Just healed for the first time.

[Ninster]

A bit of background: I have ACN at lvl 31, and plan on going SCH for endgame first, then maybe picking up WHM as time goes on. I lean towards support roles if only because I have no leading capability whatsoever.

So I went to level my CNJ to 15 from 14 and ended up actually going overboard and hit 18. So I figured, why not try out getting adjusted to healing. And the first thing I think of is Sastasha. So I queue up and find that the instance is ready almost immediately.

First, this is my first time actually using Duty Finder on my own, ever. A friend's been helping me through the story to this point, so he always queued up me and him as a duo. This is my first time healing (thread title). This was my second time to run Sastasha, with my first being several months ago.

Party composition: me, tank(no clue what class), ACN, PUG

So I was incredibly nervous on the first dungeon. And things went rougher than I expected.

Immediately I noticed that the party rushed the first mobs, meaning I had to figure out who the tank was (lucky guess on my part, especially since it ended up being a tossup with the DPS that took hate) and start healing. For the most part I kept the tank topped off, but it wasn't until the clams that I realized that I hadn't put up Protect and that I was unsure just how much time I had to cast it between (or during) pulls. Managed to get it off without trouble.

After the second encounter with the captain is where things took a bit of a turn. Tank nabbed the loot while the PUG took off and left us. And he was down by the time the three of us caught up, despite me trying to save him. And I just barely reacted enough to get back on the tank.

The last mobs before the boss were a mess, and it's at this point I have questions. I'm not sure what happened, but apparently tank either failed to grab everything or lost hate from one of the mobs, because me and PUG ended up taking damage. At this point I panicked and tried to Medica to keep everyone alive, but before I knew it I was down.

Having never had wipes occur in my time as ACN, I was a bit confused about mechanics here. I warped back to the entrance, then I hesitated because I wasn't sure if party was going to wipe (in which case I should've waited?), but after a few seconds of seeing health bars stay stable, I took the shortcut back and realized the rest of the party was still there. So... did ACN cover for me or what? Again, this is confusing, so I apologize if anything I say here comes off as dumb or common sense.

Anyway, the boss... well, my friend showed me how the adds spawned (and how to prevent them) but that was as ACN, so I was confused the entire fight. All I could figure to do was keep on the tank even as 6-7 adds spawned. It looked like he was trying to take care of the spawn points, but was that supposed to be my role? At any rate, apparently the party focused on bringing the boss down while I tried to hold things together.

So overall, it was a success, but I'm just disoriented overall due to how rushed it felt. I tried to explain in party chat but no one said anything until the end. The tank admitted he was new, but the others said nothing. I was hoping to take this as a learning experience that would help adjust to SCH when I get it but I'm not sure just WHAT I learned, if anything. All I felt like I could do was Cure spam and hold on for dear life.

[Everdark]

I hate it when the party rushes off before I can put protect up :/

but it sounds like you did alright for your first solo attempt. The MNK shouldn't have run off so that wasn't your fault, and as a healer its pretty helpful if you can grab one of the grates in the final fight as the boss doesn't hit that hard. Don't stress about it though as, as you saw its possible to heal through a few adds plus the boss

Everyone learns at some point good luck in the future


OH! tanks are marked with a blue colour in the party list if that helps. (also they either have an axe or shield on them lol)

[Coulvre]

Don't worry, it'll get easier with practice! The first time I tanked/healed in a dungeon I had no idea what I was doing and it went terribly, but the more you play the game (even as a DPS), the more you will understand about how to do things effectively.

I would advise that you make use of the party list as a healer. You can sort the order of players in the party window, which maybe isn't so important in lower level dungeons, but in 8-person content it's really helpful to have the tanks and other healer at the top of the list, I find, since they're generally priority for healing. I pretty much only use that to keep track of other people's HP and select them to heal. That way you won't get confused about which party member is which.

In early dungeons, with new and/or lower level players, there will be a lot of things going wrong. Just focus on keeping everyone alive as best you can. It's the tanks/DPS job to take care of the enemies at this stage.

[Estellios]

Just a rule of thumb, you can tell what role each person in the party is by the color of their icon in the party list. Green is a healer, Red is DPS, and blue is a tank.

In any fights where something has to be clicked on, typically it is safe for you to click on these objects if the tank isn't taking too much damage, so this is solely at your discretion and if you feel you can leave the tank alone for a few moments. This is more viable when you get the fairy or Regen. If you can't handle leaving the tank alone, the DPS will have to cover it.

Aside from healing, when you are comfortable it can be worthwhile to practice turning cleric stance on and off and adding some extra damage. This will take some getting used to so you might want to practice without cleric stance to get a feel for how long the tank will be ok without you keeping an eye on them. If you are in the duty finder I find it's best to wait for an enemy pull or two to see if the tank will be high-maintenance or if you can nuke through most of the dungeon.

[Ilenya]

The last mobs before the boss were a mess, and it's at this point I have questions. I'm not sure what happened, but apparently tank either failed to grab everything or lost hate from one of the mobs, because me and PUG ended up taking damage. At this point I panicked and tried to Medica to keep everyone alive, but before I knew it I was down.

Just as a tip, especially in the early dungeons but it stays true for the whole game, spamming AoE heals can and will easily drag aggro to you unless the tank is paying attention, since it's a pretty high enmity spell. You did do the right thing if everything was going to hell, but it's still something to keep in mind.

[Ninster]

Thanks for the tips, everyone. I'm hoping to run a few more dungeons with CNJ to see if I can get some practice in.

Ilenya, I actually am somewhat familiar with this in XI so I'm not surprised it's the same way here. I'm not too sure if I could've kept my cool and waited for the tank before I resorted to Medica, but that would've required me to not panic in the first place. =(

Estellios, I was pretty nervous throughout the whole thing so helping with damage-dealing wasn't even on my mind. Especially when I saw the tanks HP drop about 5% on the pulls. I did slow down eventually when I realized I was actually wasting Cures at a few points, but even after that I wasn't sure just how much I could leave the tank alone. From the looks of this forum though, I can see that damage-dealing as the healer is a pushy issue...

Probably the most helpful thing that several mentioned was the color of the icons, which makes sense now that I'm thinking of it.

[UlricCraft]

/psort moves everyone into order and makes healing tanks easier.

WHM/CNJ = Cure I spam!
That's the most effective way of healing you can do. When you unlock Cure II, it's useful, but costs more mana than it's worth!

As you unlock Regen, you start to become a lot lazier.
Stoneskin & Regen and just hang around.
When you hit 50 though, the laziness intensifies!

Stoneskin, Regen, Medica II. All the HoT's!
(Like someone said though, HoT's/Medica II cause tonnes of aggro)

Best of luck sir!

If you're looking for either SCH/ACN or WHM/CNJ tips, don't hesitate to ask!
We all like to talk about ourselves.

[Spoekes]

relax, take advantage of a good position to have an overview about what is going on and most important:
do_not_panic

Especially in the lower dungeons you will be able to tank a few hits, so don't immidiatly spam cure on you - it will just give you more and more aggro making it harder or impossible for the tank to grab that mob back.

You seem to be doing ok, there is no greater trick to it you are missing, just relax and things will get easier as you stop beeing nervous.

[magdahmhara]

One thing to always remember is that first and foremost you are there to heal. Anything else is gravy. If no one is taking much damage, then by all means dps or help with mechanics but never, ever put healing second. It can feel very overwhelming at times, especially when things don't go exactly right, but once you get in more practice those situations will become easier to control. It's always important to keep your head when all those around you are losing theirs, lol. It gets easier when you get the feel for cast times and how much damage the tank can take before you need to heal. That really helps with aggro. Knowing the encounters and what to watch out for helps you to anticipate incoming damage. It just takes practice. In each MMO I've played I always start out with easy dungeons then work up to the harder ones. That way you get the feel for everything. This game is so much easier cause you can start in low level ones then work up. Don't give up, healing really is a blast.

[lbs8]

I just want to say thanks for the thread.

I plan on going with Scholar for the end game and ran my first dungeon as a ARC just the other night so there is plenty of helpful advice on this thread!