Black and White

[SinSilverwing]

Well. As says. I\\'m normally a black mage for everything. But I do enjoy healing on occasion and have both white mage and scholar leveled and reliced. I feel I do a decent job healing, but I would like to be able to do better then just average.

I usually go white mage cause I feel I do better on it. But I enjoy the mechanics behind scholars. So in the end any tips for playing the healing jobs better?

[Eggnook24]

Don't panic, always keep a clear head. All the tools are there for success, you just need to be cool and prioritize: Tank, Healer, DPS, DoT.

[Seryl199]

To be most productive as a healer, you should be sensitive to how damage is flowing through an encounter. This means recognizing your tanks' cooldowns, identifying threatening aoe's, monsters with spike damage, and such.

In dungeons, don't be afraid to let your tanks dip, as long as you are confident you can bring them back up. Using divine seal, presence of mind (though this I'd rather dps with), benediction, or lustrate are fast ways to chunk your tank to near full. Not quite full, though, because overhealing is wasteful and can often be handled with a regen tick or embrace. If you're a healer that isn't comfortable dps'ing, stay busy. Apply stoneskin to members that need it, pick up items and unlock doors if dps are still killing other mobs.

In raids, it's important to pay attention to your fellow healer. If they're proficient, you'll find yourself tandem healing with smaller cures. A messier healer will lob more cure bombs, potentially overlapping heals and causing overheal. If you're familiar with the script, buff the tank appropriately and pre cast a big heal timed to go off after spike damage goes through, and be familiar with your aoe healing options. If using medica II, divine seal as often as possible. Use overcure when appropriate, hitting two or three members is enough to make it mp efficient. As scholar, rouse and whispering dawn is a popular macro, great for keeping the ticks going.

Like egg said, a cool head will get you places. Keep your priorities straight and practice. Healing is a developed intuition, and you'll eventually learn the perfect heal to match with every wound. Hope you gleaned some useful info, just some thoughts off the top!

[File2ish]

My piece of advice for any situation is to keep an eye on your party, and I don't mean just their HP.

For unsure situations; only use your cooldowns (specifically Divine Seal and Presence of Mind, and Eos skills that aren't Embrace) when you feel a large burst of damage coming or the tank pulls the whole dungeon. If you're confident in your healing ability and your tank's gear and skill for whatever content you're doing, feel free to burn them if you find a use for them (like Divine Seal Regen so you can Holy Spam).

But for situations that may be tough, my criteria is usually something like this (need to notice things on the fly):

Has the tank been dodging? Or was he/she eating all the damage from enemy AoEs?

Has the tank been using defensive cooldowns? Which ones are currently up? How long will they last?

Are the DPS doing things optimal for the situation? Are they attacking different enemies? Are they dodging, or are you healing them a lot?

How much HP per tick is Regen doing? Did Aldo get a crit? Is the regen/shield sufficient enough for me to Holy/apply DoTs before the tank's HP dips too low?

If I apply Divine Seal, will it allow my Regen to sustain the tank long enough for me to help DPS? Should I use Medica II for extra HoT on the tank?

And so on.

[Taika]

Read this thread: How can I reach my full potential as a healer?

[MXMoondoggie]

I guess most of it has been said already. Most important never panic no matter what happens. Even massive spike damage can be quickly healed up or lowered with buffs. If you panic you'll do things you shouldn't and make big mistakes. Also never get angry. Same reason. You making a mistake could make a whole load of things go wrong in a chain reaction so try your best to not lose your temper even if others making mistakes is causing you hardship.

Read about the two Tank classes if you never played them and learn what their skills do especially the buffs and how long they last. You'll know better when they need to be healed and when you can take it easy. Most important is the same thing Tanks must learn which is to see the entire fight. If you tunnelvision on just the Tank you might miss one of the DPS or the other Healer making a mistake or pulling aggro on adds. This gets harder the more people in the group a lot of people in big Raids can't see more than their own party. ST is a big example when you have really switched on Healers then no party is ever in trouble. If for example Party A has two frozen Healers what do you think will happen? You need to be able to see that to know when they need help and you can throw some heals their way to keep their group alive while somebody with fire can free the Healers.

If you can see and read the flow of the fight you'll know where you skills are required and when and you'll know when holes exist to use cleric stance and DPS to make the fight that much quicker. This is just stuff I've learned anyway while trying to become a better Healer.

[SinSilverwing]

thanks for all the advice, its been helpful since i just picked the game back up. Taking a little bit but im getting back into the swing of each of the classes as i play them more and more.