But...I...I don't wanna DPS, I'm a healer...

[Normalizer]

The second scenario involved EX roulette yesterday in Neverreap. Warrior tank with two Bards as DPS...

Swiftcast Holy is not instance, it will take about 1-2 sec before it actually hits and stuns the mobs. So if you can't afford to get this 1-2 sec delay in healing, don't swiftcast holy. Beside, if the dps of the party is that low, it may not be wise to go dps mode and holy-chain those mobs (you alone cannot bring them all down, and the fight might take too long that you will go out of mana even without dpsing. Of course it's all situational.)

If the tank gets a lot of mobs and takes load of dmg, I normally stick to heal only while waiting for DS to be available again. This is also a good opportunity to use Eye for an Eye on tank.

[416to305]

Snip

I didn't even see the other questions you asked Saito sorry, so let me add my 2 cents. I'm a casual player, I play in bed at night prob an hour every day, so I play a lot according to my friends, am at WHM avg level 190, have done all of Alex normal but I'm not interested in committing to some nightly schedule to do savage. I like to just play and collect tomes upgrade my gear and so on being more casual.

When you are doing 8 person anything, you should have tons of time to DPS if you want. People don't take damage that fast that 2 healers can't manage as usually one person will still be healing when you flip to DPS and so on. It's a good idea at the start of pulls or bosses to even put a Regen on the tank, and then flip to cleric and then I hit the boss with Aero III, Aero II, and usually Virus when able to. They should not be taking so much damage that you don't have time to do that. Even on trash pulls in dungeons I'd try to get Aero III in as it does good damage and is AoE so hits all mobs in a group!

The only time I ever find it iffy is in the 4 person stuff especially level 50+ new dungeons when tanks are low geared or pull huge. It seems like sometimes I'm sitting there hitting Cure II over and over trying to keep up. That only ever happens to me on high level 50+ 4 person dungeons. When that happens I try my best, but I figure if the tank is taking SO much damage that I'm literally just sitting there draining my MP pool trying to keep them alive, then I figure that's their issue and not mine. If I can heal Alex 1-4 not have anyone wipe, but then be in Fractal or something and tank is just droping like mad (and assuming I have proper gear of course and don't just scratch by the minimum iLvl) then I know it can't be me. If popping all my cool downs STILL can't keep them alive, then it HAS to be their fault as what else could I possibly do? In hard mode dungeons people want out fast, so they pull huge which is fine as they aren't that hard anymore. It's the new ones, most tanks twink they can still pull massive when usually it's too much.

Lastly, don't be too worried about Titan HM, it has always been hard and especially now as people aren't really doing it as much unless they are new. The past 2 times I did it I ended up solo healing as the other healer would wipe so many times it wasn't worth raising them. Wastes my MP and they are too weak. Titan is very mechanic heavy, really comes down to knowing and memorizing the fight and knowing what is coming. Where to stack, pre-casting Medica II when he jumps in the air and so on.

I saw also another post talking about not to spam AoE heals. That was just if your MP is really low, but otherwise you definitely will do AoE otherwise you're wasting MP. It costs more to Cure/Cure II individual people vs Medica unless it's more than 2 or 3 people taking damage, then Medica or Medica II makes sense. Biggest thing to be careful of with Medica II is if its a fight where adds will come, as they will latch right on to you when they spawn, so I try to use it a bit less now.

Only other thing to say is that as mentioned I'm not hardcore at all, but I never run out of MP or even come close. You have Assize to help, Shroud, and then I even keep a few Hi or Mega Ethers or whatever they are, just in case I really need to get on there. It really just comes down to practice, which you might want to do on low level dungeons. The reason I DPS as much as I can is because leveling WHM almost a year ago pre-50 it was just boring and easy to heal those dungeons, so doing DPS would only help get through them faster. So it just feels natural to me now. You'll just learn when it's safe to do so, like someone else mentioned, if you hit the tank with a Regen etc and they seem to be somewhat stable, then sure flip over and Holy spam the mobs if you want. You'll also learn when Holy is best to use, as sometimes you'll use it on 5 mobs and they barely go down, where others are more the quick kill types where Holy just once even takes them to like 40%, where you do it again and take them all out. Just comes down to practice, but keep in mind you're not expected to DPS. So any time things are dicey or rough I just say screw it, better stick to JUST healing just to be on the safe side. Everyone plays differently and my point is, playing just casual the way I do now, I've never had a problem completing Alex 1-4 or most content, so must be doing something right.

[Venjamin]

Well, that makes me feel a little better. Vying for main healer will be my calling. Out of curiosity, how necessary does the world as a whole see Stoneskin? I'm mostly pouting because I want to get to 60 but I don't have Stoneskin yet.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

Well, that makes me feel a little better. Vying for main healer will be my calling. Out of curiosity, how necessary does the world as a whole see Stoneskin? I'm mostly pouting because I want to get to 60 but I don't have Stoneskin yet.

Best if you consult this topic for that:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Stoneskin-use.

[RadiantRay]

To be honest I feel that this game over compensates tanks and healers for a lot of the raids in this game. I think it would help new healers learn how to heal in a raid setting if there wasn't always a 2nd healer covering up their mistakes (because if this game really needed 2 healers you would wipe due to lack of hps if one healer slacked off). I think that's why you see a lot of the healer dps rants on the forums for the most part.

What would make healing more fun is if they actually reduced the number of healers and tanks per raid to only 1 and only getting more when it's necessary to that particular fight. For example Titan Hard mode only needs 1 tank, but Titan extreme needs 2 and the DF should recruit accordingly. This game feels perfectly balanced for one healer because even when a healer is completely new to a dungeon/trial I always let them solo heal and most of the time they do just fine without even realizing they just solo healed while I go full time dps.

[technole]

To be honest I feel that this game over compensates tanks and healers for a lot of the raids in this game. I think it would help new healers learn how to heal in a raid setting if there wasn't always a 2nd healer covering up their mistakes (because if this game really needed 2 healers you would wipe due to lack of hps if one healer slacked off). I think that's why you see a lot of the healer dps rants on the forums for the most part.

The two healer situation is more noticable when the content is new and people were not as geared for the content. Like Bismarck and Ravana Extreme during the first few weeks of HW. You can totally feel the need for both healers, with the high damage output to two tanks in one situation, to having shields with high raid wide damage output being a life-saver in the other.

If you go back to ARR hard mode and most extremes, yes they can be solo healed even in level 50 sync with the amount of gear we ended ARR with. Although a return of some of Leviathan Extreme healer mechanics during the i90-i100 heyday, punishing healers for overhealing and not being strategic in their choices of heals, or healer "swap" mechanics like Infrit Extreme is likely as we get more mid-core "extreme" content outside of Alexander Savage.

The same with tanks. Titan Extreme nowadays you only need a single tank, gear at the end of ARR allowed a single MT to eat all the stacks preventing a need to tank swap. Provided DPS was on-target, they would also pick up the adds after the heart phase. Going back to minimum ilvl days with Titan and even Infrit Extreme heyday those vulnerability stacks hurt to a point where they'd die without a swap. Equilvent to that today is Alexander Floor 3 normal and savage, with the usual vulnerability getting too high = must tank swap.

[416to305]

I think having 2 healers is necessary just for Raise. SMN helps but others would need it as well. It's stressful solo healing a 4 man dungeon in the sense that if you let yourself fie when a boss is at like 30%, usually the party will wipe and you have to start over. I'd die if I was a solo healer in alex and I missed an AoE and everyone wipes just because of me!

[Cynfael]

Provided that your gear is not awful and your party not AFK, it is virtually impossible to run yourself so low on MP that you cannot heal for the duration of a trash pull. You can cast Cure I on fumes, not to mention free heals from Tetra, Freecure, Asylum, and Assize (the latter two might be up a second time if your party's DPS is truly poor and the pull large or continuous).

It's not outrageous to DPS and heal until you are down to low MP and then dial back to mostly healing near the end. I find that trying to play extra conservative with a low-DPS party tends to backfire; if you don't push personal DPS when the tank uses their initial CDs, you will have missed your good window to speed things along and reduce the overall healing requirement.

Of course, for your average party, doing this is just a way to play better and to save time. I never go into a duty with the mindset of "how can I make up for these people?" It's more "how can I do my best?"

[Critical-Limit]

For the record there are times where eating damage as a DPS from a mechanic is worth it. A monk losing grease lightning is worse than a whm missing a stone III.

So if a monk has to put himself in damage to keep it. It's worth it to heal through. But this case doesn't happen very often.

[Cynfael]

For the record there are times where eating damage as a DPS from a mechanic is worth it. A monk losing grease lightning is worse than a whm missing a stone III.

So if a monk has to put himself in damage to keep it. It's worth it to heal through. But this case doesn't happen very often.

You're absolutely correct. I'll make the same choice to refresh Enochian on BLM if necessary, though the Ward/Wall CDs and AM help reduce the need to eat avoidable damage. No decent healer will fault a DPS for eating occasional non-lethal damage to maintain their best rotation.