Question to the White Mages about enmity

[Miles_Maelstrom]

Sorry, I am probably least familiar with whm at the moment so I need to advice to understand something.

Are any white mages experiencing really bad enmity issues?

It's an issue my group is currently having our whm is always right on the heals of the tanks, none of the dps are as close as he is. I am just look for some advice or even just an understanding for myself as to why it's like that. As a scholar I've almost never had enmity probablems.

Some of the things I don't understand are:

Does overheal cause people enmity than a fully utilized heal?

Do white mages have anything in their kit that might cause this? Maybe lacking something the other healer have?

Edit: because of dumb forum rules that make no sense.

[Tridus]

Does overheal cause people enmity than a fully utilized heal?

IIRC, enmity wise healing is healing. Overheal or not, it doesn't matter.

Do white mages have anything in their kit that might cause this? Maybe lacking something the other healer have?

Medica II can generate a ton of enmity if the HoT ticks it puts up are mostly/entirely overheal and the WHM keeps it up all the time. This is the most common source I've seen.

[Ghishlain]

White Mages generate the most amount of enmity out of the three healers because they are the sole source of damage and/or healing for their kit and they don't have a passive enmity reduction.

AST Sects have a native -25% Enmity modifier.
SCH healing is split between themselves and their fairy, thus their enmity is split between the two as well.

Additionally, all healers have a Cross Role called "Lucid Dreaming" which cuts the users current enmity in half which should be utilized as such if they are hitting enmity issues. Lucid Dreaming also counts as a MP refresh effect so as long as you're using your MP tools you shouldn't be having too much issue with enmity in the process.

If you're allowing the WHM to do the bulk of healing, they can potentially generate a lot of enmity due to AoE heals, especially if they're chasing a Medica II with a Medica and then chasing that with a Plenary Indulgence. This is a lot of burst healing all at once and also would greatly negate how much effective healing the HoT on Medica II would do. Overhealing generates the same amount of enmity as a non-overheal but obviously is also very wasteful too since overhealing does nothing for the target. A White Mage should be trying to minimize that as much as possible as both for enmity control and resource management.

If you have a NIN, you might also consider having them Smokescreen the WHM too.

Do you have more details about when exactly this is happening? Type of content? Composition? Any more information would be useful.

[Miles_Maelstrom]

Well sadly we don't have a nin.

We are: war, drk, whm, sch(me), drg, mnk, brd, smn

We are currently working on neo ex death. Having issues where our whm will get the aero or even earth shakers some times. I know this encounter has a lot of aggro resets on boss which probably doesn't help.

Edit: also, whm being the only Healer without some form of iniate enmity reduction seems like a big oversight by SE. That should be a major issue, I almost never see whm complaining about that.

[Ghishlain]

Your issue then stems from the fact that NeoExdeath has a hate reset every time he uses Grand Cross. Your tanks need to generate a lot of enmity to keep up with the healing requirements after GC Delta. Since you have no PLD either you can't Cover-cheese the subsequent Aero III + Earthshaker.

I would tell your WHM to save Lucid Dreaming and pop it after going through the necessary healing after Almegest goes off. I usually pop my Lucid 2-3 GCDs after Almegest resolves and that saves me from dying. Your MT should be hitting things hard to get enmity back as well.

[Saraphin]

WHMs...don't really complain because it's uh..."part of life"? i guess? it's something WHMs have to trust the tanks to remember to keep generating emnity and use Lucid Dreaming as much as possible if things get too high.

"WHM best Tank" is a bit of a meme that's been going around for as long as I've been playing.

On a serious note: what everyone has said. HoTs generate a lot of Emnity, Assize now gives equal parts DPS and Healing Emnity, so...it's learning when to heal, when HoTs are enough and when you have to bear through it and save the Tetra/Bene for oneself while popping Lucid, i suppose?

[Sebazy]

Shroud timing is absolutely paramount for a WHM in O4S.

Frankly the best thing that your WHM can do is to sit down with the tanks and get a clear plan of how the tanks are handling agro and when the WHM needs to dump it.

I've had the best results with the following:

You've got 3 GCDs between Almagest and Aero III. I aim to hit my shroud on the second GCD.

So ideally, I'll time a Medica II to hit as Almagest lands then drop Asylum if I haven't already. This gives me a brief window to judge if the mitigation was ok and I'll either Medica or Cure III accordingly and then hit shroud. The aim is to front load as much of the HPS as I can allowing me to avoid any excess enmity beyond my hots whilst Aero III Earthshakers are a threat. If we didn't mitigate Almagest well, the 2 PI charges buy enough time for me to wind up some more GCD healing as needed once enmity isn't an issue again.

Using this plan, I was able to heal harder and faster than my co healer when I ran O4S as double WHM earlier this week, yet every time the healers ate an Aero or such, it was never on me

[Risvertasashi]

Healing generates the same enmity with both realized healing and overheal. Still, you should definitely make sure you're minimizing overheal where you can.

As others have noted, White Mage has the worst enmity issues. SCH has a pet, AST has a GTAoE that functions as a pet for enmity and inherent 25% reduction, and all 3 healers have a cross role that cuts current enmity in half.

The other part of this is the extreme attitudes towards maximizing DPS. Tanks will typically 1. want to avoid tank stance and 2. want to avoid their enmity combo. So you have tanks in DPS stance doing their DPS combo to hold aggro.

If your questions are particular to a raid situation, the best thing you can do is communicate with your fellow raiders to come up with a plan of action. You (theoretical 'you', not you literally) might need to use Lucid at certain times. The tanks might need to use aggro combos or tank stances at certain times. And, if you're not running a parser yourself, ask someone who is to keep an eye on your overhealing to see if you might be able to optimize there.

If multiple members of your party are regularly having problems stealing aggro, however, I would suggest asking your tanks to step it up first. Or get a ninja. But if it's just the WHM, there's probably room for improvement in his play.

[Sebazy]

AST has a GTAoE that functions as a pet for enmity

Going to repeat this point for emphasis as it's something a lot of people don't seem to realise.

I did a few days helping a static in Coil this week and the WHM using Cure III on the first fireball sometimes overstepped the mark with a few crits usually resulting in them eating Death Sentence and snowballing things from there. Earthly Star is incredible for dealing with early encounter aoes and should be prioritised whenever agro might become an issue.