Healing help

[VampericKitteh]

So back in 2.0 I mained Arcanist. SCH was where my time went. I played SMN some but that\\'s not the point here. I was a healer main all through ARR, when HW launched I healed for a bit, but I quickly found that the content scared me out of healing. My performance wasn\\'t meeting the desires of HW parties. I would love to go back to being a healer primarily SCH/WHM. I would really appreciate some tips on a way not to feel overwhelmed by the recent content patches, what stats to prioritize, when to use certain skills. Anything will be of help ^^ thanks!

[seekified]

I actually posted a rather lenghty thing on reddit on this exact subject a few days ago, so I'll edit it slightly for you and repost here. Here goes:

I use these macros to summon my pets:

/micon "Summon"
/ac Summon
/hotbar pet "Whispering Dawn" 3 1
/hotbar pet "Fey Covenant" 3 2
/hotbar pet "Fey Illumination" 3 3
/wait 2
/petaction Obey
/wait 4
/petaction Obey

And

/micon "Summon II"
/ac "Summon II"
/hotbar pet "Silent Dusk" 3 1
/hotbar pet "Fey Caress" 3 2
/hotbar pet "Fey Wind" 3 3
/wait 2
/petaction Obey
/wait 4
/petaction Obey

These summon the pet, set them to Obey, and maps their relevant abilities to your hotbar (in this case, hotbar 3). You change which bar and slot the skills end up on by changing the numbers at the end. I do have controller versions of these macros available if you're interested, though they're not too different.

Only other macro I use on SCH is a simple Raise macro to let my co-healer know who and when I'm raising so they don't try to raise the same person, and a "/p Swiftcast is NOT available <se.7>" macro to let my co-healer know that I probably won't raise that scrub who just killed himself in a 24-man.

Micromanaging Embrace with cancel macros and so on is really not necessary if you're not doing Savage, and perhaps not even then (opinions vary). So just let your pet do its thing and pop its cooldowns when you want.

Selene is very useful when you know there'll be lots of debuffs, like Ozma's bleed. Cleansing everyone with one button press is glorious. She's also good when a specific mob attack needs to be canceled and the scrubs in your party have made the mob stun immune. The 3% speed increase from Fey Wind isn't that much of a DPS increase though, so often Eos will be a better choice since her healing mmph lets you stay in Cleric Stance longer. Experiment for yourself, though.

In dungeons, always Adlo the tank right as the last mob of the pull dies. Be careful with Adloing right at the start of the next pull, because chances are the tank isn't done pulling yet and everything will try to murder you.

Always use Stay on your pet for a pull, or Place it if you prefer. If it's on Heel, it'll follow you around everywhere instead of healing the tank, which is bad. A dungeon pull for me usually goes like this (with Adlo already up from before): Stay > Bio II > Miasma > Bio > wait 0.5 seconds > Bane > run in and Miasma II if there are many mobs > Broil something until tank is nearly dead > drop Cleric Stance > Lustrate > Adlo > go back into CS if things aren't dead, or keep healing if necessary. Again, when the last mob is dead, Adlo the tank again so he's shielded for the next pull.

As for attribute/stats, Crit is your best friend (after Mind of course, which is your main attribute). A crit Adlo on a tank basically means you don't need to heal him for the next 10+ seconds in many cases. If you want to get serious about doing EX trials and/or Savage, you'll need to get LOTS of accuracy (about 592), so meld your gear with accuracy or get a relic and pump it full of it. If you're only interested in dungeons and 24-man raids, max Crit and then Spellspeed, since over half your DPS comes from DoTs and Spellspeed increases DoT damage.

You should also get used to managing your Aetherflow. Keep the stacks and use them as necessary for healing (Lustrate for single target, Indomitability for a strong AoE heal). If you still have stacks when Aetherflow is nearly off cooldown, blow the remaining stacks on Energy Drain, which deals damage and restores your MP.

SCH is a busy job. I have around 38 keybinds on mine, I think, and there's always something to press. That's part of the fun, though.

[Fernosaur]

What exactly makes you feel overwhelmed? I'm just asking to know how to give out advice. In reality, Scholar has some of the best emergendy healing tools in the game, so even when you feel like shit is hitting the fan you have more than enough to get a party back up from the brink of death by yourself. Also always remember to manage your fairy CDs! Specially Eos. Eos is incredibly powerful, and she can solo heal a lot of shit on her own, with literally no healing input from you at all.

But do say, why do you feel overwhelmed?

[Edewen]

Healing in this game. Definitely takes some getting used to. Especially when every dungeon is a speed run from day one these days. What exactly is getting you down. what level? what ilvl? what kind of content? group healing tank healing? There are plenty of general guides but without details there is not much advise people can give outside of that.

[Cherub]

But do say, why do you feel overwhelmed?

Just a guess from my side. Back when HW launched and then Gordias Savage happened, I saw that many statics just stopped. The DPS requirements were quite high back then and even A1S was quite scary back in the days with minimal gear(which was the only thing we had at the time). And A1S was one of the easier turns. If you struggled on A1S then A3S would have completely destroyed you. I think that's also where SCH really got pushed into the DPS/Heal situation it is in now. It started mostly on Turn 9 back in the days, that's where the SCH DPS meta started to take over but since Gordias, SCH DPS was actually even required and SCH has even more so become a DPS/Support job than a healer job.
I can very well imagine that OP was just too stressed out about Gordias Savage and it's craziness back then. I was so scared joining a new static as a DPS because I was afraid of not hitting the DPS requirement since I used to play SCH prior in Savage. (I actually wanted to keep healing, actually wanted to WHM originally even but I joined a friends static as BLM)

The fights are a complete joke now with all the nerfs and gear but it always drove me CRAZY when people called Gordias "easy" but never beat it themselves.

[VampericKitteh]

Hey there thanks for the replies! As for what exactly makes me feel overwhelmed, it's the fact that all the dungeons have been speed from the start of HW. I can't keep up it seems I'm not sure when and how to manage my skills without overhealing, and also how the healer is expected to help with DPS (not a bad thing, just can't keep up) I don't place enough trust in my faeries as a SCH. Just need to learn when and how to mitigate properly.

[seekified]

Hey there thanks for the replies! As for what exactly makes me feel overwhelmed, it's the fact that all the dungeons have been speed from the start of HW. I can't keep up it seems I'm not sure when and how to manage my skills without overhealing, and also how the healer is expected to help with DPS (not a bad thing, just can't keep up) I don't place enough trust in my faeries as a SCH. Just need to learn when and how to mitigate properly.

Sounds to me you just need to give it more time, to be honest. The leveling dungeons (16-47, 51-59) usually have a much lower pace, because people can't outgear them nearly as much as the 50 and 60 stuff, so maybe doing a few runs of those while experimenting with positioning, skills, faeries, etc would be a good idea.

Like I said in my (perhaps too long) post above, SCH is a busy job, but it's very rewarding once you get comfortable with it. I haven't played WHM myself, but from what I've seen it might be an easier starting point since you don't have to worry about pet management.

Muscle memory also helps a lot, and that goes for all jobs. Just taking some time to re-arranging your hotbars, trying out some DPS spells on a dummy if you feel up to it, getting used to Heel/Stay/Place for your pets... Just doing stuff like that while not having to worry about anything else can go a long way to freeing up your brain to focus on what's happening in actual battles. Hang in there, and know that by asking these questions you've already done more to improve than many, many players ever do.

[Edewen]

personally not a fan of scholar myself. As for trusting your fairies. Dont. If you manual cast thier heal instead of waiting for auto, you dont need to worry about the fairy waiting for some low threshold of health that is often too late.

Mass pulls are typically this

Tank pulls everything they can while it eats through shield. Put up any hots or shields your can to help heal while you cleric. Use your healing cooldowns
go cleric
Get up your dots and aoe, if sch do NOT stop manually spamming fairy heals into tank. that is your "hot".
pop out of cleric when tank gets low enough to scare you and drop your instacast oh crap heal on them immediately. rcover and repeat as needed.


Personally I play with my whm. Do pop cooldown/regen and even a medica 2 depending on size then aoe my ass off. Having bene and tetra to fall back on lets whm really play a dangerous game with tank health

[EaMett]

Hey there thanks for the replies! As for what exactly makes me feel overwhelmed, it's the fact that all the dungeons have been speed from the start of HW. I can't keep up it seems I'm not sure when and how to manage my skills without overhealing, and also how the healer is expected to help with DPS (not a bad thing, just can't keep up) I don't place enough trust in my faeries as a SCH. Just need to learn when and how to mitigate properly.

It might be an ilvl thing as well.

One thing I would say is that if you aren't really comfortable with SCH at the moment. Then the last thing you should worry about is overhealing unless you run out of mana regularly. Which I feel is hard with SCH if you use your aetherflow as soon as it's available (and ED with whatever stacks are left).

Actually as side note, overhealing is way overrated. It's only bad when you run out mana or when you could be DPSing or healing something more urgent instead.
Both of these are easily dwarfed by knowing fight mechanics and/or better gear.
I'd argue that, if you can afford it, overhealing in many instances is a good thing. From covering for unexpected random damage to using aspected heals (succor/medicaII) exclusively for their side effects on a full hp party. All of these provide benefits that outweigh "not overhealing and finishing a fight with 10%+ mana". Or simply outweigh having people die.

Anyways... back on topic. I found that the most painful part for me was leveling 50-60 with SCH. Didn't know the encounters, mechanics, damage. Everyone was geared up while I wasn't and replenishing bars was really tough.
Don't be afraid to tell your tank to chill because you can't keep up.

A few things that helped me during that were:
- Use eye for an eye on large pulls. That's where it shines.
- Alternate adlo and benefic + Keep Eos on obey and spam embrace on the tank while your character is casting. (keep the embrace spam up in cleric as well)
- Most tanks will cooldown appropriately if they get in the 20-40% hp range, take advantage of this. This is actually true of everyone in your party. It's amazing how well your group starts playing when they're all at 30% hp!! Makes you wonder.
- Rouse is your friend in cleric. If large pulls are a struggle, use it and whispering dawn as often as you can, it does wonders for staying longer in cleric.
- Right as the last mob of each pull dies, place stoneskin if you have it and adlo on your tank. This plus spamming embrace means that you can start all the large pulls in cleric. Place your dots and Bane at the very least before having to switch back and heal
- Don't be afraid to use swiftcast + stoneskin in the middle of pulls to get extra time in cleric (or if stoneskin falls off during the running phases of large pulls)
- Use your aetherflow stacks. Get a few more cleric stance CGDs in by letting your tank go lower in hp and then spam lustrate to up them. That's also an option.

A lot of this I'm sure you're aware of having played SCH before. I also don't claim to have extensive knowledge as I'm a new SCH player myself. I just thought I would be somewhat extensive with how my own experience went.

Cheers.

[VampericKitteh]

Thanks all for the tips. My ilvl is definitely an issue at the moment. Working on that currently ^^ Generally when is Emergency Tactics and Dissipation used? And as for AoE healing when is it best to use a stack for Indomitability? Should I save my stacks or just burn through them constantly? Not for endgame play, just like dungeon content. My stat priority for just dungeon content is crit/spspd?

Also Edewen: thanks for the tips even though you personally prefer WHM, I'll gladly take tips on WHM play as well ^^ I wanna learn both healers again.