Healers please

[Liam_Harper]

okay, so... how can you be so sure that your co healer has any kind of "plan" aside from spamming dps? how much time do you suggest giving until you know ifd they are a green dps or actually going to heal? members start dying? or you need to use LB3 to rez everyone? I usually leave my psychic shoes at home when I go into raids so if you have an easy way to figure out if the other healer has a plan, or even intends to heal, that would be wonderful. please educate us on this ability

When the raidwide is coming up soon and no one is healed. It's not too complicated.

-Raidwide hits, next potentially damaging mechanic is 30 sec away.
-Co heal does literally nothing for the next 25 sec. Shrug and Plenary lily or oGCD or even use a few GCDs if you have to.
-Raid is safe. Mechanic hits.

Even if you don't have the whole fight mapped perfectly, bosses so far often give an indication when it's mechanic time. If the next mechanic is 10 sec away, same applies for waiting 5 seconds. I won't let the party sit at a range that I couldn't heal within 1-2 GCD's if I was unsure if the next mech was soon, but I'm fine letting them sit at half for a while if I have resources to react to a boss castbar.

It's extremely rare I've come across a co-heal who simply doesn't heal. I could count the number of times on one hand. Some are a bit GCD heal allergic and I have to adjust, but nearly all dps focused healers will make use of oGCD's, which I can use to my advantage to lighten my own load and space out my own resources.

Also as I mentioned, there are numerous signs of whether your co-healer is pulling their weight. All HoT's have buff icons that you can look for. All ground heals are visible, Soil, Star, Asylum. Assize happens every 45 sec. It's one reason why playing multiple healers can help you improve on your main, because you gain an understanding of how they function mechanically, their strengths and weaknesses, how many oGCD's they have and how often they're available and what they're capable of.

If I saw them using any aoe heal not overhealing btw if we're all at 1hp.

I assume you're talking EX1. They're probably using HoT's for that first reduction to 1hp. You have roughly a full 30 sec to heal before the stack, which is HoT heaven.

Place Asylum in the top NW corner. Easy healing. Glare away for 25 sec. If your party is somehow still not full here, it's fine since you can assign Lilybell and your upcoming Rapture to the stack.
You now have your first lily. Temp, Plenary, Lily is more than enough for the stack and to sweeten it you get a natural Assize here.
Lilybell handles Phobos. If you used it for the stack, throw Temp/Plenary/lilies at it.

No GCD heals needed. Co healer could be asleep.

[Penthea]

I usually leave my psychic shoes at home when I go into raids so if you have an easy way to figure out if the other healer has a plan, or even intends to heal, that would be wonderful. please educate us on this ability

Oh man this reminds me of a really weird week pugging Omega savage learning parties in PF back in SB. I main sch, among the pugs was a healer. They did zero healing and we wiped because of it, not surprising because we were a learning party. When we asked why they didn't heal they said "you have a sch they should solo heal". Pugged again later that week. Got a different healer who did zero dps and began to flame me in chat for healing even though it was clear they couldn't handle it on their own. Their reasoning was "you're the sch so you do the dps". These two incidents happened in the exact same fight lol. Which was o7s in case anyone is wondering.

Neither healer told us they were going to entirely disregard part of their kit during combat. They both expected completely opposite playstyles from me and were both surprised that I didn't know exactly what they intended to do.

Healers are supposed to heal and dps. They have buttons for both. If you're only going to fulfil one part of your role you should inform the party before you even pull. No one is psychic. And if it's a learning party you honestly should expect to use more than one part of your kit. I would even go as far as to say the same for pugs because pugs are lottery. You have no idea how good they will be.

Yes yes efficiency and all that but it's not really efficient to not inform your team that you refuse to heal or dps and expect them to just magically play perfectly around it from the moment you pull.

[DragoAskani]

okay, so... how can you be so sure that your co healer has any kind of "plan" aside from spamming dps? how much time do you suggest giving until you know ifd they are a green dps or actually going to heal? members start dying? or you need to use LB3 to rez everyone? I usually leave my psychic shoes at home when I go into raids so if you have an easy way to figure out if the other healer has a plan, or even intends to heal, that would be wonderful. please educate us on this ability

They explained it in the earlier paragraphs mrs cherry pick and choose what part of an entire statement to nitpick.

[GarretStrongstaf]

okay, so... how can you be so sure that your co healer has any kind of "plan" aside from spamming dps?

Hi Etherea, I wonder, if you are uncomfortable with the actions of any party member, in this case your co-healer, are you able to communicate that with them via party chat? In any party situation (in real life too) good judgement and clear communication are as much if not more important than knowing your tool kit or mastering content. If I need support from a player, I always ask for it. If I don't get it, I play with someone who does. If you are playing with people who aren't supporting you in a way that makes the game fun. Find players who do. They are most certainly out there

On the topic of healer play-styles I won't speak for anyone but myself so this comment is only in reference to my own experience, but for endgame content I make it a personal goal to not use GDC heals unless the party is serious trouble. Even then, and depending on the group of players I am running with and our particular goals in that run, a wipe (and reset) may even be more preferable than an heal LB3. In my experience, most fights (even savage content) when run by a group that knows the battle intimately, OGDC heals are more than sufficient.

But I didn't always feel this way. Healing used to stress me out. I gave it a try in 2.2. At first I was anxious to let the party's HP drop too low. I would use group or single target heals to alleviate that anxiety. With time I mastered my tool kit, got better at endgame content and learned to replace those angsty GDC heals with damage instead. This is when I fell in love with the healer role. I discovered the joy of using my kit to calculate precisely how much damage the party can take (without dying) while also doing as much damage as possible. To me, this is what makes the role so exciting and why I still main heals seven years later. And honestly, it’s still something I have yet to master.

If the point of playing the game is to have fun, then neither play-style (GDC heal happy or OGCD heals only) is the "right" or "best" way to play. They are just different ways of having fun. Play the style that makes you happiest. I will continue to do the same.

[HappyHubris]

Absolutely not. I've healed both EX's without touching any of those except for when the boss can't be targeted. Usually my co-healer is still being pushed into overheal and bored and no one is in any danger of dying. Cure III should only be used in either EX in dire emergency. I've only used it twice this expansion.

While bad healers and exceptions exist, chances are you're just panicking and feeling unsafe when health bars aren't full. Raidwides in EX are often spaced quite far apart, so if I as a healer know the next potential raid damage is 30+ seconds away, I'm not going to rush to heal it. Assize will probably come up soon, or my co-heal might have an oGCD (especially Sage who needs to use certain oGCD's for mana regen or AST who gains dps from Star), or I might place Asylum and let it do it's job, or I might wait for a Lily.
Sage, AST and even SCH likewise have a lot of oGCD HoT and regens in their toolkit, so even if it looks like they aren't casting heals, if you see HoT icons among your buffs, they've got you covered.

If you get a bad healer, it sucks, I agree. But if you get a healer with the above mindset, outside of genuine mistakes I guarantee you're safe. We're paying attention. It doesn't matter if people are at half health, we'll get them before the next damage. Sure we're spamming Glare or Broil or whatever, but if we have to GCD heal we'd do it.

If you spam Cure III or Medica II immediately after damage happens, you're actually causing your co-healer issues because you're wasting their carefully planned and mapped oGCD's and causing them to overheal. Healing in raids isn't just about filling hp bars asap, it's about working together with your co-heal so your toolkits synergize and compliment each others. Pay attention to HoT icons, check if there's a Star, Soil, Asylum down, give them a little time to see if they have an oGCD, as you learn a fight try and remember when each raidwide is and how far apart they are. You'll be a much better healer for it.

I appreciate your perspective, here. I admit to using GCD heals on WHM to top everyone off when I could probably wait for say Asylum and my co-healer's oGCDs to cover everyone by the next hit in 30 seconds or whatever. Part of this is not trusting PF folks to stay out of the fire, part of this is not trusting PF co-healers, and part of this is learning healing other MMOs where random spike damage is frequent.

[Jybril]

No can do. Got everyone screaming in my ear to DPS.
I'm no longer a White Mage but a Fight Mage sorry!

[TristanX]

I just do more healing when the other is "DPS" healer. The whole raid will find out when its a wipe because I'll definitely say "I feel like solo healing".

[Xaruko_Nexume]

If im healing and others bars aren't full or about to be full, Im not doing my job. Or have I been healing wrong in mmos since 1999?

[LazyMemories]

If im healing and others bars aren't full or about to be full, Im not doing my job. Or have I been healing wrong in mmos since 1999?

If you're helping your co healer in any sort of way I'd say you're healing right. If you're going in expecting the other healer to heal everything and you dps you're doing it wrong. Make sense? Otherwise I'll just use a pf and solo heal and get another dps who can dps efficiently.

[Atamis]

You have indeed been doing it incorrectly since 1999. full hp and half hp are effectively the same thing if the monster cannot kill them in a single hit.
The healer's job is to prevent death, not maximize health pools.