I tend to run with my faerie's heal on my hot bar. While the ai is decent at keep up party members, when your tank is taking a beating it can be very nice to have that level of control. I often will queue her up to heal while I cast stone skin, or set her to heal just before I run out of an aoe. This gives me the ability to do things that, left to it's own devices, the ai won't do as well as to have a real priority in the heal targets.

It is my hope they will fix the obey/guard bug so that I can micromanage her even more, but for now this is enough to keep me going through most fights.