Healing in 8-man and 24-man content

[KeiranOlive]

Recently I've leveled white mage to 60 and I'm really enjoying being a healer, but I have a question about healing in 8-man and 24-man content. Before a fight, tanks will discuss who's main tank, but I rarely see healers discuss who will do what, be it healing or dps. When I see that someone needs healing I automatically heal them right away,. It's hard for me to hold back and trust my co-healer, so I usually end up solo-healing. But sometimes I get the feeling that I'm stepping on my co-healer's toes by not letting them do any healing. From reading posts here I've gathered that scholars throw on shields when needed, but usually dps much of the time. I'm not sure about Astrologions though. Basically I want to know if there is any kind of healer etiquette that I don't know about.

[LDR]

Your pretty much on the money when it comes to SCH co-heals; Cleric 95% of the time only coming out to shield up for phase changes, tank busters, or if stuff goes south ofc. Though this is generally for regular content, the new "Raids" in 3.2 you may see a SCH out of cleric more often. But otherwise a SCH will leave most of the basic work to their partner and the fairy. As a side note whenever i've seen/done Dual SCH its often a case of "how much can we leave this to the fairies" with minimal healing outside of the odd Lustrate :P

As for when your paired with another WHM or an AST, honestly depends on both what they do and what the content is.
Current 24-mans are rather heal easy except a few scripted bits, so you can often both go cleric after throwing up regens/a.benes. If you dont quite feel comfortable having both healers in cleric mode at once just hang on for 10-15 seconds after the fight begins and see if you co-healer goes cleric or not, often they will make up their mind in that time and you can safely do the opposite stance. But generally its safe for alot of cleric uptime and just refreshing of HoT's; you gain more confidence over time to hold back a bit.

As for everything else/8-mans; if you dont say before hand then its often the same -wait for a few seconds and see if your partner goes cleric or not-.
While by no means a rule, when paired with AST ive typically seen the AST go cleric more than the WHM, simply due to the Combust/Combust 2 DoTs sure hit for damage.

Eitherway, if yourself or your partner doesnt speak up to say a preffered healing role, its always safer to assume your the main healer until proven otherwise. If both of you stay in heal stance then its up to you to either stay like it or go cleric; i personally have never seen telling your partner to go cleric either: A. Happen, or B. go down well.

Healer DPS is your dare to do.

[Kaenbyou]

24 man : Is the MT in our party? No? UNLEASH THE CLERIC STANCE. Ho, wait, the MT was in our party? UNLEASH THE FAIRY.
24 mans are pretty much a joke nowadays, except maybe for Cthulu in Void Ark, so a few regen/fairy heal is enough.
I'll try to alternate between the stance, but however, if I see the other healer never using cleric stance, then I take it as a clue that they don't want to dps, so I'll take my share of it, however, if they show interest in dpsing too, I'll try to alternate with them.
For the 8 mans content, i.e trial and whatever, it's usually heavily depend on encounter.
For Thordan, it was pretty mandatory to let the SCH dps P1, just so you can push the phase faster, same goes for a lot of savage, but we're talking more about static than random player here.
If I end up playing with a random in some 8 mans content (i.e Midas NM), I'll just stay safe for the 1st part of the fight and after 1-2 minutes, I'll adapt depending on the other player playstyle.
However, I might not be the most impartial player for healer dps, because I'll try to dps every second I have the possibility to do it.

[Nekotee]

Awesome advice

Omg are we twin ? XP
I have the exact same playstyle
And to be honestly in 24man content... I don't care of the mt is with us or not, i don't care if I will main heal or not
I use CS 80% of the time !
I will heal only if necessary ! DPS should avoid aoe, tank should use cooldown.

Most of the time I end up with a LAZY co-heal that act as healing bot... Slacking until damage happend and then healing like a good idiotic fairy
Then i will DPS until my mana go dry XD
(Sometime ending first DPS of my group which is fun )

On 8man content i will mostly act the same
DPS most of the time
Except in thordan EX where double healing become necessary as the fight go on
And sephi EX where shielding is required to survive XD (as SCH)

...

The key is : "check your co-healer it will tell you how to act" "check your tank and pray that you didn't get an idiot that ignore defensive cooldown"

[Sida]

One of the reasons healers don't often have this conversation is that it generally doesn't screw up the party if they both heal. They can freely use the start part of the fight to find a synergy that works with them, while tanks encaging to enmity war is just.. no.

I go along the same lines as others here. If regens are enough to maintain party health, I go dps. If heals are needed, I heal. And if I notice my Co heal doesn't dps at all, I just let them solo heal. (Though even then I keep my eye out for emergencies, but I'm not as quick to jump out of cleric as usual.)

Back quite some while ago when WoD was a thing, I was happily dps:ing on the end bos with the other healer when someone in party commented about "wtf, both healers in CS". To which I asked "is anyone of you taking damage?" Answer was no. Heal when it's needed, blast when you have time. And be conscious to your own mana as well as your partners. The "stepping on other healer's toes" is only a problem with those healers who decidedly only heal and who have not much to do if you "do all the job" but they tend to be rarer than those who go blasty blast.

[bounddreamer]

As a WHM, most of the time in casual content you will be the main healer. If you're partnered with a SCH or AST, they will usually be shielding the party, buffing (AST cards), and helping out with emergency heals (lustrate, essential dignity), raises, etc. If you don't have a raise macro, you may wish to consider it, so they can see whether you've raised someone right away and that will let them know you've already done it.

If you're doing cutting edge progression content such as Extreme fights, you'll want to take a second with the other healer to establish who heals what tank, or how long you're expected to solo heal. For instance if I DF Ravana as SCH, I ask how long the other healer can solo heal. if I DF Ravana as WHM, I expect to solo heal for most of the fight. If I were healing Thordan, the WHM generally solo heals until the two knights phase, then they choose a tank and keep up Medica II and do party heals.

SCH heals pair extremely well with WAR, so if your party composition is DRK/PLD and WAR, and yourself and a SCH, it will be generally expected that the SCH will heal for WAR and you'll heal for the other tank.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

SCH heals pair extremely well with WAR, so if your party composition is DRK/PLD and WAR, and yourself and a SCH, it will be generally expected that the SCH will heal for WAR and you'll heal for the other tank.

Aside from deploy DT aside, exactly how does this matter?
Warrior gets 20% increased healing. Dark Knight and Paladin both take 20% less damage
Adlo would have 360 potency worth of damage on a warrior or 720 potency on a crit
Adlo would have 375 potency worth of damage on a paladin or dark knight or 750 potency on a crit

Different example: Adloquium good for 2700 HP
On a warrior that's 20% more and it's increased to 3240 points worth of shielding. It would also take 3240 points of damage to remove the galvanized effect
On a paladin or dark knight it's still 2700. As they only take 80% damage, it would take 25% more damage to remove the galvanized effect: 3375 points of damage
If none of the tanks have their tank stances on, it's 2700 points of mitigation for all three.

Even if numbers are bigger on a warrior, the shield value on a paladin or dark knight would be worth more value. It would take 1000 unmitigated damage to knock off a shield worth 800 points if the tank only takes 80% damage. If it's for deployment tactics purposes, the scholar doesn't have to "focus" the warrior for that. They could very well be on a different tank and adlo the warrior only when it's needed.

[GeekMatt]

In an endgame scenario, the DPSer is SCH > WHM > AST. A static will predetermine who's the primary healer and through which points they'll need to be solo healing.

In Void Arkk, Rav, Bismarck I can pretty comfortably solo heal every fight and DPS a bunch, only because I've run them so much. My recommendation on these less hardcore/less progressive fights is just to not trust your DF co-healer, stick to healing and start DPSing when you're comfortable and have found the right times to do so. Damage is predictable, the goal is to find out the breaks in damage to spend time DPSing. And if you do have two competent/experienced healers, one will recognize that the other is capable and they'll DPS more (likely with some caution cuz DF). It's the same case with tanks, never trust a DF co-tank to do their job until they've shown they're capable.

[KeiranOlive]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'm finding that there are so many things I need to pay attention to when healing, but I'll have to make a point to watch my co-healer at the start of fights to gauge their play style. Also, I haven't done much in the way of difficult fights, just dungeons and 24-man raids so far, so I'll have to gather up my courage for those and see how they're different.

On another note, I've been meaning to make a raise macro but I'm not sure how to make one. Can anyone give me an example of a basic one?

[Anova]

A lot of good advice here. As a WHM, you'll be doing the bulk of the raid healing and some dps when there are a lot of mobs grouped together. Just be sure not to switch to full dps without telling your healing partner and you should be fine in most content. If you join a static for raid, the group will probably bring it up to you first, or you can ask them. It is one of those questions that get answered fairly early on in a raid recruitment interview, kind of like a job description.

Also, for a raise macro: it depends on whether you're using a mouse&keyboard or a controller.

/micon "raise"
/ac "raise" <mo>
/p "Raise <mo>"

/micon shows the icon so you know if the ability is on cd
/ac is shorthand for /action
/p is shorthand for party chat

/micon "raise"
/ac "raise" <t>
/p "Raise <t>"