WHM: how to?

[Arale]

Ok so, here's the story. I've avoided EXP parties for the longest time, mostly ever in fact. I decided to try one today as a R37 WHM. We go somewhere with lots of ra[ptors, I want to say it was Broken Water or somesuch. After about 45 minutes of things, a few party members break off from our main group, try to solo a few raptors and die. I don't get why this happened, but after it did happen I basically got the 'you suck at WHM' indication from them. I'm wholly willing to accept that it was my first go and I'm not perfect but could I have been that bad if:

Constantly casted regen on the tank.
SP Cura/Stoneskin and sometimes Regen when it was necessary.
Kept my MP in check.

The only thing I didn't do a lot of was cast offensive magic, though I did throw a stone sometimes but other then that, this is all I did, and we had few deaths. Am I missing something here? Any tips or pointers would be appreciated, but I really think I did ok enough. :|

[Denmo]

Ok so, here's the story. I've avoided EXP parties for the longest time, mostly ever in fact. I decided to try one today as a R37 WHM. We go somewhere with lots of ra[ptors, I want to say it was Broken Water or somesuch. After about 45 minutes of things, a few party members break off from our main group, try to solo a few raptors and die. I don't get why this happened, but after it did happen I basically got the 'you suck at WHM' indication from them. I'm wholly willing to accept that it was my first go and I'm not perfect but could I have been that bad if:

Constantly casted regen on the tank.
SP Cura/Stoneskin and sometimes Regen when it was necessary.
Kept my MP in check.

The only thing I didn't do a lot of was cast offensive magic, though I did throw a stone sometimes but other then that, this is all I did, and we had few deaths. Am I missing something here? Any tips or pointers would be appreciated, but I really think I did ok enough. :|

Based on what you're saying, those players sound like ****heads.

So long as you're keeping everyone alive, you're doing your job.

[Estellios]

You were doing fine, sounds like the party was dumb. It's a WHM's job to heal but the rest of the party has to do their part to minimize the damage they take. Since you were fighting raptors, I'm guessing they all crowded around the back of them and got murdered by their Scythe Tail (I think thats the name of it). Also, at the end of the day, sometimes the stars will align and shit will hit the fan for whatever reason.

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

Before they can criticize you on your playing, they need to consider themselves. For them to break off the way they did is bad tactics.

In an EXP party, no one person is responsible for the death of everyone.

If your party members weren't doing it already, they need to learn how to dodge Foul Breath (frontal cone), Tail Swipe (rear arc), stun to stop these moves from going off, finish a target before moving to the next. If your party was each playing hero, there's a good chance three raptors could trigger their special attacks all at once, in which case, is death for everyone in range.

Chances are, a lot of your party members did not have updated equipment. Running around with a level 30 weapon and maybe some level 1 through 20 armor, dated accessories or nothing at all. They need to take responsibility for themselves as well.

Raptors are probably one of the worst enemies fight-wise to party up against, but because they used to be the best and there's such a wide range of levels for them, it's all a lot of people know.

[Arale]

That was happening a lot, and it didn't seem like there was any real...synergy in it. We just went from group to group and eventually a lot of health bars dropped when the WS/Flame attacks went off. I wasn't aware that raptors were a bad enemy though. I'll keep that in mind for sure. I'll give a few other spots a shot, but I'm glad it wasn't me. At first I thought...maybe they split up to bring the mobs over here, so you know, we could keep chaining. But they just stayed around 2x my cast range, way off and died. :/

Anyhoo, live and learn. Thanks all for the replies.

[Sol_Aureus]

From the sound of it your party was being bad, they shouldn't be getting hit by flame breath or scythe tail. That being said, from what limited information you gave, I can give a few suggestions to improve yourself:

• Curaga
  Too many WHMs forget about this spell or stay away from it because of fear of enmity generation. Curaga is amazing, use it often. It's a little MP heavy, but WHMs should never have MP problems between Blissful Mind and Shroud of Saints. Don't fire it off immediately of course, but don't forget that you have it.
  
  
• Sacred Prism
  I noticed you said you used Sacred Prism Cura/Stoneskin and Regen when necessary. While Sacred Prism Cure/Cura is definitely nice (especially Cura) if more than 2 party members take AoE damage so Curaga won't hit them all, the vast majority of the time I prioritize Sacred Prism Regen over Sacred Prism Cure/Cura. The reason being Regen is the most potent and efficient healing tool you have as a WHM. It lasts for 45 seconds so keeping AoE Regen on your DDs significantly reduce the amount of HP you have to cure them by and increase their surviveability a lot. Stoneskin is definitely a good tool to use as well along with Sacred Prism, so keep that up.
  
  
• Benediction
  Even worse than Curaga, people are stuck in the FFXI mindset of 2 hours: the "BUT WHAT IF I NEED IT LATER IN AN EMERGENCY?! D:" mindset. The recast on Benediction is 15 minutes, it's very viable to use in standard situations. My rule of thumb is if 3 party members or more are in yellow, Benediction. Don't forget you have it, and remember that it's useless if you never use it.

[Estellios]

To expand on Curaga, it splits a certain amount of HP healed between 2+ targets, healing the lowest% HP targets first until that amount runs out. For me it heals similar HP as Cura if it only hits 2 people. For that reason alone, it's slightly mroe efficient than 2 Curas by itself, but there is also a lot more utility for it. Since it splits a set amount of healing, you can use it to top off the entire party if they've taken a little bit of damage, and if you practice using it you can get used to just how far you can stretch it and adapt to using it based on the situation.

[Arale]

Mmm, to be fair though, the party was 35-40 range in levels, so I did not possess curaga.

A few LS mates told me to try SP Regen as well, so next time I'll try that. The main issue though was that 1-2 of those abilities that the raptors were using kept hitting 4 or 5 people, so regen wasn't going to really cut it in my mind (hence Cura's) :/

[Sol_Aureus]

Mmm, to be fair though, the party was 35-40 range in levels, so I did not possess curaga.

A few LS mates told me to try SP Regen as well, so next time I'll try that. The main issue though was that 1-2 of those abilities that the raptors were using kept hitting 4 or 5 people, so regen wasn't going to really cut it in my mind (hence Cura's) :/

Which is perfectly reasonable. Like most people in this thread said, the majority of the fault was with your party, even if you did do SP Regen, their inability to not stand on the side of raptors would kill them anyway. You did fine

[Mikita]

Many people prefer to point fingers and blame others rather than accept their share of responsibility.

From what you wrote, it sounds like you did your job.
They just took more monsters than the party could handle as they were trying to chain them for EXP.

I would chalk it up to experience, and remember to avoid certain people if they show themselves to have bad attitudes.