Basic Principles for WHM - What and what not to do.

[Spoekes]

Divine Seal, combine it with regen and medica II (situational), short CD (60s), don't develop a habit of saving and underusing this.
Cure III, even if only 2 players take damage worthy of a ~Cure II and they stand close, it's already more Mana-efficient than 2 Cure IIs and in one GCD.
Cleric stance, what it does, how to queue it in between casts, when to utilize it, how to react if you accidentaly (bad timing) switched it on.
Benediction and the dreaded animation before it goes off
DPS rotation that tries to incorporate Fluid Aura
SpeedRunning how to deal with it as WHM

Learning how you spend your mana and GCDs: when to use two cure I instead of one cure II, when to spam cure II, comes by practice.

The list of skills could need berserk and it's evil brother pacification. WARs will love you if you time esuna right.

- About preemptive casts : you are NO scholar. That should say it all. While a SCH's job is to mitigate damages with precasts skills, your job as a WhM is to restore HPs immediatly, on a low scale (cure I, regen) or on a high scale (Cure III, benediction and such). There's always that time, just before the pull, when everyone is being re-buffed with stoneskin and such. I sometimes come across white mages who seem to feel it's the right thing to do to cast Medica II or Regen before the tanks actually pull. IT IS NOT RIGHT. Why ? First, because you're messing with the tank's pull. You are generating enmity unecessarily while no one needed any cure, and there's absolutely no reason for that. Second, mana management, there's no reason to waste any mana, as insignificant as it seems to you..
The only pre-casts you could possibly do are "Eye for an Eye", "Presence of Mind", or "Divine Seal, which will all prove very efficient if the tank is a massive-puller.

I could be wrong, but whenever I read the word "pre-cast" it was in the context of: Try to time your cast so that it will heal at the same time damage hits.
What you write about medica II pre-pull i.e. is right, we should just all be in-line what "pre-cast" stands for.


Some kind of gearing advice would also be nice.