WHM Help and Question

[Lyrinn]

Also, I never, ever use Medica 2 for pulls. There's no need to.

I find it situationally useful. With Divine Seal + Regen + Medica II up, you're looking at 1k HoT ticks. I can sit in cleric stance for the entire duration of the pull without having to blow Benediction.

[Moqi]

If his health dropped to 1/4 while pulling I'd let him die because he clearly doesn't know what he's doing.

For large pulls, I usually Eye4Eye=>Divine Seal=>Regen (Medica II if necessary for extra healig ticks)=>top the tank off=>Swiftcast=>Holy and and Holy and Holy and Holy... but the tank has to know waht he's doing.

[Artiste]

I never use Medica2 on pack on monsters, I spam divine seal + regen, or Divine Seal + regen, and after 2 or more holy, depending on how can aggro the tank, trying to keep 2k mana if shroud is on CD after every pack of monsters (and I do a pack without dpsing to regen some mana, or with only 1-2 holy), trying to put stoneskin on the tank also beetwin each pack of monsters, begin to cast it when you see the last monster dying.

I dont why medica 2 (ok, from the dragon that does aoe, yes, you need it, for the other, never)

[Samsta]

Lot of the "farm" dungeons (like brayflox hm) are usually speed runned even in df, and this is what I do pretty consistently:

stoneskin tank before pull: Divine seal --> cure 2 till he is at least 80% hp --> regen --> shroud --> continue to apply cure or cure 2 depending on the damage, if no significant damage is taken then holy spam a few times to stun and deal damage --> apply regen again when it runs out and tank is at least 80%

if there is aoe damage I tend to use medica 1 or cure 3 if the players are in a good position for that one, not usually medica 2 because the 200 potency is really low, and the tank can actually fall to really low health sometimes when the regen doesnt kick in right away, and the 30 sec regen usually ends up overhealing the dps which is not ideal, if you however know that there is much aoe damage in the fight it is really good to throw one medica 2 there so you don't have to heal the dps that much and it also helps the tank combined with the regen.

Apply PoM there if the tank is taking really heavy damage, sometimes the tanks are not really geared that well and they tend to take so heavy damage you can only spam cure 2 and maybe use bene if the situation needs it, but remember that the aoe stun from the holy is really good if you can get it off without risking the life of the tank, a 4 second moment with no damage usually.

[Sinna]

Thx for all the great advice it really helps & is very much appreciated! Seeing the different styles & situations pulled it all together in my head.

I usually throw a regen first thing, but this tank's health was so low couldn't chance the GCD. I wish tanks would remember a healers first time in a duty, they are going in blind so it's difficult to gauge things.

The speed run thing is fine if you are with a group doing a speed run, but this was a first time & I wasn't there to do a speedrun. BUT for every bad run like this one I have 20 good ones including speed runs, so next time instead getting verbally abused by a stranger, I will just leave. Video games bring out ugliness in people that blows my mind & it's not my job to be an angry person's whipping post.

Hopefully with these new tips&tricks, Ill be able to keep the tank up thruout the run and keep his blood pressure down so he doesn't stroke out halfway thru the run rofl!

[PetiteMalFleur]

Tank dying was not your fault, however I noticed you do not have E4E. Level your arcanist for the skill. It can save you in situations like these.

[Fyrebrand]

Well, first thing's first: the tank is at fault for causing these problems. As you said -- that many mobs on him, and at 1/4 HP by the time you can catch up and cast anything? That's a joke. No matter how good a healer you are, there's little you can do at that point, especially if he pulls this stunt repeatedly and your cooldowns are blown. From his behaviour, I'll bet he really wants to force a speedrun, and is just using high damage skills rather than defensive abilities.
Second, if you've been healing without regular problems for this long, chances are you are not doing anything fundamentally terrible.
Third, he says you're doing your "rotation" wrong? Baloney, there is no such thing as a healing rotation.

As far as tips, I'd say:
* Regen the tank at the start of a fight, and keep it on at all times. I ease off the Regen if there's one mob left and a fresh cast will persist long after it dies, just because if it's still on when a new group of mobs is encountered it seems to initially draw aggro to me.
* Don't be afraid to use Shroud of Saints often, in bosses or longer fights. It is not an emergency "Low MP" button, but rather something you should be using regularly to avoid having low MP.
* Contrary to what that one person told you, don't put Cleric Stance on. You are a healer, not a DPS. By all means, if everyone's relatively topped up and there are no imminent emergencies, throw it on for a moment and dish out some damage. But that is an extra bonus on top of your regular role, only if the run is a cakewalk.
* Eye for an Eye is an excellent Arcanist cross-class ability. Buff the tank with it, and any mobs that hit him will have their damage output decreased. Naturally, this is more useful the more mobs are whacking on the tank. If there's a big pull coming up, throw it on. I use it all the time, it's great.
* To be perfectly honest, I use regular Cure the majority of the time, and only switch to Cure II when things are getting hairier and the damage is outpacing the heals. Maybe Cure III if it's really bad. As others mentioned, Divine Seal and Presence of Mind are very helpful in a pinch (though I am bad at remembering to use them).
* Are your bonus attributes from leveling put into Mind? Because that's where they belong.
* I used to put Stoneskin on the tank before a lot of fights, but I'm doing it less and less now because I find I'm just standing there watching him, waiting for damage to start registering. Seems kind of pointless. Instead, I put it on me and the more squishy DPS, to lessen the impact of somebody suffering a stray attack or AoE.
* Not sure if this depends on your connection or not, but when I want to cast stuff repeatedly, I don't wait for the cast bar to disappear and the spell to connect. I hit the next spell slightly before the previous cast bar is full, so there is no interruption or downtime.
* A bit hypocritical of me to say, since I haven't actually gotten around to learning it yet, but apparently Swiftcast from THM is a must-have. If somebody does go down in a tough fight, Swiftcast + Raise will make a world of difference.

[Lyrinn]

* Contrary to what that one person told you, don't put Cleric Stance on. You are a healer, not a DPS. By all means, if everyone's relatively topped up and there are no imminent emergencies, throw it on for a moment and dish out some damage. But that is an extra bonus on top of your regular role, only if the run is a cakewalk.

* I used to put Stoneskin on the tank before a lot of fights, but I'm doing it less and less now because I find I'm just standing there watching him, waiting for damage to start registering. Seems kind of pointless. Instead, I put it on me and the more squishy DPS, to lessen the impact of somebody suffering a stray attack or AoE.

* A bit hypocritical of me to say, since I haven't actually gotten around to learning it yet, but apparently Swiftcast from THM is a must-have. If somebody does go down in a tough fight, Swiftcast + Raise will make a world of difference.

Good healer, you are not.

[Granyala]

* Contrary to what that one person told you, don't put Cleric Stance on. You are a healer, not a DPS. By all means, if everyone's relatively topped up and there are no imminent emergencies, throw it on for a moment and dish out some damage. But that is an extra bonus on top of your regular role, only if the run is a cakewalk.

Well, if you enter CS, you have 3-5 seconds until you can exit again.


Other than that you can ALWAYS give the command to exit, even while casting. (It'll immediately drop off after the cast is through)

You can do it, but it's rather irrelevant. Why? See below:

Imho the advice to SPAM holy is suboptimal at best.
If your tank goes to the limit of what you both can do (not talking about herp-a-derping 2 thrashgroups, there you can spam to your hearts content), you will NOT have the time to spam DPS spells. Oo

Usually I use it once in conjunction with instant cast, for the 4s stun duration immediately after all the mobs are in position. Gives me time to heal the tank back up and put the HoT on.
After that, I have to spam the big heal (Vitra?) in conjunction with the 30% heal boost / 50% haste boost or she will die.

Imho using Holy more than 3 times is nonsensical, because of the stun DR and eventual immunity of the mobs. Even the 3rd stun is already < 1s.

* Are your bonus attributes from leveling put into Mind? Because that's where they belong.

Disagree. On heavy pulls my WHM is mana limited, not throughput limited. Piety is more useful.

As far as stoneskin is concerned: Surely you can and should put it up before the pull, but imho it absorbs so little that it's hardly worth the cast time midfight. It doesn't even stay on the tank longer than 2 seconds.
I rather use it for the squishies to mitigate encounter based damage spikes.

[Odd]

Usually I use it once in conjunction with instant cast, for the 4s stun duration immediately after all the mobs are in position. Gives me time to heal the tank back up and put the HoT on.

That's crazy talk. If you swiftcast Holy, the mobs will remained stunned until a split second before the next one. You might as well do two for sure. But as I said at the start of this thread, I use it a minimum of 4 times, 6-10 on huge packs when SoS and benediction are ready. When using Holy, WHM can be the top DPS against trash mobs, by a HUGE margin if there's no BLM in the group, and even still against the vast majority of BLM's.

I play on ps4, so good luck accusing me of parsing, but I play with someone who does parse, and I regularly do 1000+ dps on trash (big pulls). Nobody dies except the mobs, which die a hell of a lot faster than if I stood there waiting for the tank to take damage.