Advice for an Anxiety-Ridden Healer

[Eloah]

Awe, I missed all the good advice... ummm... something something heal...lol?

In all seriousness though, what everyone else said is right. But, to make things feel a little less stressful try keeping this in mind. 24-mans, while they are challenging in their own way, they are best used as practice. Queuing as a job you want to get better at is great in 24-mans, since your party only amounts to 1/3 of the overall effort I'm. You can learn to fine tune rotations, adjust bluffs and debuffs, and pay attention more to what the other roles are doing. These are things that will help when you get to the extremes and savages, where only your party is the sole damage dealers.

[Lubu_Mykono]

It really is a sideshow attraction in those 24 mans particularly as a healer. Just have rez ready I guess. And relax. Whole point of game is to enjoy yourself, if you mess up people understand. if you find that content difficult maybe party with a group or select another role.

[NobleWinter]

PS4 poses some unique challenges and I think the best advice I was ever given was how to scroll through the entire Alliance. Press L1 and left or right on the D pad to scroll through every single Alliance member in order. Its invaluable for targeting dead healers in other parties when you can't even see them on your screen. Also try setting up a "tt" macro. Basically you are able to target your Target's Target quickly so if you target the main boss you can cast a heal on the Tank they are attacking. This will allow you to easily help the main tank. I have had a few runs where I was doing the bulk of the healing for a tank outside my party and its much better than letting the boss run wild.

[Aleytia]

Ps4 player here. I know you said getting a pc is out of the question but have you considered a mouse/keyboard setup? the ps4 accepts most usb keyboards/mice and it has helped me alot when i choose to main heals.

[Gemina]

Thank you all for the advice!!

I never really thought about the HUD and I had NO IDEA you could turn off particle effects. That will make things so much easier.

And I appreciate the confidence boost I will definitely put these into effect and report back!

I can do it!!

Of course you can! And you can have a ton of fun while doing it too. There is nothing more valuable than hard earned experience, and the more of it you have, the better healer you will be. So that is the best advice I can give amongst all the great advice you have already received. Get out there and heal! Run everything from Sastasha to current. Go, go, go!

I have major anxiety issues, yet I play the two most anxious roles in this game. I look at it like getting into pool. The major difficulty is getting in, not being in it. CANNONBALL!!

[Lorgana]

Haha... the title says it all. But I need help. I love running dungeons.

Light parties? Great! I can do this.

Standard parties? Ok... 8 people... I can do this....

24 player parties? WHAT IS GOING ON. I CAN'T SEE. HAVE I GONE BLIND? WHO AM I HEALING?!

Yeah... It gets nerve wrecking when most of my screen is taken up with health bars and there are so many mobs and players on my screen. It kind of takes the fun out of running dungeons. But I know that it should not.

So, I need help? How does a Healer (WHM) on a PS4 keep up with it all? How do I stay the amazing healer that I know I can be, without going crazy over what to do?

This is a call to all the Healers out there? How do you cope with it? Do you have any tricks of the trade? Any advice for a PS4 user (AND NO. Saying get a PC is not an option. Yes yes.. master race and all that but... no)? I think this is a good place to post this (IE the Healer Roles forum) but still...

HELP?!

The idea that playing on a ps4 is somehow like a handicap for healing is fundamentally false. I main healed 4 raid tiers on ps4 and did it perfectly fine. Truth be told you just need to be comfortable in the class and in the fight. Learn to predict when high levels of damage are coming out, make sure to top people off before it happens and pre cast a heal as it goes out

[Tint]

So, I need help? How does a Healer (WHM) on a PS4 keep up with it all? How do I stay the amazing healer that I know I can be, without going crazy over what to do?

The best advise i can give is that you just ignore 2/3 of the 24 players. It's not much different from an 8 player party. Heal your team, the other teams have their own healers.

But there are 2 exceptions: When the healers of one team are both dead you have to raise them. They will shout for help, so you don't have to watch them all the time.

And it's not bad to heal the main tank, even when he is not in your own team.

A great help for that is to remap the R3 (or L3) button to "targets target". Whenever you push that stick down, you switch to the target of your target then. So when you have the boss in target, you will switch to the main tank.

(you can do that in the System Configuration -> Controller -> the Config button top right)

[Dzian]

1. set up your target filters. i generally have L1+square as objects only. L1+x as enemies only. l1+ trianlge everything. and l1+circle players only. these can make targetting what you need to target that much faster. you need to activate an object buts its swarmed with people and adds l1+square and bam easy to target..

2:- If possible set up a couple of macros. my R3 button is set to "/target <f>" which means pressing it will always target the main boss. (usually the thing i have focus set on.)
i also have a second macro which is "/as <t>" what that does is it will target whatever is being targetted by your current target.
these 2 together basically allow you to target whoever has hate in 2 quick button presses. making it much faster to toss a heal on them. and pressing that macro again after healing them will switch to whatever they have targetted. (ie the boss)

3:- This seems to be quite a secret as it amazes me how many people don't know about it but In 24 man raids if you hold down L1 and press left or right on the dpad you will directly cycle through the alliance lists instead of cycling through enemies or whatever your usual filter is. So if you see both the healers are down in alliance B holding L1 and tapping left or right a couple of times will quickly get them targetted for you to raise and gett hem back up. the alliance list is sorted by job icons so it's so much easier to cycle through to a dead healer using that than cycling all the dead bodies on the floor trying to find the right one.

4:- people have mentioned turning off display names and such but an alternative option to that is simply change the color for alliance members. people in my party are geenreally dark blue and people in other alliances are almost skyblue. this generally makes it easier to see where your party are. which should allow you to make better judgements about where you want to be when you cast an aoe heal to hit the most people..

generally healing 24 man isnt much different to 8 man as you'll mainly focus on your own party within the alliance while maybe helping keep the main tank alive with the odd regen or raises on the dead..

I think if you use a few of these you'll have much less stress as to me i find the biggest anxiety was generally not being able to target what i needed to when i needed. and now i can target anything i need with minimal fuss.

[micropanther7]

Always great advice from people in the healer section So won't rehash what they said (well maybe a little lol), but one thing I would suggest is running content unsynced solo, this really helped with my anxiety. In the way that I learnt to recognize patterns from certain attacks, visual/auditory cues (like someone suggested to me when I was struggling on Titan as a baby WHM, listen to the music changes). It also helps with muscle memory, and finding the best fit for your UI and what you're most comfortable with in the placement of skills/potions/macros etc, all without the added pressure of being in an 8 man (for me I really struggle with primals >.< my reflexes suck, which makes the anxiety worse D: Had waaay more fun doing primals unsynced, starting on the EX primals now )... I'm positive that you will find a comfortable fit and do well as a healer, if you love the job don't let anything or anyone put you off, you definitely can beat this!

[Gemina]

If I can give some 24-man specific advice, and sorry if I echo any:

Focus on your alliance at first, and always make your own alliance priority: As you get more experience in 24-man and the action slows down a bit, it becomes easier to support the other alliances with heals, regens, shields and raises. Your own AoE support abilities won't get the other alliances, but single target abilities can help support the other alliances.

Both you and your co healer are KO'd: You can still make yourself useful. Place a marker on yourself and use alliance chat to inform that both healers in your alliance are down. This makes it tons easier for another healer to find you amongst the chaos, and raise you.

Set your combat filters to only show effects from your own party: It can be difficult to get out of telegraphs you can't see.

Know who is tanking: Ignore any concrete rule you might hear about alliance B always main tanks, or some crap like that. Whoever has the most agro will have a red border around their health bar if this player is in another alliance. No red border around anyone usually means your tank has agro

Be prepared to use healer LB3: Make sure you hotbar it because I guarantee that the window will open for you to use it if you keep running alliance raids. 24-man is a circus and things can go south real fast. Especially Dun Scaith and onwards. They are not as difficult as savage raids or EX trials, but they do well to get you prepared for that content if you ever decide to run them.

Have fun! This is probably the most important. There will be a wide range of skill levels. Aim to do your best and try to be forgiving of derps. It's a 24-man PUG after all.