Brand new player - question about Swiftcast and Macros - PS4

[Naria]

It depends on which healer you are going to be playing. As Whm and Ast Swiftcast is mostly used for raise, but I do use it for emergency aoe heals sometimes (this can be negated in some situations by precasting the aoe heal if you know that the damage is incoming but the timing takes a bit of practice). Sometimes swiftcast will be used with a DPS spell such as Swiftcast+Holy or Swiftcast+Aero III. Ast and Whm have there own native cooldowns to lower cast time for other spells if they need too. On Sch I use Swiftcast almost everytime it is up, mostly with Shadow Flare (a long casting aoe dot/debuff) unless I have some reason to save it. It is also great to resummon your fairy for whatever reason mid fight. Raise definitely takes priority if it is needed. As for macros most people don't use that many in this game since if you are using a macro you can't queue your actions. I use a number on Sch to help control my fairy, but I think I have only two five on Whm--a /p line attached to raise saying who I'm raising so that the other healer knows and one to make it easier to place Asylum (a ground based aoe regen), and three for the different versions of Stone.

Example of the Asylum macro:
/micon "Asylum" (makes the macro's icon Asylum)
/ac "Asylum" <t>

Example of a DPS macro:
/micon "Stone"
/ac "Stone" <t>
/ac "Stone" <tt> (<tt> is target's target so if I this macro while targeting the tank I'll cast on whatever the tank is targeting)

Hmm newbie advice:

Focus Target is your friend. It allows you to monitor what is happening with one mob/player even when you are targeting another. I normally use it on the boss. In a macro Focus Target is <f>.

/assist is a command that lets you target whatever your current target is targeting. On the controller I have it set to R3. It is great for quickly switching targets between a mob and the tank.

Soft Target is also your friend. If you select a person on your party list, but don't confirm the new target then they are "soft targeted". After you cast a spell on them the game will snap your target back to whatever you were targeting before.

Don't over use regen. It produces hate/agro in this game everytime it ticks, so precasting it will annoy your tank. Regen is awesome, but wait a few seconds after a pull before you use it.

As a console player set up your controller and target filters it will make your life 120% easier. Character Settings->Hotbar Settings and Character Settings ->Control Settings->Filters, respectively.

Which healer are you planning on leveling?