Which Job should we raise first?

[ItMe]

Raise whoever has the best glam.

[Gemina]

I think the first go to in a multi-kill situation is to just use LB3. I will also mention that you should make it a habit to raise a player as soon as they fall, whether swiftcast is up or not. This will help, though not prevent these situations from getting overly out of hand. If LB3 it isn't up, and you have to prioritize your raises, it is entirely situational.

Posters make some good points such as placing lower priority on rezzing a player who already has a weakness debuff. However, you might have to account for that particular player could be down because someone else screwed up. In which case you could potentially have your strongest DPS despite having the debuff sitting on the mat. I bring up such intangibles because you can't really factor them into your decision. In these cases, you simply raise the player 'you feel' is the optimal choice for the given situation.

By rule of thumb, you need at least one tank, and one healer up at all times to prevent wiping. Sustainability is further increased with a second tank, and a second healer, but you can forgo one of these in just about every casual encounter in the game. Keep that in mind. In tougher content where there are tank and healer specific mechanics, things can get messy real quick if one or more are down when the mechanic executes. Other than that advice, all that is left is to use your best judgement, which will get better over time.

Best of luck!

[Sylvain]

Assuming your refering to an Ex fight, i assest the current situation

Assuming we have a dead : dps, tank, healer

I would ask myself :
Is there a tank buster requiring a tank a swap soon : if yes -> Rez the tank

Is there a combo of raid burster that I feel I won't be able to heal alone or a specific mechanic requiring both healers to be alive (lb2 newest Ex) : if yes -> Rez healer

Nothing is about to threaten the safety of my group and I can safely Rez all 3 players back to back : I start with dps (even more so if it's a SMN / RDM)

Multiple dps are dead : I Rez the best one

A dps keeps dying and him being dead increase the odd of success of my party : wops.. I think I removed my Rez from my bar by accident

So... In short, if there's no need for a tank/heal I simply go for a dps.
If to many people are dead then I Rez people who can Rez so we raise faster.

Regarding lb3 : if a mechanic requires 8 players NOW and I can't rez 2-3 in Time, i hit the button. If 3 dps are dead and I'm positive we won't need the lb3 heal latter on something potentially more deadly, I lb3 heal. A lb3 melee doesn't do enough to compensate 3 dps with Rez sickness... Especially if you consider it will take you some time to Rez all 3 of them

[Hysterior]

Assuming everyone but me is dead, I would raise:
- At least one tank so I don't tank myself and solo heal for a bit
- I would either raise the co-healer or a RDM to help raising the rest if no LB3 in sight
- Continue with the other tank and SMN
- The rest

[ty_taurus]

Something else to consider is who's performing to what capacity on your team. Sure, SMN can help you raise allies, but if that SMN has been dying constantly throughout the encounter, then perhaps it's better to raise a more competent DPS and just handle the raising yourself. Post 64, RDM's Verraise is fairly unlimited in terms of doublecasting, so even if your RDM is incompetent, they should hopefully be able to at least raise a couple allies if the situation is dire.

[Veis_Alveare]

I really disagree with the whole healers > tanks > dps idea. Basically the only time I stick to that (and even then quite loosely) is when I'm very new to a fight and unsure of my ability to keep myself/the party alive on my own. Every healer has the ability to solo heal everything that isn't Ultimate and that goes double for non-Savage stuff.

I tend to prioritize the strongest dps (not by job, I just keep an eye on the threat throughout and if more than one person is dead I'll stick to raising the one who was the highest first, it's pretty easy when I'm already looking at that for AST cards) with the exception of needing a certain person up for a certain mechanic.

Like oh, is there a dual tankbuster like in e1/e2? Well then if that might be coming up I'll raise a tank first. Is there a healer specific mechanic like in the Chaos fight that might confuse a tank or dps if they get it? I might raise my cohealer just to avoid that targeting someone else.

In general it pays off more to raise dps first, you're getting more damage out of your MP that way. Plus if a tank or healer actually manages to die with all the mitigation and restoration they have access to chances are they aren't exactly going to be performing amazingly for their role. Everyone has first times of course but that often isn't the case.

If you're unsure of your ability to carry raise a healer first if you really think you need to but you'd be surprised how little actual damage comes out in most casual content. It's literally the difference between (as a WHM) being able to heal with just lillies and oGCDs and having to occasionally toss a Medica 2 out or maybe Regen a tank.

[LeonKeyh]

I really disagree with the whole healers > tanks > dps idea. Basically the only time I stick to that (and even then quite loosely) is when I'm very new to a fight and unsure of my ability to keep myself/the party alive on my own. Every healer has the ability to solo heal everything that isn't Ultimate and that goes double for non-Savage stuff.

I tend to prioritize the strongest dps (not by job, I just keep an eye on the threat throughout and if more than one person is dead I'll stick to raising the one who was the highest first, it's pretty easy when I'm already looking at that for AST cards) with the exception of needing a certain person up for a certain mechanic.

Like oh, is there a dual tankbuster like in e1/e2? Well then if that might be coming up I'll raise a tank first. Is there a healer specific mechanic like in the Chaos fight that might confuse a tank or dps if they get it? I might raise my cohealer just to avoid that targeting someone else.

In general it pays off more to raise dps first, you're getting more damage out of your MP that way. Plus if a tank or healer actually manages to die with all the mitigation and restoration they have access to chances are they aren't exactly going to be performing amazingly for their role. Everyone has first times of course but that often isn't the case.

If you're unsure of your ability to carry raise a healer first if you really think you need to but you'd be surprised how little actual damage comes out in most casual content. It's literally the difference between (as a WHM) being able to heal with just lillies and oGCDs and having to occasionally toss a Medica 2 out or maybe Regen a tank.

I'm not sure that this argument really tracks. Content is easy enough to solo heal, but there are more than 1 person on the floor and we need to discuss rez order? Sure, it's likely more so due to people making mistakes than a complete failure by the healers. Rezzing the healer not only allows you to mitigate _some_ of the mistakes that people are obviously making, but also halves the amount of rezzing that needs to be done by you. From there, if you're able to solo heal, then you can spend 2,500 rezzing the other healer and the other healer can rez the DPS that are on the floor. THAT would be a better use of personal MP and ultimately the better long term play.

I'm sure that there's specific instances where what you're doing is right, but I don't think that you can argue that rezzing DPS first in a situation where there are healers, tanks, and DPS dead in a fight is a good general rule.

[Veis_Alveare]

I'm not sure that this argument really tracks. Content is easy enough to solo heal, but there are more than 1 person on the floor and we need to discuss rez order? Sure, it's likely more so due to people making mistakes than a complete failure by the healers. Rezzing the healer not only allows you to mitigate _some_ of the mistakes that people are obviously making, but also halves the amount of rezzing that needs to be done by you. From there, if you're able to solo heal, then you can spend 2,500 rezzing the other healer and the other healer can rez the DPS that are on the floor. THAT would be a better use of personal MP and ultimately the better long term play.

I'm sure that there's specific instances where what you're doing is right, but I don't think that you can argue that rezzing DPS first in a situation where there are healers, tanks, and DPS dead in a fight is a good general rule.

Expecting DF healers to be able to comprehend the idea that they need to rez someone else (while simultaneously not dying again) is a big ask based on what I've seen, especially if we narrow the scope to DF healers who manage to die in casual content.

Living dps should be contributing a ton more damage than healers or tanks, you will get a faster kill if you prioritize raising dps first. As I said this is contingent on your confidence in your ability to reliably solo heal whatever content this is, if you aren't sure by all means dont risk it. If you are then a dead DF healer should be the lowest on your priority list.

[LeonKeyh]

Expecting DF healers to be able to comprehend the idea that they need to rez someone else (while simultaneously not dying again) is a big ask based on what I've seen, especially if we narrow the scope to DF healers who manage to die in casual content.

Living dps should be contributing a ton more damage than healers or tanks, you will get a faster kill if you prioritize raising dps first. As I said this is contingent on your confidence in your ability to reliably solo heal whatever content this is, if you aren't sure by all means dont risk it. If you are then a dead DF healer should be the lowest on your priority list.

That's certainly fair I suppose. Like I said, I just feel like a lot of these instances seem to be anecdotal (albeit frequent, I'm sure).

I agree that you're pushing for them to be "better" than just good though. It's extremely important to understand what is happening to be the most efficient with your gameplay, and raising a good DPS would be more efficient than raising a mediocre healer if, like you said, the healer is confident enough to solo heal. I think that would be a good thing for them to strive for and I understand why you're pushing that.

This is a joke... right?

In my line of work, we call that "Over Engineering" .....

[Ezlin]

Note that you can actually sort your party list in the game's options such that certain jobs appear before other jobs. See below. My party list is sorted by:

Healers
Tanks
RDM
SMN
With the rest of the DPS jobs sorted by their theoretical DPS and utility.

My rez macro then executes /psort and casts Raise first on my selected target, and then moves down the party list until it finds a party member that can be raised. Since the first attempt is on my selected target I can manually prioritize another player if necessary. Eg; RDM is below level 64 so I manually select the SMN.

Without Swiftcast, Raise takes an eternity to cast. If the DPS are down then most likely mistakes have been made, and more mistakes will probably be made during the glacial pace at which Raise casts.

Here is my raise macro:

/merror off
/psort
/macrolock
/ac "Raise" <t>
/ac "Raise" <2>
/ac "Raise" <3>
/ac "Raise" <4>
/ac "Raise" <5>
/ac "Raise" <6>
/ac "Raise" <7>
/ac "Raise" <8>
/p Raise <t> <wait.1>
/micon "Raise"

The party sort option is located in Character Options -> UI Settings -> from there, choose "Party List" near the top of the options window. Now at the bottom of that window click Role Sort Settings.

/psort does what it sounds like, it sorts your party list according to the aforementioned setting.

/macrolock prevents other macros from executing until this one finishes. Thus no other macro can cancel or interrupt the raise macro.

Combined with macrolock, the wait of 1 second prevents spamming your party if you quickly tap the raise two or three times in a row.

/micon of course just sets the icon of the macro.

edit:

/merror off prevents the macro from spamming you with unnecessary error messages.

and also, adding a quick line to /party chat informs your cohealer about the raise so that they can avoid burning a Swiftcast.