Disheartened healer annoyed with Shadowbringers' difficulty

[HyoMinPark]

For WHM, on trash packs you should be using Holy as opposed to DoTing every mob with Aero II—the Aeros just aren’t worth the cast compared to what Holy can do for you. Holy can offer you a Stun for up to 7 seconds before the mobs become immune to it, which means your tank can have a much needed breather when it comes to auto-attacks. It’s excellent mitigation that the other two healers sadly lack. What I tend to do is hardcast the first Holy (tank will have Divine Benison + Regen on him already, or Divine Benison+Regen+Asylum if the pull is relatively large), Swiftcast the second Holy, oGCD heal the tank if need be (usually with Tetra, but sometimes I have to GCD with Solace), and then start casting the third Holy. By the time the third one hits, the mobs will most likely be Stun immune. I keep the tank targeted while I’m Holying so that I can throw heals on them quickly without having to cycle through to find them.

When you have to heal, prioritize your oGCDs first (in this case, Tetra and Benediction); then move to your Afflatus Solace if you have the lilies, since it is instant-cast, and you won’t have to wait for the cast time to go off first for the heal to land. Only after those options are exhausted should you default to Cure II—don’t try to get by with just Cure I. Its potency will be too low during large trash packs to keep up with the incoming damage on your tank. If Divine Benison comes off cooldown and the trash mobs are still alive, throw it back on the tank to add in another buffer while you get another heal off.

It’s also possible that you have landed with tanks that are either pulling too much for their gear, or they aren’t adequately using their cooldowns. Even with heal spamming, you will only be able to hold out so much with the latter type of tank before they bite the dust. And that has always been the case.

For your Esuna, unless the DoT is one that ticks super hard and needs to be cleansed, you can mitigate by just casting Medica II (for party-wide DoTs) or giving a regen (single-target DoT). Take the last boss of the level 73 dungeon: it places a Bleed on the party, but the Bleed doesn’t tick hard enough to warrant 4 Esunas. Instead, a single cast of Medica II will be less casts and less MP cost, and will accomplish the same thing: the HoT negates the DoT.

[Peach64]

If you are struggling to get the mechanics down as a healer, you shouldn't really be dps'ing much. Try to optimize your healing first for the dungeon. WHM is the best class to heal dungeons with right now, but as some said, HP went up a lot this early expansion whilst the +healing didn't increase much more, forcing healers to heal a bit more. Ironically, I've found Trust NPC Thancred (tank) easier to heal than real player tanks. Outside a few wipes, which was mostly my fault for not knowing mechanics, I did not have much problems healing Trust dungeons all the way to 80, especially not as a WHM.

[Risvertasashi]

If you're really struggling, gear is the likely culprit. That can be both your own and the tank's.

If every time you look at the tank you're panicking at his HP level, try moving your party frame closer to the center of the screen. And lastly... yes, there's a very strong push for healers to DPS. But if you're struggling, don't, just focus on healing. At the end of the day a party can get by without healer DPS, they can't get by without healer heals.

Good luck out there.

[Urthdigger]

If you're really struggling, gear is the likely culprit. That can be both your own and the tank's.

If every time you look at the tank you're panicking at his HP level, try moving your party frame closer to the center of the screen. And lastly... yes, there's a very strong push for healers to DPS. But if you're struggling, don't, just focus on healing. At the end of the day a party can get by without healer DPS, they can't get by without healer heals.

Good luck out there.

This. There's a lot of tanks who are like "Yeah I'm just gonna go to 80 on Augmented Scaevan gear, it's fine." If they bother to augment it at all. And then they try to do mass pulls on top of it. I'm willing to bet this is where the vast majority of your issues are coming from.

[KDSilver]

SHB is not more difficult.

What might make you have this sentiment might be low gear + learning the new mechanics (from dungeons + your class).
+ if your tank isn't properly using his defensive CD.

[Tharnor]

I am not sure what people thought was going to happen with the dps/healer debate and SE clearly siding with healing. They made healing harder. Things hit harder more often and our heals did not scale well going into the expansion. I cant speak for ast but whm and sch have no issues healing when properly geared and played. That is with the normal pull everything strat on trash. People that were keeping themselves busy should not have had problems adapting. But, surprise surprise the "I only heal" crowd have issues now.

[Ayer2015]

Healing will get easier as players over gear the content we are running. If its not fun currently, give healing a try again in 5.01 after people are in raid gear. The game has awful level sync, so things are generally easier the further into the patch cycle we get.

[Alael]

Um, hi everyone! I'm very apprehensively posting this. I kind of expect to get verbally mauled for it.

I think you are too much obsessed and focus too much on one things at once, you should try to relax a bit more there are always 2 healer :P

[MrSmiley]

I dont get this, my whm casts more glares than heals in both dungeons and ex, maybe your tanks suck and arent using their defensive cd's properly. I'm mad because they gutted our buttons but still didn't give us anything to do in the 70% downtime.

edit: tank cooldowns matter more now, its is readily apparent when they don't use them properly

[EaMett]

Like others have said.

The content isn't much harder than what SB had to offer on launch. The forum had similar complaints back then too.

Some tanks outright suck. I've run dungeons with tanks that didn't mitigate a single thing. Not even TBN... So clearly not always on you.

It's also possible that you're rusty and/or haven't found your healing rotation yet with the new skills. Don't forget to place solace on your bar (I did). Holy gives you a fair amount of time with no healing required. Basically DB, regen, asylum, assize, Holy stun, Bene, tetra, solace are enough options to allow you to holy spam like crazy. Holy spam will also help things die before your tank runs out of mitigation options. Because if he does you'll be chain healing the bugger for sure.

Eventually things will get easier with gear. Already, the extra skills you get make the later dungeons easier imo than the first few. Don't despair!