A nervous healer needing some tips

[Lynesse]

Hello

So I just started healing on Conjurer, after years and years just playing as a DPS I finally took the plunge and tried healing.

I'm a nervous healer but I have been doing alright so far, until Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak I was able to judge when to DPS and when to heal quite well and keep the tank alive when they did big pulls. But Tam Tara Deepcroft is when I started having problems, I joined a party in progress, so the previous healer had left for what ever reason. We got to the last boss and omg everyone was getting hit and the tank went down so fast I had no time to think. I panicked when I saw everyone having poison and everyone getting hit.

Admittedly I then left rather quickly after that convinced that I would get blamed I was much too nervous to see what they would say, which is silly really I think the pressure got to me, after all I'm used to being a DPS with the only job of hitting stuff til it dies.

I do enjoy healing, I just need some tips for it and a little bit of help.

I'm going to echo what others have said: This sounds like the problem was the team, not you.

Try not to let this kill your confidence. There was probably a reason the other healer had left.

That's the biggest help I can give you: You don't know yet when something is your fault and when it's not. But it's safe to assume this wasn't your fault, and you can't be blamed, especially as a new healer.

In these types of situations, you have to slow down your DPS or not DPS at all. There have been a few low level dungeons recently where I've needed to stop DPSing to conserve my MP because the tank was struggling and the DPS didn't know their rotations.

You can't learn how to play at the highest level when you are with people who play at a much lower level. c:

[GenBroadaxe]

Everyone has made great points so the only thing I could add would be this: Don't feel that you have to lock yourself into Conjurer if you want to heal. Try out Scholar and Astro too because you may find one fits your play style better or it just 'clicks' in a more satisfying way. I got White Mage to almost 70 before I decided to go back and really feel out the others and I'm really glad I did because I found that I LOVE how Scholar plays. It's shields feel more proactive to me (no need to heal if you can negate damage!) which clicked and play with more confidence.

Conversely my friend who is one of the best healer mains I know prefers how Astro plays (with White Mage sitting at #2) over Scholar. So give them all a try and have fun healing! It can be challenging, but incredibly rewarding once you're comfortable with it.

[Gemina]

If the dungeon in question was Maws and the tank's HP was depleting quickly, he was likely pulling too many enemies while being undergeared. If it was during the last boss, he was probably standing in the poison puddles the boss leaves behind. The poison stacks from the exploding pods don't tick for a whole lot, but they can be a nuisance if everyone has stacks and you have to resort to using Medica to keep up HP bars. The tail of that boss needs to go down asap or he will leave the truly threatening poison puddles all over the place.

As a healer in that fight, stay far away from the exploding pods while keeping yourself in range to heal the group, especially the tank. You don't have regen at this level so keep using Cure 1 to keep the tank up while staying out of the bad stuff. If you do take damage, prioritize yourself over everyone else. If another player dies, try not to panic. Make sure your health and the tank's health are ok, breath easy and use Swiftcast; target the player that is KO'd and then cast resurrect. It will take a few seconds for the player to rise, and get a little health back. Use those few seconds to toss a GCD or two curing the tank, and then cure the resurrected player. The player you bring back will get a buff that grants them about 5 seconds of immunity so long as they don't take an action, so you do have some time to top them off.

The last boss of Maws is one of those bosses where you want to focus on healing, especially when you're starting out. Don't feel bad about holding off on offensive skills during this particular fight. Adding in DPS while healing comes with your comfort level. You will likely over heal a good bit while establishing this comfort, but it will come around when you get better at gauging HP bars and how quickly they go down along with how much HP your abilities restore.

It's good you are taking things slow, and that what these kind of dungeons help players get used to before things get a little more serious. CNJ/WHM is a good class to progress with and learn the in and outs of healing as you don't need to focus on micro managing a fairy and cards like SCH and AST do.

You'll be fine, trust me. Just don't give up and try not to get too discouraged when bad things happen. Keep us updated with your progress as you progress through more dungeons, and we will help anyway we can.

[Rilifane]

The best advice I was giving when it comes to getting into a new role: do every dungeon until you're satisfied with your performance.
The very first time I did Toto-Rak back in ARR I was in a similiar situation: the tank dropped pretty fast, the group took a lot of damage and add to that that my positioning wasn't always on point and I didn't get everyone with every Medica. So I ran it again. Healers have really short queue times, so leveling them by spamming dungeons is pretty fast and teaches you a lot.

Right now I'm getting more into AST and though I already know all the dungeons from playing WHM, sometimes I feel like I underperformed. That doesn't even has to mean someone died or something. Things like not drawing on time, having CDs left unused too often or handling a mechanic not as well as I could have is enough for me to run it again. There are plenty of mechanics and different bossfight designs across the low-level dungeons so they're pretty neat to get used to lots of dots flying around, unavoidable party wide aoes, add handling, interacting with objects etc.
While the toolkit and gameplay of WHM doesn't change much at lower levels it's still a good idea to go back into a dungeon below your level with certain skills locked until you are comfortable with all the previous skills.

Things you should focus on improving:
- general overview of the fights, how everyone is positioned etc.
- using your cds, don't fall into the into the trap of saving everything for "oh shit"-situations. Prevent them instead of reacting to them
- recognizing and healing according to damage patterns instead of hp % alone. Some tanks drop faster and 40% is already a critical threshold, others drop super slow and are self-reliant, so even 20% isn't worrying
- balancing resource management vs gcd efficiency. Potent spells are more expensive but if you have more than enough mp, use them. No use in hoarding them. On the other hand know how to go back to mp efficient healing if fights take super long and you're running out of mp
- and of course balancing healing vs dpsing

There will always be hiccups, either because you lack routine or because someone in your group screwed up. Doesn't mean you're a bad healer. I recently ran a whole dungeon without Sect on my AST. Completely forgot about turning it back on after I ran a <30 dungeon and it was disabled. That was one hell of a facepalm moment when I noticed it during endboss fight.

Also, I found it easier to get into new jobs by having every skill already on my hotbars with their final hotkey, but that's up to personal preference.
Even if they are locked and will be locked for another 40 levels, I put every skill the class has and uses on a slot where I intend to keep it. Prevents a lot of "whoop misclicked" when learning new skills and reorganizing your hotkeys every few levels, it also gives you a good overview of how many skills you will have to handle and wether you can reach them easily enough according to their importance. I leave an empty spot for role actions as they can't be added before you unlock them.

[JunKriid]

If you are updating gear I can almost promise it will be an issue with others not updating their gear. For example, I was leveling my AST in a 40 dungeon and I immediately noticed the tank was being auto hit for about 15-20% per mob. They weren't cycling any 60-90sec defensive cooldowns each pull. I had to spend 90% of my ocd/gcds on healing not actually DPSing, so everything went slower as well. I was using MP regen tools constantly. Then I examined them and saw they had like 20 levels lower gear.

Then you get a dungeon where the tank does the opposite, you only have to throw an off heal and you can help the rest of your GCDs with DPSing and making the run faster/smoother. Tanks updating their gear at least every 5-10 levels makes a HUGE impact. Also DPS should pretty much be taking no damage on trash mobs, if you're stressing healing them all the time don't worry, it's them not moving out of aoe/standing in front of mobs etc.

Also if you're learning a new healer, there are heaps of 10-15min videos on youtube. I watched one on AST while I was healing a dungeon and picked up a few tricks/insights. The card system with 3 different withdraws seemed confusing but after a day or so reading/playing now it seems like second nature.

[Lynesse]

To give a bit of an anecdote. I wiped my party in Ghimlyt Dark last night. It's a dungeon people characterize as easy because the pulls are gated and the bosses are gimmicky. But it has about three mechanics that can take you by surprise.

I've actually died to all three of them.

There are various reasons for why, too. Some of them have nothing to do with the mechanics themselves.

I feel pretty invincible on WHM. Sometimes I forget to look after myself because 99% of the time we can kind of lol at things and not worry too much. Parties tend to panic, and then I mother them too much, fall out of position, etc. And then... poof. Floor Mage.

It doesn't happen often, but when it does happen, it's easy to blame myself.

Last night was practically the first time ever that I've been the sole reason we've wiped. Which I say with a giant asterisk -- if people weren't taking damage or moving too far away from me to be healed, I may not have wiped us. I take responsibility, though, because I still failed the mechanic!

Really, just no one was available to save me when I made a mistake.

Stuff like this is going to happen. You're everyone's safety net, but you have none of your own without a SMN/RDM in the party.

If I were a DPS, it wouldn't even be worth talking about. If I were a tank, I would've used Hallowed Ground and been like, "I'm really good at my job." (Not a shot at tanks! I'm growing to main PLD! Just a lot of mechanics are easier when you can... ignore them. xP)

Being a healer comes with a lot of added pressure, but everyone I've encountered has been super understanding. No one really seemed to care that I went "braindead" last night (which was actually a combination of nervousness, everyone else being out of position, trying too hard to mother everyone, and not figuring out a mechanic in that time!)

I have edited this post so many times. More editing, for the sake of teaching what I want to teach properly and giving an honest look into the day-to-day of a DF healer. x-x

[Anya_Synia]

So I didn't give up and this time went back into it with my fc it was so much easier this time I realised the previous party were failing mechanics.

I am not nervous because of trying to dps, I main Summoner so that has taught me to think outside the box, the most exciting memories of being a summoner is summoning Titan when the tank has left or raising the healer and replenishing their much needed mp. I get nervous of the responsibility, it's alright to die as a dps but it's a wipe if you die as a healer.

I have gotten to 35 and practiced Titan a few times now taken on the tip to run dungeons a few times. Titan hits hard and got critised for not rezzing someone who fell off, I told them I couldn't target them. But thanks for the tips of starting casting before a big attack I'm quite ok with Titan now.

I'm now starting to now purposefully not say I'm new so I can practice bigger pulls since the community is so nice they give me little ones, but I want to push myself to improve. Ofcourse if we die I will mention it.

I'm now a little nervous about getting to aurum vale I think I will call on my fc to help with that one.

Thank you for all the tips I do stay calm now and try not to panic and focus more on healing myself and the tank first.

[griffinborn]

Oh yeah, you'll always hate Aurum Vale with PUGs. It's fun with FC though.

[hynaku]

My suggestion is if first time heal the tank in a instance and they can't keep agro off you leave. Today did msq roulette and heal one of the 2 tanks and every mob there attacking comes after me and you get killed. When that happens just leave the party means tanks don't know how to hold there enmity.

[Anienai]

Wait til the Vault.



edit: Do not regen the tank before a pull.