Healing help

[seekified]

I usually use Emergency Tactics as a sort of "backup" Indomitability after really big hits (like the 24-man raid-wide attacks that puts everyone at really low health). Usually it goes: attack hits > Indomitability > Emergency Tactics > Succor. If the other healer pops at least one AoE heal as well, that puts mostly everyone at full health.

Dissipation is only really useful as a DPS tool (use it during the start of a fight to freely blow three Energy Drains on the boss) or during real emergencies where you really need an Aetherflow stack for Lustrate/Indomitability. I don't use it much, really, but it can be handy.

Indomitability is best used right after big hits, if everyone is stacked up. It has a pretty short range, unfortunately. If you don't have many stacks and have to choose between Sacred Soil before the hit and Indomitability after the hit, Indomitability is usually the way to go since it's a rather strong heal (for a SCH anyway, it still pales in comparison to Cure III). As I said above, save your stacks for when you need them, but if you still have stacks when Aetherflow's cooldown is nearly finished, just blow the remaining stacks on Energy Drains so you get extra MP.

[EaMett]

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?

As far as Emergency Tactics go. Often times before you gear up properly (in 4 man) on some larger pulls you'll feel like the [Adlo + Benefic] rotation isn't enough to raise your tank's HP. Depending on the situation, instead of panicking and using stacks on [Lustrate], you can add a [Adlo + Emergency Tactics + Adlo] rotation. Other uses are when you have a low group overall as covered above.

I won't say anything about Dissipation as I don't use it much (yet) Just feels like something I would keep for a "Holy s*** I need stacks and lots of them" moment.

Otherwise I make it a point to use my stacks up even if it's just for "trivial" healing. If aetherflow is up or nearly up again and I have stacks left I just dps and then use those stacks to top people off after. But this really depends on my knowledge of the encounter. If it's a pretty high damage encounter that I don't know much about I might be less inclined to just spend my stacks unless I really need to.

As far as WHM goes I feel the gameplay is more straightforward and a little less situational. I feel like [Divine Seal] (if available) + [Medica II] (even if the group is topped up) + [Regen] will get you through any encounter. At that point it's just a matter of mana management. So basically use [Shroud of Saints] as soon and as often as possible. Also use [Assize] in the same fashion, even if the heal/damage goes to waste, if delaying a few seconds means your healing actually benefits the group then by all means wait it out.
[Benediction] has a long cooldown but you can use this while in cleric stance so that greatly increases the amount of time you can spend DPSing.
Also during large pulls, if you [Stoneskin] then [Divine Seal + Regen] the tank when he has the aggro you can [Holy] the mobs in cleric stance. The stun from [Holy] will let your [Regen] tick a couple of times giving you more time to DPS. Also feel free to [swiftcast + Stoneskin] in cleric stance.

Also, Elixirs and Ether pots are you friends when your gear is crappy. Especially as WHM. Use them like you would any other mana refreshing cooldown. As soon and as often as possible.

PS: Noticed you're on Faerie. Lets play together =D

[Fernosaur]

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.

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.

Aah, I see.

I had the same issue for a while, of feeling like I couldn't completely trust my fairy, but tbh, you can 100% trust her so long as you learn where to place her to reach the tank with every possible healing option and CD, and how to time Rouse and other abilities.

Let me try and get all these ideas more organized.

1) There's really nothing wrong in overhealing when you're learning content that is new for you, and not DPSing too much when that's the case too. It sounds like it's out of your comfort zone, but you're trying to push those boundaries, so the fact that you have this mindset is already a win for you and the first step! DPSing as a healer is actually relatively easy once you start getting to know the size and attack power of the pulls on each dungeon, so every time you run a dungeon, the first thing you should do in the first pull is gauge how well the tank is playing: look at their CD bar, look at how much time it takes them without your input for them to start dropping. You can usually put a little DPS in this time, since the tank will be at full HP, so throwing in your DoTs and using Bane is a good use of this time, even if you have to swap out of Cleric Stance soon because the tank is bad or undergeared.

After you assess the tank, take a close look at how much damage the tank is taking and at what speed, and do this during every pull. This will give you an idea of how hard each pull hits and you'll know how to manage your big healing Cooldowns for these measures. Managing them throughout the entire dungeon and not throughout each individual pull is a very important part of healer efficiency.

TL;DR for point 1: getting familiar with the content is the first step to feeling more comfortable and less overwhelmed by the pressure of the healing role! At least, that's how it works in a game like FFXIV.

2) Know your toolkit. Specially on Scholar, as someone else mentioned earlier, there are far more buttons to press than other classes. Not only do you make use of all 5 cross-class skills (unlike WHM and AST to a lesser degree), but you also have between 3 and 5 additional fairy skills to manage. That said, the only waste on your hotbar is Sustain, and thanks to Scholar's playstyle being more gated towards healing -that is, their bigger healing power is locked behind cooldowns and only available a short amount of times within a minute- you must know the toolkit like the palm of your hand to make the best use of it. I'll break down what are the (in my opinion) most important healing abilities on Scholar, and I might touch a bit on WHM afterwards too, since you mentioned you play it. Take note, of course, that this applies only for dungeons. If you ever intend to do more intensive raiding your toolkit becomes even broader, but let's go on! Also, apologies if you already know a bunch of this stuff, but it's important to touch on, I think!

2.1) Fairy cooldowns. These are literally the most important CDs a Scholar brings to the game, as it's literally what sets the job apart from the other two. In your fairies you have a powerhouse of healing, even in Selene, who is slightly more limited. Both of them can give you enough time to DPS through every pull as they solo heal, but as the pulls get bigger, specially in new content, it would do you well to understand how to use Eos efficiently. Of course, the higher your IL becomes, the more powerful she will be, and the less direct input from your own healing she'll need to do the job!

Eos has some of the most powerful healing abilities in the game. First of all, you have Rouse, which increases her healing potency by 40%. This is massive. Then you have Fey Illumination, which increases it (and yours) by 20%. If you combine these two with Whispering Dawn, you get one of the most powerful regens in the game, which is also combined with the buffed Embrace spam on the tank. When a super buffed Whispering Dawn is active and Eos has Fey Illum and Rouse on her, the amount of healing is almost equivalent to a WHM casting Cure II every 3 seconds on the tank. Just let that sink in and you'll realize that when these abilities are up, you don't have to do almost any healing at all. Now, this speaks only of trash pulls, but remember that Whispering Dawn is a party-wide regen, so you'll generate a lot of overhealing, but any stray hit on a DPS or a party-wide hit will also be taken care of passively. The best part about this is that you don't even need to stop casting to make all of this work, since Fey Illum and WD are completely independent abilities.

You also needn't necessarily use Fey Illumination right away, since it's on a way longer CD than Rouse+WD. However, Rouse and WD share the 1 minute CD, so it is VERY likely you'll have both of them up for every pull in the dungeon. Remember what I said before about knowing the dungeon to know when to blow out your more powerful CDs? That's what you do with Fey Illumination. Finally, there's also Fey Covenant, which has a more limited use because the pull needs to have casters. If you see mobs casting magic, then pop it. It will always help, even if it's overkill. You can save it if you know the pulls are particularly punishing, though, like the big ass pull in Great Gubal (HM).

Now, don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean Eos is absolutely necessary for every dungeon. For most of lvl 60 dungeons, using her to heal is overkill, and you and your party benefit more from Fey Wind so long as you keep Selene roused, but if what you want is to grow your trust in your fairy, I would suggest getting used to micro managing Eos and seeing how powerful her regen and healbot spam on the tank can be. There'll be scary moments when you see the tank's HP drop under 30 or 20%, but if you give it the time, WD+Embrace will pop them back up to around 70% in an instant. The more comfortable you get, the more you'll let the tank's HP go low without worrying too much. Just pay attention to Whispering Dawn ending (this can happen if DPS is too low) when the pull is still mostly alive, which is then that you have to bring out your own healing tools.

2.2) Mitigation. Following into the whole managing your CDs through the entire dungeon deal, Eye for an Eye, Virus and Adloquium all fall into this. Use E4E while the tank is pulling if you know this pull has a lot of heavy hitters. The mitigation is not much, but it will definitely add up when the tank is getting hit by 6+ mobs again and again. This is specially useful if you're using Selene, to give her a hand with her less potent healing. Also, always try to Adlo the tank between pulls, even stopping to refresh it as the tank is running to the next. If you manage to get a Crit, deploying that is a good choice, since then you can just Sprint into the pull's end and begin casting and you usually won't take damage even as the tank takes hate off you. You also can forget about DPS stealing hate and getting hit if you do this. Just be careful not to pull hate if he didn't use AoE enmity gen. I recommend not bothering with Stoneskin, since you'll get more mileage out of Blizzard II in dungeons. With the combination of your DoTs, Bane and Blizzard II on 4+ targets, you are doing more damage than Gravity and Holy spam. Keep that in mind too!

2.3) Aetherflow stacks and Emergency Tactics. I know you were having trouble knowing when to hold on to Indomitability, and weren't sure when to pop Emergency Tactics, but these two skills don't really see that much use in dungeons unless things really start to go south. Dungeons don't usually have too much AoE damage that happens too constantly to be fatal, so you can use Whispering Dawn to deal with most of that. If you're using Selene, you can just let the party's damage add up a bit before popping Indomitability in-between Aero or Bio casts. Indomitability is an incredibly powerful skill. Emergency Tactics has a much more limited use, and you won't find yourself using it in dungeons almost ever, save for the rare occassion in which you get a Dark Knight who uses Living Dead and needs potent healing, in which case you should use ET+Adlo on them. Other than that, ET is better reserved for party wide healing when the party already has a shield (from either Succor or a Deployed Adlo) and is still not topped off, or if healing potency is more needed than mitigation.

Other than that, about Aetherflow stacks the only input I can add is that if you're still feeling insecure about your healing, you should hold on to them for now, at least until the timer on Aetherflow is around 15-10 seconds to be up for use again. Once you see Aetherflow is about to come up, you can either use it to Lustrate the tank if they're low, or just use it all on Energy Drain. Always remember to have at least one stack up at the start of every pull, though, since Bane is one of the most important skills for Scholar in dungeons. If you're new in a Duty, it's also fine to hold onto AF stacks, just remember to use them before the CD resets, since sitting on them for longer than that is a waste!

2.4) Dissipation. This skill gives everyone mixed feelings. From the looks of it, it makes it sound like they intended to give Scholar an "emergency" button in case they run out of AF stacks and there's a lot of raidwide damage going on, or the tank is in desperate need of Aetherflows, etc. However, you will hardly ever run into this situation in dungeons unless the content is 100% new and the tank is both undergeared and not very good at mitigating. In dungeon runs, you won't use this skill much because you benefit much more from your fairy being alive and healing the tank through pulls while you DPS than from the extra stacks and healing potency buff, but once you get more comfortable with the class and the content, a good use for Dissipation is blowing through your Aetherflow stacks when a boss is close to dying, making sure you use your fairy CDs went off (like Fey Wind), and dissipating her to get three extra uses of Energy Drain to burn the boss down. If you see the boss is well about to die and Aero/Bio aren't a good option, just use Ruin II to weave in Energy Drain inbetween casts. It's a small gain, but a gain nonetheless. Other than that, there's not much use for Dissipation in dungeons, other than maybe using that 20% healing bonus for a bigger shield? IDK, it's very unnecessary in casual content.


3) Don't be discouraged!! Even if you feel anxious about starting to heal, which is totally understandable due to the pressure associated with the job, I think you'll find that pushing your skills to try and be more optimal is very fun, and it's interesting to play as a healer in FFXIV because of how unique it is for its kind of game. Healers here are incredibly powerful in their healing toolkit, so taking advantage of that and using your non-healing time to DPS is a good use of your time and it's incredibly satisfactory when you finally get the gist of it. If people give you shit for a mistake or two, try to ignore the bad feeling that comes from it and see their PoV. They might point something important out, or they can just be spewing non-sense. You'll have to use your criteria to judge which one of those holds true :P

4) About White Mage! My knowledge about WHM isn't as in-depth as Scholar, but WHM is very, very good for dungeons because of the amount of DPS they bring to the table, and their crazy healing abilities can help them stay in Cleric Stance for longer than AST.
With WHM, Divine Seal is your equivalent to Rouse. You have it up every minute, so there's no point in not using it on every pull. Pop Divine Seal and Regen on the tank, and bam, they can hold off on their own for a long, long time. That's when you Swiftcast Holy, pop Assize, and then begin the hardcast Holy spam. Just... watch your MP! Remember that Benediction is a rather bad emergency tool, and its use is much better when it is controlled than when it is improvised because of its weird delay. The most important thing about Benediction, however, is that you don't need to get out of Cleric Stance for it to work :P. Save it for those big-hitting pulls and go ham! Since Holy doesn't require a target, you don't even need to re-target the tank to use it. It's awesome.

IF you don't have Benediction up and the incoming pull is big, you can also use Divine Seal+Regen and throw Assylum on the tank. The two HoTs together provide ridiculous amounts of healing. You can think of Assylum as your equivalent to Eos's Fey Illumination , with the added bonus of it taking care of melee DPS taking stray hits to the face!


Aaah, I'm sorry for my very long winded response XD. I get somewhat passionate about some of these topics, and I cannot pass the chance to help a returning player out, specially when they're so open and eager to learn and become better! Wish you all the luck, and remember, don't be discouraged. And most importantly, always trust your fairy

[Edewen]

That's when you Swiftcast Holy, pop Assize, and then begin the hardcast Holy spam.

While I agree with most you say about whm, this one I would suggest a change. Get aero 3 up. Save your swiftcast. The slightly faster holy is not worth sacrificing your wipe protection. No one is perfect. Accidents happen and Id much rather have the swiftcast raise ready to cast and kite.

Also, dont under-estimate the power of a medica 2 for the really big pulls. Simply wait to cast it until after DS regen so the tank has gotten solid threat. Combining can really help.

[Feyona]

No need to bother with pet management in dungeons till you get used to your other spells Scholar is quite a fast healer with lustrate and indom. Keep adlo on tank, and use succor for group damage. When you feel safe enough to dps you can get a macro to spam embrace on tank if necessary. Crit is aways the first secondary stat to go for. To save time as well, selene is good on auto to take first status off party. Not as efficent as manual management, but saves you having to think about all status effects for one time at least .

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

I know some people don't like this idea but I macro all my cast time dps spells (not my instants) with my faerie's heal focused on my target's target. That way whatever I am dpsing, the faerie is healing its target. I also macro phys and aldo with the faerie heal on my mouse over so that when I am focus healing someone, so is my faerie and if I cant finish a cast due to movement, she will still heal them. It works well for me.

[Archamgel]

I know I'm going to get blasted by the people who believe the faeries need to be macroed, but the easiest way for me to manage the fairy is to just place the fairy, use rouse, and let her be. Eos will use Whispering Dawn during the 20sec of Rouse (that makes an extremely strong regen). Then, Rouse and WD are close to same CD, so just pop Rouse before WD comes off CD. I never have a rough time healing like this.

How battles go:
Place fairy near tank, use Rouse on her, use Adlo on tank (if crit or a big pull, Eye for an Eye and deployment tactics), then use all dots in CS. From there, I wing it if it is a new place for me, or I go through the motions if I know it (succoring before party wide hits, using Emergency Tactics, Quickspell, and succor after, or an Indomitability).

Tip: Use Aetherflow on CD after you use up all previous stacks, too. (Energy Drain is great)

That's the best I can think of right now, but I hope it helps ease you into Sch again.

[raela]

Fairies at the start of HW felt really weak in comparison to the end of ARR, so I felt like I had to be on top of healing a lot more. Now that ilvl has flown up, my fairy does 99% of the healing in dungeons.. so yeah, ilvl improvement should help out a lot.

There's been a lot of good advice here, so I don't think I need to say much.. My personal use of indom outside of savage is mostly an "oh sh--" heal after people have ate some mechanics. DPS stood in goo and now everyone's critical? Ok, I'll do an aoe burst heal so the fairy doesn't ignore the tank too much.

[VampericKitteh]

Thanks everyone for the amazing advice you've given me. It's much appreciated and I feel like it'll help me regain my footing with a class that I've loved since the launch of 2.0. I've slowly began healing in certain situations again, and with the help from everyone here I felt that it's gone really well ^^

[matteoxyz]

You might find white mage better while you're learning the newer content. It's much simpler IMO. I find on a large pull I just keep up all HOTs and heal bubble and spam big heal skill (cure 2). DPS only when confident and comfortable doing so.

I find it's nice to play other roles as well as heal. Having a break From the high responsibility is refreshing.