How can I reach my full potential as a healer?

[Kelya]

Humm, just to clarify before going back to the subject, secondary stat is nothing but... a secondary stat ! Since you need around 580-600 (or 300+ in Determination) in one of these stats to clearly see the effects of them, keep in mind that regardless the stat you choose to improve, it won't be so much important as you think and it won't radically change your gameplay, just a little.

Each stat is useful. Stop saying Crit is useless and then saying Crit is useful but following it by saying Spell Speed is useless (as for Crit, it allows you to have a ratio Cure 1/Cure 2 highter than if you hadn't any SS, and it has several others advantages but the subject isn't about it). So rather than thinking you (and I'm not targetting someone in particular) hold the truth and try to transmit it to everyone, keep being objective and don't forget to relativize.

The person who's playing Crit oriented build, is on T9 if I remember. He or she succeded to clear almost or all the HL content with his horrible useless stat ! Point is, our truth is not the truth, as long as you can clear correctly and efficiently the HL content, each stat is good and has its own pros/cons otherwise they won't be present in game... There is no need to argue about it.

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Now to answer to the OP, I'll try to share the most I can assuming I understood what he or she is looking for. Ppl already told the more important and general things. Then, if you want some precisions about what makes the difference between a correct healer and a very good healer, here we are.

IMO, the correct healer is the one that will play depending on this statement : Everyone is alive at the end of the fight/We cleared it so everything is alright.

The very good healer now, will tend to improve himself as time flies. They won't be ok if they cleared a fight in chaotic conditions (not because of the others ppl, but mainly because of them). They'll want to be efficient. Efficient isn't being "correct". Efficient is more. This is about overhealing for example. Who cares if you're overhealing but everything is fine ? Nobody, but you. If you want to be the more efficient as possible, you'll care because you know you can do better. There is tons of things that can show if you're efficient or "doing the minimum". The good healer is the one that, at the moment he casts a spell, say to himself "shit, I shouldn't have done that !" "I should have used X or Y" "Next time, I'll try to do this or that". Sure, if you're not part of a FC and not doing HL content with ppl you know/you often play, it can't really apply because of chaotic Pick'up team. But for now I'll be only talking by considering you're in FC team and doing HL content (low dungeons and speed runs are a joke in comparaison).

Ppl talked about communication with the other partner. It's very important. Look at the cast bar of your co-healer, don't hesitate to use another spell or interrupt it accordingly.
Share the tasks : who's going to rez first ? Who's responsible for the tank ? Is it a SCH/WHM team or a double SCH/double WHM ? The worse thing to get will 2 healers, is to overheal, waste a precious GCD or even a big CD. As WHM for example, you don't want to loose your Benediction in the wind : if you can't trust your SCH partner or if he doesn't talk with you (by informing you he has stacks or on the contrary he can't rely on his stacks anymore), maybe you'll use Benediction but for nothing cause SCH will Lustrate. It's an horrible thing so the more you communicate, the more you avoid mistakes. Sharing healing stuff correctly and efficiently with your partner is one of the most important thing if you're looking for a superior level of healing.

If you play as WHM

From an effective and challenging POV, overhealing and MP management will be your main problem to deal with. Don't resolve it by underhealing.

Learn to know when you can not to heal and when it's really needed. This brings us to an important thing often forgotten : natural HP regen. It's low but it's there. This means when the team gets damages around 10% of life, you do NOT heal them if no more damages are coming soon. By the time you'll cast Medica (2,5s) you'll heal more than the HP lost, which results in overhealing. Example : during Ramuh EX thunder circles, if orbs are cleared properly there's no need to Medica because the damages are low and the time before next attack is long.

Learn your spells (range, MP costs and time to cast) but also the values of healing of each of them. You can test by yourself and calculate an average of them. You're likely to overheal with AOE heal rather than with single target heal, that's why you should mainly work on the AOE heal use. For me Medica is around 950, Medica 2 around 1500 and Cure 3 around 1700 without the party bonus. With this in mind, you'll know when to use one instead of the other. Medica for every moderate damages, Medica 2 for important damages and Cure 3 for important damages with stacked ppl. Careful with Medica 2 and its HOT that lasts 30s. It's very easy overhealing with this spell so learn when to use it. In most of the cases, do NOT follow it by a Medica otherwise you'll basically cancel the purpose of Medica 2. It can be used to smooth big damages (several attacks during a short period) though.

We talked about natural HP regen, let's talk about natural MP regen now. Depending on your mana pool and therefore, on your Piety, you'll get back a certain amount of MP every 3s approximatively. For example, having 4600 MP offers around 100 MP per tick. The more MP you'll have, the more you'll be able to use X or Y spells.

But MP isn't essential. And sometimes, considering MP and overhealing (both being closely linked) you won't need to AOE heal even if before you would have thought you need. I mean, when 3-4 ppl get moderate damages, do you need to AOE heal or can you afford healing them individually ? Then you'll say "Even if I can, why would I waste time and MP ?". In fact, you don't waste MP. 4 Cure 1 = 532 MP in 8s = 167 MP in 2,5s and 1 Medica = 379 MP in 2,5s. And if you got extra time, well use it to maximize your MP comsumption. Actually it's very efficient in the long term : if you meet this kind of situation frequently and you choose to Medica, you'll finish by loosing MP. If the situation is rare it's ok if you don't pay attention though, but keep in mind when you AOE heal for 4 ppl, you're likely to overheal 4 others ppl maximum. Besides, SCH's fairy or the other heal in general, is likely to heal one or two target meanwhile, consequently your Medica would certainly overheal more than 4 ppl. If you only Cure, most of the time you won't even success to heal all the target because the other healer will take care of them too or the melee dps would have healed themself a little. Individual Cure, when possible, gives you time to see how things are going and thus this often prevents you from overhealing. A good example where I apply it is on Ramuh ex solo healing during the thundercircles (duo healing there is just nothing to heal). So, personnaly, I use 3 rules to know if Medica is really needed :

- How much targets lost HP ? Good number will be superior or equal to 5

- If it's inferior, am I forced to top them fast or not ? Depends on the following mechanics of the fight

- If not, do I have time to top them individually or not ? Depends on whether we need to switch on a tank-focusing moment soon or if he will be ok

How to know you manage your MP correctly ? There are some way but better thing to do is : do NOT run with a bard ! Or pray for him not to know he has a Mage Ballad x) Bard is helpful when you learn HL content, but the fact is, the more you're used to go with a bard, the more you're likely to get a Mage Ballad (if you didn't ask for it, someone did). Learn to play without this helpful but dependant Ballad. If you can, ask bard not to use it even if you look bad on MP ! I know it seems a bit contradictory but it's the only way to evaluate your MP. Ballad during a fight will falsify it, not so much, but it's there. With time, you become easily dependent on the bard and the damages are done. Another thing you can do, if you really want to see if Piety isn't a problem for you, is trying to have a low pool of mana. I mean, the contrary of looking for Piety on the stuff. Try to have less MP that you're used to have, and come back into fights you know. See the difference and question yourself about it. When you got a very comfortable mana pool, you can afford doing more mistakes (too much heal, wrong spell ect) because first you just get more MP to use, but secondly your MP regen will increase. There is a big difference between playing with a 4K MP or a 5K MP. If you're looking for some difficulties and want to improve yourself, don't try to get more Piety on your stuff.

Let's talk about single target heal and tank focus now. First thing as already said is to keep Regen up on the tank as much as possible except the "pause situations" : don't refresh it just before the boss diseappears (titan, leviathan, T5, T9...) and according to the level of the tank, when adds are coming. Don't refresh it neither if there is a swapping tank mechanic and the current MT is about to switch OT because most of the time, the next 21s he won't get any damages. Also Regen can be used on another target that the tank : it gives more HP than a single Cure 1 (around 3 000) so you can learn when to use it (value of damages and mechanics of fights allowing you to top target slow or not). But if you do, don't follow it by a Cure 1 ! As for Medica 2, it will cancel the utility of the regen. Regen can be a preventive spell if you decide to use it before the damages are coming. Example : circle of fire on the distant dps at T7. If you use it before the damages, and just after you're in P2 with adds, this means you gained time that you won't loose during a tank-focusing moment. You just stay on the tank and don't care any more about the dps until the next damages. Therefore this brings us to something else : even if you can't predict damages, you can use Regen on a dps/heal during a tank-focusing moment if they don't need to be topped quickly. 1 Regen instead of 2 Cure 1 means 1 gain of GCD allowing us to come back to our precious tank faster, and 1 Regen instead of 1 Cure 2 means you save some MP.

Going to focus on Cure 1 and 2 now. Normally, you should use Cure 1 as your main spell and try to use Cure 2 only if it's really necessary or if you got the free proc. Difference between Cure 2 and Cure 1 is that Cure 2 costs the double of MP but heals 1,6 better than Cure 1. This means 2 cure 1 is more efficient that 1 Cure 2 for the same MP. This also means using too often Cure 2 will give you MP issues. Purpose of Cure 2 is in the timing : it's to top your target FAST because it takes only 2s instead of 4s with 2 Cure 1. So you should't use it if you don't need to give back the target a lot of HP fast. Instead, when you know time isn't a problem and you don't need to top fast (damages taken/frequences are slow) just relax and keep chain Cure 1 until the safe zone. Besides, remember there is another healer. When target is at 50% HP and nothing important is happening, Cure 1 + Cure1/Physick of the other healer is enough. More generally, you can identify the "normal" periods and the "complex" periods of a fight. During "normal" period you tend to use only Cure 1, Regen and proc Cure 2 (that you must keep until maximum 15s if you don't really need it). That way, you're trying to save your MP and your CDs for later, for tense situations. And here we are : during "complex" period, it's time to use more Cure 2 and your CDs. Using them will compensate the fact you're using more Cure 2 because in brief during this period the power of your heal will be very high. These 2 kind of period are easy to memorize for each fights and most of the time, the "normal" period is dominant.

Except for the tank, there is a very important thing to keep in mind : if you have the time/if nothing important is coming soon, getting everyone topped full life permanently isn't the way to heal. Topping target quickly doesn't always mean it's more efficient than topping it progressively. Topping target at 100% each time instead of topping them in the safe zone (around 80%), that is completly enough in most of the cases, isn't needed. However, there are times where you can't afford loosing your tank target even a few seconds, in this case ofc you'll search to switch to him as fast as possible and you will act consequently. This means, according to the situation, you won't use the same spells, you won't decide the way to top one target the same way you would in another situation. It's all about a balance : not to heal too much, not to underheal.

Then what about CDs ? First, use Divine seal frequently (refreshable each 45s since 60s CD but it lasts 15s) and re-apply Regen during the CD if you can but otherwise, re-apply it at the last second of the CD to maximize Regen. If you see Convalescence from your Tank, refresh Regen too in order to gain the healing bonus. If you got lucky or just ask you tank to pop his CD meanwhile you're on DS, re-apply Regen and get a +50-60% healing bonus ! Use swiftcast too, 1 min isn't so much long and normally the SCH will keep it for the first rez. You'll combine it with Medica 2 most of the time or with Cure 2 if something is getting critical. Also it can save from a big attack if you really forgot about StoneSkinning the tank. Presence of Mind is for emergency or when you know you have long staff to do before some mechanics of the fight. Be careful though to use the rights spells ; if not your MP will literally melt. A sympatic thing to do is combining this CD to the rez if no one has the instant rez. Depending on your Spell Speed, you can rez the target in "only" 4-5s. For Shroud of Saints, I personnaly never have to use it for threat reasons so I just pop it each time my MP go under 3900 MP (having around 4750 MP). Don't forget about Mind potions, the more powered give you something like +15% healing power so it's like a mini CD. All of this is general, it's up to you to find multiple others way to use them.

I'll finish by saying don't underestimate Stoneskin. It's mainly used before a fight, before a big attack but there are so much others utilities. You can use it on dps that are choosen to take some predictable damages (depends on the values though) at the same period that you need to focus tank. SS them 30s, 15s, 8s (it's up to you) before this period happen so that you know you won't need to loose your tank few seconds to heal other ppl (just as Regen on T7 example). Useful on ppl you just rez and on the tank just before you need to move or to go out of range because of a mechanic of the fight to compensate the loose of heal during the period you won't be able to heal him, ect... Also if you got a WAR, be aware of 'Thrill of Battle' that gives him a bonus of +20% HP max. When you see this, this must draw your attention and you must try to put a SS on him as long as the buff will be there, and the 3s left too in order to maximize the utility of SS (that shields 18% of the HP max, which is very nice on WAR because of their life and this buff). There are plenty of uses for SS, just find them !

Then... it's all about you and your instinct, your feeling, your capacity to fusion with the fluctuations of the life bars, to analyze things and your knowledge of the fight. This last point is very important because if you know what is coming next, you won't panic and you'll feel confident by choosing X spell to use instead of Y at Z moment. Example : for some reasons one of the dps is almost dead. What do you must to do ? Depending on the following events of the fights, you don't have to loose your Benediction on him (which happens a lot actually). Just keep cool and Cure 2 him or Cure 1 several times him until the safe zone if you got time. Example where Benediction is "correct" to use is on Titan EX just after killing the Heart and the dps got hit by the bomb but Titan is about to jump and kill him in less than 2s and there is no SCH / SCH doesn't have any stack to Lustrate. But generally, you will only want to use it on the tanks. The more you'll know the fight, the more you'll got extra time. Even when you think there is moments where you haven't any extra time, knowing fight better will be a big advantage : you create on your own some extra time.

Mainly WHM is seen as a "reactive" healer. Again, knowing the fight makes you less reactive and more "preventive" because fights are scripted with timing, pourcentage of boss HP or boss cast bar. But in addition to this, you can take in account the animations of certains moderate/big attacks that don't appear on the cast bar. If you're able to identify them, you can precast your spells so as to they hit the targets at approximatively the same moment the damages are taken. More generally, you can act as a very active and preventive healer by always precasting some Cure 1 and interrupting them each time they aren't needed. If they are, you let the spell landing. This means you don't wait for damages and you gain extra time, but you shouldn't be able to do this all the time.

Conclusion

There are so much way to analyze each job and to play them, so best advice still is work by yourself to understand things and play as its suits you. Even when you read tips and advice about healing, ask yourself, don't "rush headlong" without getting a minimum of reflection about all that is said. Everything I myself wrote (and I wrote a lot ), in various situations, can be contradicted. My tips aren't more reliable than others and we can be wrong sometimes too. The good healer is the one that think about all of it. He likes talking about heal, he likes sharing tips but he's able to keep a critical look even if he's open minded.

You being efficient, very good or whatever we name it, can only be evaluated by your constant choices. It's the only way to evaluate a healer. You can't rely to their MP by the end of the fight because there are too much factors. Healer job is all about being confronted to many choices every single second that passes, so healer responsability is to make decisions, to make the right choices. And the difficulty when you try to evaluate yourself is that there are several good choices for each single situation. But, maybe if you think about it, you'll find that some choices are better/more efficient than others. Healer job hasn't limits to improve. You can say "I learnt the basics things and master them" but you can't say "I have nothing more to learn". Ask yourself : how was my healing level 3 months ago ? If you're answering "oh god, I was so bad!" you're in the good direction. A good healer can't be the same healer as he was before, he only can improve, change and that's the way to become more and more competent.

There are so much things to say, we could talk about all of this days and days that you won't ever get a chance to see the end coming. That's the power of healing job I guess!

[Kaiya-Gray]

Thankyou so much Kelya! You said some really helpful things there (:

[ruskie]

Thanks for that Kelya. I learned a lot of that on my own by playing(and by friends that are great whms) but it's nice to be put into a nice cohesive thing. Might be a good idea to make that it's own thread. I can say this... a lot of fights(especialy primals/exs) will teach you precasting heals or stoneskining mid fight.

[synesthetic]

The best advice I can think of has all already been stated throughout this thread. But the main points I would pick out are..
- know the fights
- know your skills
- be observant and adapt

And then if you want bonus points, never be idle. If you have time to sit around not healing, then you have time to be preemptively mitigating or DPSing. Just because you're a healer doesn't mean the damage you can do is negligible.

The best thing you can do for yourself is to just keep playing, keep partying. Build up that personal experience and always think about how could you do things a little better. Even if you know things went wrong because of someone else, think about what you could've done to make things better.


Regarding the whole secondary stat debate, I would rather just point you to some websites so you can decide for yourself once you're in a position to consider what's "best in slot" to you:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/ - handy place to see all of your options and let it sum up what the stat totals would be
http://valk.dancing-mad.com/calculat...ng-calculator/ - calculator to input those stats so you'll know how much your heals are affected

The general opinion I hear is still crit for SCHs and det for WHM, simply because SCH's Adloquium benefits greatly from crits, and det for WHM because people don't like random and are afraid of crit-cures generating too much aggro. And then there's the occasional advocate for spell speed because they feel more comfortable knowing they can get a heal out 0.1 sec faster to barely save someone.

If you want a more objective view though..

Determination

The higher your weapon's damage, the more this stat does. And if I recall, the general ratio between det and a job's primary stat (MND in this case) is somewhere around 4:1.

For the sake of healing, it's about 2 HP per 1 MND for a Cure/Physick.
For the sake of DPS, det has always had the most weight in affecting your overall damage. But I would also note that this should only matter for bosses, not trash mobs, because higher DPS means nothing against low-HP targets if it's not enough damage to let you kill them in one less hit--if it takes you just as many hits to kill them, you're not killing them any faster at all. Similarly, players are low-HP targets. So when you look at a 5k HP tank and your Cure hits for 900, healing for 910 isn't going to change how often you have to heal them.

Crit

"Unreliable" but has greater impact on low-HP targets than det does.
Crits do 1.5x the amount of damage or healing that would've been done normally. For DPS, the difference is likely enough to save some time in killing the occasional target. For healing, like in the scenario described in the previous section, healing for 1350 there can definitely change how often you have to heal that target, especially when you're dealing with high damage, like large mob pulls, or big spike damage attacks that deal over half of your tank's HP.

On a side note, DoT/HoT ticks can crit as well.

Spell Speed

1 point in spd shaves off roughly 0.001 sec from something like Cure; you can use Selene's Fey Glow and check your stats and skills' cast/recast times to see how much each one is affected for certain. (Also note that your fairy's stats are dependent on your own. So Embrace and Whispering Dawn actually do get their cast/recast times reduced as you increase your spd.)
But essentially, the results aren't noticeable if you can't stack this stat.

This stat's pretty situational. The argument is that if you can cast spells faster and more often, then you can get more casts out in a given window of time. For DPS, the benefit of that is obvious; but for healing, that means saving that one person because you were able to get a heal out 0.1 sec faster, because you're never going to be spamming heals nonstop (if you are, there's something very wrong). But the benefit really only applies if you can be casting nonstop, or at the least get an extra cast out during a window of time. If a fight requires you to move often so you effectively get no extra casts out compared to a non-spd build, then there's no benefit. Or even if you don't have to move, if you run out of MP, again there's no benefit.

[Lovemonster]

I'm sure our pets benefit from critical hit rate and determination (tested both) but spellspeed does not seem to change their tooltips like it does for our skills (hard to test). Are you sure that spellspeed affects pet cast and recast times?

[synesthetic]

It's been a while since I tested it, but it definitely did back at i90 cap when I was trying out different gearsets. With a difference of 80ish spd in my sets at the time, I definitely recall seeing Eos' Whispering Dawn have a shorter recast, and it messed with me a little because of Rouse's recast.

Since you brought it up, I'm looking at them ingame now, and I have to wonder if they took it out or if it's just the tooltip not reflecting the difference. If they really did take it out, then that's unfortunate.. :|


edit: I believe it's just the tooltip not reflecting the difference.
I just pushed myself to 480 spd, and used a macro to pop Rouse then Whispering Dawn. Whispering Dawn was available again while Rouse still had about 2 seconds to go.

Tried again with the minimum 341 spd, same macro. Rouse was available again first, while Whispering Dawn was available like half a second later.

edit2: I was doubting my memory about Embrace, so I just tested that, too. Spd affects it.
Using both sets, I timed how long it took to spam Embrace 20 times, starting the clock from the moment I hit the macro and ending once the number appeared for the last heal.
Spd set was about 1:02.
No-spd set was about 1:06.
Repeated each a few times just to make sure I didn't miscount.

I don't have the best latency from where I live, so if you test it yourself you may get a different disparity.

[Kelya]

Be careful, when you cast Embrace and interrupt it with Stay or whatever, fairy stops casting but the GCD is lost. That means you can NOT use another Embrace of fairy on other ppl during the time fairy would have casted normally. Now that I noticed this, I just don't try to interrupt Embrace when I want to Embrace another ppl since I would have the choice to wait for nothing to be casted or to wait for an Embrace of the automatic fairy. However you still can use the others spells after interrupting Embrace.

Same for Whispering dawn unfortunately, if you cast it and interrupt it the same way, the fact is you loose the CD because even if you didn't use it finally, you need to wait for the next 60s. But this doesn't share the GCD so if you interrupt it, you can still chain it by an Embrace.

[subteraneanbird]

Owner spell speed does not affect pets. This has been stated many times by S-E. If you're a pet class you want crit regardless because your crit does affect your pet and gives you spell speed.

[synesthetic]

I don't recall them saying that, so if you could point me towards a source, that would be appreciated.

They really screwed up then, if that was their intent. Because as I said, it is still affecting my fairies at least when I summon them with different amounts of spell speed equipped. The tooltips just aren't reflecting it anymore.
I even found a bug report of someone else who noticed it sooner. Probably happened with patch 2.2 then.

[Kelya]

I agree with synesthetic.
I just macroed a "/pac Whispering Dawn" followed by a "/wait 60" and then a "/p Time to recast Whispering Dawn guys !" And the result was, with 580 SS, Whispering Dawn was up 3-4s BEFORE my /p text.

Something is wrong with this spell x)