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[Maeka]

There was a conversation a few months back, and I offered to post a video of me healing and we were going to toss around suggestions and everything.

Only, that ended up going pretty badly because of my terrible upload speed.

Well, that's been fixed! I now have 15Mbps upstream, and I did another video, this time of Hells' Lid. This is me going in Blind and I'd have to say I played better than I did in that last video I made.

Oddly, having twitch export video still causes it to be 320p so I'm going to link my Twitch highlight instead because that looks way better.

Anyways, I was still a bit rusty when I did this, and I forgot about a few of my buttons in a couple panic situations.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/261843480

[EaMett]

Ohh I remember!

I haven't watched all of it just yet but here are a few pointers I can think of :

- Don't use cure I. It's better to let the tank fall lower and use cure II. Keep cure I on your hotbar in case you need to mana manage but otherwise just don't use it.
- Remember that holy stuns. Swiftcast holy is a great way to get a few regen ticks without the tank taking any damage. Combine this with aero III and assize and you'll be doing a good amount of damage.
- You can let your tank drop lower. I usually won't bother healing my tank unless he's 40% or under (unless there's a lot of damage incoming). And use bene/tetra on cooldown rather than cures.

You make good use of DB though. Props to you, that's something I fall a little short on.

Would be cool if another whm could make a video of this so you could compare. (I would if I knew how twitch worked < might look into it)

[Sebazy]

I did a dungeon and uploaded the replay for a comparison for you, I'll preach that I was also a bit rusty blablah but the video turned out ok <3

https://youtu.be/VGHkOSvNMx8

A few things I can take away from your replay:

First and foremost, that replay really gives me the impression that you aren't at all comfortable with your setup. Whilst more practice might well get you working smoother and with a higher APM, I really do think you should consider some rather sweeping adjustments to your hud and hotkeys. I'm not a huge fan of clicking but it can be done well with some optimisation and practice. For example, as well as simply shunting more important abilities onto hotkeys, there's a few abilities that you consistently click such as Benison, perhaps consider making another larger hotbar alongside your party HP bars so you don't have to move the mouse pointer so far.

Secondly, the wipe at 12 minutes is interesting for a couple of different reasons.

Most importantly, I wouldn't consider that to have been your fault, if you look at your MP usage vs the damage that had been done to the mobs, killing that pack before you both ran out of cooldowns and mp would have been a big big ask, especially with your gear. IMHO the tank should have either warned you about the big pull since it had been made clear that you were a first timer, or they should have spotted that you'd fallen behind and aborted the pull at the first pair of scorpions.

However!

Let's not beat around the bush here. You could have done better. There are a few lessons to be learned from watching it back, here's some pointers on how I think you could have improved the odds of making it through a situation like this.

The first mistake you made there was faffing around with the chest at 11:30. Don't do that. Ever. (If you need seals or such, it's actually better to sit at the end of the instance and then simply return to open chests after the rest of the group has left, granted, it's rarely worth it in the current two dungeons). Your tank had a huge head start over you and as such, you were in a bad position right from the word go. It's best to treat large trash pulls like a three legged race, you want to be either glued to your tank's side, or where possible, even have a head start on them to allow you to get Aero IIIs off mid pull.

Next up, this is something that'll come with experience but it's good to keep it in mind. Simply put, be more efficient with your movement. 12:02 is a classic example of wasteful motion at it's worst, whilst you did save it with a Bene, you were left in an even worse situation than you already were. You were around half a second from finishing that Cure II cast and even though you used it for Benediction, that little jig you danced around the outside of the AoE was painful to watch given the situation.

IMHO you should have let the Cure II finish, moved to the edge of the circle aoe on you and immediately started another Cure II. From there, combining Largesse with an oGCD to buy you enough time to get regen and Asylum up would have likely allowed you to keep the tank going for a good bit longer. PoM+Thin air after that would have bought another extension but as mentioned above, I'm not sure if it would have been enough to survive that pull so don't take this as me bashing or blaming you, rather that careful movement and more thoughtful pacing of your oGCDs could have turned that Tank's mess around. TLDR: You always see people bashing GCD healing as wasteful, but unnecessary movement is even worse in my eyes.

Lastly, as mentioned above, you use DB practically on cooldown which is great, try to do the same with Assize. It's such a great ability and whilst it can pay off to pocket it on some occasions (Saving it for the 4 wind sprites on Kamaitachi for example), for the most part you just want to mash it on cooldown particularly on trash.

*edit* Another more subtle trick to keep in mind, if you're going to have to spend 2 cures topping a DPS, consider throwing a regen at them instead. That'll keep them alive through all but the most comical of mistakes and it usually means you don't have to worry about them for another 20 seconds.

Now you'll notice that I've not talked about your DPS at all thus far. Why? Because your healing is the foundation of the job, and there's no point building up a big shiny dps palace ontop of weak foundations as it's just not going to stand up to any kind of pressure. Worry about the stuff above first before you put any stock in the stuff I say below this point.

So DPS:

Again, if you want to contribute good DPS, you need to be a decent position in the first place. The three legged race comment stands proud and true here. Ensure you are right up there with them and try to align your sprint usage with them to make things easier on you both.

Whilst I'll never begrudge a WHM that's throwing rocks, there are a good few avenues open to you to improve your DPS game should you chose to. In your example, the overall group DPS was kind of low with little AoEing going on. I would have focused on multi dotting rather than just emptying my MP bar via Holy. Careful pacing is key and the 3 crab pull at the start is a fantastic barometer for this, if my assize is back up whilst the Nurikabes in the second pull are all still alive then I know that DPS is bad and that I'm going to need to hold back a bit.

However, PoM into holyspam is a hugely powerful combination and allows WHM to put out massive damage, you can combine this with Thin Air too if you won't have an opportunity to get MP back afterwards. I really can't stress enough how much DPS a WHM can do with this even on a smaller pull. For example, on the very first pull, I contributed 56% of the group's overall damage without leaving myself oom and in a bad situation. If you want crank things up to 11, you can use swiftcast to get a final cheeky Holy in in time if the pull is almost dead.

Try to get value out of your dots especially where it's safe to do so. On the 3rd pull with the Hellish Lion, my two Aero III casts did more than half the damage of my 6 Holies, and again, on the Snail pull after the first boss two Aero IIIs did a little under half the damage of 8 Holies. That's money in the bank right there. Whilst not as impactful, Aero II is similarly important on bosses IMHO.

[Maeka]

One thing I forgot to mention is that I was horribly rusty, like.... "Haven't played WHM in 3 months+" but still good hints and things, and yes I do realize I was missing buttons because again, rust. Like the first part of the dungeon, I forgot Assize was a thing and I kept thinking "I know there's another thing I was throwing here..."

And yeah that wipe was mildly frustrating... the tank should have known I was in kinda bleh gear (311 at the time with a 290 weapon) and I was new to the dungeon and he still tried that huge pull. I was like "what are you Doing!?"

I forgot about Asylum *and* Largesse on that wipe because I really was Not ready for him to pull a ridiculously huge group.

I normally play better than this, but not when I'm coming back from a 3+ month hiatus, lol. I'll have to do another one here after I've played the job a bit more and have gotten more into using the abilities, and where the buttons are, etc.

And that accidental boss pull, I dunno what they were doing... who did what and how.

[EaMett]

Sebazy at 7mn : "c'moooooonnn". Funny how tanks do that but then pull the entire last pack set, like somehow out of all the dungeon pulls that mob is just "too much" to handle. Makes no sens.

[Sebazy]

Sebazy at 7mn : "c'moooooonnn". Funny how tanks do that but then pull the entire last pack set, like somehow out of all the dungeon pulls that mob is just "too much" to handle. Makes no sens.

That moment where I regret not taking Rescue

EDIT: Oh, right, that reminds me, leafing through the video myself.... I need to unbind the change hotbar buttons. I got screwed several times while I was tanking because I accidentally switched hotbars and suddenly I couldn't do anything lol.

Ugh yeah, I've been caught out with that myself as well, it's not fun to say the least.

[Maeka]

So I looked at the video and I don't see what you mean by the 7 minute mark? Is that where the tank uses Living Dead? IIRC at some point in the dungeon, he blew LD for some odd reason when it really wasn't necessary (but yet he didn't during that wipe pull that I know of).

Also, I'll note that for about a week, the entire stream should remain available (which was some 2.5 hours long) in which I also tanked a Sastasha (Hard) and.... what was the other one? Oh yeah, Kugane Castle. In fact, that was the first time I had ever tanked KC (I've healed it plenty of times).

And naturally, I was very rusty at PLD too.

So if you guys are curious you can leaf through that stream video while it's up.

EDIT: Oh, right, that reminds me, leafing through the video myself.... I need to unbind the change hotbar buttons. I got screwed several times while I was tanking because I accidentally switched hotbars and suddenly I couldn't do anything lol.

[Maeka]

OH, you were talking about Sebazy's video when you mentioned 7 minutes. I've not watched it yet, as I've been kinda busy today, but I'll try to set aside some time to do that tonight or tomorrow.

[Maeka]

SO!

I tried another, and I think I did MUCH better:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/262403899

I made a few changes to my routine:

1). I re-bound the hotbars: Ctrl+ is now Shift+ and Alt+ is now Ctrl+ and I also unbound Shift+ up and Shift+down so no more annoying accidental bar swaps.
2). I forgot that one could use F1-F4 for targeting party members! I tried doing that today and I feel it works better. I did make a few flub ups though, but I think with better muscle memory, that should go away. It felt comfortable.

The Shift+ and Ctrl+ allowed me to use the keyboard almost exclusively with no clicking whatsoever except for a couple panic situations where I found myself clicking because it's what I'm used to -- I didn't want to flub in a potential wipe situation so I clicked for caution's sake.

I noticed that I made a few Holy mistakes, where I meant to cast Cure2 and some odd reason, held Shift and did Holy instead. Whoops. Thankfully nobody died. I think with more muscle memory, this should happen less often too. I think I might also move Holy to someplace that is less likely to occur, perhaps Shift+6. Or maybe move it to 6 altogether since I never use that water repulsion spell.

EDIT: I also tried some things like PoM+Holy... but the tank was multipulling and I wasn't really wanting to add complexity while trying to build muscle memory; I didn't want to screw up and cause a wipe or something, but I did try to weave a few in there to test how easy it could be done.
EDIT2: Moved Holy to 7 and Fluid Aura to Ctrl+2 so I shouldn't be casting Holy when I mean to Cure2, lol.

[Sebazy]

SO!

I tried another, and I think I did MUCH better:

Handily, I uploaded a 1 minute clip from the first pull of Ala Mhigo a bit back if you want another comparison. It's an example I uploaded to demonstrate just how low you can let a tank go with little to no risk. It's worth noting that this was with an FC member though, I wouldn't be quite this harsh in a pug with a tank I don't trust

Your improved targeting speed via F1-4 is immediately noticeable. This is easily the most significant single improvement from your last video and it'll only get better as you get more used to it. Great stuff.

As for other things in order of significant to nitpicky:

Definiately consider further refinements to your hotkeys, in particular moving away from clicking any crucial twitch abilities. @9:45 is probably the most glaring example where you are getting distracted hunting around with the mouse for your Tetra click. It's both sluggish and distracting and is likely to cause significant issues for you in emergency situations or more challenging content.

I'll repeat my wincing at your excess movement and habit of dancing inefficient jigs particularly on bosses. The second boss @11:10 is the clearest and most unnecessary example of this, you're constantly repositioning yourself with little to no benefit and throwing away likely over 50% of your GCDs in the process. Whilst it's not actually going to impact anything other than your DPS on a boss like this. It still puts you behind on certain heals as you have to run in to AoE and it's another thing that is going to really hamper your throughput in raids.

Your spell selection is still quite erratic as well with a good number of unnecessary medica 1s being the standout here. It's also worth noting that you are overhealing with your Cure IIs by 30-70% with a fair degree of consistency. Whilst it's better to heal too much than too little, if you want to head on down the DPS rabbit hole, this will be the next place to look at after you've set anchor and grown some roots

Another area to look at is your overall awareness, both of your cooldown status as well as the overall situation around you. I'll openly admit that this is an area that I've struggled in and there's a few things you can do to make it easier. The biggest tip I can offer might not be so great for you with the limited HUD space you have, but it helped me no end, and that was to place a vertical 2 wide hotbar right alongside my character in the middle of the screen. It's not bound to any hotkeys and I only click a couple of non combat things on it. Rather it's primarily there to show me all my cooldown timers in one easy to glance at spot. This is hugely important in letting me instantly know if I have enough oGCDs in the bank to push DPS or if I need to play it safe and keep the tank topped. Another thing that can help with awareness is simply zooming the camera right out and looking down a little more. Giving yourself the best field of view over what's happening is paramount for Extremes and beyond.

Moving into heavy nitpick territory, keep working on your regen and dot uptime. It's worth it <3

Excuse me if it sounds harsh. Whilst you've clearly got room to improve (as does anyone frankly), your first clip was borderline train wreck status at times. You definitely look a lot more at home in this clip which is is a crucial step in the right direction. Whilst I'm chastising you for dropping the ball at 9:40, once you actually planted your feet and got your stuff together you looked a lot more convincing with the Cure IIs into dodging an AoE whilst placing Asylum immediately into more Cure IIs at 9:50 being a much better standard of play, enough so that I'll forgive you getting distracted with your Holy immediately after

Good stuff, keep it up <3