Levelling Healer

[Firepower]

I'm levelling WHM to cap atm as it is my last 50, Since I have seen every dungeon hundreds of times before, I already know where the large or more dangerous pulls are so it is already immediately easier to heal when you know how much damage the tank is likely to take, which allows you to maximise DPS in cleric stance before switching back to heal. I generally start every pull in cleric stance (Tank has full hp at this point anyway) and stick Aero on all the enemies, if it is a large pull I will switch earlier and begin healing, most 3 enemy packs and a reasonable tank (better geared tanks will give you more time to cast Stone for extra dps, worse geared less time) Some dungeons have groups of 4 or adds roaming (or ones that hit VERY hard) so you should be prepared to heal quickly should their hp drop, if you have already been through all the dungeons before and can remember these things your job is instantly already much easier, if not then don't try and over DPS on a pull you aren't sure on or haven't seen before because it could be the one your tank dies on.

I always check the Tank's gear before the start of the dungeon, if they are wearing any Disciple of War equipment or even DRG/WAR/PLD equipment you can already assume their defence will be lesser than that of a properly geared tank for that level and will require additional healing (underleveled gear also contributes, accessories aren't a big issue during 1-49 and the dungeon appropriate green gear is the best, failing that a level synced high level tank will be very well geared too this all decides how much DPS you can expect to get out of a dungeon before having to take care of the tank, some tanks you will have to babysit the whole run) the tank's skill on maintaining enmity on all enemies will also decide on how you can approach the dungeon. It is little point DPSing the enemies if you are only going to tear the hate of a tank who doesn't use overpower and/or flash and everyone is running around chasing enemies. If you do accidentally pull hate DO NOT run around (except in the case of Cutters cry first boss where your job IS to run around with all the ants on you), run TOWARDS the tank and stand still, it is easiest and quickest for them to get it back off you that way and if the DPS are attacking it do not need to chase it down either, also in this case DO NOT use Fluid Aura (you can use it on some bosses where there is no pushback but I don't have any specifics on which ones so personally I don't really use it at all unless I am soloing) as there is nothing more annoying for a melee DPS or tank to have to chase the enemy you just sent flying away.

These are things I have picked up on levelling all the other jobs to 50 that I notice. People who have posted before me will provide better information on rotations and skill usage as they are likely full time WHM's as opposed to my measly level 45.

[LycorisSelunis]

As a leveling conjurer still, there are some things you should prepare for that will be coming your way. For one, if you don't have arcanist to 15 yet fill that in as soon as possible so when you hit 30 you can get the white mage job.

Secondly, not too long from now you get to Brayflox's Longstop and this dungeon is just a good test of your capability to handle things going WRONG, because they usually do. This is often the first test of a tank's ability to be aware of positioning, and a dps check of sorts for dps pulling sub-optimal damage. Since this isn't your first class you probably remember it but going as a healer is a whole new perspective. Just be glad you aren't a scholar and have esuna (scholars don't get leeches till 40 so nearly all lvl synced content they cannot remove debuffs) and bring along some hi ether for the final fight. Try and keep to cure1 to get some freecure procs unless necessary, and don't bust medica unless pretty much everyone is in range.

As a reward for surviving that dungeon, soon after at lvl 35 you get regen. Regen is your BFF. You shouldn't have it precast though before the tank pulls since it will automatically get threat thrown at you before the tank can grab anything. Keep an eye on speedrunningish tanks that may run to the next pull before it falls off and plan accordingly. One level after regen you get stoneskin, which you can usually throw on the dps at the start and only need to refresh after bosses with aoe, unless they are derping and taking avoidable damage or pulling agro off the tank.

When you get shroud of saints be aware that this is not just your mana regen button (which you're probably in desperate desire of by hitting that level) but it ALSO reduces your threat by half the moment it casts (no refreshing threat lowering with the mp ticks unfortunately). I didn't really have to use this for threat dump a lot till Stone Vigil when tanks have issues with getting caster agro, or they are super squish and I had to bomb heals on them.

Don't be afraid to sue your cooldowns on trash! many times certain trash pulls can be more intense than actual bosses >.> Divine seal increases healing by a ton and it makes regen even MORE efficient. Presence of Mind gives you spellspeed so pop it (possibly also with divine seal) if the tank is just getting chunked very quickly, so you can push out cures faster. If you are in dire need of ressing someone and swiftcast is on cd, presence of mind speeds that up a fair bit too. Speaking of swiftcast, you certainly don't need to save it for a res, several times a swiftcasted cure2 has saved me from needing to res.

As for dpsing as a healer, it's really just 'nice bonus' until you get to about Dzemael Darkhold. This is typically the first place you will see a speedrunning tank, and if you are lvl 45 all the better. Why? Holy. Wait for the tank to finally STOP wherever they choose to (usually a crystal light), do some stabilizing heals and a regen after he has threat, then pop cleric stance and spam some holy. Watch your mp carefully though since holy costs a lot and you may need to drop out of cleric to heal.

Aurum Vale is evil. Prepare to yell at dps for standing in the gold stuff, prepare for someone to come take your morbol fruit that you are CLEARLY standing next to for your own use so you have to run out of range of healing the tank to get that other fruit on the other side of the room. Or for them to not clear stacks at all and promptly die. I honestly would recommend avoiding this place it usually isn't worth the headache unless you have your own premade that you can rely on.

Level 50 brings a new aoe heal to the table, and your "oh crap' button, Benediciton. Doing 8 man content will have you with a cohealer. WHM and SCH work well together, hots + shields = living party members <3 There may be times however where you find yourself near-solo healing while the scholar lets fairy assist you and goes dps some, don't fret. As someone already said, making a raise macro so that you don't both try to raise the same target can save mp and a swiftcast cd for one of you. You may consider macroing some text to other abilities as well, for this same reason. There is a lot more to healing at 50 of course, but let's get you there first ^_~

[cgbspender]

Macro for raises is good only when you make mention of who you're raising (in teams that contain at least 2 healers). Otherwise, it's faster to cast it manually and less inclined to "break", for various reasons (lag, players gets out of sight, and so on...)

[LycorisSelunis]

Macro for raises is good only when you make mention of who you're raising (in teams that contain at least 2 healers). Otherwise, it's faster to cast it manually and less inclined to "break", for various reasons (lag, players gets out of sight, and so on...)

Or a nice summoner that wanted to combat raise a dps. It could happen.....

[Viuiji]

Wow! So much great advice and tips. Really appreciate all your time and effort. I'll have no reason to suck at WHM now!

EDIT: had to split my replies due to forum character limits.

Here's a guide I wrote for a friend.

Great guide and thank you. I'll take some time to read through it properly. I've already set up that raise macro though. Haven't has need to use it just yet, which I take to be a good thing!

[Viuiji]

With that being said, there will always be opportunities to DPS in any dungeon. It just comes down to a matter of two things:
(1) How comfortable and familiar you, as the healer, are with the mechanics of the dungeon
(2) How competent the rest of your party is. If you're constantly mending people due to not dodging AoEs, not using cool downs, etc.; you're going to have very little opportunities to DPS on the side.

This is starting to make much more sense tome. I spammed low level roulette (dungeons up to lv28). At first I just healed but then would start to throw in an aero in here and there. on the 2nd/3rd runs I started to DPS a little once I knew what to look for such as how much damage the tank is taking, are the DPS moving properly etc. I started to really enjoy swapping between healing and DPS, although I always erred on caution and made sure healing was my priority.

[Viuiji]

I always check the Tank's gear before the start of the dungeon

I never even thought about checking gear of other players..

If you do accidentally pull hate DO NOT run around (except in the case of Cutters cry first boss where your job IS to run around with all the ants on you), run TOWARDS the tank and stand still, it is easiest and quickest for them to get it back off you that way and if the DPS are attacking it do not need to chase it down either, also in this case DO NOT use Fluid Aura.

I learnt this one as DPS, good to know it is still the case with a healer.

[AskaRay]

Toooooo be honest, he best times I had running Aurum Vale were as WHM and as PLD.
Probably PLD because I can choose where we go (we're farming everything, you got it? I wanna level) and WHM because of Regen. If I could I'd marry Regen. I like playing SCH more often but if someone needs me to heal AV, I go as WHM.

[KisaiTenshi]

Best and worst stuff:

1) Because it's such a big whine point on THIS forum - You DO NOT have to DPS, no matter what anyone says. If they make a stink of it, you are better of leaving because they have no faith in their own DPS. Your job is Healing you, the tank and the DPS last.
1a) The worst healers are those who queue as healers just to get a faster queue, you will see this more typical of SCH, who then do little or no actual healing*, or let the fairy autopilot.
*If you get a SCH in a pre-level 30 dungeon, they don't have any SCH abilities to use. Just the fairy, so it's no different than ACN or SMN in those dungeons.
1b) The worst tanks will be those that don't turn on their tank stance immediately. Second only to those not wearing Tank gear in all left-hand slots.

2) If you do WHM and SCH, set up your healing skill bar the same (eg Esuna/Leeches, Cure/Physick, Medica/Succor, Cure II/Adloquium, Revive/Resurrect, Protect/Protect,Shroud of Saints/Aetherflow) to make use of "muscle memory" from one job in the other. Even though SCH skills are more about damage mitigation, and don't combo the same way.

3) Macro Swift-Revive/Resurrect on WHM, Swift-Resurrect on SCH.

/micon "Raise"
/ac "Swiftcast" <me> <wait.1>
/ac "Raise" <t>
/ac "Raise" <2>
/ac "Raise" <3>
/ac "Raise" <4>
/ac "Raise" <5>
/ac "Raise" <6>
/ac "Raise" <7>
/ac "Raise" <8>

I got that one off reddit. Mainly it avoids wasting the Revive if there are other targets in the party.

4) Macro Swiftcast-StoneSkin II on WHM

/micon "Stoneskin II"
/ac "Swiftcast" <me> <wait.1>
/ac "Stoneskin II"

Sometimes fails. Mainly because you have impatient speedpulling tanks, and anyone who dies in the first 60 seconds is just playing bad.

5) Macro Medica II into high power healing on WHM

/micon "Medica II"
/ac "Presence of Mind" <me> <wait.1>
/ac "Divine Seal" <me> <wait.1>
/ac "Swiftcast" <me> <wait.1>
/ac "Medica II" <me> <wait.1>

The only reason I have it set this way is it's just long enough to use before raid-wide damage (eg Ultima Weapon, Xande's Ancient Quaga, Cloud of Darkness)

6) Some dungeons are harder than others depending on what you play.
- Brayflox Longstop NM(Normal Mode) will tend to be a disaster if you have a new tank or new DPS. It's easier on WHM, but it will be the first instance of burning out your available MP, where as SCH will have to heal straight through the poison stacks.
- Cutter's Cry is harder to do on SCH since the only "regen" comes from the fairy, and it's possible to do without party healing, but you probably want party healing and leeches before attempting. WHM will already have Regen and Esuna.
- Aurum Vale... don't get me started. The very very first time I played this on DPS and got a SCH for a healer, and it took multiple tries because SCH is mostly shielding, not straight up healing. On WHM it's generally not a problem, but the bosses leave little room for error. This, like the final boss in Brayflox will test your MP management.

7) New Tanks ... and DPS tend to stand in AOE's. Not-new tanks will purposely stand in AOE's to be lazy, let them die once. If they overpull, let them die once. Your job is to heal, not compensate for laziness or incompetence. Which means...

8) Tanks and Healers want to be treated like princesses and it's better off to grin and bear stupidity from them than to create an argument that will just waste time. Don't take grief from DPS though. DPS players can be replaced, usually instantly. Tanks and Healers tend to vary from 90 seconds to 20 minutes to be replaced, depending on time of day.

9) The Healer often has to do more AOE dodging dances than the DPS. This has to do with Enmity tables, where the healer will tend to be the highest priority target any time the Tank isn't generating enmity.

10) Overhealing, Proactively casting Medica II, Regen, or doing Medica at inopportune times will tend to generate more enmity on you than the tank can deal with. The Healbombs are best saved for raid-wide damage, and not proactively used. This includes the Fairy on SCH (Whispering Dawn) which has the same effect as Medica II, minus the initial heal burst. Ideally you'd just stick to Cure I (WHM) or Psysick (SCH) until the healing target is below 50% to avoid overhealing. SCH is a bit harder, strategy-wise since Adloquium is not Cure II though it "fits" in the amount-of-HP-recovered slot if cast on the target before they are at 80%. The shielding effect apparently doesn't generate enmity (but YMMV.)

11) Field combat is awful as WHM and SCH(at least compared to SMN/ACN) since neither really do high power damage (SMN/ACN, the pet is supposed to contribute half the damage) or fast damage(Aero/Bio does work to tag single targets.) It's more awful trying to do FATE's since most DPS (eg BRD) can fire stuff, including their AOE's without delays. If you're doing the storyline and start as CNJ/WHM it will take a LOT longer than it will on a DPS-specific class. Typically many of the solo-DPS encounters will take twice as long, but you have the advantage of healing yourself, so the difficulty isn't quite as bad.

As a final note, you don't need to take anyones advise and can play whatever way you want to, but it's better to work together. Toxic people are bad people in general, so if someone starts trash talking you, ignore it, leave, but don't bother to engage them.

[Cynfael]

1. Let's practice full disclosure and mention that most of the "whine" regarding healer DPS comes from players who are either adamant about not improving their reactive and/or lazy playstyle or are refusing to consider and apply the tips and general information liberally provided to them.

2. Field DPS as WHM or as SCH is fine even at lower levels provided you use cleric stance. What time you lose by not having the output of a true DPS class you gain by being basically indefatigable. Then, at 45, WHM becomes a faceroll trash compactor with Holy.