitigation tool. The stun you get will give 4-7sec of zero damage when used back to back.

Afflatus skills should be your Go-To first use abilities when you have them. Combo them both with Plenary Indulgence to get an added 200 potency. Also note that PI is a buff and doesn't dissapear after it's first activation.

Assylum, Assize and Temperance all mesh extremely well together. I tend to alternate pulls when using Assylum and Temperance given their C/Ds.

Tetragrammaton is excellent to use when you do not have an Afflatus skill available.

Benediction should not be kept as a panic button. It is the most potent, single target heal in the game. Plan your use of it. Doing so lets you save other resources for future pulls.

lol, you act as if I don't use those abilities. I will have to record a video one day and show you all.

[HyoMinPark]

lol, you act as if I don't use those abilities. I will have to record a video one day and show you all.

The guy could have been giving advice to the OP... they mentioned that they’re struggling on all three healers...

Either way, no need to be rude to the guy. He’s just trying to help—either you or the OP. Or someone randomly reading the thread who may also have a similar issue.

[Numenor1379]

lol, you act as if I don't use those abilities. I will have to record a video one day and show you all.

I wasn't talking to you, get over yourself. Besides your post says you're also having issues with WHM.

[Mhaeric]

I wasn't talking to you, get over yourself. Besides your post says you're also having issues with WHM.

Guaranteed that person has received healing advice during a run and took it as an insult.

[AphraelAmarantha]

Guaranteed that person has received healing advice during a run and took it as an insult.

Nice assumption, but no I have never received healing advice in an instance. My hostility stems from this forum feeling more like an elitist circlejerk where everyone here laughs at people less skilled than they are and then just go git gud. They don't try to see or understand how difficult things may actually be for someone like me, despite explaining over and over and over and over to them, so eventually it becomes tiresome and people wonder why someone gets jaded at a community. Practice doesn't always make perfect or better, some people just do not have the ability to get better at something even though they try their damnest, following other's advice, trying to apply what they are told, watching videos, reading guides, and no improvement whatsoever to show for it over months and years of trying.

People like the ones in this community or more specifically this forum just don't get it, and they never will because they have their stuck so far up in the clouds due to their skill level that they can never relate, never understand, so when you try to tell them you try and try and they just give a half-assed canned response, yeah I'm going to be hostile, jaded and angry because you still don't GET IT. Oh this fight is easy! Not to me and others liek me it isnt. Oh you just need more practice! What, ten years to see any modicum, improvement? How long do I have to practice at a game to get better at it if I don't see improvement over doing something for months or years? Oh but the job is so easy, I can do it in my sleep! Good for you, I'm glad teh game is trivial to you, its not to me and never will be.

@MikuMitsuko, Again I just say don't worry about it. Ask for smaller pulls and ditch them if they don't want to cooperate. There is only so much you can do. If you after practice practice practice practice and still cant handle large pulls, then you can't handle large pulls and you have to accept that. I can barely handle large pulls and usually someone dies if a tank goes crazy, this is with someone at a ilvl443, uses my ogcds and gcds as much as possible and the tank still dies. All you can really do is try your best and if teh party doesn't like that, they can find another healer.

[Mhaeric]

You can get ilevel 450 gear without doing any savage with tomestones and eden normal gear, so I'd work on that. Don't worry about the base secondary stats on your gear too much, just wear the highest ilevel you can since you'll get the most bang for your buck from the primary stat which is always better on a higher ilevel piece.

Also, make sure you're melding your gear in the 100% success slots at the very least. The additional output you get from melds is significant. On a DPS class it results in about a 40% increase in your dps output, and while I haven't tested with a healer I assume it would be a roughly similar increase for your healing output. As a healer, and Scholar especially, I'd recommend a meld priority of Crit > Det > Pie > SpS. Materia can be bought in Eulmore using the bonus in need items you get from roulettes which tend to be plentiful when you're a healer.

[Jaelommiss]

It's hard to give a helpful answer without seeing how you heal. If I had to guess, your difficulty is a combination of low party dps, being undergeared, and inefficient healing tool use. You mentioned that tanks have been using CDs appropriately, so I'll ignore that as a possibility.

Low party dps makes fights drag on longer. After the tank's defensive CDs wear off and you burn through your healing CDs there is going to be a significant amount of incoming damage if the pack hasn't been whittled down. If you are finding that healing is fine for the first 30 secs of a pull but then gets very difficult towards the end, this is likely the cause. You might have simply been paired with bad players, or maybe you could be doing more to help bring down the enemies. Healers can output competitive amounts of damage during trash pulls, so if you're not spamming Art of War, Holy, or Gravity at the start of the fight, then you're increasing your overall healing load. SCH in particular has a very easy time with this. Art of War allows you to continue using healing oGCDs effortlessly.

Being undergeared isn't helping. If your abilities are only restoring 80% of what an average healer's abilities do, then you will need to use 25% more healing abilities. With how potent oGCD healing can be this could be the difference between no GCD heals and 5+ GCD heals in a single trash pull. Only fix for this is getting better gear. You can earn i450 gear in Eden normal, i460 from tomestones, or you can buy HQ i450 crafted gear off the MB. Don't bother with NQ crafted gear. Your weapon makes a bigger impact on your power than any other gear. If you have a weaker weapon then you will underperform for your ilvl.

The only way to improve your healing efficiency is to keep practicing. If you can, examine your previous fights on xivanalysis and scroll down to the bottom. There is a timeline you can use to see how much you're leaving your CDs unused after they are available again. If you understand your toolkit entirely it's hard to give anything constructive for this. A couple things I see a lot is holding big CDs for emergencies and not using aoe healing CDs in situations where only the tank is taking damage. Simply put, it's not worth holding onto Benediction and the like for panic moments, and Asylum, Whispering Dawn, Celestial Opposition, etc. are all great tools even if only the tank is taking damage. You might also have efficiency losses to overhealing. If you're constantly topping off the tank to 100% then you're losing a portion of your heals.

The last possible cause I can think of is people standing in avoidable aoes. This increases the healing burden (assuming you deign to heal them...) and there's not a whole lot you can do about it.

If you have other questions or want more detailed help about specific aspects of healing, feel free to contact me on Discord at Qina#4625.