Is healing supposed to be this...hard?

[Riluske]

I've played for a while, but took a break after finishing Shadowbringers. I came back about two months ago.

I have always loved healing in this game. It was awesome balancing DPS and heals as SCH, and I felt like WHM was easy mode. I healed a bit, then just ran dps for most of the dungeon.

Now, I feel like I'm constantly pushed to the limit. Tanks run right to a boss's door in dungeons, dragging all the mobs with them. If I stop healing them for a second, they are dead. I can't switch to damage spells until just a few mobs are alive.

I used to get 1-3 commendations a run. Now I'm lucky if I get 1. I just feel like a crappy healer at this point. I don't want to risk DPSing because it usually means the tank just dies and then we wipe, but if I'm healing the whole time, I feel like a beginner healer that can't balance dps and heals. It's just not fun anymore.

Is this just the state of healers right now or do I really need to rework my play style?

[Absurdity]

I'd say it's a combination of several things. You probably just need to get used to it again, those tanks might have terrible cooldown usage and therefore take way more damage than they should and since you stopped early into the expansion your gear is probably also lagging behind. As most of the threads in here show, healing is currently so easy that a lot of people actually get bored of spamming their one dps button for more than 60% of a fight.

[Risvertasashi]

As most of the threads in here show, healing is currently so easy that a lot of people actually get bored of spamming their one dps button for more than 60% of a fight.

And 60% is putting it lightly. Just checked one of my e8s kills - 80% of my GCDs are damage, a lot of the healing GCDs are regen, and that's with room to optimize further... bet the earlier fights are even more than 80% of my uptime on DPS.

...But leveling is a different ball game. In leveling dungeons, the sync points are low enough - and then combine that with lower end gear both the healer and tank might have - and sometimes big pulls can be a struggle, yeah. Small pulls basically never are even with crap gear now.

[Recon1o6]

The quality of tank players has dropped drastically, most don't bother using cds anymore, healers also have so many ogcds they can pop them off when tank hp is lower.

Finally it is probably a bit of rust. Healer's have been complaining all shb that healing is too easy and mind numbing with between 60 and 80% of fights being spamming broil/malefic/glare. Replace that with aoe for dungeon mobs

remember though, you don't need to top them off, just keep them alive. Its on the tank to dodge aoes

[glamazon]

You say this but when people don’t dodge aoes that makes it that much harder to save them. Nothing is worse for me as a healer than letting someone die.

So at the start of a run I use the first couple of fights to judge if I can heal and dps comfortably or lean more toward healing.

When I’m with an inexperienced tank I work hard to keep them alive and rarely dps except for a few dots. I have never played tank so I can’t even off them any tips.

[Riluske]

Yeah, I went back at it today. I bought some new gear (480 ilvl) and just tried to relax a bit.

Expert is definitely much easier. I'm having the most difficulty with leveling. I think it's just a matter to getting back into it, and also checking the tanks ilvl before he runs into the thick of it.

[ForteNightshade]

Yeah, I went back at it today. I bought some new gear (480 ilvl) and just tried to relax a bit.

Expert is definitely much easier. I'm having the most difficulty with leveling. I think it's just a matter to getting back into it, and also checking the tanks ilvl before he runs into the thick of it.

This video from Momo Sama may help. He goes into a lot of depth for a beginners guide to max level healing.

[AC9Breaker]

The quality of tank players has dropped drastically, most don't bother using cds anymore, healers also have so many ogcds they can pop them off when tank hp is lower.

Finally it is probably a bit of rust. Healer's have been complaining all shb that healing is too easy and mind numbing with between 60 and 80% of fights being spamming broil/malefic/glare. Replace that with aoe for dungeon mobs

remember though, you don't need to top them off, just keep them alive. Its on the tank to dodge aoes

I feel like this comment hit the nail on the hid. Being in the middle of this expansions life cycle, we have more players who are trying tanking for the first time and there fore are up to the nuances of mitigation cooldown management.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

One keynote for White Mage, regardless how squishy your tanks are, Holy is generally superior to healing as long as the stun resistance hasn't fully ramped up so you can stun enemies for a collective amount of 7 seconds each - basically like a 7 second hallowed ground for every pull (assuming mobs can be stunned). After that it depends on how your tank mitigates (if at all *shudders*) and how you rotate your healing cooldowns in coordination with eventual Healing SPELL usage.

That said, going into Shadowbringers as a tank player, I feel like the equivalent to the damage intake I have now is equivalent to me tanking in Stormblood without my tank stance on, on top of a handful of mitigations (like blocking, parrying or Dark Mind) having dropped in overall power while boosting other parts of their kit (mostly short-duration cooldowns). All in all, my experience in Shadowbringers is like me playing a DPS-stanced tank for the majority of content.

But generally, disregarding metric & cooldown changes going into Shadowbringers, the main two issues is either the tank is literally running minimum item level armor and thus his defense + HP is squish, or he is plainly not mitigating, OR both.

[Rilifane]

It also strongly depends on what type of dungeons you are doing.
Experts and 80s are a snoozfest and even tanks who don't mitigate properly don't take a lot of damage. Hell, I had runs on my GNB where my WhM constantly dumped lilies between pulls because they were simply not needed during the pull itself.

Leveling dungeons, escpecially ShB dungeons, are a different matter. They are notorious for hitting like trucks on steroids and I spent a good amount of time hardcasting heals on all healers even with all my resources constantly used. But even then you should always aoe on WhM at least for the stuns. SCH can weave freely during AoW. On AST it might feel a bit busy with single weave target switching for Gravity but it still helps a lot.
If you notice a lack of mitigation, the best thing you can do is speak up and ask them to rotate their cooldowns. A lot of tanks still don't use Reprisal after the neat AoE effect change or Arm's Lengths for the slow.

If a tank feels paperbag-level squishy in max level dungeons, they are clearly doing something wrong. Rusty healer or not, all tanks only need minimal attention from the healer of they rotate their cooldowns properly. If they don't, they still shouldn't drop like flies unless they are grossly undergeared.
Party dps is also a huge factor. Killing something before your resources are exhausted is important and if DPS are slacking you'll notice.