To place fairy or not & fairy's heal range questions

[Renryuu]

Hiya, so I should preface and say that I'm mostly a casual player, I don't do Ultimate or Savage raids and most of my time is spent with dungeons, normal raids, or 24 man alliance raids. I was wanting to ask, is it better to preplace the fairy or am I fine just letting it follow me? Also what is the actual healing range of the fairy? I know embrace says it has a range of 32y but when I am at that distance and healing, my fairy just sits there and does nothing.

[Mesarthim]

Adapt to the situation.

-Room Size
-Party location

If you and your fairy are out of range then you should place it in range, or move in range yourself if it's an aoe heavy fight. Place is a skill you should make use of more. If you need your fairy to follow you again then hit heel afterward (especially after a fight ends in a dungeon).

[KDSilver]

As Mesarthim said, Room size and party location. If the entire party has to stack in a certain area for a mechanic for example.
But in general, mid is a good spot.

However... and especially in 24m raids, arena are sometimes really wide, and your caster/ranged dps will probably for a lot of them be so far away that your fairy's abilities (dawn, fey blessing...) won't reach them.
But you can't place the fairy accordingly to their random positioning (since they ignore healers range). But just keep that in mind that you can't totally ajust her position for everyone.
Mid is often a good place. Just never let her follow you automatically.
I don't know what she's doing right now, but before, a fairy following you each time you move was a fairy who couldn't cast her embraces peacefully.

[Risvertasashi]

Hiya, so I should preface and say that I'm mostly a casual player, I don't do Ultimate or Savage raids and most of my time is spent with dungeons, normal raids, or 24 man alliance raids. I was wanting to ask, is it better to preplace the fairy or am I fine just letting it follow me? Also what is the actual healing range of the fairy? I know embrace says it has a range of 32y but when I am at that distance and healing, my fairy just sits there and does nothing.

In dungeons, honestly, you can just be lazy and let it follow you. That said, it may be helpful to place the fairy to ensure everyone is hit... without you yourself having to move (and wait for the fairy to catch up). Usually I'll put the fairy on the boss's butt - the most common party stacking location - or at some midpoint between the party members. In alliance raids, I'll place wherever the part tends to congregate.

As for healing range - In line with the above, I try to keep the party, or as much of it as possible, within 15y - so they'll be hit with whispering dawn and other aoes. I haven't actually tested the limits of the auto healing range (It used to be you could order the fairy to heal someone out of range and she would fly over to them, heal, then fly back, so maybe the 30y is a holdover from those days?) - but I haven't noticed any auto embrace issues for those within 15y, so I think that's probably a safe bet.

Edit: So I did a quick test - using Sacred Soil to gauge range, it seems auto embrace happens up to about 20y out. It's definitely less than the 30y listed in the ability tooltip.