Best methods/practices for healing a group of 8.

[Jmeat]

Just wanted to start off by saying I'm still getting used to the new battle system. I find that healing a large group now on CON is rather clumsy. For example hitting Cure II then either tabbing around or trying to click on names/characters is too sluggish in a rapid fight. Macros also do not seem to help yet either for example:

/ac "Cure II" <p#>

Numbers for party members seem to stop at 5, with no way of macroing a cure for members 6,7 or 8. Also the F1-F5 key targeting also seems to neglect party members 6-8 as well.

So how has everyone else been healing? Thanks for any tips I might be missing out on.

[Arcell]

I'm not a mage but I'm thinking a good strategy for the party to develop as a whole would be to take a little more personal responsibility for your own health, especially the war disciplines. If you're a random melee DD and you get hit by an AoE, don't be afraid to pop second wind or bloodbath+attack. If some people can take care of themselves for minor heals then the actual healer can focus more on the tank or those oh shit situations. Every bit helps here.

However communication is key here so the mages dont waste MP on someone who is going to heal themself.

[Fated]

I'm not a mage but I'm thinking a good strategy for the party to develop as a whole would be to take a little more personal responsibility for your own health, especially the war disciplines. If you're a random melee DD and you get hit by an AoE, don't be afraid to pop second wind or bloodbath+attack. If some people can take care of themselves for minor heals then the actual healer can focus more on the tank or those oh shit situations. Every bit helps here.

Good luck getting randoms to follow this logic.

[Anty]

it looks like finally enfeebles make more sense and are needed and many other abilities now do make sense.
People forget that there is the ability to cut mp costs to half and that a mix of para, slow, blind etc. etc. really help a lot.
Finally there will be more challenges. i didn't try out a lot so far so i'm not sure if the mp costs are a bit tooo high (they seem a bit to extreme to me so far), but well see.
Generally i welcome the changes and it finally makes more sense to have both con and thm in parties.
If the balance is right, i can't really tell so far.
Enfeebles save the day in the end and more strategy will be needed.
I think it seems incredibly tough to many people just because we had the easy-mode-fantasy-online before.
So... we need to get used to not zerging 24/7. After some days of testing i think we all can say more about balancing and if things really are a bit too tough, or just about right.

[Winterclaw]

Rule #1 for being a healer: never over-heal.

[Chiz]

You haven't tried healing from the party/hp display panel? That's the easiest method by far from what I've seen. You can move that character pane around too, just can't make it larger last I checked. You may even be able to scroll up and down with arrow keys or with gamepad but not 100% sure on that.

Just make a few macros for each heal you slot like:

/ac "Cure II" <st>

That'll bring up the selection icon, but then just click on the person's name/hp you want to heal and you auto-face your target(bigger deal with thm aoe heals) and start casting in the same click.

[Ylferyf]

If you play with keyboard, F1 - F7 work fine for targetting all your party members. I didn't realize it for the longest time but they added hotkey configuration to allow you to set F5-F8 for the rest of your party awhile ago. This will just be the way mages used to heal in FFXI. It encourages care and skill when fighting which I like.

[Delmontyb]

I focus on using the up and down keys to navigate the party window. This allows me to highlight the party member in need and cast heal. I still have work to do on my action bar so that all my items are where they need to be, but this seems to work well for everything going on.

I love the adjustments, as a healer I don't feel I can zerg cure, which is nice.

[Dreadnought]

its so awesome how complicated healing is.
im not talking about MP management or enmity, im talking about the direct functionality of it lol
the combination of targeting + weird action bar system + system delay make for a really tedious time.

[Sorel]

its so awesome how complicated healing is.
im not talking about MP management or enmity, im talking about the direct functionality of it lol
the combination of targeting + weird action bar system + system delay make for a really tedious time.

Not very helpful to the OP.