A question about healing!

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Hello =D I was wanting to try healing, but I was told that I needed to be able to dps and heal at the same time, which kind of makes me nervous, especially in higher dungeons. I was also wondering when I should use Cure 2 over Cure on my White Mage (I don't have the healer I want yet, Astrologian)

1. You are playing a 'Healer' role. Keeping everybody alive is your MAIN PRIORITY. Familiarize yourself with your healing kits & choose the right healing kit to heal. It's generally not needed to keep everbody at full health all the time, but if you have to start learning from there, it's much better than zero effort.
2. You got first step alright? Now the next step: resist the urge to top up everybody all the time and use that time to DPS until you need to heal again. Even if it means to leave them at 1 HP and still running around. (hyperbole) They don't die, so you're still doing your job.
3. Comfortable enough with 2nd step? Next, adjust accordingly. Encounters in FFXIV are generally scripted in a way you can plan out your heals efficiently to maximize DPSing. But players behavior are not, so be ready to react accordingly if mistakes happens. These are those times when you'll have a quick pop questions in your head such as "Can this DPS survive next unavoidable damage?" ; "How many GCDs left until next tankbuster?" ; "How much healing my random co-healer will pitch in after next major damage?" ; "Do I think this DPS is in danger of dying due to more mistakes?".

The only way to get these steps right is to play more and experience more. It won't always be perfect but don't worry, because we're not unicorns

[Cure I] is your main healing spell for WHM until lv30 where you receive [Cure II] from its job quest. At that point, your usage of [Cure I] will diminish drastically, preferably zero usage beyond lv50+. Arguably not even worthy to provide a slot for it in your hotbar, because we have lv syncing. AST's equivalent of that is [Benefic I] & [Benefic II], same rule applies.