New to healing in FFXIV, looking for WHM help

[Orbus]

Always prioritize your off gcd healing abilities over anything that has a cast time.
As a whm you have a ton of healing abilities that neither have a cast time or use mp.

Regen is your most mp efficient as well as your strongest single target gcd healing spell.

If you feel the need to pop a buff on yourself to help your healing, don't be afraid to use multiple at once.
An overhealed party is better than a dead one.
Presence of mind and thin air will let you swiftly spam medica/cureIII for free.

If you're gonna stack hots, power stack those suckers.
If you know repeated party wide damage is incoming hit your largess, drop an asylum and pre-cast medica II so it goes off after the first hit (or swift cast it), this will make something like repeated rhyme wreath spam much easier to deal with.

And if you're feeling particularly confident just use presence of mind to increase your own damage.

And lastly.... you can't heal through stupid.
If someone's going to stand in something that kills them, there isn't much you can do.
Yes you have rescue, but if someone needed to be rescued in the first place then it's probably going to happen again and again and your attention would be better focused on the people who aren't trying to commit suicide.

[Ghishlain]

Since there's already a lot of pointers regarding kit utilization, I'll push my post to emphasize fight knowledge. A lot of trial fights in FFXIV are extremely scripted in nature. This means you'll know when all the tank busters (heavy single target damage) and raid busters (large AoE damage) will hit the table - which in turn means you'll know how to react / pro-act appropriately. Even though many dub WHM as the "reactive healer" you still want to time your heals to occur just as tank busters and raid busters hit the table to minimize risk. Which leads onto my next point - not everyone needs to be topped at 100% all the time.

There aren't many back to back raid busters in the game, so it's important to realize when you can let Medica II do your healing or when you need to out put more healing for the raid to keep up with the following busters.

Likewise, understanding the fight timelines ALSO allows you to realize when someone needs healing prior to a mechanic if they mess something up earlier in the fight. IE, someone takes avoidable damage so you top them up with Bene before the next raid buster hits in 3-5 seconds.

Understanding trial fights come with time and experience so don't be afraid of being more cautious when you first commence with healing. It's better to be safe than sorry. Once you understand a fight more and more, that gives you the opportunities to heal less and DPS more

In terms of dungeons, if you're in a level 50, 60, or 70 dungeon, be prepared for tanks to mass pull a ton of things and thus, also require a lot of healing. I think the hardest part is determining when a tank will start and when they'll stop as you want to try to avoid healing them when they're doing their pull or else you'll take hate and just make the pull harder to do. Usually, a good sign I see is when tanks just stop and start to use their AoE threat tool. The stopping is important as there are tanks that are good enough to use their AoE threat tools without stopping and just keep on running to the next pack. Dungeon knowledge will also help you in determining the extent of how far a tank can pull and just how much damage they'll be taking once they reach that point If they decide to pull everything.

At the end of the day, healing is about experience and awareness, so don't be afraid to be cautious initially until you can accumulate that experience then start to cultivate your awareness so you can see the other player's making mistakes before they realize what they're doing so you know how to fix it.

Good luck and happy healing

[Insomniaq]

Thank you to everyone that has offered me some advice! I will defo take it all into consideration as I continue on my way to becoming a better healer.

That being said, I see most people adjust the skills to suit their own play styles, as no general consensus can be reached regarding cure 1. With that in mind,it seems to me that I must just find something that works for me. Being relatively new to the game (only 3 weeks total) knowledge of each instance will mean just practicing (rinse, lather, repeat), because from what I can see, that has a bigger impact to the party than the skills that I choose to use or will have to use in the situation at hand.

Last night i didn't do too badly, however when too many HPs were dropping, I started panicking and that just made matters worse as I wasn't able to make a rational decision on what needed to be done. I will just need a lil more time to gain that confidence in my own abilities, for which I am grateful to the many members of my FC whom have been helping me through the learning of playing WHM. I will continue monitoring my runs and if I have any more questions, i will ask again ^_^

On a last note, this has been by far the friendliest and most helpful community I have encountered in any online play. Makes me feel tons better about still being a new player and having people support me. Thank you all <3

[Dmhlucky]

Glad you are feeling welcome! Its not always like that.
If you are that new still, don't minimize your options by removing Any tools you have. Cure 1 is your more efficient cure, lowest cost, and even in higher content you can effectively heal with Cure 1 and regen. (everything is situational)

For the most part, DPS shouldn't be taking too much damage, nor should you, unless the fights are AOE heavy, or non main target targetting bosses. Just keep regen up on everyone at all times(when you can), will also help with the stray hits. And will help you manage emergency situations better. Once you hit 50, keep medica 2 up also, for the same reasons.

Don't regen or heal between battles, its not needed usually, Esuna, yes depending on the Debuff. But one of your first actions in any fight, once the tank pulls hate is to regen them. Then you can sit and throw Aero/stone at the monsters if you want, and cure as needed.

Your cures should restore anywhere from 20-50% of a tanks HP, even at low levels. As silly as it sounds, if you aren't familiar with how much you cure, when not in a dungeon, just cast a few on yourself to get more familiar with the numbers. Back to what i was saying before, "know the fight" Know your tools.

It all comes with time and patience too. If they see you are trying, they are more likely to work with you, give pointers etc, then just flaming you and leaving.

[Gemina]

That being said, I see most people adjust the skills to suit their own play styles, as no general consensus can be reached regarding cure 1.

Cure 1 and Cure 2 need to be consolidated much like Stone Mastery for WHM. Right now, you do need to keep it on your hotbar/crossbar due to level sync. But if it was consolidated, trust me not many WHMs are going to miss it.

You don't need a consensus to know that Cure 2 is more GCD efficient. This is indisputable. Over healing isn't necessarily healing more than maximum HP will allow; it can also be used to describe unnecessary healing as would be the case when you are restoring more HP to the tank than they need to survive.

Your threshold for when it is time to drop some hard casted heals on the tank should not be constant. It is going to fluctuate based on your overall experience, on the duty, your familiarity with it, and who is tanking it. In something like 50/60 roulette, you can let your threshold fall as low as 30% and your tank might not even get that low throughout the entire encounter if you're optimizing your regens and ogcds. For a high-end duty you're doing your first time, it is probably best to raise that threshold since you don't know when a tank buster is coming, or if your tank will mitigate incoming damage.

In short, using x2 gcd Stone and x1 gcd Cure 2 will still bring the tank back above your threshold. If you use x3 gcd Cure 1, then you just lost out on 500 potency to the enemy @lv64. The faster things die, the less healing needed.

[Ilyrian]

I really don't want to be one of those healers that people dread playing with as im really hoping to make this my main job.

Learn the fights - obviously this comes with practice.

Watch the enemy cast bar - learn to precast. FFXIV is relatively slow in comparison to other MMOs so finding that rhythm is part of your job. There's a definite 'feel' to it - effected by latency, GCDs etc.

Get a thick skin. Don't take any nonsense. (Try not to give any either )

It will click eventually and I hope you find you enjoy it

[Dmhlucky]

And a few more things i forgot to mention. Keep up to date with gear and Job quests if you aren't already. It seems common sense, but i've ran across plenty of players who this is their first MMO and or RPG in general, and had no idea they had to upgrade gear, they just thought they had to grind to get better stats.

Even doing things as simple as the leveling roulette, will just help you get more comfortable with healing. Everyone starts out somewhere. Personally, i had the benefit, in that literally Every game ive ever played, even going back to Final Fantasy 1, i am a healer. Final Fantasy 11, the first MMO i played, Whm was my main job. It was a much more community based game back in the day, and Screwing up with a debuff removal could spell the difference between a successful kill or a wiped party. And there were much steeper penalties for messing up, ie a lot more hostility, and it was a lot more complex. There was literally a spell for every different status removes, poisona/poison, Paralyna/paralyze, slow/haste(erase), blindna/blind, viruna/virus/plague, silena/silence, you get the idea. Here we get Esuna which removes basically everything.
There were 6 single target cures, 5 AoE heals, 4 tiers of regen, situationally defensive spells, "barspells" which gave you a resistance to a stat or an element, boost spells which raised your stats. Also gear, in 14 you have a gearset. There is no need to change gear mid battle, in fact, you can't. In 11, as a mage, you used to have to carry 8+ weapons for the different elements.

Basically what i am saying, is you'll get used to it with time, and you'll look back on where you were now one day and see your progress.
On the other side, getting to 61 in 3 weeks is fast, So that may not be helping yourself.
You are doing more difficult content without the background knowledge and experience. You can and should also watch videos of the dungeons you plan to do. They often give pointers and things to look out for. When new instances come out, thats what most people do.

[Jukebox12]

cure 1 is only good if your really low on mp but cure 2 is still a better gcd usage on healing (non HoT). I got nothing to say

[Sylvain]

cure 1 is only good if your really low on mp but cure 2 is still a better gcd usage on healing (non HoT). I got nothing to say

That's a good way to go

As a WHM you shouldn't struggle with mp but if you just died, have no access to Thin Air, Lucid Dream, Assize still on CD and well, the tank needs healing.
Better do CureI than CureII, you'll get more heal/mp

You can also use CureI to top off a dps missing a few hp (assuming that hp loss would be enough make the next AoE lethal)

So, in an ideal scenario you do not want to use CureI, but scenario are not always (if ever in pug) ideal, so obviously, you need to adapt.

[Jukebox12]

That's a good way to go

As a WHM you shouldn't struggle with mp but if you just died, have no access to Thin Air, Lucid Dream, Assize still on CD and well, the tank needs healing.
Better do CureI than CureII, you'll get more heal/mp

You can also use CureI to top off a dps missing a few hp (assuming that hp loss would be enough make the next AoE lethal)

So, in an ideal scenario you do not want to use CureI, but scenario are not always (if ever in pug) ideal, so obviously, you need to adapt.

I really don't know why you reply to the quote but oh well