Any advice for a WHM?

[Lilyarel]

General tips like when to have Cleric stance and when to Heal. How to manage mana better in boss fights when to use Medica and Medica 2 ect.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[PetiteMalFleur]

This really depends on the content you are doing.

Mana management is big to me. A WHM who overheals to the point of needing ballad is frustrating to work with.

Let your hots tick. I can't emphasizethis enough. If there's no incoming damage trust your medica 2 hots to be enough.

Learn what fairy buffs look like and use them to your advantage. If Eos has a roused whispering dawn up her hots will be enough to top off the entire raid with no help from you. Fey Illumination is a really nice buff to you as well.

Divine seal is amazing. Use it as much as possible.

Keep regen on the tank at all times. It is hands down your most potent and mana efficient spell.

Use shroud early in the fight. Use it after your first aoe heal or after consuming about 800-1000 mana. It refreshes over time and returns a flat amount of 1060 mana so it's likely you will still get the full return. This will allow you to shroud more throughout the duration of the fight.

[Sanguisio]

I would suggest reading previous threads already about this subject.

But to set you off :

-learn how to estimate damage flow so you can DPS accordingly
-be aware how much your cures heal, pointless using a cure 2 over a cure 1 if a cure 1 is enough.
- Learn when to use regen e.g. on a DPS who isnt going to get hit again soon or maintaining it on the tank to reduce heals needed.

Most of the time it will be working out what is the least amount of mana and GCDs I can spend on healing to keep people alive while also making sure I dont run out of mana while DPSing. All of this will be dependent on your gear and party at the time.

Cleric stance :

If a tank has 1000 HP, and takes 100dmg each hit, its safe for you to let them drop a bit and dps (be aware the dmg to the tank isn't that low due to CDs that may wear off before you are prepared to heal.


Use divine seal like you would as Raging strikes on ACN/SMN, heavy healing needed use it, about to refresh HOTs and party wide HOTs and it is needed use it.

[Sumimi]

My base advice for all WHMs generally is, know what every spell and ability does, encounter specifics come afterwards.

That's not to say to simply read it, but to actually understand it. There's little bits and pieces there that make a big chunk of the pie when utilized to their full extent.

Here's a few examples:

• Holy stuns for 4 seconds, then 2, then 1 every odd Holy. This means within 5 holys you'll have let a Regen tick 3 or 4 times while mobs will only hit them thrice. Stun is a good mitigation
• Holy also eats a TON of MP if you're spamming it, knowing the fight to the point where you can afford some loss of MP to DPS is crucial to clearing the fight.
• Divine Seal saves mp if utilized fully. Instead of spamming Cure II at 650 Potency, I can spam Cure 1 at 520 Potency instead. The difference is that Cure 1 procs Cure 2, and Cure 1 costs half as much MP.
• Cleric Stance's cooldown is close to 2 GCDs worth, so what I tend to do (when the group can go without a heal for a few seconds) is pop into Cleric Stance, Aero II/Aero > Fluid Aura, then swap back and heal. This nets some DPS (actually close to 60 with good gear) and allows pushing of phases.

[Magusrex]

Knowledge...knowing what is going to happen and when. Everything is so much easier after. Proactive rather than reactive. HUD set up. I get tunnel vision during high stress moments, these are the critical moments of a fight. I need to be able to see all the critical information in one tight spot. It also needs to be near my character so I can see what is happening around me. My play has improved exponentially as I have experimented with my HUD. do not want to have to move my mouse far. I play on three screens use a ten button mouse and have FANG gaming accessory for my left hand. All my attention is on the screen, I mouse click no abilities.

[cgbspender]

If you are unfamiliar with switching in and out of cleric stance, expect a few failures at first. (one learns by practicing). Don't start this by trying on WoD. A good option is to try in pre-50 dungeons so that you get to "feel" it. After that, you really just need practice (if you know the fights with other jobs, all the better) so that you can learn phases. It's not really about the difficulty of a fight/ a boss but about being able to deal with everyone's damage. For example, I will never use cleric stance in the first room of WoD against the trash mobs. After you've done it a few times, you realize you need to dispell players who get paralyzed, heal those who can't / don't want to run out of an aoe. It might turn really ugly anytime. On the contrary, when you face Angry Manyu, you can tell after a few tries that you can use cleric stance against the 4 clocks without putting the party in danger.
Same for the last boss. You can tell that you need to get ready when he's casting the beam. There'll almost always be someone getting hit. Same for meteors. On the contrary, the clouds-add phase, you can use the cleric stance to help dps, as the main boss will not cast anything during that time (just keep an eye on the meteors).

Regen at all times. Medica 2 for small damages phase (Xande for instance - You can dps there until the first orbs, just by casting Medica 2 to compensate the damages caused by Xande)

In any case, do not ever wait for the last moment to switch off cleric stance. Do it a few seconds before to avoid unecessary risks (misclicks may happen).

Keep in mind that any dps, even small, is a benefit to the party. Just casting Aero/Earth a couple of times can potentially make a difference at the end of the fight. Do not push your limits uneccessarily. At Ilvl 115, Earth 2 does about 1k of damage. Each hit you give is bonus. Safety first.

[MXMoondoggie]

Just some general rules of thumb i find WHM's get wrong. You don't need to spam Medica II. You use it and it heals then does a HoT each tick. Overwriting this is pointless same with regen. Only reapply in the dying seconds on a MT and where needed elsewhere. You lose mana very quickly if you over heal and waste your HoT by spamming it. Holy is one of your greatest gifts but also your biggest mana drain. You need to use it as much as you can especially when clearing trash mobs and adds but know to store enough mana and switch out of cleric stance when needed. Holy is also a very effective group stun which can protect the Tank from early damage. Practice opening with one holy after the Tank pulls mobs. Use swiftcast to get one off instantly then you can take off cleric stance and apply divine seal regen and if it's a huge mass use medica II also.

Learn the fight mechanics to fights how the flow of phases works and which attacks come in which order this will mean you know when to heal or DPS or recharge mana for an upcoming phase. You will be ten times more effective. It's really all about understanding the fight,your party and being able to read situations instead of react to them. A lot of newbie healers will just react to what happens and be a lot slower on the draw but a top tier or even a fairly decent one will be able to think 2-3 moves ahead and prepare themselves.

Learn to see the whole fight too. You can adjust your UI so important information is more central on your screen this way you can stop yourself looking to one side so much. Remove pointless things from your UI that clog your vision and start to focus on the whole fight over what is directly in front of you. Look at the placement and movement of party members and keep yourself in blind spots of enemies while in range to heal as much as possible. After a while this becomes so easy that you can see what is happening in a full Raid and help out where needed.

This all fits into the DPS thing too you need to know when your openings are to add damage and to do that you need to understand the fight and the party. If you're not worrying too much about most people you can probably find areas to DPS but sometimes a party is new or not getting it so you'll have to be careful for when they eat huge damage.

[Lyzern]

General tips like when to have Cleric stance and when to Heal. How to manage mana better in boss fights when to use Medica and Medica 2 ect.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Set 2 keybinds to quickly select the 2nd and 3rd player on the party, if the party is sorted (It's automatic in duties or you can manually do it in the party menu), it will select the 1st tank and the 2nd tank. I use R and F for this.

Focus Target the boss and pay attention to its spells

Don't forget to esuna! A lot of debuffs actually reduce your healing on the target, paralyze you or casters, cause heavy and make it harder for people to avoid AoE

Divine Seal + Regen is your best friend, you can do Regen at the beggining of Divine Seal and at the very last second, regen procs will still have the 30% healing

In bug pulls, you can Swiftcast Holy to give yourself a 5 second breather and deal some damage, if you're confident enough you can even use Cleric Stance and get a couple of Holy's in without letting your tank die, big pulls will die faster and it will be safer because of the 5 + 3 + 1 stun times.

Don't cast Regen or Medica II before pulls

Shroud of Saints is to be used at around 70% or even earlier if you use Presence of Mind + Stone II repeatedly.

Most fights are all about rotations and knowing what will happen after X and Y, so basically learn the fights and deal damage when you know there won't be damage and prepare a Stoneskin or Divine Seal for the incoming damage

Use your Off Cooldown spells smartly, my favourite quick damage combo for when damage is being dealt but I still wanna deal some myself, is (for bosses): CS, Aero II, Aero, Fluid Aura. Because after Aero you still can't switch back to Cleric Stance, but you will be able to as soon as your Fluid Aura animation finishes and you won't have that 2 second downtime after Aero.

Petite mentioned Fairy buffs, but remember to watch for Mantra as well, pretty hard to miss, it's a big hand with blue background.

Don't be afraid to use Benediction or Swiftcast Cure II if the tank is dying, better safe than sorry

For mana management:

Cure is your best bet here, just keep using it until you get a Freecure proc

Divine Seal Regen is the biggest potency single target healing combo you have

If Medica isn't enough to heal everyone and everyone is stacked together, go for a Cure III

Edit: Cleric Stance queues, so you can use it while casting and switch right back to whatever spell you need next

[MXMoondoggie]

When it comes to esuna it's a good idea to learn about debuffs and what they do. some can wait or be ignored so you can learn them and make a priority list there are some debuffs that need to be removed instantly or a person can die from it. Things like Disease which lower the amount of healing received you want to get rid of fast but a weak poison won't cause too many problems. Paralyze won't cause too many problems for melee like the MNK but BLM's with long cast times will be crippled by it so priority after Tanks is the BLM's These are just some examples but knowing what all debuffs look like and what they do can make your cleansing more efficient.

[Chevrefoil]

Remember not to spam Medica 2. If you need more AOE healing, you can medica or cure 3 on a target. I like divine seal+swiftcast+cure 3 on the titan breaks.

In 4 mans, it's more important to manage your aggro while keeping the tank alive. Dead WHM = dead party. I tend not to use regen or medica 2 outside of boss fights in DF since it's mostly speed runs anyway and those regen ticks can draw nasty aggro on those big pulls.