Why do so many healers not use specific abilities?

[HyoMinPark]

I get skittish if the entire party has taken a significant amount of damage. If Medica II is about to end or already ended I use that; if not then Assize if it's available or will be in a couple of seconds; otherwise Medica. In many cases such damage occurs in situation where the party will be grouped up so Cure III would be a better choice, but I haven't quite finished wiring my brain to properly recognize those situations yet.

A good rule of thumb to consider whenever you fret between “should I Medica/Medica II right now” and “should I wait for Assize to come up” is to consider the timeline of the fight. If, for example, Assize has 15 seconds left on its cooldown, and there are no instances where the party will have to spread or will take AOE damage that would otherwise be fatal within the next 15 seconds, then allowing them to sit at a level of HP that is not full is perfectly fine. Now, if Assize has 30 seconds left on its cooldown, and there is an incoming mechanic that needs people to be topped off, you should Medica (if the mechanic happens within the next 5~10 seconds and people need fast top offs) or Medica II (if there is enough time between your cast and when the damage comes out that the HoT tick will put everyone at a safe HP level to survive).

Same when you are judging when to use HoTs—if the regen ticks will tick everyone up to full and there is no incoming mechanic within the next 30 seconds, then you can allow them to tick without any extra top off.

Damage in this game is incredibly scripted, so once you do content enough times, you start to learn where there are lulls and when you need to get your party up to full HP (or close to full HP) to prepare for the next wave of incoming damage. You also get used to seeing just how much initial heals hit for (Medica, Medica II’s initial heal, Cure III) and how much your HoTs tick for every 3 seconds to determine which course of action you take when deciding your healing (HoTs? A GCD heal? Assize? Asylum? Etc.).

[MoroMurasaki]

My brain handles Thin Air a bit differently because its benefit depends on what you do while the buff is active. In an attempt to optimize it I often end up not using it at all, which is certainly not optimal. Unlearning bad habits takes a lot of effort.


I get skittish if the entire party has taken a significant amount of damage. If Medica II is about to end or already ended I use that; if not then Assize if it's available or will be in a couple of seconds; otherwise Medica. In many cases such damage occurs in situation where the party will be grouped up so Cure III would be a better choice, but I haven't quite finished wiring my brain to properly recognize those situations yet.

I could be misunderstanding and if I am I apologize - you mention if Medica II is ending or has just ended you will use it but if not you use Assize/Medica. While I would never fault anyone for overhealing via Assize if you have a Medica II ticking you don't then cast Medica, do you? It's not super clear, as I said I could just be misunderstanding.

As for Thin Air you're right to prioritize it for times where you need to spend a lot of MP quickly. I rarely use it during boss fights in dungeons for this very reason, preferring to save it for trash packs and Holy. Holy is by far the best bang for your buck that you're going to get out of Thin Air in a dungeon situation unless you find yourself chain raising and even then it's debatable.

I think what you do with Thin Air is exactly my own problem with Largesse - I tell myself I might get more bang for my buck later with it but then later never comes and I've just wasted an entire use of it or more. It's definitely a hard mindset to leave behind.

As for being skittish when people have taken damage I use an 'innocent until proven guilty' philosophy with pugs - I trust them to not eat avoidable damage until I see them do so more than once. At that point I then weigh my options as to how much extra effort I will have to spend keeping them alive instead of just swiftcasting a raise after they die to teach them a lesson. I know it's optimistic and not for everyone, just offering my take on it.

[Connor]

As a not-so-great Astrologian (I’m a Scholar when it comes to healing), I often find myself forgetting to set earthly star at the right moment whenever I’m pulling and placing cards, especially if Sleeve Draw is up. I also tend to forget to weave card draws between Malefic III’s and end up clipping my gcd looking at who gets what (as a PS4 player I can’t just throw Balance on the highest DPS, because I don’t know who it is).

I assume other healers that forget to use skills like Asylum / Earthly Star / etc are in a similar situation, they’re focusing too much on one thing to realise that doing something else is just as a good (if not better).

Like I said though, I’m not exactly the greatest Astrologian lol, and I imagine the majority of them don’t have a problem with weaving cards and/or Earthly Star between Malefic III casts.

I’ll also say that I’ve never really experienced this as a Scholar, maybe because it’s so much easier to weave stuff between gcd’s with Ruin II / Miasma II

[tdb]

I could be misunderstanding and if I am I apologize - you mention if Medica II is ending or has just ended you will use it but if not you use Assize/Medica. While I would never fault anyone for overhealing via Assize if you have a Medica II ticking you don't then cast Medica, do you? It's not super clear, as I said I could just be misunderstanding.

Did you perhaps read it as "(Medica II or Assize) then Medica" or "Medica II or (Assize then Medica)"? The intent was "Medica II or Assize or Medica" - i.e. it was a description of how I choose one AoE healing spell to cast when the party has taken significant damage. If that wasn't enough to bring the party to satisfactory health levels I'll cast another, but I won't waste MP casting Medica if it isn't needed. It's hard to quantify how much damage is significant enough to warrant an AoE heal; it depends on the flow of the fight and how good the others are in avoiding AoEs. My experience is undoubtedly colored by playing with randoms since my FC doesn't have enough active endgame players to form our own raiding group yet (but several members are my IRL friends so I'm sticking with them).

[Joe_Schmoe]

Why do so many healers not use specific abilities?

Can't speak for everyone, but probably the big one for me would be this perfect gem right here, which sums it up nicely. Anything longer than a one minute cooldown is pretty much this to me.

[Belgianbeer]

Can't speak for everyone, but probably the big one for me would be this perfect gem right here, which sums it up nicely. Anything longer than a one minute cooldown is pretty much this to me.

Indeed, anything above iron swords might get your units killed in hard or extreme mode. So better put your soft gloves on and relax

[Tharnor]

I see healers use all ones you mention rather regularly. Some of the abilities you mentioned are niche as well or sometimes just are not needed due to how steam roll a lot of the content is currently. It also could just be that you have been getting a lot of lazy or bad healers. Not sure why this is a surprise since I regularly run into the same kind of people playing tank/dps. Just the other week in pagos the tank on louhi had a ultimate curtana and ate every ae. Obvious that he was good enough to get the weapon but was just to lazy to do the content.

[Risvertasashi]

Hello!

For a while now I've been noticing that many healers just don't use specific abilities. Either only very rarely or never. Recently, I've also been in many practice, clear and then farm parties for Suzaku Ex as a healer and I've noticed this about my co-healers even more.

I'm going to guess it's from sheer ability bloat.

I myself am guilty of this somewhat. I really don't use E4E as much as I should, mostly because I haven't had it for so long and perhaps partly because it's yet more clipping to play around. And well, when you have 4 hotbars of ability, it's hard to not neglect something now and then.

But I hope SE doesn't use that as an excuse to axe Benison come the expansion, I love that ability...

[Ghishlain]

I'm going to guess it's from sheer ability bloat.

I myself am guilty of this somewhat. I really don't use E4E as much as I should, mostly because I haven't had it for so long and perhaps partly because it's yet more clipping to play around. And well, when you have 4 hotbars of ability, it's hard to not neglect something now and then.

But I hope SE doesn't use that as an excuse to axe Benison come the expansion, I love that ability...

I'm going to agree with this here too as a WHM specific complaint. Both SCH and AST have tools that allow them to use oGCDs without clipping with either no DPS loss (AST) or small DPS loss (SCH). WHM doesn't have the same tool to use so they have to be particular picky about the what abilities they want to use when to avoid clipping when possible.

If anything, the change to having all the role actions available to WHM was an indirect nerf to WHM just because you WANT to use all the abilities, but only have maybe... 6 GCDs in a minute where you can use abilities without clipping anything (3x Regen and 3x Aero II)

I am also very guilty of not using E4E often either, lol.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

Mostly the skills i forget to use are ones that have specific functions that i just don't need. For SCH its the skill that sends the fairy away. The only real use i can see for that is one that probably doesn't exist: using it after you're raised and your fairy is dead (you probably cant use it in that case--i assume your pet has to be summoned for it to even light up).

For AST, its the skill that ties you to a single-target, who then receives a portion of your overall heals. This is for tanks i guess and it just never lasts long enough for it to really be effective. Also sleeve draw and a few of the card discard skills. I only use the discard skill for the initial draw and not spread or rr.

For WHM its actually Cure 3. Mostly its Heal Buff skill + Medica 2 or 1 and i actually save it for those instances. I use the heck out of Asylum in dungeons especially during large trash pulls. Asylum + regen + medica 2 = thin air quickened holy spam with no need for healing. Pack dead. :3