How does one overheal exactly..?

[Twilite]

Yeah, sounds like a stupid question, but I'm a long time healer from FFXI, looking to finally go back to the thing I've always been good at and I need to get an understanding of what this truly means, as healing in FFXIV is obviously different..

[PriestAlseid]

Basically overhealing is any time you use a heal that would result in the other person gaining more health than their max, or when you heal someone with a full health bar.

[Anova]

Alseid more or less got it. Coming from FFXI and with a lv.60 blm in ffxiv, you have some understanding about how precious MP is and how enmity works.

Overhealing makes it much harder for tanks to maintain enmity on their target and wastes your MP. It is generally much more preferable for the healer to either stand still and do nothing or use attack spells than to heal 2000 hp every time the tank takes 500 hp worth of damage.

[Twilite]

Alright I was cap happy in FFXI(so to speak). Will have to lower my "healer's threshold". Yep, unlike tanking, I actually know a thing or two about healing thankfully lol.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

Snip

Right, but also wrong :P

Overhealing doesn't necessarily make it harder for the tank unless you're seriously trying - mindless AoE healing when no one took damage, for example. If anything, it's more like a dps job constantly dealing damage;

When you deal damage instead, every point of damage you deal is equivelant to 2 points of hp restored in terms of enmity. Dealing damage may actually result in more enmity building than single target healing, but shouldn't be an issue if the tank at least knows how to press 123 over and over.

[Pells]

A healer overheals the same way a dps overkills.

Like popping a level 3 limit break to do 50000 damage on a boss with only 50 hp left.

[Shiki_Lockhart]

A healer overheals the same way a dps overkills.

Like popping a level 3 limit break to do 50000 damage on a boss with only 50 hp left.

Yeah lets go LB3 a lvl 1 Marmot

[Kuwagami]

snip

not quite. iirc, single target healing gives 0.6 enmity per 1 hp healed, and double for every overhealed hp.

In the example given, overhealing 1.5k hp per gcd gives more hate than anything you could do to throw damage then heal the 2k hp lost in one heal.

There is a reason why the #1 method to get max reward on hunts is getting 8 stacked WHM to spam cure 3

(also #1 method to reset mobs back when hunts were introduced)

False.

Per HP healed is always 0.5 enmity, regardless of overheal or actual heal.

I checked back and was going to edit anyway, but you're right on overhealing. For the heals themselves, it's not a flat out 0.5.

Cure and the HoT (regen and medica 2's HoT) are 0.5 enmity, but every other heal is 0.6 enmity for a WHM.


(if this is still up to date)

[DreamWeaver]

not quite. iirc, single target healing gives 0.6 enmity per 1 hp healed, and double for every overhealed hp.

(also #1 method to reset mobs back when hunts were introduced)

False.

Per HP healed is always 0.5 enmity, regardless of overheal or actual heal.

[Lastelli]

Do notice that every healer has in a sense a natural level of overhealing. Generally speaking, a WHM or a Diurnal AST is expected to overheal more than a SCH, for instance, as DoTs usually cause overhealing, whereas shields help reducing it. Ofc there's also the fact that SCH usually DPS, but my point is still valid to some extent. If you have access to a parser, the most important statistics you should look at as a healer is OverHealPct in my opinion. Assuming you're keeping the party alive, the lowest that % is, the better.
Take a look at this, by clicking on the hyperlinks you'll find all the data you need the have an idea of how each healer job should do in that regard.