Eyes Open Now

[Ghishlain]

Healers need to adapt to a situation, learn the fights, know how to react and prepare for things to happen, and have incredibly good situational awareness.

The above on so many levels. If anyone can take anything from this discussion, it's THIS QUOTE right here.

You will run into a variety of situations as a healer and you need to understand how to adapt to them. You want to have an acute understanding of your tool kit and what you are and are not capable of handling on your own and how and how you can react to surprises or unexpected spikes. You want to know how to gauge your groups effectiveness and what liberties you have with that group.

IE
-Running Bahamut's Coil? HEAL ALL THE THINGS!
-Doing AK / WP with a set group? You'll probably be able to DPS through most of it with the odd heal here or there
-AoE speed run AK / WP with a set group? You'll know what to do because it's exactly defined what's expected
-AK / WP with PUGs from DF? Be a bit conservative so you can gauge the group then make your decision based on that

A good healer is one who can keep their party alive.

An exceptional healer is one who can keep their party alive and have very little down time doing so. Whether this means just chain healing because of bad tank / DPS or being able to contribute your own DPS to the fray, you are reducing your idle time while being aware for any "O SNAP" scenarios that may occur.