ðĢ i decided to give white mage a try and wow, it's hard ðŽ but i THINK i'm getting the hang of it? in this video, i share my experience playing a healer for the first time in FFXIV. also, if you have any feedback or tips on how i can be a better healer, let me know! ð ðĢ chapter markers - 0:00 my first time playing a healer in FFXIV 0:39 why did i pick healer to try? 2:09 why healer has been hard for me 4:46 hereâs what has helped me 6:23 hereâs what i still struggle with 8:58 hereâs what iâve been doing, correct me if iâm wrong 13:16 so how do i feel about healer now?
Love that you are back and picking up healer! Here are some quick tips. 1. Use your off global heals first saving your cast time heals for later 2. Learn tank kits (WAR can basically heal themselves in dungeons, DRK has a huge shield) and Rampart at higher levels gives tanks a healing received boost. Knowing how tanks can heal and mit themselves can reduce your healer anxiety 3. Use your dome for mitigation, even if hp levels are good 4. Understand that you are not 100% responsible for all party. deaths. Welcome to the healer role!
Welcome to healing wooo! Stuff I have learned over the years: - Dungeons are usually in this format - 2 trash packs and then boss. 2 trash packs and then boss. 2 trash packs and then boss. - I try to use the "big" heals with long cooldown so they can be used on each wall to wall pull - trash packs / mobs, the wall to wall pulls are more scary than the bosses - sprint lasts 20 seconds outside of combat, so if tank sprints and then pull mobs from the 2 trash packs, I usually do the same to keep up. My "whm" priority for level 60ish dungeons pretty much every pull goes like this: - sprint - tank starts pulling mobs, run with tank - regen on tank - dots (aero) on mobs - tank stops - regen, use swift cast and presence of mind, holy, place down asylum (the healer bubble) and use assize (used for damage and heal) - holy, holy, holy, holy, etc. - wait until tanks hp gets low, use bendiction - more holy, holy - tank gets low, use afflatus solace (instant heal), and tetra - more holy, holy - tank out of cool downs and mobs still alive? no more benediction and no more charges of afflatus solace? use regen - regen unable to keep up? cure II
â@@HeatherJustPlay Lots of great advice here. One thing to add that took me a minute to realize, that's specific to White Mage (my first healer was Astro, so I had some muscle memory already that I had to break for WHM), in a scenario where your tank is undergeared or isn't using defensive cooldowns, a particularly hard-hitting dungeon, or some mix of those. With repetition healing dungeons (and from playing a tank yourself) you start to recognize when your tank is losing HP particularly fast, (in general, below 75% before you finish casting your first Holy). What is always useful, but particularly in these cases, is using the Stun effect of your AoE spell (Holy) to your advantage: it can stun trash mobs 3 times before they become immune to stun, each lasting a shorter duration, but you can't overwrite an existing Stun effect with another cast of Holy. And since you can't overwrite Stun with back-to-back casts of holy, you can instead capitalize on this first, extended stun duration-when the tank isnât taking any damage from mob's auto attcks-to cast a healing spell (Afflatus, Cure II, or Regen) before resuming your Holy spamming. This is especially effective for reapplying Regen (and at lvl 66: Devine Benison, a shield that's oGCD - explained below, so you can weave it in between damage and/or healing spells) once the tank stops moving. Tetragrammaton is one of your spells that can be stacked onto other spells without the normal recast time (or "weaved"). The community calls these types of spells "off-global cooldowns" (or 'oGCD's). They are often listed (or perhaps always, idr) as "abilities" on the tooltip, and assuming you haven't already: you can sort your spellbook (Character>Actions & Traits>bottom right corner of window) to display only with "class" and "job" sections... or rearranged to be broken down into more sections-combos, weaponskills, spells, and abilities-with each section sorted by level.
Honestly in dungeons I usually just put a regen and start spamming holy once the mobs get stacked up. By the time the stun stops working the mobs have started dying anyways so the tank isn't taking big damage anymore.
Welcome back! That's very similar to my experience trying healer too for the first time. -Wesk Alber has a lot of good guides where he explains the skills and rotations at each level cap (50, 60, 70, 80, ...). I'm pretty sure he started to make the Dawntrail guides. I also like to watch some of Umbral's healer videos, they have some shorts explaining skill combos for dungeon mob pulls.
Welcome to the green dps club! It sounds like you're getting the hang of things! Here are three tips that I find helped me pick up WHM: 1. Once you gain access to the lily gauge (you spend these on Afflatus Solace, and later on Afflatus Rapture which is a group heal), it is good to get in the habit of spending your lilies. While they do trigger the GCD, they are instant cast! Good for top ups, and later in the job's kit, you get a big nuke to throw out for spending your lilies! Please look forward to it. 2. Don't be afraid to keep Assize on cooldown! This is a 60-second cooldown oGCD area heal that also damages mobs and refunds you some much needed MP. It will help with your MP management which is something WHM sort of suffers from compared to the offerings of other healers. I like to weave Assize between Holy casts on big pulls for a little HP top-up before I think too hard about anybody's health. 3. Regarding your questions around spamming Holy during mob pulls: absolutely go for it! Your stun is a mitigation tool in and of itself, but be aware that the stun might interact in a funny way with certain tank mitigation tools. e.g., Arm's Length applies a 20% slow effect for 15 seconds to enemies that hit the target under the effect of this ability. If you stun the mob before the slow is applied, the slow likely doesnât get applied at all. This isnât to say you should just stand there, but it might be good to learn what tank mitigation icons look like in the party list if you think that sort of thing will change when you use which abilities.
A couple things from a healer main: 1) Your team list on your hud is way to small and way to far away. Healing from the team list is far easier than clicking on people. Personally, I never use focus target outside raid, the team list is good enough for me. 2) assize is money. Damage + heal + mp regeneration. It should be constantly on cooldown. 3) the flower heals should be your main Healing output. It's a cure 3 with no cast time and no mp cost, what's not to love? Overall you're doing great! It's all the learning process, don't feel too bad.
IÂīm still running through the endwalker storyline, so maybe not 100% true but as @orillian8023 said: the gauge skills and tetragrammatron plus maybe keeping up medica 2 and if necessary regen/asylum is normally more then enough to keep your group/raid alife. At least in normal or savage settings not sure about the ultima content. ^^ From my experience if I have to cast cure or anything else something isn't going the way it should. ^^ Also if your tank is to low or a darkknight/gunbreak who used his invul benedection is always a get out of jail free card :) When it comes to holy in my opinion as long as trash groups can be stunned it can make those groups a lot easier since you can nearly perman stun every group with it si i keep it in my rotation. Until end of shadowbringers it worked quite well in combination with medica 2 and aero.
honestly i didn't know you could increase the size of individual windows on the HUD ð so thank you! i will do that. and thanks for the encouragement!
I came here to specifically comment on Assize, you should be using it, constantly, lol, not at the end of the fight. But Heather, welcome to healing! You'll get better we all start from the first step.
it helps to keep your party frame near your character so you can glance at HP bars easily. also, i personally like using mouse over macros for healing. it makes it where you dont have to target people and can just hover the cursor over their name on the party frame and then use the abilities. i personally just target the boss and then use the party frame to monitor hp
Amazing and relatable video! It was like hearing my own thought process back to me, and thatâs validating. Learning healer with whm after being a tank/dps my whole playthrough, and the hardest part is learning the role in content vs the skills themselves. but I always wanted to learn healer so the healers in my fc have a chance to level other jobs ð
Thank you for sharing your experience with white mage. Iâve got a WHM leveled up to the low 30s, and I keep telling myself that Iâm going to get them leveled up soon so I have a healer role in my arsenal. I think one of the reasons I keep putting it off is because of the anxiety you describe about playing as a healer with other players. My main is a tank (PLD), so there was some tankxiety to overcomeâĶnow itâs not nearly so bad, and when Iâm firing on all cylinders, itâs quite fun! I donât have any specific tips for your gameplay as a WHM, being a noob and allâĶjust encouragement to keep at it. You got this!
"My main is a tank (PLD), so there was some tankxiety to overcomeâĶnow itâs not nearly so bad, and when Iâm firing on all cylinders, itâs quite fun!" heck yeah!! that makes me want to try PLD next ðĪĐ and thanks for the encouragement!
It's difficult to say: do this or do that to improve. You are not playing alone, so need to analyze your group about what is the best you can do: dpsing more or healing more. Some hints I can give you: Dead enemies is the best mitigation, so don't be afraid about dpsing and use all you can to kill the enemies as fast as you can. Use Assize as much as you can - it will heal and do damage. Macro some heals, so you won't need to target the tank (macro as - target; e.g. /ac "Cure II" ) or click on the floor to put your Asylum (/ac cast Asylum - cast on you because you will be more near the center and can shield a better area than the tank).
Hi! I'm a WHM main, so happy you decided to give it a try! These are the things that I learned from playing a lot of the class: 1. Spam Holy on mobs with 3 or more enemies. Less than 3, go back to single attack for more efficient damage.(this applies to all AOE attacks on all classes, to be fair). Holy is 100% the best AoE damage ability in the game, use it whenever you can. 2. The most challenging healing comes at the end of a big mob pull. Your tank can lose a TON of life in a second, even if at full health so throw your shield and regens at the tank and be ready to fast heal. If you're feeling brave, at the end of a wall to wall pull, use Swiftcast to drop Holy to stun the mob long enough for you to put shields and regen on your tank. You will have to play a bit with timing (Holy stuns the mob for less and less time with each hit, until they are immune, but each new Holy interrupts the previous, so theoretically, you can do things between Holy hits to maximize the time the mob is stunned. 3. Why am I talking of Holy in a healing point? Because preventing damage is part of healing: eventually you will get Divine Benison, a single target shield. Use that on cooldown, keep it on the Tank as often as you can (if they are in combat). No, don't save it for Tank Busters - the Tank Busters are the responsability of the tank to mitigate (eventually you'll get Aquaveil, another single target shield, which is the one you save for Tank Busters.) 4. Your priorities to keep alive are: You - the tank - the DPS. A DPS can survive as a tank for a few moments (long enough to rezz the tank), and even if they die, it gives you enough time to rez the tank. Do not sacrifice yourself to save others, not even the tank - you need to survive to bring other people back and heal them. 5. Low level WHM does have a problem with MP management, but in time you will get some tools to manage it: other than obviously "Use Lucid Dreaming on Cool Down", use Thin Air when you do Cure 3 or even Medica 2. I know the instinct is to save it for a Rez, but unless things are going wrong you should be casting Big Heals more than Rez. Use it. Use Assize on Cooldown, it gives you mana back. When you get to your 70s and you unlock blood lilly, if you're low on mana, start spamming lillies - no, it's not a waste of healing potential. Blood Lilly (the big pink nuke) does the same damage as if you'd done the same number of Glares. So you can give yourself a break for a few GCDs by spamming lillies (even if you can't fully form the Nuke) and recover some MP. Carry some Super-Ether potions with you: you can't use them often but sometimes, it will save you in a pinch and give you enough MP. 6. Healing is much harder at lower levels for a WHM. Your healing is potent but you need to cast, you don't have shields, and the MP cost is fairly brutal, while you only have ONE tool to recover MP until your late 50s. By level 100, you won't need to use most of your casting heals. I never use Cure 1, Cure 2, or Medica 1, and I rarely use Medica 2 or Cure 3. Your heals become THAT potent later one, and most of them are instantaneous. If you learn to combine them (using Plenary Indulgence, Wings or Asylum to increase the potency of your group Lilly heals ensure you don't need to resort to casting). 7. Don't believe people when they try tell you it's your fault (the healer) that the wall to wall pull failed. Big Mob pulls fail because of DPS. Any tank can wall to wall, and any healer can keep the tank alive from being chomped on by a mob - especially a WHM. But eventually the tank will run out of mits and the healer will run out of MP. There is a short window of time where the DPSes need to do enough damage to reduce the mob to a manageable level. You cannot heal forever - if the DPSes don't perform well, there is nothing you can do.
Using Lucid off CD is a very good idea! Keep that up. Using thin air on Raise is the way to do it. Assise restores mana and does hella damage. You could use it off CD. I sometimes will hold it for a gcd or 3 if i know dmg is coming so i can keep glaring. I use Aero on mobs as i run with the tank as he grabs aero. I absolutely spam Holy on mobs and you had limited party effects and hadn't noticed. Holy applies a stun so it can function as mitigation as well. I usually couple holy spam with Presence of Mind, your spell speed steroid.
Healing takes a lot of practice to get comfortable with. Sometimes, I have a hard time remembering that since I am so comfortable with it now (I've been playing WHM since ARR). Focus target is... eh. I dont know. I've used it sometimes. I would recommend focus targetting the boss instead of the tank because all your tank's information is in the party window. If you move the party window closer to the centre of your screen, you can mkre easily keep an eye on it with little eye movement. Other advice: Cast Regen before the tank pulls. 7.0 made changed to how Regen generates enmity. Stick to your tank in case you do pull something. Pop sprint for pulls to make this easier. You do NOT need to keep Regen up at all times. If you feel more comfortable with it being up, then go ahead, but it's not entirely necessary. Use Assize all the time. It is OP. Spam Holy. It's also OP. The Stun is ridiculous. Asylum should be used all the time for free healing. Use on pulls, use it on bosses, etc. Benediction should be used all the time as well. Let your tank drop as you spam Holy and then pop Bene. It's free and strong. Tetragrammaton can be used in combination with instant GCD heals. Letting your tank drop low and then using Regen + Tetra or Afflatus Solace + Tetra are powerful combos. Or you can weave it after Aero/Dia or Stone/Glare. After you have access to Medica II, you can pretty much forget about Medica. Medica II is a stronger heal over time, and Cure III is a better option for stacks/quick bulk healing. This becomes even MORE true when you learn Afflatus Rapture. Medica is bad. What I generally do in a dungeon pull when I'm spamming Holy is keep the tank targeted. You don't need a target to use Holy, so if you keep the tank targeted, you can more easily drop healing on them when/if needed. Though my biggest point of advice is this: don't panic. The damage in FFXIV is very manageable and, especially in dungeons, you will have plenty of time to heal group wide damage. In dungeon pulls, just keep your tank at a comfortable amount of HP, and you should be fine. And remember that everyone has the responsibility to keep themselves alive. It's not always your fault, as the healer, when people get knocked out. Tanks need to mitigate, and everyone needs to avoid mechanics. You can't be expected to do all the heavy lifting.
@HeatherJustPlay So, what makes Assize OP (or overpowered) is that it deals damage to all nearby enemies, heals all nearby allies plus yourself, and restores your MP. And is on a fairly short cooldown. Holy is the best AoE skill in the game because it does okay damage and stuns all nearby enemies for a maximum of 7 seconds.
I focus target the tank because my "target your focus target" button is easier to hit than F2 is, i don't really do it so that i can see the tank's health. but that's just me
You posted this at the right time! Iâve started healer too and after tanking the entire time Iâve been playing FFXIVâĶ Holyyyy, is it different ð like you said, youâre looking at things you never had to worry about before. It can be so overwhelming!
Iâve played healers a lot! I still struggle with where I should pay attention also, especially on a hard healer like AST. Whm is a good start though, easiest to learn I think. One thing about targeting is I put F2(second character on party list), which is always tank for me, on my MMO mouse which is the same as yours. I put it on the top left button. That way I can target the tank easily, and simply TAB or press target-of-my-target (I put on T) to target the enemy the tank is targeting. If you have two tanks like a raid/trial, then CTRL+F to focus the other tank on F3(third person on party list). If they are the tank, just use focus for that tank instead of the F2 button. Just get used to tabbing back to the enemy to keep casting, and turn on the setting that allows you to auto-target an enemy if you arenât targeting one with your ability. This only works if you arenât currently targeting a party member though - so make sure to always tab off of your tank or whoever you are healing/shielding/regening/mitigating/etc and practice weaving your oGCD heals with castings of Glare/Stone.
oooh that's interesting. putting a targeting button on my mouse hmm! you've given me something to think about. i haven't done a raid/trial yet. i've been too scared lol. i don't want the other healer to think i'm terrible ð thanks for your input!
@@HeatherJustPlay I like being cohealer for new healers. Reminds me of my own struggles LOL one of the neat things about raids and trials is that most raid wides will have a long wind up which lets you prepare for your own raid wide heals. Something to keep in mind!
Great video! I started as a Bard and now play White Mage and I love it! I have been playing for about a month now. It can be scary and stressful but I have an amazing FC and they treat me good
In FF14, each Healer has different tools for dealing with MP management. White Mage's MP management is mostly using your no-MP heals first before resorting to Cure II. At your current level those would be Tetragrammaton and Afflatus Solace.
There are plenty comments that help you here, but the one thing not getting mention or players usually has the wrong idea about is Benediction. Use Benediction as often as you can, do not think Benediction as an Emergency Tools ("oh god" button) only, think of it as just another tool for healing, big healing in fact. This requires a bit planning and confidence, but you can let your tank drop their HP, it doesn't have to super low, as low as you are comfortable with, then use Benediction on them. This will have some effects; one is you get to save your other healing tool for another pull. Two, it puts you into a good habit that it is fine to let people low on HP / not full HP in general as long as you have a plan when to heal them, and they are not in immediate danger. Some players think Benediction as emergency tools and barely use them, and when they reach endgame, they tend to forget they have that button in the first place due to panic.
@@avendji totally! Oh like to use it on a player I just ressed but sometimes just use it to heal the tank from 75% to 100% because itâs an extra ogcd and feels fun to use. Muscle memory comes when we just go ahead and use our cooldowns whenever. Not for emergencies, but for fun. And at that point, there are no emergencies.
It really depends on how twitchy your tank is. There is no worse feeling than benediction followed by superbolide. But it's a bummer for basically every invuln except the paladin one.
oooh i never even thought to use it after rez! i've had people i've rezzed die right away again because they were too low health (ahem my husband ahem ð). thanks for the tip!
@@HeatherJustPlay totally! Now itâs partly on the rezzed player that died because they get a buff that makes them invincible for about five secs, but only if they donât use any spells or attacks. That gives enough time to cast something like cure 2 on them but many players donât know the buff vanishes if they attack the second they are rezzed.
I really did enjoy White Mage when I played mouse and keyboard. I don't think it is as easy to grow on controller so far. I really enjoyed your perspective and hope you find the classes you can enjoy.
WHM is my favorite healer and my main job! Welcome! It's known as being the most simple of the healers, but its identity largely revolves around taking actions on the global cooldown. This means that you have a few less heals that can go out immediately when the GCD is rolling. So a good tip is to just slow down. Maximizing damage is for when you're comfortable in a situation. A few tips to help you ease into White Mage! 1) Holy is one of your strongest mitigation tools in dungeon pulls. The first 3 casts of Holy that hit an enemy will stun your dungeon mobs, preventing them from doing damage. After the 3rd cast, those enemies will become immune to stun. So feel free to use the 3 casts to buy you some time and be prepared for damage to come rushing in afterwards. 2) Assize is a great button to weave in after a cast of Cure 2, Stone, or Medica. Assize is actually one of WHM's greatest tools to recovering its own mana. So whenever you see it up, feel free to press that button! 3) When you have time in-between group damaging mechanics, regen is your best friend (Regen, Asylum, Medica 2). When you need HP bars topped up quickly, you're going to want to default to the fattier heals (Medica, Cure 3, Afflatus Rapture). 4) Healing is about mixing and matching the tools available to you. Plenary Indulgence WITH a Medica 2 can give you a larger burst heal followed by a regen to the whole party. Asylum with a Cure 3 can help you give a lot of health back to the party and then rely on the regen to top up health bars. Eventually you'll get more healing buffs and tools in your kit to mix and match. One thing that helped me was to sit down and read the tool tips and try to imagine how various buttons synergize together in different scenarios. You don't have damage combos as a healer, but you do have healing tools that can work together to heal your party to maximum faster and give you more time to hit your damage buttons! Best of luck on your white mage journey!
Try the Icy-Veins leveling guide on White Mage. It has a selector for each level, and will give you advice for that level. I used it throughout my Paladin run through. Might be helpful for you.
As a healer main, there's only two things I usually keep in mind, which also easily translates to higher-end content. Reactive Healing: Basically your standard dungeon mob pack, keep an eye on your tank and keep them alive - for higher-end, this is more of a "panic situation" where you have to cover for people's mistakes Proactive Healing: Knowing when to heal/mitigate, basically studying the fight or encounter well enough to prevent more than necessary damage - for higher-end, this is the most important type of healing and actually not simple the healer's job, all the roles have one or more buttons that help the party survive, a healer will just make sure everyone is fully alive. This is definitely non-exhaustive and it really can vary across encounter, but overall a good healer will know when and how to heal (encounter and job knowledge) as well as know when to deal damage to help the encounter flow smoother. I'm always happy to help new healers get on track with learning their role and its basics, so if you want to chat a bit about this, let me know, otherwise, sources like The Balance are perfectly amazing to learn too!
I think the one perspective shift you can benefit from the most is: your DPS output is a resource. Heals on the GCD spend that resource, so you have to factor that into your assessment of their cost. This leads directly into hold nothing back. Your strongest tools are your cheapest ones: the ones that cost no mana, no DPS, or no planning. Finally, you need only heal damage that is taken. Keeping Regen on a full health tank just wastes your MP and DPS. Keep them alive, but leave enough room in their health pool for your heals and their self-heals to matter: you can keep a WAR alive on half health much longer than you can keep them full, and in the latter case, once you can't, they just die.
I can fully relate to this! I have just picked up White Mage after Black Mage as my main. I am not perfect as a Black Mage, but learning a new rotation AND role all together. I am just taking it step-by-step. It did help to see other peoples layouts with their hotbars and look at why they positioned where they are (common spell that needs to be the most accessible? etc..). Then, I work from there and modify the hot bars as needed based on personal preference as I am playing.
Assize: Use on cool down, this thing is great, instant cast, heal the party, damage the enemies, give yourself 500 MP. Holy: When there are three or more mobs, spam this unless someone is dying. It will stun all of the enemies up to three times. After that, it's still better damage on three or more enemies over stone. Afflatus Solace: I would get in the habit of using this over Cure II when you have it. It's instant cast and the same potency as Cure II. Asylum: This is very useful when doing trash pulls too.
i didn't realize Assize gave MP until i took the screenshot for this video ð 3 or more enemies for holy - got it! flowers over cure II â thanks for the tips!
One extra tip: use holy, and then after the first cast use medical 2 and then your next holy cast. the stun from holy gets shorter with each use, and the first stun lasts long enough that you can fit a medical in and maintain the stun after
Also starting a pull with a quick Regen on the tank helps too. Also you have a shield you can slap on tanks and tetragrammaton(?I've never actually remembered bubble heal name before). When I first learned to heal, I actually went in with AI, so that I could experiment with no one to bother, so you might wanna try that if you wanna get some practice healing/dpsing
A few tips from a WHM: 1. Once you get access to the lilies (Affletus solace) and Tetragrammaton think of those as free cure 2 spells. Use them as needed. 2.Assize is great to use right after bosses do raid wide attacks and I also use it once the tank is done pulling mobs. Also assize is great to use on cooldown. Its free damage and HP/MP regen. 3. Spam Holy on 3 or more mobs. Once the tank is done pulling slap a regen on them and spam holy. 4. Use lucid dreaming when your mp gets down between 7000-8000. These are some the things I do when Iâm playing WHM. It may not be âoptimal or metaâ but itâs gotten me and countless parties through dungeons. Hope this helps.
8:10 I'm rarely a healer (tank main), but when I do heal I *do* focus target the tank and here's why: There's a keybind to target your focus target. (By default it's [F10], I change it to [F] for my layout.) With this setup, I can constantly [Tab] back to the boss, and [Focus] back to the tank, easily swapping between the two of them. I know some healer mains use [F2] to target the first party member underneath you (which should be the tank by default sort, but might sometimes be the offtank in 8-player content), in which case setting the boss as your Focus target can work just as well (with you alternating between [F2] for the tank and [Focus] for the boss). Also, for jumping back into Dragoon - I would recommend using the rotation graphic that you shared for level 100, and just eliminate the abilities that you don't have access to yet. For most jobs (Black Mage being the notable exception IMO), the endgame opener and rotation are pretty much what you should use when leveling - you'll just be missing the newest capstone abilities. EDIT: One more note if you feel like you're struggling to keep the tank up: Make sure to constantly upgrade your gear, at least every 5 levels and maybe every 2-3. I found that when I was healing I had a *much* more difficult time if I wasn't upgrading gear all the time, and that if you're near the minimum item level for some dungeons you might not be able to keep the tank alive. (I went into Aurum Vale my first time as a healer around min ilvl, and I couldn't keep the tank alive to the first boss. Upgrading to lv47 gear made a huge difference.) I typically upgrade tank gear at a similar pace, and rarely upgrade DPS gear when I'm leveling outside of MSQ (every 5 or 10 levels).
It's scary at first....then you realize you are literally the only thing keeping everyone alive (unless you have a WAR in later levels). You realize and demand respect and make those plebs bow before you to keep their HP above 1 :3
Priority 1 - keep yourself alive. Priority 2 - keep your Tank alive. Priority 3 - keep everyone else alive. Priority 4 - do damage. Oh and just watch the health bars and not the actual players.
I think some of your problems might be solved by tweaking your HUD a little. I would recommend moving the party list more toward the middle of your screen, that way you can keep track of everyone's health, buffs and debuffs, including your own. You can also see the cast bars for the boss in the enemy list, which I recommend having in sight as well, especially for dungeons. You can also separate the enemy cast bar from the the target bar. I have it set up so that it is a big bar above my hotbars so that I can always have an eye out for what the Boss is casting, I also do prefer focus targeting the Boss instead of the tank, but I guess that's just personal preference. For now I wouldn't worry about optimizing too much and focus more on getting comfortable in the role. Just pick one thing to improve and once you feel like you manage it well, move on to the next thing. Just as a general rule, prioritize healing abilities (ogcds like tetra) and heals that don't cost mp (like afflatus) over the casts (like cure) and don't be afraid to use cooldowns that might seem long, its better to use them suboptimally than not using them at all because you want to save them for the right moment! Above all just remember that not everything is always your fault, there is nothing wrong with wiping and people are generally pretty understanding and kind, especially if you mention being new to healing. Unfortunately the only way to get over the anxiety is by doing it and getting more comfortable but I'm sure you'll do just fine!
oh wow i didn't even realize you can increase the size of each HUD thing. separating the enemy cast bar sounds super helpful. and thank you for the encouragement! ð
This is exactly what I planned on posting but much better said! All excellent advice :) and agreed, I used to be so cut up if a party member died. Now it doesnât bother me nearly so much as a lot of the time it was down to something I couldnât have prevented. I will say I miss Rescue when Iâm not on a healer though - love being able to yank somebody over to a safe spot in the nick of time!
@HeatherJustPlay I will also second the idea of moving the party list up, more centered along the vertical dimension of the screen. You will likely be looking mostly at the middle of your screen just by normal monitor ergonomics (in addition to watching mechanics), so having the party list more easily available in your peripheral vision will help a lot. It can be worth watching some other streamers'/creators' videos to see how they have it set up, to see if that helps you get some ideas. (Perhaps watch ones from before June so you don't accidentally get spoiled.)
I find success in the 1-100 guides. People do them and Iâll watch up to the level Iâm currently at and kinda leave the video there for a few. So you could always do this when learning new classes. I went from Ninja to Sage and managed to max out the sage at 100 comfortably by watching those type of vids. Currently working on tank, but I still get anxious even though I feel comfortable with rotations ðĩâðŦ
Sounds like you're on the right path! Healing in this game is interesting, because in some ways it's the least engaging role if everything goes as planned, but the most engaging when shit hits the fan. In other words, the better you get and particularly the players around you get, the easier your job becomes.
1. I use focus target mainly on bosses when I play any healer. I like knowing what the boss is casting even when I'm targeting a teammate. But that's how I prefer it. I also have my focus target bound to R3 on my controller so I donât have to manually scroll down the target menu everytime I need it. In dungeons for example, Iâll focus target the tank for trash pulls and then switch to the boss when we reach it. But if you are still having trouble seeing what mits you have on the tank/party members, it could be a HUD issue. Could try moving the party list somewhere you can see it easier. Or make it a little bigger, until you get more comfortable. 2. And remember, sometimes you can try your best and your teammates will still die. People make mistakes. Tanks might not mit correctly or dps step in every damage mechanic. Not everything is the healer's fault. Itâs something I had to learn when I switched to healer. Sounds like your taking the right steps in learning to heal tho. Definitely can be stressful for someone new to it. Takes time to get comfortable with healing in general. Glad your having fun tho. Btw, Rescue is a very useful skill. Make sure to use it on your friends and "rescue" them into AOE's XD.
thanks for the tips and the encouragement! ð i just set up my PS5 in my studio so i am beginning the process of switching from k&m to controller... but yeah i haven't wrapped my head around how to play WHM on controller at all ð
Oh wow this is a new video! So as a healer, the FIRST thing you should organize is your HUD. Visually seeing the party member's health is a priority. I suggest you put it front and center. Right now you have it hidden away to the bottom left, which takes your eyes off the mechanics. I would move your party in between your enemy list, and your character. When you look at their health, your peripheral view of mechanics will be better, because your eyes are not darting downward and left. You could even increase the size to make it easier to see. Second, you should go into your HUD options, and separate the boss's into different elements. The checkbox is called "Display Target Info Independently." You can then move their cast bar, and enlarge that sucker, and put it above their HP, or wherever it catches your eye visually. Third, the tank's health is the most important. Until you're doing content that is doing party wide/single target UNAVOIDABLE damage, then a DPS being dead is their fault for not avoiding mechanics. So don't feel bad if you see a DPS dying. Once you get more comfortable healing, then you'll be able to keep them up without thinking about it. Fourth, you mention looking at your health, but there's really no reason to "pay attention to it." If you get hit, you need to heal yourself. That's pretty much it. You're squishy, so you need to top yourself off after getting hit by a mechanic. If it's a raidwide, then you're already healing yourself+everyone anyway. I can't think of a time I specifically heal myself, or am worried about my health, unless I just got rez'd or I got hit by a mechanic and a raidwide is about to come. Fifth, Yes you are correct to Focus Target the boss instead of the tank. Again, enlarge the castbar for this. Super sixth: Use Macros. Set your party so your tank is always second on your list. Example of a macro I use on my paladin: /merror off /ac "Intervention" /ac "Intervention" /ac "Intervention" /ac "Intervention" /ac "Intervention" /ac "Intervention" /ac "Intervention" /ac "Intervention" /ac "Intervention" /ac "Intervention" /ac "Intervention" /ac "Intervention" /ac "Intervention" /micon "intervention" Replace intervention with Benediction, and now when you click/press that button, it'll benedict the second party memeber. The reason it's typed out so many times is due to macros hanging up at times, so this makes it cast quickly. Some people even line up cast bars next to the party member list with macros for these. It's up to you how many of these you use. Also, a small rule of thumb for your spells in terms of general healing priority: Regens->oGCDs->GCDs. Keep this in mind and it won't matter how many buttons you get. Lastly, stop stressing. Go into roulettes with people and play a lot. You cannot get good at healing by healing bots because people make a lot of mistakes, and part of learning to be a healer is to learn how you cover different mistakes. You build up muscle memory to covering mistakes with your oGCDs, you learn to heal different tanks slightly different.
White Mage beginner tips 1. Regen heals for a ton over time, keep it on the main tank, saves tons of MP in the long run. 2. "Freecure" trait is a newbie trap to spam Cure 1. Regen heals more than Cure 1, and Cure 2 which is also stronger than Cure 1. 3. Keep Lucid Dreaming (MP regen ability) on cooldown even if at near full MP. Don't wait until your MP is at half or near empty. 4. Afflatus Solace is literally an instant free version of Cure 2, use it instead of Cure 2, again this will save lots of MP. 5. Use Thin Air ability (next casted spell is free) for Medica 2 /Medica 3/Cure 3 and more importantly Raise spell as it's most expensive MP cost for healers. 6. Let your heal over time actions do most of the work. Regen, Medica 2, Medica 3, Asylum (healing dome), they all heal over time and can get your party HP bars to full, set them and go back to casting damage spells. 7. Use Asylum for 2 or more groups of dungeon mobs, they'll hit harder than a dungeon boss. Assize keep on cooldown, but some boss fights it does big damage to adds, so hold on it if add phase is coming up.
I feel like healing is like riding a bike, it's scary at first but once it clicks it's actually not very difficult or scary unless everything is going wrong at once, but even then, at higher levels, you get some insane tools. Same with tanking, I think the biggest hurdle is no longer psyching yourself out at the idea that you need to keep everyone up. Once you get the practice it becomes very smooth.
As a longtime healer (mainly WHM) main I feel like I can give some commentary on the topics you mentioned: It's good that you are using focus targets. I find that whether you focus the boss or the tank comes down to personal preference. Personally, during trials, raids and boss battles, I prefer focusing the boss as most dmg will be raidwide or individual player's oopsies and with a regen applied (maybe even just a co-healer's kardia or fairy heals) the tank should only need healing specifically when set tankbusters happen that you can easily anticipate. When I have the boss focused I can easily spot heal who ever needs it and retarget the boss quickly afterwards. Some bosses also are easier to (re)target if you focus them cause their size/hitboxes makes them somewhat finicky to target if you aren't looking straight at them (especially the really big and/or edge-of-the-arena types when they require you to get in close). For dungeon packs I like having the tank focused for quick accessibility, though I don't always bother with it anymore (tank self-sustain, especially WARs', makes it kind of a moot point at max lvl imo xD). Mana management is a thing, but you will eventually get a feel for it, and whm is one of the healers with the easiest time of it. As you gain levels you'll also be getting more tools that you can use instead of your MP cost GCD heals, so those will help too. In general, though, you'll want to priotize oGCDs over GCDs, and also anything that doesn't cost mp over anything that does. I personally like to use Lucid Dreaming anytime my mana falls to around 7000-8000, or whenever it's off cooldown if my mp is below that. When you're still getting familiar, just using it whenever it is available when you are not at max mp is a good habit to get into, though. Holding Thin Air for raises is good, when you feel you are in a situation where you will likely be casting one soon. However, you should also consider using it for your more mana intensive heals (cure III, Medica II, etc), especially if there is no risk of anyone dying in the near future. I'm not sure if at your level you already have the 2 charges, but when you do, you can safely use one charge and keep one back for potential raises. Since you are lvl 62, you should also have Tetragrammaton, which is a really good oGCD single target heal you can weave between your spells for almost the potency of a normal cure II. The single target lily heal is equivalent to a cure II, so prioritize using it since it doesn't cost any mp. You can also very easily weave a tetragrammaton after it to get someone from near-death to near full hp. You also get a lily based AoE heal lvl 76, which is also a very good option to reduce you mp use, as, while not quite as strong as a cure III, it still heals for a good amount and it only costs the one lily and has a much bigger range. Also don't forget Benediction, don't keep it in reserve as a just-in-case, because that will likely mean you barely ever use it. Instead, when it's not on cooldown, feel free to let your tank fall to a low hp point you are comfortable with (maybe something like 20%-25% to start with) and then just heal them with that. (mind, at high lvl if you have a war as your tank in a dungeon, it might mean you barely need to heal them at all, with how good their self-sustain is right now XD) Assize is actually also a mp management tool, if a pretty weak one with its 500mp every 40secs, on top of dealing dmg and being an AoE heal. You will basically want to use it anytime it comes off cooldown. In specific situations you can hold it for a couple of seconds so you don't waste its healing potential if you know your party will be taking raidwide dmg soon. Lastly, healer AoEs like holy are usually a gain on dmg when there are 2 or more enemies in range. Holy's stun is also a great mitigation tool for dungeon packs, so feel free to just spam it as much as you can as long as you keep your tank alive. (again, feel free to let them drop as low as you are comfortable with and then throw out some heals as needed.) All in all it sounds like you are well on your way to learning the role and the job. I hope you'll get as much enjoyment out of it as I always have
- Blow up the boss cast bar and put it closer towards the center of the screen - Target of my Target is an amazing tool to easily move between the boss and tank - Play with HUD info to your liking. You can hide enemy names always, if you arent targeting them, etc... it helps clean up the screen for me to see better in dungeon pulls - Set part member HP to display when not 100%. - Play legacy camera if you arent. - Prepull regen works, you just need to make sure to do it before the tank grabs agro, the passive healing does not generate aggro anymore - Order of skillls: OGCD > Lilly Spells > Non-lilly GCD Skills aka Cure 2. - Use assize for damage. If you can time it with a heal, cool, but dont hold it more than a few seconds - Holy is a gain on 3 but its stun can be good on < 3 still. - Rez prio: Healer > Tank > Rez DPS > Non-Rez DPS
For "holy", i often think it's worth letting the enemies get resistant by spamming it. When tanking a massive pull, the most dangerous part is always in the first few seconds while all the enemies are actively attacking. The stuns slow that down, and if you have good DPS teammates, there will be a lot fewer enemies by the time they are immune to your stuns, or at least they will be close to death, and the tank can hold on for a bit longer. The disadvantage to "Holy" is that if the enemies do a large interruptible AoE attack, tanks and melee DPSs can't interrupt it. So it's a judgement call between the types of enemies, and how many of them there are.
For Assize, it also recovers MP, so when Lucid Dreaming is down, you can use that as well. When I heal, I don't bother putting dots on every single ad. I just spam my aoes until it is down to like 2 or 3 ads then I place dots on them. Reason being by the time you've put dots on every ad, the first ad you applied the dot on it'll be almost over and you'd have to reapply or the dos killed them already. Also, for your dome, use it during huge ad pulls, it'll help recover hp and lower the damage of everyone inside it.
When I play WHM, I always keep Medica II (III) on the whole party up and Regen on the tank. Once you've learned it, Plenary Indulgance + Medica II (III) for extra healing. Asylum I use it every time it is up. To heal I use Cure I mostly and if procs than Cure II, that in the lower levels. Cure II I only use when it is not proced, if it is an emergency 'cause it costs lots of MP as well. In the lower levels as well I use Medica I and Cure III for aoe healing. Medica I doesn't heal for much but has a wider range. Cure III heals for more but has a lower range and it costs lots of MP. But in the high levels I almost never use the Cures. I use mostly Afflatus Solace, Thin Air + Tetragrammaton for single heals. One important thing about the Afflatus is that every time you use it, in the later levels you will get a Blood Lilly. Once you've stacked 3 of them you will be able to use Afflatus Misery which is an AOE damage spell. Benediction I usually use during emergencies on a player with very low health 'cause it heals a hp bar full and the recast time is very long. Afflatus Solace and Assise for aoe healing and Assise does a heal, deals an aoe damage and restores a bit of your MP. I use Divine Benison and Aquaveil on the tank for tank busters. On trash mobs pulls I usually do Medica II (III), Regen on the tank, Presence of Mind and than I start spamming Holy (III), it is a dmg aoe and it stuns the enemies. Temperance I use on stacks and spreads if it is up. I use Lucid Dreaming every time my MP bar is about 75% low. Surecast for knock backs. Rescue to pull someone standing on the wrong spot to a safe spot. Swriftcast + Raise to put dead players on their back on their feet. And hard cast Raise if Swiftcast isn't up, but that only after the tanks health is full and the standing players are safe. Esuna to cleanse the debuffs off of the players. You will see a debuff symbol next to the name of the player on your party list. If the symbol is red and has a white bar on top of it you can cleanse it. If it is red without a white bar on top of it you cannot take it off. Oh and now they've added a gap closer to the job called Aetherial Shift. You can use it to evade. =) For the second priority, Aero (Dia) is a DOT that you should keep up on your enemy target. If the tank pulls one group of trash mobs I usually put the DOT on each mob. But if the tank pulls more than one group of trash mobs I put the DOT only on the mob I have selected at the time. And on the Bosses fights I always have them on, as soon as it wears off I put it up again. Stone (Glare) is your main single target spell. Here is a little guide on the buffs and debuffs. It is pretty simple to understand and very straight forward. Have fun, playing healer is always so exiting. docs.google.com/document/d/1NJL3ig4OXSrIbz7DgbHzObxaOD142cu2msuePzg6hMM/edit Oh and if you are aiming for End Game content here is a website where you can see job rotations. www.thebalanceffxiv.com/
You can use Regen before the tank pulls, as the HoT tick doesnt actually generate aggro. But if the tank has hit a mob you may want to hold it. You will want to use Assize on Cooldown, as it also helps your mana. At your level: Tetragram > Lilies > Cure 2 for single target. Holy is a damage mitigation on trash pulls due to the stun.
In FF 11 at some of the higher leveling spots a group of Monk/white mage could level in certain areas . I dreaded learning WM in the beginning but it actually got really fun and opened new possibilities.
Dungeon pull priority: Regen, benison, holy, assize, holy x3 (because it stuns, so no damage goes out), aslyum. Keep pumping holy and use afflatus when needed. Repeat this flow when things come off cooldown. Use cure II if you don't have lilies. I would only use regen between pulls or to cover tank damage in boss fights while on the move though.
The dome thing boosts your healing spells potency. Use it once the tank has stopped during a big pull. WHM for dungeons, cast Medica 2 (has cast time) followed by regen (instant cast) target on tank. Refresh when medica 2 falls off. Itâll be a double regen on tank (medica 2 + regen) and single regen on everyone else hit by medica 2. Should be enough to keep any average gear tank comfortably topped. If you feel a tank you have is taking more damage than you can manage, toss out your dome before medica2/regen. Should be able to get off a second medica 2 before some goes away and it will carry its increased potency after.
WHM main here: There are no emergency buttons, get used to your whole kit. When i was learning an ability I used to forget the rest of the buttons where there ðĩâðŦ. That's fine, you are learning, just slowly start weaving in all the abilities. 1. OGCD are best for mp management and you gotta feed that blood lily (btw, don't let lillies cap, you can pop them while walking even if no damage is occurring) 2. Use that lucid dream before you think you need it. 3. Thin air + Medica II or Cure III will save your mp 4. Assize also heals mp, keep it on cooldown unless you are going for the 2 min burst or a mega heal check 5. Balance discord has some awesome rotations up. 6. Have faith between 60-80: I call it the awkward whm phase, just survive those levels and you'll be fine ðĨģ 7. HAVE FUUUN. Mistakes in tanking ends in death, slow dps ends in death, lack of cures ends in death, stepping on the sick ends in death. Not all deaths are the healer's fault. Don't be discouraged, I'm leveling my remaining dps and need other healers to take the mantle in roulettes . Baby healers, we need you! ðĪ
You can use Assize on cooldown :3 It's one of your main OGCD's for damage. For Aero, you don't really need to keep putting it on every mob in pulls, once the tank stops it's better to swap to Holy spam(just make sure to wait till the tank stops, cause Holy has an aoe stun and makes the mobs stop moving :'3) Aero is good to use on boss fights and/or if you're moving around. You can also make a little macro that automatically places Asylum under yourself or a target instead of having to manually click on the ground to place it, it's pretty convenient xD
I haven't read ALL of the comments so I don't know what if these tips have been mentioned, but I'll mention them just in case. These are my personal tips that I use when I heal on WHM. (I am a tank main for the most part, but I tend to run WHM often) 1. Regen is your best friend. Keep Regen on at all times as the ticks help on healing. If you cast Regen as the tank is pulling, you may get some aggro, but if you cast Regen a few seconds before pulling, you will get no aggro. This was a recent change during EW. 2. When you get Medica II/(Lv50), the added regen from that stacks with Regen, so use this to your advantage. 3. Use your Asylum when pulling large groups too. The regen of that stacks with Medica II/III and Regen! 4. When tanks go nuts and start pulling 2 to 3 rooms, use Holy/Holy III. Holy stuns mobs. This is a mitigation I do not see a lot of WHM do. I just spam Holy until the mobs are immune to the stun. 5. Keep an eye out on your MP and use Lucid Dreaming around 6000-7000 MP. It has a 60s cooldown. By the time you will need it again, it will be available most of the time. 6. Use your Lilies often. Do not use them for ohshit heals. While they can be used for that, they do not heal enough for an emergency and you may need to pop 2 or 3 when in an emergency. Just use them at 50-60%. After the appropriate level, you get an extra AoE attack when you use 3. 7. Use Assize when pulling groups. Assize heals the party, attacks the group of mobs, AND refreshes some MP. It's a great spell for attacking, refreshing MP, and healing the tank a bit. 8. When tanks are being hit by a tank buster, (red round marker), throw them Divine Benison (Lv66) as it shields. This can mitigate some of their damage and it will be easier to heal them back up after a buster. 9. Macros are invaluable! I have an insta-cast resurrection macro, an Asylum macro that will cast the dome on target, a Liturgy of the Bell macro that will cast the bell on me, and I have a hotbar next to all the group window going down with Macros next to each person. These macros are insta-cast heals that I can click in an emergency to heal each respective person. 10. Have fun and experiment! Don't hesitate to ask people to take it easy in a dungeon and not pull the entire thing in one pull. Most tanks won't mind, really. (I prefer going slow, tbh) I hope to see another video on how you're progressing! It is interesting to me when people go out their comfort zone to try a new job and they end up liking it! If you have questions, ask! I am more than happy to share my macros and any other tips! :)
heyyy thanks for all this! super helpful and the percentages of when to use certain abilities makes it a lot more understandable. ð i haven't dove into the world of macros (yet) but i can see how that would make things a lot easier.
The thing with healers is how you heal changes directly to how other players in your group play. Lots of Tanks/DPS players say healing is easy ... HA! Most players are focused on the enemy and mechanics and thats it, then as a healer you have to also focus on every party members health/debuff status understand when a HoT will be usefull or a AOE HoT for the group, knowing how to pop these off to counter group wide damage but while doing all this you also have to watch the boss and the mechanics. It really can lead to overload. When i went from Tank/DPS to healer OMG! Healers in FF14 are the true GOATS!
My method for dungeons... 1. While tank is collecting mobs, ignore healing and DoT everything you can. 2. When tank reaches wall, run in the middle of the mob and Holy -> Regen tank -> Holy -> Medica 2 -> Holy -> Heal tank if needed. 3. Get out of mob and concentrate on DPS 4. Keep regen on tank and Medica 2 on everyone. If your team is halfway good, and you pop asylum when you can, this will take care of 90% of healing, just spot heal as needed when bad stuff happens.
As a healer main, and someone that has played my fair share of WHM since ARR, here are a few rules to really understand to make playing a healer a bit more enjoyable. First things first, most healers will feel incomplete until a certain point in there leveling due to missing a few specific spells or abilities, WHM has that problem until a much higher level than the other three. WHM won't really feel as cohesive until around the level that you get Afflatus Rapture, so don't let the lower lever stuff make you feel weak, it's just that the major pieces of the puzzle haven't been given to you yet. Second thing, regardless of what people tell you, you are allowed to make mistakes. You can't learn something until you have managed to screw it up at least once or a dozen times, just look at PF savage. Third thing to always remember, the only HP that maters is the last one, keeping everyone completely topped off is practically impractical, and rather pointless. Just make sure you keep people high enough to survive the next hit, usually the game does a really good job with explaining when that is. And for a final rule to always remember, it doesn't mater how hard you try, it doesn't mater how good you are, and it will never mater how much you play a healer in the game, The final rule to always remember is, YOU CAN'T CURE STUPID. People are gonna make mistakes and if people are willing to work together we can all be happy to add a new player to the ranks of the dark side of raiding, but you may have to deal with those idiots that expect everyone to play at the level of absolute perfection so they can get carried through content faster. DO NOT LET THOSE PEOPLE CONTROL HOW YOU FEEL when it comes to playing a new role all together. Also, Welcome to the role that will one day make you realize that you are in fact the most important player in the party.
OK, as a healer main i just wanna say 1st off welcome to the healer club. i.e the club where it is literally your job to keep track of a thousand things at once ;P it is not an easy role and when i started out i was confused as well so here are some of my tips and tricks 1- you already do this but keep regen on the tank at all times (the aggro problem you mentioned really only applies in duty support as the tank doesn't use its AOE attacks, thus losing the aggro of the mob) 2- on mobs pulls in dungeons you are going to want to spam holy on 3 or more enemies and keep it up until it gets down to 2 then use stone. 3- use your flowers and tetragram as your main heals instead of cure 2 to save mp (i.e cure 2 is to use only when you don't have a flower-its a backup) 4- keep assize on cool down. it helps with your mp management 5- to help you with mob pull healing -> cast a holy for stun then thin air and medica 2> holy again> refresh regen on tank if needed and pop an assize and keep it on cool down>spam holy and heal as needed. 6- continuing on from 5; medica 2 and regen stack thus giving you constant heals until the timer runs out. it takes a lot of the pressure off. 7- for a massive pull or a heavy hitting one you are going to want to throw in presence of mind and lucid dreaming at the start and add in the bubble after the first holy. 8- cure 3 is a group heal on the target so if you need to heal multiple people at once and they are far away target one of them then cast it. 9- the focus target thing is a personal preference, there is no wrong answer so do what works for you. :) I have a few more but these are the basics that'll carry you through most of the content until endgame just with a few more spells to add in. Hope it helps :)
1. ooooooh i didn't know that. got it! 8. oops i don't think i knew cure 3 was a group heal on the target. thanks for letting me know ð thanks for all of these helpful tips! â
I am by no means an expert at the game, but I've been playing Healers since before Stormblood and here are a few things that I've kept in mind and have helped me through casual content. General Healer Tips: ...Prioritize off global abilities for healing and mitigation. Every healer has tools that do not trigger the global cooldown and help to restore HP or even mitigate damage. If you need to heal, try to prioritize abilities like Tetra since you can weave them in-between your spells like Stone. Besides, dead enemies can't hurt the party, can they? ...Try not to over heal. When you use moves like Regen or Medica II, they provide healing over time, and unless a party member is taking a lot of damage or at very low health, the regen typically works enough to get them up to par for the next part of the fight. ...Don't worry about making sure party members are topped off. While it does help ease the anxiety, as long as a party member has at least 1 HP they have survived the attack. Obviously it's good to keep party members closer to full HP, but as long as they are close you should be good. ...Experiment with your actions. Obviously practice makes perfect, but getting an idea of how much certain moves restore gives you a better idea of how much healing you actually need to do. As you get more used to the actions at your disposal you'll have more insight on how much you actually need to focus on healing overall. ...Put your party list in easy view. It doesn't need to be center screen but it is easier to parse when you don't have to look as far to see it. ...I'd personally focus target on the boss, however you may want to swap it around depending on the fight. That being said, being able to keep a eye on what mechanics you need to focus on helps tremendously when healing. ...Try to cleanse debuffs with Esuna when you can. Not every debuff is cleansable, however debuffs that have a white/blue line above it's icon can absolutely be cleansed. (Also, fun fact if you haven't already noticed debuff icons look like an arrow pointing down while buffs look like arrows point up.) White Mage Tips ...Unless you are in a really low level dungeon, don't worry about using Cure 1. It's underpowered and even the bonus effect of a free Cure 2 means nothing in the grand scheme. ...Always use Assize whenever it is available. Yes, it heals nearby party members but it also restores MP and deals damage to nearby enemies. These later two effects are the important parts of Assize, the healing is just beneficial if the party has low health. Plus, with it being an off global action you can weave it in between spells with relative ease. ...Don't worry about keeping Regen on the tank if they are at full health. While it may help with large mob pulls, in moat boss fights Regen is more of a supplement to healing than a core tool, especially at higher levels. ...Don't be afraid to use the Afflatus spells. They're instant cast, cost no MP, and you get resources for them as the fight progresses. I'd go as far as to say use them first over things like Cure 2 and Medica II as you'll have an easier time conserving MP. ...Cure III is a massive MP sink compared to other AOE heals, so I'd recommend saving it for when you need them for big heals. Although, Thin Air can give you a use of it for no cost so if you feel you're running low on MP, don't be afraid to use that. ...Holy is your AOE best friend. Unlike most AOE actions which tend to be more effective when there are 3 or more targets, Holy's added effect of Stun makes it useful when there is more than 1. That being said, enemies will grow resistant to Stun the more they are inflicted with it, and once it can no longer be applied then it may be better to focus on Stone and Aero if the enemies fall below 3. While there are more tips that can help in the long run, especially as some of these don't necessarily apply to the raiding scene, these at least should give you a decent basis for how to approach both White Mage as well as Healers in general. It's gotten me through most content and in some cases saved a lot of parties.
certain mechanics you can follow up with certain skills. Like after a stack marker, everyone takes damage you can use Assize or your aoe heal while everyone is still stacked together. Healers, particularly pure healers like WHM, and AST are very reactionary healers and tend to do their healing after taking damage.
You're gonna be fine, most players are patient and understanding. And lots are also willing to help you learn, be it just to be helpful, or because they want more healers to learn and stick to healing to make queues faster... the more people that swap to maining healer, the faster the DPS queues get. And also: I believe a lot of couples play healer and tank together is cause the easiest way to learn healing is with feedback from the tank - the party member who can most clearly see the effect of what you're doing, or not doing.... but this is also helpful yourself! Give tanking a try and ask an experienced White Mage to run a dungeon with you specifically to learn to heal better, and watch what they do while you're taking damage (focus target them so you can see what they're casting, and also watch for the flyover text poping up over your character when they heal you - particularly to see the names of spells that are instant-cast, and therefor don't have a castbar to see when you've focus targetted them). As long as your tank stance is on and you're doing your aoes to keep trash mobs attacking you, you're doing the same as about 50% of random tanks in dungeons, and a good healer can keep you alive without breaking a sweat, especially with gear over the level cap of synched-down content. Throughout the run or just at the end, ask questions: about things you saw they did, spells you don't fully understand, or whatever else!
thanks for your input! that's definitely one area where i can improve. i don't know any other classes abilities! i think i am going to try tanking next. curious, which tank class do you think i should try? ðĪ
@@HeatherJustPlay Although most people would recommend Marauder (which later becomes Warrior), because of its straightforwardness and ease of play. I will instead say Dark Knight, which is almost as simple to play as Warrior, but starts at level 30, which saves you from having to level up from lvl 1 again (pick up the quest in Ishgard - near "The Tribunal" aethershard in The Pillars). It also has the best Job Quests storyline in the game, written by Natsuko Ishikawa, who is beloved in the community as also being the lead writer of the Shadowbringers MSQ (among other things, including the Rogue class quesline - later turns into Ninja - which is also very good). Though, whichever tank you think is most interesting or looks most fun to play should be the one you choose, they are all more-or-less equally simple to play in the earlier levels, differing complexity and more unique playstyles come about level 60 or so. I will say if you wanted to start again from level 1 as a tank and later move on to one of the expansion tanks, I'd say start with the one that plays more like the one you want to play later: which would be Marauder (Warrior) if you want to move to Dark Knight (starts as level 30), or Gladiator (Paladin) if you want to move on to Gunbreaker (starts as level 60).
For targetting, there is a keybind you can assign that will let you target the target of your target (whoever the monster is targeting, IE the tank) 100% recommend a keybind that is easy to get to that will target the tank. Will make your life so much easier I have my ~ key set up to focus on my focus target. I set the tank to my focus target and I can switch to them in a second. Sometimes it gets a little hard if there's a boss I have to focus target to watch out for specific mechanics, but it isn't too hard to switch around I have to.
2:46 I main healer in a lot of games lol. Everyone is your baby to take care ofðž . The chaos is the fun part of being a supporter role though cause a lot of ransoms will die without you paying attention.
For healing, I would work on keeping party alive, then gradually work on weaving damage in. So focus on healing, then work on getting dots on mobs, then adding stone etc while managing your own, tank then dps's health Don't forget to heal yourself as well
watch Rinon's guide on WHM. He explains how to play that class and the order of abilities you want to use in your healing rotations alongside the optimal DPS rotations for when you're not healing
Glad you're getting back into XIV! That said... hoo, gurl, I got some WHM tips for you. I wouldn't say it's my main - that's BRD - but realistically it IS the class I play the most often once I've learned new content, because I love those short queue times. I'm sort of a "hardcore casual" player - I play a lot, but I don't play EX's or Savages or Ultimates, so I'm not trying to push the limits of what I can do, but I do typically perform more than adequately using these techniques in regular content. -Your priority should always be: keeping yourself alive, then the tank, then any other rezzers, then anyone else. You can't heal if you're dead, the group will likely wipe if the tank is down for too long, other rezzers can help you if things start going south, and everyone else... if they stood in bad, they should have thought about that beforehand ð -Once you've gotten to about 7000-8000 MP, start hitting your Lucid Dreaming on cooldown. You'll have a hard time running out of MP if you do this, unless you're really having to burn all of your high MP cost heals all the time. -Any debuff with a straight white line over it on your party members vitals (including your own) can be cleansed with Esuna. If there's no white line, it's not cleanseable. -"Noob" techniques to use until you get more comfortable with healing: abuse the hell out of your regens (Regen, Medica II/III, Asylum). Put all 3 down at once if you've got a tank that's wall-to-wall pulling. Unless the tank is undergeared (or you are), you probably won't need to heal again until at least one of them wears off. You can drop Asylum as you're running, once you know roughly where the tank is going to stop. You can also Regen them as you're runnning. You have to wait until you stop to hard-cast Medica II/III, unless you want to Swiftcast it (not recommended unless it's an emergency). -Once the tank stops and you've got those regens set up (or even if you've got one or two and can sneak this in): Holy spam commence. Holy has a diminishing return Stun attached to it - IMO, Stuns are effectively also healing, because it's however many seconds that people are not taking damage. If you Swiftcast your first Holy once the tank stops running, that can give you a few seconds to hardcast Medica II/III without incoming damage going on. Do note that you need to be "in the thick of things" to have your Holy stun hit everything though, so be careful where you position yourself. -Once you're comfortable with the regen(s)/Holy combo for pulls, start adding in your Aero/Dia DoT's as you're running. I like to try to tag all the mobs as the tank goes from one pack to the next with an Aero, to help with DPS. That's one you can cast on the move, so if you've Regen'd the tank already and you're still running, it gives you something to do while you're moving. -Once you're more comfortable with healing, try to pull back on the Medica II/III spam a bit. I used to like to keep it up almost all the time because I don't trust anyone, but it IS an MP and "action economy" suck - you could be instead contributing DPS every time you cast it, if you're confident it won't really be needed. This takes some time to understand your heals as well as the content (and other people's likely pain points/difficult areas in that content), though. That's why this is a "later" tip. I like to try to play a game with myself now when I'm comfortable with content called "Can I run this whole dungeon without casting Medica II/III at all and still not have anyone die?" ;-p -Cure III is great for large group heals after raidwides and things like that, but keep in mind everyone has to be relatively close together. Medica has a slightly wider range but less potent heal. -Whenever possible, USE YOUR LILY HEALS OVER CURE I/II!!! First of all, they have no cast time, so that's great - you can also cast them on the run. Secondly, you'll later get an ability that lets you use an AoE DPS burst skill for every 3 lilies you consume, so healing with those actually helps your DPS in the end. Cure I/II should basically be a last resort for heals. If you're not comfortable with content or your party's skill level, consider holding lilies in case you need to burn some big heals in a pinch. -Assize is possibly the best skill in the game, IMO. AoE damage + healing + small MP refund = use it on cooldown, basically. In the beginning, you'll probably see it as a healing skill that you need to hold for emergencies. It's actually a DPS skill ;-p -Tetragrammaton and Benediction are your "OH ISH" buttons, but you can also use them in less urgent situations. Don't be afraid to put your skills on cooldown. -Make yourself a "Swiftcast Raise" macro. Use it as needed. If multiple people go down at once in a raid, Presence of Mind + Thin Air and I've generally had luck either rezzing the rezzers first, or starting at the bottom of the party list (other cohealers usually tend to rez from the top down, creating redundancy overlaps if you're both rezzing the same person). -They just added a dash skill to WHM in Dawntrail: Aetherial Shift. Learn the rough distance you'll travel with it in low pressure content, so you don't yeet yourself off a ledge with it in a group situation ;-p Then put it somewhere that you can easily access it but never accidentally press it during group content, to avoid more "fun times" there. And then, there's my most "controversial" piece of advice. I originally played LotRO before this, which had "skill target forwarding" - that is, if you had a friendly targetted and cast a damage spell, but THEY had the enemy targetted, the game was smart enough to filter your damage spell through to the "target of target." So... you could keep the tank targetted all the time but still cast damage spells, or vice versa. This game does not have that feature innately... but what it does have is macros. Now, people will tell you macros are bad because there's no skill queueing and you loose some tenths of a second every time you go to cast, etc. - this is all true, but I find that if you're not trying to do "bleeding edge" content (Savages or Ultimates, really), you'll still perform just fine with all that in mind. This would allow you to keep the tank targetted, focus target the boss so you can see whatever they're casting at any given time, and not have to switch targets for your heals or DPS skills. For me, the slight optimization loss is worth it in exchange for the EXTREME QoL I find this to bring. If you are interested in this, then, I have a macro like this set up for each of my DPS skills (exchange the DPS skill name for whichever one you're trying to macro): /micon "Holy" /ac "Holy" /ac "Holy" What that will do is try to cast Holy on your target first (if you have an enemy targetted) or your target of target (if you have a friendly targetted). This way you can use it either in solo content where you'd be directly targetting enemies, or group content where you'll likely be targetting through the tank. I'm a button masher, so this works great for me, since I"m usually mashing it again well before it's come off cooldown. Again - this is NOT OPTIMIZED GAMEPLAY, and the general consensus of the internet will be that it's bad, but shrug, it's worked fine for me for years now, and it saves me the nightmare of having to target switch all the time just to do some damage. There's other things I could tell you about some higher level strats/skill usages as well, but since you don't have those skills yet (and I've already written a novel), this is probably enough for now lol. I wish you luck on your healer's journey! I hope you come to love it as well! And always remember: you can heal a lot of things, but you can't heal stupid.
@@SeifellAlmancht That's why I said that part was controversial and gave a lot of warnings - I know it's not optimized. Yet I will tell you, from literal years of playing this way now, I've never had any noteworthy problems with it or really any problems at all that I even remember. I HAVE had problems trying to macro heals though, and I wouldn't recommend that, but DPS skills have worked for me (and in fact are a DPS GAIN for me vs. me trying to fat-finger target switch all the time, as well as being a more calming way to play healer). However, everyone is different, and your mileage may vary - again, I heavily disclaimered that part before I added it.
-oh wow i didn't know the thing about Esuna, thanks. i actually haven't ever used Esuna because i don't know what the status icons mean yet and heals have been enough to keep everyone alive so i figured just do that. -i've gotten pretty good about doing Aero as i'm running to catch up with the tank â -didn't know to use the lilies over cure! now i know. for some reason i thought it was the "oh ðĐ" move but clearly i had it backwards haha. -"In the beginning, you'll probably see it as a healing skill that you need to hold for emergencies. It's actually a DPS skill ;-p" yes this is exactly what i thought hahah ð -i haven't used tetra or benediction yet so thanks for the explanation THANK YOU for the in depth guide, seriously! this was very helpful! ðŊ
Duty support just takes longer (the DPSs attack enemies one at a time). If you force wall-to-wall pulls in duty support and can keep the AI tank alive, you can heal anything. That's how I got good at AST.
For assize, Iâd recommend just using it on cooldown. Itâs much more useful for the mp regen and damage rather than saving it for the healing aspect. Thatâd help with your mp issues as well, itâs an extra 500 mp youâll be getting back every 45 seconds.
Good Morning, as a fellow Dragoon main, and then going into White Mage as secondary, here are a couple of things that i like to do when i play this healer ditch Cure III, i find that Medica II + Assize will do the same job but better in terms of maths, Cure III = 600 potency Medica II + Assize = 650 potency Plus 150 Regen potency it also Cost Less MP and you actually gain some back due to Assize if you need to heal a DPS, i would just put a Regen on them, if they're like below 50% HP, then i would probably give them Afflatus Solace + regen that way you're not wasting so much MP and time casting a Cure II i definitely prioritize using Afflatus Solace and Tetragrammaton over Cure II you save Time bc they are Instant Abililties and MP, well bc they are Free.99 Good Luck in your Roulettes i hope these will help you
I literally had the same problem with Dragoon and just had to learn my own rotation for it. Those rotation guides I find are a bit mad anyway, I don't really play the savage content, I get along fine with a more basic rotation.
I'm fairly new to FFXIV, been playing for 4 months...XD but I am a white mage main at level 100 lol and I'll share with you what some of my mentors taught me! Assize - damage to boss and heals with no MP cost! For big pulls, and the tank rushes on ahead of you and you need to heal him immediately use assize. Also when taking on a boss save it until the boss does a big hit and the party's HP is down to half. Focus target - Use this on the tank when pulling mobs. When you face the boss focus target the boss. After the boss is defeated focus target the tank again. Keep switching depending on the duty. Holy - the stun effect lasts 3 times. If the tank does not pull on ahead and you can reach him use Holy FIRST. It'll stun the mob and allow the party to do damage while the enemies are unable to move. After the 3 times you still want to use holy because it does damage even if it no longer stuns. Using stone and aero will take too long and slow down the party. Now you can still do aero on each enemy after you use Holy 3 times. Also you want to use Presence of Mind when using Holy. It speeds up the casting time. Raise - First it's good that you use swiftcast and thin air when raising people. But you want to create a user macro that combines raise with swiftcast. If you're not sure how to do that I'll be happy to show you what I have! It just speeds up the time to raise someone. Tetragrammaton - Single spell heals with no MP cost! If your MP and HP are low you want to use Tetra until you get your MP back up. Benediction - If your HP is super low and you're about to die make sure to use Bene! It's great in a pinch. But only use it if you're within 10% of dying. Also use if it you do die and need healed quick! Reagen - Yes you always want to use reagen on a tank so keep it up! As for being afraid of leveling it up more because you'll get new stuff, you will find healing to be a lot easier when you get to a higher level cause there are traits and abilities that can do your healing for you while you dps! Don't be afraid to level it up. So far I've done White Mage and Scholar and prefer White Mage but it's all about preference. I love being a healer main and hopefully you'll grow more confident and learn to love it too! If you need extra tips on how to play I'll be happy to help as best I can and if I don't know then I'll ask one of my mentor's to assist! That's what I love most about this game. The majority of the player base is extremely supportive and wants everyone to succeed!
thank you so much for this awesome guide! it's been super helpful. i'm scared to jump into the world of macros... they seem very intimidating ðģ but maybe i just need an explanation and start with something simple like you said?
@@HeatherJustPlay You're welcome! Yeah I was intimidated in the beginning too but macros really helps to simplify everything. I'm not just new to this game but new to gaming in general and once I was taught about macros it helped me to learn the job better. Starting off simple is a good idea and once you master healing then you can do more complex macros.
F2, F3 & F4 selects the other players in a light party. F5-8 for a full party. WHM is the most straight forward, thatâs true. Holy is great for pausing damage to heal folks up. Just be aware the effect is halved each time you use it. Let the tank pull before you start healing, or the enemies will get really upset at you. Duty support is a great way to learn mechanics because the bots nearly always get them correct. Donât be afraid of new abilities, they always expand your toolbox options. Your grasp of abilities is very good. Start using lucid dreaming at about 75-80% mana, and then on cooldown. Assize is used on cooldown as well, as it also has a mana regen as well. I try to alternate them.
Few tips: - Assize also restores MP so not using it until the end is not a great idea. Should basically be used as soon as it comes off cooldown, also Assize is off the GCD (it does not take time to cast, and you can straight away cast something else) and deals a ton of damage, so not using it often will reduce your damage. A great moment to use it is 5-10 seconds into a boss fight. Open up , put up your aero, perhaps a regen on the tank, start spamming Stone. "A lot" of bosses open with some kind of AoE attack a few seconds into the fight. Assize is perfect for this. You can heal up the party without stopping to deal damage and you get the MP back you already spent. In short, use Assize as soon as you can, unless you know AoE damage is coming up then it's okay to hold onto it for a short while. - Lillies shouldn't just be used when MP is low, since they don't cost MP themselves they should be used to prevent getting low MP in the first place. Sitting on 3 full Lillies is bad, and this becomes even worse later on when you receive your blood lilly. Healing ability priority should generally be use oGCD first (Assize, tellegramation,...) > Lillies > Hard casting spells that cost MP like Cure II . This will result in the highest DPS and lowest MP cost, but if you're not comfortable with a fight it's also okay to hold onto your oGCDs until you need them to help keep everyone alive. Just prioritize using Lillies over hard casted heals that use MP. - Yes Thin Air (free MP spell) is best used together with Raise, but people (luckily) don't die all that often. You get 2 charges of the spell. So it's also fine to use a charge in combination with a spell like Medica II or Cure III, you won't save as much MP as you would with Raise, but it's still a lot of MP saved and better than not using Thin Air at all when noone is dying. - Aero is really only worth casting if it can stay on the full duration on the mob, so it's great for bosses. It's also great to put on mobs while the tank is still running and fetching them as you don't have to stand still to cast it. As soon as you're in the neighborhood of 3 or more mobs, Holy is always going to result in more damage than refreshing Aero or casting Stone. So Aero in typical mob packs should only be put up at the very beginning while everyone is still moving. - Lucid dreaming should indeed be cast ASAP but try to be down to 8000 MP or so before you put it on so you're sure you will get the most out of the MP regeneration. Unless you know you're about to cast some heavy MP heals then you can use it earlier. There's plenty of more nuances to the job, but these tips should already help you out a lot if you're struggling with MP.
Assize is a damage oGCD, don't wait to use that, ignore the heal on it, use it off cooldown, for heals you are gonna learn the fights be proactive and not reactive. Example, a raidwide AoE is coming up cast your aoe oGCD or GCD heal and time it to go off right after the party is hit. Remember that there is a lot less to heal if the enemies die faster, Healer damage is quite considerable so don't ever stop casting You'll manage your cooldowns better if the fights don't drag out for ages. The most healing intense parts are dungeon mob pulls and raid bosses that specifically have healing/mit checks.
Healing is not terrible, and WHM has the easiest Barrier Of Entry to overcome. Low lvels, get used to keeping pace with the tank, make sure to throw him a regen before he wades into battle, and spam Holy to stunlock the mobs (Damage lost to stunlock is damage prevented to your tank!) If your DPS is taking damage but not in immediate danger, throw out regens. instant cast and as long as they stay out of the fire, they will be fine while you focus elsewhere. Also, F1-F8 keys. Instant target party members without those precious miliseconds being wasted by locating your mouse in all the flashy effects and guide it to the party member in need of help ALSO: I can only assume you have seen Jocats' crap guides to FFXIV by now, but its always good for a laugh and some solid advice
YES the F1-F8 keys. i haven't done any 8 person+ duties yet as a WHM but i'm getting better at using at least F1-F4 haha. and i haven't seen Jocat's crap guide so thanks for the heads up!
Started as a white mage and is still my main. I've grown more comfortable along the way. Scared to fail as a healer and letting the team down and ... Now ending in runs with friends and trying to kill eachother XD healers are brutal cause we can pull people to safety (sure). I play the way I feel comfortable. I do target focus the boss to have an idea of what is coming, and just makes it easier for me personally to click on his name and have him ready to do damage to again. My party list is on a place I know I can easily reach. Keep playing with your hud until it works for you. Also feel free to not like the whm in the end. I love my whm end enjoy astro alongside. Scholar and Sage ... no thanks and that's ok to. Holy is nice in big pulls. You can keep your focus on the tank while still doing damage, putting a heal in here and there if needed. Aoe heals are my lazy healing ^^. Regen on a tank is never wrong. Could you have done an extra damage spell sure, does it give you a sense of security to do regen instead go for it. The lillies are so nice and rest assured more is coming. A healer feeling at ease and enjoying themselfes is a pretty good start. Oh and healer LB3 ^^ such a nice feeling. Take your time, see what works for you. Heck only recently I was watching a vid and the whm used Cure 3 this 1 time. Never used it myself before seeing the vid, it was on the right on my bar to be forgotten. Now it has it's place among the rest, still on the side cause hardly used, but it has a purpose here and there.
Especially for lower level where your ogcdâs are more limited/nonexistent, itâs ok to play a bit safer. Sometimes trying to be optimal actually makes things riskier, and if you arenât confident, itâs better to heal a bit more excessively and do less damage, then trying to maximize damage and accidentally let the tank drop. Also avoid the compulsion to max hp bar right away, which I did when i started. If you got regen from medica 2/regen then itâs ok to let their bar go up slowly unless another ape is coming. Canât tell how many times i overhealed and used up my mp before i realized i was trying to hard.
I don't use focus target but I probably should. If you're having trouble with yourself dying it might be good to adjust your HUD layout a bit like you said. I had a bad habit of not watching my own bars so I moved my HP and MP directly above my hot bars at the bottom middle if the screen and made them bigger so if I was looking down to check a cooldown timer, they were right there. I just had to make them harder for myself to miss. One thing I do for my health dropping is if I notice that I took a bit of damage, I will use my F key for (deep breath) "Target the target of your current target (Assist Target)". Yep, that's really what the function is called, it's in the targeting section of the keybind menu. I can't remember if it's F by default or not. Basically, if the tank is targeting an enemy and you press F, it switches you to target that enemy. If you press it again, it switches back to the tank (or whoever the enemy is targeting). During the fight, I will press F off of the tank onto the boss/enemy and then cast regen. Since you can't heal an enemy it automatically casts the heal on yourself. Then you can refresh your Aero dot and press F again to go back to the tank. A lot of these are habits I got burned into me by playing priest in WoW over a decade ago that never went away. If you find yourself having to heal a dps directly and target them, they're usually targeting something that is targeting the tank already. So, you can target the dps, cast the heal, then tap F twice quickly. This will switch your target to the enemy, then back to the tank quickly. Generally if the DPS took damage it means they either made a mistake or it was a party wide hit. If everyone is missing health, medica 2 will take care of it and you don't even have to change targets. If you're fighting a group of enelies like a dungeon pull and a couple of people need to be topped off, assize is good for that since it damages all of the enemies around and heals the party. Once you get the lily gauge and afflatus heals, those will eventually replace cure 2 as your standard spot heal. Tetragrammaton is basically another lily heal on its own cooldown (eventually it gets a second charge at 98 I believe). Neither afflatus heals or Tetra cost MP so that will take some of the MP bar stress off. Otherwise I use Lucid Dreaming any time my MP is 7,000 or below and it's off cooldown. I have seen some healers spam holy like crazy and you certainly can. I usually space out the casts a few seconds at the start of a dungeon pull. You can think of the stun as extra mitigation for the tank since they're not getting hit during that time. The stun has a diminishing return where the first cast stuns for 4 seconds, the second cast for 2 and then the third for one second. After that you're just doing damage.
oh wow the assist target thing actually sounds nifty and practical but also something i'll have to practice. "topped off" is a good term that makes me understand when to use assize. thanks for your input! ð
Sounds like you're getting pretty close but I do have a few tips: 1. Focus Target your tank on trash pulls in dungeons, then switch your target to the Boss on Boss fights. 2. Use Holy on any pack of 3+ even if the stun drops off because the stun is the secondary effect the damage is the primary purpose of Holy. Particularly useful for trash packs because you can use Presence of Mind to speed up your casts causing a minor stun lock on mobs which will give you enough time to weave in an Off global CD heal such as Tetragrammaton or Afflautis. 3. Position yourself to use Medica more often than using Cure III because of the stark difference in MP cost. Medica II is an AOE heal over time so only use it as a top up. 4. Assize my beloved, use it often use it always. 5. Asylum is a mitigation. Think of it as a little bit of extra protection during trash pulls and right before unavoidable aoe attacks. It's also very helpful to signal to a tank how far to take a trash pull. 6. If you're shaky on mechanics or feeling anxious during a boss pull, put Aero (dot) on the boss and focus on healing. It's okay to lower your dps a little to make sure everyone is up and healthy than to lose a party member. You'll add more and more DPS over time as you get used to the mechanics. 7. When things get hectic and you're kinda panicking a little, use a Medica, then use an individual heal. That way if you're getting hyperfocussed on the party's health bars you can make sure you're getting healing too. I know it's a lot but honestly it sounds like you're doing pretty great and I'm so glad to hear you're having fun playing a healer. It can be stressful but once you get the healer mindset really working for you, then you can apply it to other healing jobs and find the one that really clicks with you and then it's all gravy. :D
i don't know why it didn't occur to me that i could switch the focus target from the tank to the boss during boss fights. seems obvious but thanks for pointing it out to me ha ð and yes, i've had to switch my mindset for some boss fights and tell myself to just focus on healing vs damage until i get better. i'm obviously trying to do too many things at once when i'm still learning. thanks for the tips and the encouragement! ð
I main as a SCH and really struggle with LOWER level dungeons actually. I will literally wipe because I don't have a group heal until level 35. We do have a group regen we can pop after level 20, Whispering Dawn, but it's just a regen. At least WHM gets Medica I at level 10! And, Duty Support is so much easier of course. When you do Duty Roulette, you have to deal with Tanks who think they can pull wall to wall but don't actually have the gear to handle it and forget it's a poor little SCH without their awesome higher level tool kit to help. Usually I would pop Adloquium on the tank pre-pull to pop up a shield for them, but there is no chance in Duty Roulette when they are running all the way through and by the time I reach them, they are almost dead and I just have to Physick them back up. It's really hectic and stressful! And, there have been times I totally forgot to summon my fairy before someone noticed and said, "Where's the fairy?" But, honestly, I think it's so much fun. When I played as Dancer, it was so much easier and no one was really paying attention to me or relying on me too much.
Some of your worries are outdated, regen ticks don't reap aggro anymore, and i think cure 3 area is a lot bigger. For UI, i use the party list a lot to see my hp/mp at the top. And as for fear of new abilities, consider that the more abilities you have, the more it's ok to use them slightly ineficiently (like your fear with the bubble ability). Once you are a bit more comfortable with healing/whm, consider looking up a bit about the different tanks and their way of mitigating/healing themselves. For example knowing that when a warrior uses bloodwheting they will not require any healing for 6-8 seconds. Or that blackknights require a bit more babysitting of their health than other tanks. Anyway good luck with healing, i find that the awareness it teaches makes you a better player in general. (sorry for my bad english)
As for what to do with your new abilities. Assise : use on cooldown, it deals damage, heals and gives you MP back. tetragramaton: priority for healing any single targets, it's free and you can use it between stones :p. Afflatus anything, it's free, and it comes back really quick, use it before considering Cure 2/3. Even benediction which might seem like a panic button is probably a good use just to restore half a hp. As a rule of thumb, using your cooldowns before your MP is always a good idea. And something that comes with experience, is to let your regens do the heavy lifting when the team wont take damage for some time. Asylum is great to get people to full after team wide damage while you do other things.
UI and Button set up. Disclaimer, im a sch main but i organize my spells in similar fashion. I think this is something people overlook when playing healer is an intuitive button set up. The tip i can give is to consolidate types of heals to a specific button. For a very simplified example. Let's use you keybinds 1, 2, 3 and 4 Single target heals would go to 1, instant single targets on 2, group heals would go to 3, and 4 would be instant group. Now with the use of commands, you access the different types of heal such as alt, shift, ctrl, ctrl+shift, alt+ctrl, and alt+shift. Example 1: regen Alt+1: cure 1 (i know we don't we use c1, but for sake of example) Shift+1: cure2 2: Tetra Alt+2: beni Shift+2: lily Single heal 3: medica1 (direct group heal) Alt+3: medica2 (direct plus HOT) Shift+3: cure3 4: assize Alt+4: asylum Shift+4: lily group heal Take note that holding shift will give access to lily heals. So you know shift is for instant lily heals either single or group, depending. But again, this is just simplified example, and keybinds can be categorized in different ways depending on play style. This grouping and organizing of your heals to make it less confusing.
I do the same thing, but the opposite way. I have the heals across 1-2-3-4, and the AOE/party counterparts on Shift+1 (etc). I find this a lot easier to remember in a pinch because for tank/DPS I use Shift+key for the AOE counterpart to the single-target, so that just keeps things the same.
@@onyx.avenger Yup. i know of others that do the same. So really again its playstyle. Either using keys to categorize the type of heal and shifting using command combos (my preferred playstyle) or through command combos and shifting using keys (your preferred playstyle). Although different, both serve the same purpose. Organizing our heals to promote efficiency. /cheer
i have so much i could say about white mage but I'll leave it to a tip that i don't see said very often. holy on trash pulls will stun on first hit and third hit before they are immune. i generally use holy, then try to put my dot on as many as i can during that, then regen tank before casting holy 2 more times for the second stun. after that if your at 4 or 3 enemies or less your single target attacks are better.
It's a normal thing to get back to being used to the game once you've taken a break, specially a long one like yours. Even me, who had capped all jobs, finds it daunting to get back to how I used to play. Healing is more stressful but very rewarding once you've mastered it. If you can't keep up with a fast pulling tank you can always tell him to do small pulls instead. Being a WHM, your heals have more potency than other healers but the problem lies on mana consumption because it depletes faster than the other healers. What you will do instead is keep casting aflatus to manage you mana better. Since you're using a keyboard, try to practice pressing f2 instead of targetting the tank. Also set you party HUD to where you can observe the hp better. These are just a few that I can suggest. Most of the things you mentioned are already correct and I'm sure you will get the hang of it as time goes by.
My first healer was actually Scholar because you level up Summoner at the same time. I would say I am adaquate, not spectacular. This is just me, but my priority for healing is Tank, then self (or fellow healer), DPS who can res, and then other healers. This allows for highest surrvivability. The reasoning is because if Tank dies, you can heal properly due to aggro. If you or other healers die, you can res other players. Then DPS with Res, because it always good to have another who can ressurect players. And finally all other DPS because they dont add to survivability. At least thats just how my brain works for healing.
I don't really main healer (but I can comfortably heal casual content up to 100), and when I do play I generally play barrier healers, but the best realization I had when I started leveling healers with WHM was that you don't need the party tl be 100% healed. As long as there isn't a big attack coming ofc. There also isn't anything bad in letting DPS getting low during trash packs and focusing on the tank if you can't keep up. For single target heals on WHM you should prioritize Afflatus solace (you get funny spell later that depends on your usage of them) > single target instants (Tetra, Benediction, etc.) > cure II For multiple targets it should be Afflatus rapture (lv 76 and forward, it's the AOE version of afflatus solace) > medica 2 > medica Cure III is mostly for rare cases such as the rest of the party being in Narnia and your mesicas not reaching them I usually try to pop lucid dreaming at 7000-8000 MP, bit often forget to... This should allow you to heal most casual content (it does for me at least), but I also learned WHM during EW tho and can't be considered a master in any way, so WHM makns are welcome to correcting me
OK, I started out FFXIV years ago and I wanted to play a caster or healer and my friends said to play Conjurer as they turn into a WHM and you can play both. Joy! I was a very experienced healer from other MMOs from over the past 20 years I so had this, right? No. It was hard because I was also expected to do damage. In other games, you do one thing. You have a role in a group or a raid and you do not stray from that. Getting cussed out by someone in a Roulette Duty that it took 15 minutes longer than they had planned because the tank couldn't mitigate and had crap gear, was MY fault because I kept us all alive was the end of that for me. I play all four healer jobs. All but Sage are maxxed out, fully geared and yes, I'm healing current trials, but refuse to do savages because life's too short to want to measure things. When I get into a duty, I focus target the tank. I click, on them, right click and click on focus and his name and health bar go up the my HUD there I have it and can see it even if I'm healing, casting or rezzing. That is the most important thing to do when you are healing. Never, ever take your eye off the tank. That's why I utterly hate AST right now, too busy. It's the Sage's main weakness, and frankly, SCH doesn't really need to. Assize is an AOE mass heal as well as doing damage to the enemy/enemies. I start off AOE pulls going wall to wall as it heals the tank, does damage, hit the tank with a heal and then start Holy so I don't have to heal so much as it stuns the mobs. Know what your spells do. As a white mage, you use every tool at your disposal, Asylum, Bell, and do as much of your awesome damage going so you ALWAYS have lily spells at your disposal. Use Termperence like you invented the spell at higher levels. Use Aquaveil on your tank whenever it's ready, Benediction on yourself and your tank after 90. Never ever forget that medica 2 is your best friend and always have your lily heals ready for stack markers. Also, know your rotation forward and backward, running FATEs will help you with that for solo and group work, while getting bicolor gems for stuff you might need. I love the role, and now we're even better than ever. Have fun with it and play with people you trust to get into your groove.
You *can* actually pre-regen a tank now as long as you do it before they target the next pack :) if theyâve already drawn aggro on it and then you cast regen, thatâs when all the mobs will target you. I donât bother focus targeting the tank, myself - Iâm healing them often enough that I donât need to and I have my UI set up so I can see cleansable debuffs and my regens on them. I DO have the bossâs cast bar massive and right in the middle of my screen so I donât miss any boss casts while busy topping up my team. Youâll get used to it though! I find Dragoon way harder than healing, personally - having to focus on a rotation while I avoid mechanics is way more difficult for me to get my head around :)
Holy adds a short stun to your aoe damage to enemies that aren't bosses so I would feel free to spam in trash mobs because it helps mitigate damage against your tank/party but remember to cast Regen and Medica II every so often but it sounds like you've found the right track!
Alright. I do not know if you will see this, 141 comments is a lot. I have 2 years exp playing, i have tanked/heal/dps from ARR all the way until the end of DT. I will do like a quick 10 tips that imo, is what the qualties of a good healer. 1. Stick close to the tank at all times of a pull. If the tank sprints, you should be too. 2. Individual Regen and group Regen STACK! I know, right? Tested this one day, and i was so pleased to see the heal factor doubled with both on. 3. Healing classes are more or lese the same at its core with just different names for abilities. But they do have a few differences. I highly recommend trying different ones. Imo. White mage is the least fun healer. 4. Playing tank / dps / healer is so good to understand what is required in each role to make an efficient unit. 5. Esuna. The number of times i have seen healers, not esuna bad effects, blows my mind. A tank with 3 or so debuffs on (the one with a blue line at the top can he removed) will die fast in a big mob. Make sure to remove them asap. 6. Swiftcast + Raise should be 2 buttons close to each other. If the tank dies, it does not automatically mean a wipe. 7. And this one is super important. Some tanks are just bad. If they pull 15 mobs but just use 1 tiny mitigation, then the healer takes a lot of strain. 8. This sort of ties in to 7. Mob pulls are what hurt, not boss fights. When i tank, i pull wall 2 wall, as soon as i stop pop 2/3 mitigation abilities and repeat. By the time i get to the boss fight, everything is on cooldown. And thats fine, because bosses don't hit that hard. 9. Prioritise in your head. Healing is more important than dps. Tank hp is more important than dps hp. So make a little one of these for yourself: Heal > Esuna > Attacking And you will only attack once the first two conditions are met. With holy, it has a stun, so you could alternate 1 holy/1 cure 2 or something, for example. 10. Don't be afraid to fail. You will learn more dying to a wall 2 wall than you will to surviving a single mob pack. Bonus: Do hall of the novice for healers. It teaches you what the tame wants from you. They really should make it compulsory to unlock different roles. I always say: Fear not him who isn't afraid to die. But fear him who fears dying. I hope that helps! The rest is just practice!! And try the other healing classes as well!
Just remember that *Holy is a heal* and should be a priority when the tanks sits with a mob pack. If mobs are stunned they cant do damage and you can think of all that damage that you prevented as "Healing". Just remember you can only stun a mob 3 times before they become immune to it. After that you should be prioritizing ogcd's and lilies then gcd's. Of course there is more nuance depending on the situation but that will come with time and experience.
I loved playing white mage until I got to the Eden raids. I kept dying to the swirly bird mechanic and letting the team down, and completely lost confidence.
I have a job for each role quest (5 in total), my main one being melee dps, and I suffer when I need to level up my tank and healer. I confess that to level up these two I end up using the Trust or Support dungeons because they give a lot of XP and no one will insult me, lol, especially healer... I'm terrified of playing Duty. My problem with Healer is that you have to memorize all the mechanics of all the enemies, because if you die it's game over for everyone.
For damage - spam spam spam. Use Presence of Mind at the start of a fight and then when available so you can spam more. It's a 2 minute cooldown and everyone's (BRD, DNC, MNK, DRG, SCH, AST, etc.) party buffs are 2 minute cooldowns, so it should line up and let you spam the most damage you can into their buffs. If there are 3 or more targets, spam Holy constantly. If there are 2 or fewer targets, spam Stone on 1 of them. Keep Aero up all the time. On one target, Aero does more damage than a Stone cast if it will be applied for 15 seconds or more. On up to 6 targets, Aero does more damage than a Holy cast if it will be applied for its full duration. On dungeon mobs, I would put Aero up on each mob at the start and then not bother reapplying it. On bosses, apply Aero at the start of the fight and reapply it whenever it has 5 seconds or less remaining. While you're getting comfortable, you might want to hold your Swiftcast in case you need to Raise someone. Personally, I start every dungeon trash pull with Swiftcast + Holy > Assize > Presence of Mind > Holy spam, but that's probably not wise if there's a chance that the tank could die and you need a speedy Raise. Worth thinking about later though. Lower level WHM is all about trusting the regen effects. You don't need to keep Regen up on the tank at all times, but Regen is a good thing to cast as soon as the tank is taking some damage because it's a very high value heal at the cost of 1 cast. I would usually put a Regen out at the start of a trash pull or before a boss fight starts and then not use it again after that. You also have other great regen tools... For AOE party healing - Medica 2 is preferable over Cure 3 unless you REALLY need healing NOW because the initial heal + regen from Medica 2 is actually much higher than the healing from Cure 3 and it also costs less MP. Cast Medica 2 and just let the regen that it provides do its thing. Cure 3 is preferable over Medica 2 if you know there's more damage incoming and you don't have time for the Medica 2 regen to heal people up. In those cases, you might want to cast Cure 3 so that people have enough HP to survive the incoming damage, then use Medica 2 afterwards to slowly heal off that 2nd wave of damage. Asylum is also a very high value regen. It's good any time there's damage going out. You can throw it down during trash pulls or after the party has taken damage in a boss fight and it will just do its thing. It's like Medica 2 but it costs 0 MP, has no cast time and is an ability rather than a spell, so it can be used between spell casts. It's literally free. We love Asylum. For single target healing on the tank (or anyone else who has taken damage) - the highest value abilities that you have are benediction and tetragrammaton. These are great because 1) they're abilities, not spells, so you can weave them between spell casts and 2) they have no MP cost. Aim to use these first. Once you've let the tank's HP dropped low and used your bene and then used tetra, it's a good time to start using your afflatus lilies. Again, no MP cost - so these are nice to use over Cure 2. If you've run out of bene/tetra and your lilies, now it's time to start falling back on Cure 2. As you said, you pretty much want to be pressing Lucid Dreaming when it's available to prevent yourself from having MP issues. If you press it shortly after the fight starts and then keep pressing it whenever it's available, as well as prioritising your 0 MP cost heals, you shouldn't run into MP issues. Thin Air has 2 stacks, so you use one of them freely on anything that costs a big chunk of MP - any time you have to cast something like Medica 2, you might want to Thin Air it - then hold on to the 2nd stack of Thin Air in case you need to raise someone. Assize does damage, heals and also restores MP. I would use Assize at the start of a fight and then literally just press it on cooldown after that. If it heals, great. If everyone is already full HP then it's whatever. It still restores MP and deals damage, which is the main thing you're using it for. That was a lot but hopefully it helps!
see it didn't even occur to me to spam damage in the beginning when everyone else is casting their 2 minute cooldowns - that totally makes sense! thanks for the holy, stone, aero explanation. i feel like you did the math that i was trying to do in my head ð and i totally understood everything else you explained so thanks for taking the time to share it! super helpful! now i just have to practice â
@@HeatherJustPlay Good luck! Healing feels like a lot of responsibility at first but once you've had a bit of practice and are confident in what buttons to use when, it's honestly really comfy.
I heal a lot and never use focus target lol. I just always forget to look FT bar. Forgetting to look at your own health: that took me forever! I had to move my own health bar to be right under my character's feet, so as I dodged AOEs i would see my HP.
Coming from a veteran healer thatâs been at the game for over 8 years, all I will say is that, should you stick with it, youâll find out that healing, more than any other role, has the most control over the entire party- Youâll become an all-powerful force. Also, Iâm sure itâs been said already but just making sure: use assize on CD, always and holy 1 on 2 or more targets, and holy 3 on 3 or more targets. Have fun
First, establish a God complex. With everyone's life in your whims, you might as well enjoy the power trip. You mostly got it. Here's some other pointers in no particular order. 1. Assize is great as a heal if you're uncomfortable so you can save it until you're comfortable, then use it on cooldown. 2. Try to only rely on OGCDs, Afflatus, and Medica II/Regen (in that priority order); if you're out of heals and forced to Cure II, it's a desperate situation. 3. I normally don't recommend macros but this one's too useful - /ac "Divine Benison" - you can keep DPSing the boss and shield the tank for tank busters without having to click away.
As a healer in FFXIV, your enjoyment depends on rather or not the tank knows that the skill "rampart" exists for trash packs. . . If you want a way to level with your husband and also have short queue times you could swap to tank. I suggest Warrior or Paladin. Use your defensives (cycle them on trash packs weaving in the short 20s CD between them) and you'll be fine to max level.
I can't speak for everyone, but I'm ok with playing with a healer who's struggling. I've definitely been there before. I still struggle with sage sometimes
ðĢ i decided to give white mage a try and wow, it's hard ðŽ but i THINK i'm getting the hang of it? in this video, i share my experience playing a healer for the first time in FFXIV. also, if you have any feedback or tips on how i can be a better healer, let me know! ð
ðĢ chapter markers -
0:00 my first time playing a healer in FFXIV
0:39 why did i pick healer to try?
2:09 why healer has been hard for me
4:46 hereâs what has helped me
6:23 hereâs what i still struggle with
8:58 hereâs what iâve been doing, correct me if iâm wrong
13:16 so how do i feel about healer now?
Love that you are back and picking up healer! Here are some quick tips.
1. Use your off global heals first saving your cast time heals for later
2. Learn tank kits (WAR can basically heal themselves in dungeons, DRK has a huge shield) and Rampart at higher levels gives tanks a healing received boost. Knowing how tanks can heal and mit themselves can reduce your healer anxiety
3. Use your dome for mitigation, even if hp levels are good
4. Understand that you are not 100% responsible for all party. deaths.
Welcome to the healer role!
thanks for this! these tips are perfect! â
For DRK that shield comes at like level 70 so xD lmao.
Thanks for resurrecting me many times ðŽ
Welcome to healing wooo!
Stuff I have learned over the years:
- Dungeons are usually in this format - 2 trash packs and then boss. 2 trash packs and then boss. 2 trash packs and then boss.
- I try to use the "big" heals with long cooldown so they can be used on each wall to wall pull
- trash packs / mobs, the wall to wall pulls are more scary than the bosses
- sprint lasts 20 seconds outside of combat, so if tank sprints and then pull mobs from the 2 trash packs, I usually do the same to keep up.
My "whm" priority for level 60ish dungeons pretty much every pull goes like this:
- sprint
- tank starts pulling mobs, run with tank
- regen on tank
- dots (aero) on mobs
- tank stops
- regen, use swift cast and presence of mind, holy, place down asylum (the healer bubble) and use assize (used for damage and heal)
- holy, holy, holy, holy, etc.
- wait until tanks hp gets low, use bendiction
- more holy, holy
- tank gets low, use afflatus solace (instant heal), and tetra
- more holy, holy
- tank out of cool downs and mobs still alive? no more benediction and no more charges of afflatus solace? use regen
- regen unable to keep up? cure II
oh wow, i actually understood all that. THANK YOU! i will try this tomorrow!! ðĪĐ
â@@HeatherJustPlay Lots of great advice here. One thing to add that took me a minute to realize, that's specific to White Mage (my first healer was Astro, so I had some muscle memory already that I had to break for WHM), in a scenario where your tank is undergeared or isn't using defensive cooldowns, a particularly hard-hitting dungeon, or some mix of those. With repetition healing dungeons (and from playing a tank yourself) you start to recognize when your tank is losing HP particularly fast, (in general, below 75% before you finish casting your first Holy).
What is always useful, but particularly in these cases, is using the Stun effect of your AoE spell (Holy) to your advantage: it can stun trash mobs 3 times before they become immune to stun, each lasting a shorter duration, but you can't overwrite an existing Stun effect with another cast of Holy. And since you can't overwrite Stun with back-to-back casts of holy, you can instead capitalize on this first, extended stun duration-when the tank isnât taking any damage from mob's auto attcks-to cast a healing spell (Afflatus, Cure II, or Regen) before resuming your Holy spamming. This is especially effective for reapplying Regen (and at lvl 66: Devine Benison, a shield that's oGCD - explained below, so you can weave it in between damage and/or healing spells) once the tank stops moving.
Tetragrammaton is one of your spells that can be stacked onto other spells without the normal recast time (or "weaved"). The community calls these types of spells "off-global cooldowns" (or 'oGCD's). They are often listed (or perhaps always, idr) as "abilities" on the tooltip, and assuming you haven't already: you can sort your spellbook (Character>Actions & Traits>bottom right corner of window) to display only with "class" and "job" sections... or rearranged to be broken down into more sections-combos, weaponskills, spells, and abilities-with each section sorted by level.
Honestly in dungeons I usually just put a regen and start spamming holy once the mobs get stacked up. By the time the stun stops working the mobs have started dying anyways so the tank isn't taking big damage anymore.
Welcome back! That's very similar to my experience trying healer too for the first time.
-Wesk Alber has a lot of good guides where he explains the skills and rotations at each level cap (50, 60, 70, 80, ...). I'm pretty sure he started to make the Dawntrail guides.
I also like to watch some of Umbral's healer videos, they have some shorts explaining skill combos for dungeon mob pulls.
sweet i'll check them out. thanks for the recommendations!
Welcome to the green dps club! It sounds like you're getting the hang of things!
Here are three tips that I find helped me pick up WHM:
1. Once you gain access to the lily gauge (you spend these on Afflatus Solace, and later on Afflatus Rapture which is a group heal), it is good to get in the habit of spending your lilies. While they do trigger the GCD, they are instant cast! Good for top ups, and later in the job's kit, you get a big nuke to throw out for spending your lilies! Please look forward to it.
2. Don't be afraid to keep Assize on cooldown! This is a 60-second cooldown oGCD area heal that also damages mobs and refunds you some much needed MP. It will help with your MP management which is something WHM sort of suffers from compared to the offerings of other healers.
I like to weave Assize between Holy casts on big pulls for a little HP top-up before I think too hard about anybody's health.
3. Regarding your questions around spamming Holy during mob pulls: absolutely go for it! Your stun is a mitigation tool in and of itself, but be aware that the stun might interact in a funny way with certain tank mitigation tools. e.g., Arm's Length applies a 20% slow effect for 15 seconds to enemies that hit the target under the effect of this ability. If you stun the mob before the slow is applied, the slow likely doesnât get applied at all. This isnât to say you should just stand there, but it might be good to learn what tank mitigation icons look like in the party list if you think that sort of thing will change when you use which abilities.
A couple things from a healer main:
1) Your team list on your hud is way to small and way to far away. Healing from the team list is far easier than clicking on people. Personally, I never use focus target outside raid, the team list is good enough for me.
2) assize is money. Damage + heal + mp regeneration. It should be constantly on cooldown.
3) the flower heals should be your main Healing output. It's a cure 3 with no cast time and no mp cost, what's not to love?
Overall you're doing great! It's all the learning process, don't feel too bad.
IÂīm still running through the endwalker storyline, so maybe not 100% true but as @orillian8023 said:
the gauge skills and tetragrammatron plus maybe keeping up medica 2 and if necessary regen/asylum is normally more then enough to keep your group/raid alife. At least in normal or savage settings not sure about the ultima content. ^^
From my experience if I have to cast cure or anything else something isn't going the way it should. ^^
Also if your tank is to low or a darkknight/gunbreak who used his invul benedection is always a get out of jail free card :)
When it comes to holy in my opinion as long as trash groups can be stunned it can make those groups a lot easier since you can nearly perman stun every group with it si i keep it in my rotation. Until end of shadowbringers it worked quite well in combination with medica 2 and aero.
honestly i didn't know you could increase the size of individual windows on the HUD ð so thank you! i will do that. and thanks for the encouragement!
I came here to specifically comment on Assize, you should be using it, constantly, lol, not at the end of the fight. But Heather, welcome to healing! You'll get better we all start from the first step.
it helps to keep your party frame near your character so you can glance at HP bars easily. also, i personally like using mouse over macros for healing. it makes it where you dont have to target people and can just hover the cursor over their name on the party frame and then use the abilities. i personally just target the boss and then use the party frame to monitor hp
Amazing and relatable video! It was like hearing my own thought process back to me, and thatâs validating. Learning healer with whm after being a tank/dps my whole playthrough, and the hardest part is learning the role in content vs the skills themselves. but I always wanted to learn healer so the healers in my fc have a chance to level other jobs ð
Thank you for sharing your experience with white mage. Iâve got a WHM leveled up to the low 30s, and I keep telling myself that Iâm going to get them leveled up soon so I have a healer role in my arsenal. I think one of the reasons I keep putting it off is because of the anxiety you describe about playing as a healer with other players.
My main is a tank (PLD), so there was some tankxiety to overcomeâĶnow itâs not nearly so bad, and when Iâm firing on all cylinders, itâs quite fun!
I donât have any specific tips for your gameplay as a WHM, being a noob and allâĶjust encouragement to keep at it. You got this!
"My main is a tank (PLD), so there was some tankxiety to overcomeâĶnow itâs not nearly so bad, and when Iâm firing on all cylinders, itâs quite fun!" heck yeah!! that makes me want to try PLD next ðĪĐ and thanks for the encouragement!
It's difficult to say: do this or do that to improve. You are not playing alone, so need to analyze your group about what is the best you can do: dpsing more or healing more.
Some hints I can give you:
Dead enemies is the best mitigation, so don't be afraid about dpsing and use all you can to kill the enemies as fast as you can.
Use Assize as much as you can - it will heal and do damage.
Macro some heals, so you won't need to target the tank (macro as - target; e.g. /ac "Cure II" ) or click on the floor to put your Asylum (/ac cast Asylum - cast on you because you will be more near the center and can shield a better area than the tank).
Hi! I'm a WHM main, so happy you decided to give it a try! These are the things that I learned from playing a lot of the class:
1. Spam Holy on mobs with 3 or more enemies. Less than 3, go back to single attack for more efficient damage.(this applies to all AOE attacks on all classes, to be fair). Holy is 100% the best AoE damage ability in the game, use it whenever you can.
2. The most challenging healing comes at the end of a big mob pull. Your tank can lose a TON of life in a second, even if at full health so throw your shield and regens at the tank and be ready to fast heal. If you're feeling brave, at the end of a wall to wall pull, use Swiftcast to drop Holy to stun the mob long enough for you to put shields and regen on your tank. You will have to play a bit with timing (Holy stuns the mob for less and less time with each hit, until they are immune, but each new Holy interrupts the previous, so theoretically, you can do things between Holy hits to maximize the time the mob is stunned.
3. Why am I talking of Holy in a healing point? Because preventing damage is part of healing: eventually you will get Divine Benison, a single target shield. Use that on cooldown, keep it on the Tank as often as you can (if they are in combat). No, don't save it for Tank Busters - the Tank Busters are the responsability of the tank to mitigate (eventually you'll get Aquaveil, another single target shield, which is the one you save for Tank Busters.)
4. Your priorities to keep alive are: You - the tank - the DPS. A DPS can survive as a tank for a few moments (long enough to rezz the tank), and even if they die, it gives you enough time to rez the tank. Do not sacrifice yourself to save others, not even the tank - you need to survive to bring other people back and heal them.
5. Low level WHM does have a problem with MP management, but in time you will get some tools to manage it: other than obviously "Use Lucid Dreaming on Cool Down", use Thin Air when you do Cure 3 or even Medica 2. I know the instinct is to save it for a Rez, but unless things are going wrong you should be casting Big Heals more than Rez. Use it. Use Assize on Cooldown, it gives you mana back. When you get to your 70s and you unlock blood lilly, if you're low on mana, start spamming lillies - no, it's not a waste of healing potential. Blood Lilly (the big pink nuke) does the same damage as if you'd done the same number of Glares. So you can give yourself a break for a few GCDs by spamming lillies (even if you can't fully form the Nuke) and recover some MP. Carry some Super-Ether potions with you: you can't use them often but sometimes, it will save you in a pinch and give you enough MP.
6. Healing is much harder at lower levels for a WHM. Your healing is potent but you need to cast, you don't have shields, and the MP cost is fairly brutal, while you only have ONE tool to recover MP until your late 50s. By level 100, you won't need to use most of your casting heals. I never use Cure 1, Cure 2, or Medica 1, and I rarely use Medica 2 or Cure 3. Your heals become THAT potent later one, and most of them are instantaneous. If you learn to combine them (using Plenary Indulgence, Wings or Asylum to increase the potency of your group Lilly heals ensure you don't need to resort to casting).
7. Don't believe people when they try tell you it's your fault (the healer) that the wall to wall pull failed. Big Mob pulls fail because of DPS. Any tank can wall to wall, and any healer can keep the tank alive from being chomped on by a mob - especially a WHM. But eventually the tank will run out of mits and the healer will run out of MP. There is a short window of time where the DPSes need to do enough damage to reduce the mob to a manageable level. You cannot heal forever - if the DPSes don't perform well, there is nothing you can do.
Using Lucid off CD is a very good idea! Keep that up. Using thin air on Raise is the way to do it.
Assise restores mana and does hella damage. You could use it off CD. I sometimes will hold it for a gcd or 3 if i know dmg is coming so i can keep glaring.
I use Aero on mobs as i run with the tank as he grabs aero. I absolutely spam Holy on mobs and you had limited party effects and hadn't noticed. Holy applies a stun so it can function as mitigation as well. I usually couple holy spam with Presence of Mind, your spell speed steroid.
Healing takes a lot of practice to get comfortable with. Sometimes, I have a hard time remembering that since I am so comfortable with it now (I've been playing WHM since ARR).
Focus target is... eh. I dont know. I've used it sometimes. I would recommend focus targetting the boss instead of the tank because all your tank's information is in the party window. If you move the party window closer to the centre of your screen, you can mkre easily keep an eye on it with little eye movement.
Other advice:
Cast Regen before the tank pulls. 7.0 made changed to how Regen generates enmity. Stick to your tank in case you do pull something. Pop sprint for pulls to make this easier. You do NOT need to keep Regen up at all times. If you feel more comfortable with it being up, then go ahead, but it's not entirely necessary.
Use Assize all the time. It is OP.
Spam Holy. It's also OP. The Stun is ridiculous.
Asylum should be used all the time for free healing. Use on pulls, use it on bosses, etc.
Benediction should be used all the time as well. Let your tank drop as you spam Holy and then pop Bene. It's free and strong.
Tetragrammaton can be used in combination with instant GCD heals. Letting your tank drop low and then using Regen + Tetra or Afflatus Solace + Tetra are powerful combos. Or you can weave it after Aero/Dia or Stone/Glare.
After you have access to Medica II, you can pretty much forget about Medica. Medica II is a stronger heal over time, and Cure III is a better option for stacks/quick bulk healing. This becomes even MORE true when you learn Afflatus Rapture. Medica is bad.
What I generally do in a dungeon pull when I'm spamming Holy is keep the tank targeted. You don't need a target to use Holy, so if you keep the tank targeted, you can more easily drop healing on them when/if needed.
Though my biggest point of advice is this: don't panic. The damage in FFXIV is very manageable and, especially in dungeons, you will have plenty of time to heal group wide damage. In dungeon pulls, just keep your tank at a comfortable amount of HP, and you should be fine. And remember that everyone has the responsibility to keep themselves alive. It's not always your fault, as the healer, when people get knocked out. Tanks need to mitigate, and everyone needs to avoid mechanics. You can't be expected to do all the heavy lifting.
awesome - thank you for this explanation! it all makes sense! ð one question though, what does OP mean?
@@HeatherJustPlay over powered
@HeatherJustPlay So, what makes Assize OP (or overpowered) is that it deals damage to all nearby enemies, heals all nearby allies plus yourself, and restores your MP. And is on a fairly short cooldown.
Holy is the best AoE skill in the game because it does okay damage and stuns all nearby enemies for a maximum of 7 seconds.
I focus target the tank because my "target your focus target" button is easier to hit than F2 is, i don't really do it so that i can see the tank's health. but that's just me
@K0ppar Makes sense. I play on controller so it's not easier for me to heal the tank if I focus them at all.
You posted this at the right time! Iâve started healer too and after tanking the entire time Iâve been playing FFXIVâĶ Holyyyy, is it different ð like you said, youâre looking at things you never had to worry about before. It can be so overwhelming!
Iâve played healers a lot! I still struggle with where I should pay attention also, especially on a hard healer like AST. Whm is a good start though, easiest to learn I think.
One thing about targeting is I put F2(second character on party list), which is always tank for me, on my MMO mouse which is the same as yours. I put it on the top left button. That way I can target the tank easily, and simply TAB or press target-of-my-target (I put on T) to target the enemy the tank is targeting.
If you have two tanks like a raid/trial, then CTRL+F to focus the other tank on F3(third person on party list). If they are the tank, just use focus for that tank instead of the F2 button.
Just get used to tabbing back to the enemy to keep casting, and turn on the setting that allows you to auto-target an enemy if you arenât targeting one with your ability. This only works if you arenât currently targeting a party member though - so make sure to always tab off of your tank or whoever you are healing/shielding/regening/mitigating/etc and practice weaving your oGCD heals with castings of Glare/Stone.
oooh that's interesting. putting a targeting button on my mouse hmm! you've given me something to think about. i haven't done a raid/trial yet. i've been too scared lol. i don't want the other healer to think i'm terrible ð thanks for your input!
@@HeatherJustPlay I like being cohealer for new healers. Reminds me of my own struggles LOL one of the neat things about raids and trials is that most raid wides will have a long wind up which lets you prepare for your own raid wide heals. Something to keep in mind!
Great video! I started as a Bard and now play White Mage and I love it! I have been playing for about a month now. It can be scary and stressful but I have an amazing FC and they treat me good
In FF14, each Healer has different tools for dealing with MP management.
White Mage's MP management is mostly using your no-MP heals first before resorting to Cure II. At your current level those would be Tetragrammaton and Afflatus Solace.
There are plenty comments that help you here, but the one thing not getting mention or players usually has the wrong idea about is Benediction. Use Benediction as often as you can, do not think Benediction as an Emergency Tools ("oh god" button) only, think of it as just another tool for healing, big healing in fact.
This requires a bit planning and confidence, but you can let your tank drop their HP, it doesn't have to super low, as low as you are comfortable with, then use Benediction on them. This will have some effects; one is you get to save your other healing tool for another pull. Two, it puts you into a good habit that it is fine to let people low on HP / not full HP in general as long as you have a plan when to heal them, and they are not in immediate danger.
Some players think Benediction as emergency tools and barely use them, and when they reach endgame, they tend to forget they have that button in the first place due to panic.
@@avendji totally! Oh like to use it on a player I just ressed but sometimes just use it to heal the tank from 75% to 100% because itâs an extra ogcd and feels fun to use. Muscle memory comes when we just go ahead and use our cooldowns whenever. Not for emergencies, but for fun. And at that point, there are no emergencies.
It really depends on how twitchy your tank is. There is no worse feeling than benediction followed by superbolide. But it's a bummer for basically every invuln except the paladin one.
i've never used benediction because i was definitely thinking of it how you explained it: for emergencies. so thanks for the explanation! ð
oooh i never even thought to use it after rez! i've had people i've rezzed die right away again because they were too low health (ahem my husband ahem ð). thanks for the tip!
@@HeatherJustPlay totally! Now itâs partly on the rezzed player that died because they get a buff that makes them invincible for about five secs, but only if they donât use any spells or attacks. That gives enough time to cast something like cure 2 on them but many players donât know the buff vanishes if they attack the second they are rezzed.
I really did enjoy White Mage when I played mouse and keyboard. I don't think it is as easy to grow on controller so far. I really enjoyed your perspective and hope you find the classes you can enjoy.
WHM is my favorite healer and my main job! Welcome! It's known as being the most simple of the healers, but its identity largely revolves around taking actions on the global cooldown. This means that you have a few less heals that can go out immediately when the GCD is rolling. So a good tip is to just slow down. Maximizing damage is for when you're comfortable in a situation.
A few tips to help you ease into White Mage!
1) Holy is one of your strongest mitigation tools in dungeon pulls. The first 3 casts of Holy that hit an enemy will stun your dungeon mobs, preventing them from doing damage. After the 3rd cast, those enemies will become immune to stun. So feel free to use the 3 casts to buy you some time and be prepared for damage to come rushing in afterwards.
2) Assize is a great button to weave in after a cast of Cure 2, Stone, or Medica. Assize is actually one of WHM's greatest tools to recovering its own mana. So whenever you see it up, feel free to press that button!
3) When you have time in-between group damaging mechanics, regen is your best friend (Regen, Asylum, Medica 2). When you need HP bars topped up quickly, you're going to want to default to the fattier heals (Medica, Cure 3, Afflatus Rapture).
4) Healing is about mixing and matching the tools available to you. Plenary Indulgence WITH a Medica 2 can give you a larger burst heal followed by a regen to the whole party. Asylum with a Cure 3 can help you give a lot of health back to the party and then rely on the regen to top up health bars. Eventually you'll get more healing buffs and tools in your kit to mix and match. One thing that helped me was to sit down and read the tool tips and try to imagine how various buttons synergize together in different scenarios. You don't have damage combos as a healer, but you do have healing tools that can work together to heal your party to maximum faster and give you more time to hit your damage buttons!
Best of luck on your white mage journey!
Try the Icy-Veins leveling guide on White Mage. It has a selector for each level, and will give you advice for that level. I used it throughout my Paladin run through. Might be helpful for you.
ooh i'll have to check this out thank you!
As a healer main, there's only two things I usually keep in mind, which also easily translates to higher-end content.
Reactive Healing: Basically your standard dungeon mob pack, keep an eye on your tank and keep them alive - for higher-end, this is more of a "panic situation" where you have to cover for people's mistakes
Proactive Healing: Knowing when to heal/mitigate, basically studying the fight or encounter well enough to prevent more than necessary damage - for higher-end, this is the most important type of healing and actually not simple the healer's job, all the roles have one or more buttons that help the party survive, a healer will just make sure everyone is fully alive.
This is definitely non-exhaustive and it really can vary across encounter, but overall a good healer will know when and how to heal (encounter and job knowledge) as well as know when to deal damage to help the encounter flow smoother.
I'm always happy to help new healers get on track with learning their role and its basics, so if you want to chat a bit about this, let me know, otherwise, sources like The Balance are perfectly amazing to learn too!
I think the one perspective shift you can benefit from the most is: your DPS output is a resource. Heals on the GCD spend that resource, so you have to factor that into your assessment of their cost.
This leads directly into hold nothing back. Your strongest tools are your cheapest ones: the ones that cost no mana, no DPS, or no planning.
Finally, you need only heal damage that is taken. Keeping Regen on a full health tank just wastes your MP and DPS.
Keep them alive, but leave enough room in their health pool for your heals and their self-heals to matter: you can keep a WAR alive on half health much longer than you can keep them full, and in the latter case, once you can't, they just die.
I can fully relate to this! I have just picked up White Mage after Black Mage as my main. I am not perfect as a Black Mage, but learning a new rotation AND role all together. I am just taking it step-by-step. It did help to see other peoples layouts with their hotbars and look at why they positioned where they are (common spell that needs to be the most accessible? etc..). Then, I work from there and modify the hot bars as needed based on personal preference as I am playing.
Assize: Use on cool down, this thing is great, instant cast, heal the party, damage the enemies, give yourself 500 MP.
Holy: When there are three or more mobs, spam this unless someone is dying. It will stun all of the enemies up to three times. After that, it's still better damage on three or more enemies over stone.
Afflatus Solace: I would get in the habit of using this over Cure II when you have it. It's instant cast and the same potency as Cure II.
Asylum: This is very useful when doing trash pulls too.
i didn't realize Assize gave MP until i took the screenshot for this video ð 3 or more enemies for holy - got it! flowers over cure II â thanks for the tips!
When you say "on cooldown", does that mean "use it every time as soon as the cooldown timer is finished"?
@@bluesrike Yep...using something "on cooldown" means using the skill or ability as soon as the cooldown timer expires :)
One extra tip: use holy, and then after the first cast use medical 2 and then your next holy cast. the stun from holy gets shorter with each use, and the first stun lasts long enough that you can fit a medical in and maintain the stun after
Also starting a pull with a quick Regen on the tank helps too. Also you have a shield you can slap on tanks and tetragrammaton(?I've never actually remembered bubble heal name before).
When I first learned to heal, I actually went in with AI, so that I could experiment with no one to bother, so you might wanna try that if you wanna get some practice healing/dpsing
A few tips from a WHM:
1. Once you get access to the lilies (Affletus solace) and Tetragrammaton think of those as free cure 2 spells. Use them as needed.
2.Assize is great to use right after bosses do raid wide attacks and I also use it once the tank is done pulling mobs. Also assize is great to use on cooldown. Its free damage and HP/MP regen.
3. Spam Holy on 3 or more mobs. Once the tank is done pulling slap a regen on them and spam holy.
4. Use lucid dreaming when your mp gets down between 7000-8000.
These are some the things I do when Iâm playing WHM. It may not be âoptimal or metaâ but itâs gotten me and countless parties through dungeons. Hope this helps.
8:10 I'm rarely a healer (tank main), but when I do heal I *do* focus target the tank and here's why: There's a keybind to target your focus target. (By default it's [F10], I change it to [F] for my layout.)
With this setup, I can constantly [Tab] back to the boss, and [Focus] back to the tank, easily swapping between the two of them.
I know some healer mains use [F2] to target the first party member underneath you (which should be the tank by default sort, but might sometimes be the offtank in 8-player content), in which case setting the boss as your Focus target can work just as well (with you alternating between [F2] for the tank and [Focus] for the boss).
Also, for jumping back into Dragoon - I would recommend using the rotation graphic that you shared for level 100, and just eliminate the abilities that you don't have access to yet. For most jobs (Black Mage being the notable exception IMO), the endgame opener and rotation are pretty much what you should use when leveling - you'll just be missing the newest capstone abilities.
EDIT: One more note if you feel like you're struggling to keep the tank up: Make sure to constantly upgrade your gear, at least every 5 levels and maybe every 2-3. I found that when I was healing I had a *much* more difficult time if I wasn't upgrading gear all the time, and that if you're near the minimum item level for some dungeons you might not be able to keep the tank alive. (I went into Aurum Vale my first time as a healer around min ilvl, and I couldn't keep the tank alive to the first boss. Upgrading to lv47 gear made a huge difference.) I typically upgrade tank gear at a similar pace, and rarely upgrade DPS gear when I'm leveling outside of MSQ (every 5 or 10 levels).
It's scary at first....then you realize you are literally the only thing keeping everyone alive (unless you have a WAR in later levels). You realize and demand respect and make those plebs bow before you to keep their HP above 1 :3
hahah ð
Priority 1 - keep yourself alive. Priority 2 - keep your Tank alive.
Priority 3 - keep everyone else alive.
Priority 4 - do damage.
Oh and just watch the health bars and not the actual players.
I think some of your problems might be solved by tweaking your HUD a little. I would recommend moving the party list more toward the middle of your screen, that way you can keep track of everyone's health, buffs and debuffs, including your own. You can also see the cast bars for the boss in the enemy list, which I recommend having in sight as well, especially for dungeons.
You can also separate the enemy cast bar from the the target bar. I have it set up so that it is a big bar above my hotbars so that I can always have an eye out for what the Boss is casting, I also do prefer focus targeting the Boss instead of the tank, but I guess that's just personal preference.
For now I wouldn't worry about optimizing too much and focus more on getting comfortable in the role. Just pick one thing to improve and once you feel like you manage it well, move on to the next thing.
Just as a general rule, prioritize healing abilities (ogcds like tetra) and heals that don't cost mp (like afflatus) over the casts (like cure) and don't be afraid to use cooldowns that might seem long, its better to use them suboptimally than not using them at all because you want to save them for the right moment!
Above all just remember that not everything is always your fault, there is nothing wrong with wiping and people are generally pretty understanding and kind, especially if you mention being new to healing. Unfortunately the only way to get over the anxiety is by doing it and getting more comfortable but I'm sure you'll do just fine!
oh wow i didn't even realize you can increase the size of each HUD thing. separating the enemy cast bar sounds super helpful. and thank you for the encouragement! ð
This is exactly what I planned on posting but much better said! All excellent advice :) and agreed, I used to be so cut up if a party member died. Now it doesnât bother me nearly so much as a lot of the time it was down to something I couldnât have prevented. I will say I miss Rescue when Iâm not on a healer though - love being able to yank somebody over to a safe spot in the nick of time!
@HeatherJustPlay I will also second the idea of moving the party list up, more centered along the vertical dimension of the screen. You will likely be looking mostly at the middle of your screen just by normal monitor ergonomics (in addition to watching mechanics), so having the party list more easily available in your peripheral vision will help a lot. It can be worth watching some other streamers'/creators' videos to see how they have it set up, to see if that helps you get some ideas. (Perhaps watch ones from before June so you don't accidentally get spoiled.)
I find success in the 1-100 guides. People do them and Iâll watch up to the level Iâm currently at and kinda leave the video there for a few.
So you could always do this when learning new classes.
I went from Ninja to Sage and managed to max out the sage at 100 comfortably by watching those type of vids.
Currently working on tank, but I still get anxious even though I feel comfortable with rotations ðĩâðŦ
Sounds like you're on the right path! Healing in this game is interesting, because in some ways it's the least engaging role if everything goes as planned, but the most engaging when shit hits the fan. In other words, the better you get and particularly the players around you get, the easier your job becomes.
1. I use focus target mainly on bosses when I play any healer. I like knowing what the boss is casting even when I'm targeting a teammate. But that's how I prefer it. I also have my focus target bound to R3 on my controller so I donât have to manually scroll down the target menu everytime I need it. In dungeons for example, Iâll focus target the tank for trash pulls and then switch to the boss when we reach it. But if you are still having trouble seeing what mits you have on the tank/party members, it could be a HUD issue. Could try moving the party list somewhere you can see it easier. Or make it a little bigger, until you get more comfortable.
2. And remember, sometimes you can try your best and your teammates will still die. People make mistakes. Tanks might not mit correctly or dps step in every damage mechanic. Not everything is the healer's fault. Itâs something I had to learn when I switched to healer.
Sounds like your taking the right steps in learning to heal tho. Definitely can be stressful for someone new to it. Takes time to get comfortable with healing in general. Glad your having fun tho.
Btw, Rescue is a very useful skill. Make sure to use it on your friends and "rescue" them into AOE's XD.
thanks for the tips and the encouragement! ð i just set up my PS5 in my studio so i am beginning the process of switching from k&m to controller... but yeah i haven't wrapped my head around how to play WHM on controller at all ð
Oh wow this is a new video! So as a healer, the FIRST thing you should organize is your HUD. Visually seeing the party member's health is a priority. I suggest you put it front and center. Right now you have it hidden away to the bottom left, which takes your eyes off the mechanics. I would move your party in between your enemy list, and your character. When you look at their health, your peripheral view of mechanics will be better, because your eyes are not darting downward and left. You could even increase the size to make it easier to see.
Second, you should go into your HUD options, and separate the boss's into different elements. The checkbox is called "Display Target Info Independently." You can then move their cast bar, and enlarge that sucker, and put it above their HP, or wherever it catches your eye visually.
Third, the tank's health is the most important. Until you're doing content that is doing party wide/single target UNAVOIDABLE damage, then a DPS being dead is their fault for not avoiding mechanics. So don't feel bad if you see a DPS dying. Once you get more comfortable healing, then you'll be able to keep them up without thinking about it.
Fourth, you mention looking at your health, but there's really no reason to "pay attention to it." If you get hit, you need to heal yourself. That's pretty much it. You're squishy, so you need to top yourself off after getting hit by a mechanic. If it's a raidwide, then you're already healing yourself+everyone anyway. I can't think of a time I specifically heal myself, or am worried about my health, unless I just got rez'd or I got hit by a mechanic and a raidwide is about to come.
Fifth, Yes you are correct to Focus Target the boss instead of the tank. Again, enlarge the castbar for this.
Super sixth: Use Macros. Set your party so your tank is always second on your list. Example of a macro I use on my paladin:
/merror off
/ac "Intervention"
/ac "Intervention"
/ac "Intervention"
/ac "Intervention"
/ac "Intervention"
/ac "Intervention"
/ac "Intervention"
/ac "Intervention"
/ac "Intervention"
/ac "Intervention"
/ac "Intervention"
/ac "Intervention"
/ac "Intervention"
/micon "intervention"
Replace intervention with Benediction, and now when you click/press that button, it'll benedict the second party memeber. The reason it's typed out so many times is due to macros hanging up at times, so this makes it cast quickly. Some people even line up cast bars next to the party member list with macros for these. It's up to you how many of these you use.
Also, a small rule of thumb for your spells in terms of general healing priority: Regens->oGCDs->GCDs. Keep this in mind and it won't matter how many buttons you get.
Lastly, stop stressing. Go into roulettes with people and play a lot. You cannot get good at healing by healing bots because people make a lot of mistakes, and part of learning to be a healer is to learn how you cover different mistakes. You build up muscle memory to covering mistakes with your oGCDs, you learn to heal different tanks slightly different.
White Mage beginner tips
1. Regen heals for a ton over time, keep it on the main tank, saves tons of MP in the long run.
2. "Freecure" trait is a newbie trap to spam Cure 1. Regen heals more than Cure 1, and Cure 2 which is also stronger than Cure 1.
3. Keep Lucid Dreaming (MP regen ability) on cooldown even if at near full MP. Don't wait until your MP is at half or near empty.
4. Afflatus Solace is literally an instant free version of Cure 2, use it instead of Cure 2, again this will save lots of MP.
5. Use Thin Air ability (next casted spell is free) for Medica 2 /Medica 3/Cure 3 and more importantly Raise spell as it's most expensive MP cost for healers.
6. Let your heal over time actions do most of the work. Regen, Medica 2, Medica 3, Asylum (healing dome), they all heal over time and can get your party HP bars to full, set them and go back to casting damage spells.
7. Use Asylum for 2 or more groups of dungeon mobs, they'll hit harder than a dungeon boss. Assize keep on cooldown, but some boss fights it does big damage to adds, so hold on it if add phase is coming up.
I feel like healing is like riding a bike, it's scary at first but once it clicks it's actually not very difficult or scary unless everything is going wrong at once, but even then, at higher levels, you get some insane tools. Same with tanking, I think the biggest hurdle is no longer psyching yourself out at the idea that you need to keep everyone up. Once you get the practice it becomes very smooth.
As a longtime healer (mainly WHM) main I feel like I can give some commentary on the topics you mentioned:
It's good that you are using focus targets. I find that whether you focus the boss or the tank comes down to personal preference. Personally, during trials, raids and boss battles, I prefer focusing the boss as most dmg will be raidwide or individual player's oopsies and with a regen applied (maybe even just a co-healer's kardia or fairy heals) the tank should only need healing specifically when set tankbusters happen that you can easily anticipate. When I have the boss focused I can easily spot heal who ever needs it and retarget the boss quickly afterwards. Some bosses also are easier to (re)target if you focus them cause their size/hitboxes makes them somewhat finicky to target if you aren't looking straight at them (especially the really big and/or edge-of-the-arena types when they require you to get in close).
For dungeon packs I like having the tank focused for quick accessibility, though I don't always bother with it anymore (tank self-sustain, especially WARs', makes it kind of a moot point at max lvl imo xD).
Mana management is a thing, but you will eventually get a feel for it, and whm is one of the healers with the easiest time of it. As you gain levels you'll also be getting more tools that you can use instead of your MP cost GCD heals, so those will help too. In general, though, you'll want to priotize oGCDs over GCDs, and also anything that doesn't cost mp over anything that does.
I personally like to use Lucid Dreaming anytime my mana falls to around 7000-8000, or whenever it's off cooldown if my mp is below that. When you're still getting familiar, just using it whenever it is available when you are not at max mp is a good habit to get into, though.
Holding Thin Air for raises is good, when you feel you are in a situation where you will likely be casting one soon. However, you should also consider using it for your more mana intensive heals (cure III, Medica II, etc), especially if there is no risk of anyone dying in the near future. I'm not sure if at your level you already have the 2 charges, but when you do, you can safely use one charge and keep one back for potential raises.
Since you are lvl 62, you should also have Tetragrammaton, which is a really good oGCD single target heal you can weave between your spells for almost the potency of a normal cure II.
The single target lily heal is equivalent to a cure II, so prioritize using it since it doesn't cost any mp. You can also very easily weave a tetragrammaton after it to get someone from near-death to near full hp.
You also get a lily based AoE heal lvl 76, which is also a very good option to reduce you mp use, as, while not quite as strong as a cure III, it still heals for a good amount and it only costs the one lily and has a much bigger range.
Also don't forget Benediction, don't keep it in reserve as a just-in-case, because that will likely mean you barely ever use it. Instead, when it's not on cooldown, feel free to let your tank fall to a low hp point you are comfortable with (maybe something like 20%-25% to start with) and then just heal them with that. (mind, at high lvl if you have a war as your tank in a dungeon, it might mean you barely need to heal them at all, with how good their self-sustain is right now XD)
Assize is actually also a mp management tool, if a pretty weak one with its 500mp every 40secs, on top of dealing dmg and being an AoE heal. You will basically want to use it anytime it comes off cooldown. In specific situations you can hold it for a couple of seconds so you don't waste its healing potential if you know your party will be taking raidwide dmg soon.
Lastly, healer AoEs like holy are usually a gain on dmg when there are 2 or more enemies in range. Holy's stun is also a great mitigation tool for dungeon packs, so feel free to just spam it as much as you can as long as you keep your tank alive. (again, feel free to let them drop as low as you are comfortable with and then throw out some heals as needed.)
All in all it sounds like you are well on your way to learning the role and the job. I hope you'll get as much enjoyment out of it as I always have
- Blow up the boss cast bar and put it closer towards the center of the screen
- Target of my Target is an amazing tool to easily move between the boss and tank
- Play with HUD info to your liking. You can hide enemy names always, if you arent targeting them, etc... it helps clean up the screen for me to see better in dungeon pulls
- Set part member HP to display when not 100%.
- Play legacy camera if you arent.
- Prepull regen works, you just need to make sure to do it before the tank grabs agro, the passive healing does not generate aggro anymore
- Order of skillls: OGCD > Lilly Spells > Non-lilly GCD Skills aka Cure 2.
- Use assize for damage. If you can time it with a heal, cool, but dont hold it more than a few seconds
- Holy is a gain on 3 but its stun can be good on < 3 still.
- Rez prio: Healer > Tank > Rez DPS > Non-Rez DPS
6:40 you can have your hp show in the party window. Big help for keeping an eye on yourself
For "holy", i often think it's worth letting the enemies get resistant by spamming it. When tanking a massive pull, the most dangerous part is always in the first few seconds while all the enemies are actively attacking. The stuns slow that down, and if you have good DPS teammates, there will be a lot fewer enemies by the time they are immune to your stuns, or at least they will be close to death, and the tank can hold on for a bit longer. The disadvantage to "Holy" is that if the enemies do a large interruptible AoE attack, tanks and melee DPSs can't interrupt it. So it's a judgement call between the types of enemies, and how many of them there are.
For Assize, it also recovers MP, so when Lucid Dreaming is down, you can use that as well. When I heal, I don't bother putting dots on every single ad. I just spam my aoes until it is down to like 2 or 3 ads then I place dots on them. Reason being by the time you've put dots on every ad, the first ad you applied the dot on it'll be almost over and you'd have to reapply or the dos killed them already. Also, for your dome, use it during huge ad pulls, it'll help recover hp and lower the damage of everyone inside it.
got it! thanks for the heads up!
When I play WHM, I always keep Medica II (III) on the whole party up and Regen on the tank. Once you've learned it, Plenary Indulgance + Medica II (III) for extra healing. Asylum I use it every time it is up. To heal I use Cure I mostly and if procs than Cure II, that in the lower levels. Cure II I only use when it is not proced, if it is an emergency 'cause it costs lots of MP as well. In the lower levels as well I use Medica I and Cure III for aoe healing. Medica I doesn't heal for much but has a wider range. Cure III heals for more but has a lower range and it costs lots of MP. But in the high levels I almost never use the Cures. I use mostly Afflatus Solace, Thin Air + Tetragrammaton for single heals. One important thing about the Afflatus is that every time you use it, in the later levels you will get a Blood Lilly. Once you've stacked 3 of them you will be able to use Afflatus Misery which is an AOE damage spell. Benediction I usually use during emergencies on a player with very low health 'cause it heals a hp bar full and the recast time is very long. Afflatus Solace and Assise for aoe healing and Assise does a heal, deals an aoe damage and restores a bit of your MP. I use Divine Benison and Aquaveil on the tank for tank busters. On trash mobs pulls I usually do Medica II (III), Regen on the tank, Presence of Mind and than I start spamming Holy (III), it is a dmg aoe and it stuns the enemies. Temperance I use on stacks and spreads if it is up. I use Lucid Dreaming every time my MP bar is about 75% low. Surecast for knock backs. Rescue to pull someone standing on the wrong spot to a safe spot. Swriftcast + Raise to put dead players on their back on their feet. And hard cast Raise if Swiftcast isn't up, but that only after the tanks health is full and the standing players are safe. Esuna to cleanse the debuffs off of the players. You will see a debuff symbol next to the name of the player on your party list. If the symbol is red and has a white bar on top of it you can cleanse it. If it is red without a white bar on top of it you cannot take it off. Oh and now they've added a gap closer to the job called Aetherial Shift. You can use it to evade. =) For the second priority, Aero (Dia) is a DOT that you should keep up on your enemy target. If the tank pulls one group of trash mobs I usually put the DOT on each mob. But if the tank pulls more than one group of trash mobs I put the DOT only on the mob I have selected at the time. And on the Bosses fights I always have them on, as soon as it wears off I put it up again. Stone (Glare) is your main single target spell.
Here is a little guide on the buffs and debuffs. It is pretty simple to understand and very straight forward. Have fun, playing healer is always so exiting.
docs.google.com/document/d/1NJL3ig4OXSrIbz7DgbHzObxaOD142cu2msuePzg6hMM/edit
Oh and if you are aiming for End Game content here is a website where you can see job rotations.
www.thebalanceffxiv.com/
You can use Regen before the tank pulls, as the HoT tick doesnt actually generate aggro. But if the tank has hit a mob you may want to hold it. You will want to use Assize on Cooldown, as it also helps your mana. At your level: Tetragram > Lilies > Cure 2 for single target.
Holy is a damage mitigation on trash pulls due to the stun.
In FF 11 at some of the higher leveling spots a group of Monk/white mage could level in certain areas . I dreaded learning WM in the beginning but it actually got really fun and opened new possibilities.
Dungeon pull priority: Regen, benison, holy, assize, holy x3 (because it stuns, so no damage goes out), aslyum.
Keep pumping holy and use afflatus when needed. Repeat this flow when things come off cooldown. Use cure II if you don't have lilies.
I would only use regen between pulls or to cover tank damage in boss fights while on the move though.
The dome thing boosts your healing spells potency. Use it once the tank has stopped during a big pull.
WHM for dungeons, cast Medica 2 (has cast time) followed by regen (instant cast) target on tank. Refresh when medica 2 falls off.
Itâll be a double regen on tank (medica 2 + regen) and single regen on everyone else hit by medica 2. Should be enough to keep any average gear tank comfortably topped.
If you feel a tank you have is taking more damage than you can manage, toss out your dome before medica2/regen. Should be able to get off a second medica 2 before some goes away and it will carry its increased potency after.
WHM main here: There are no emergency buttons, get used to your whole kit. When i was learning an ability I used to forget the rest of the buttons where there ðĩâðŦ. That's fine, you are learning, just slowly start weaving in all the abilities.
1. OGCD are best for mp management and you gotta feed that blood lily (btw, don't let lillies cap, you can pop them while walking even if no damage is occurring)
2. Use that lucid dream before you think you need it.
3. Thin air + Medica II or Cure III will save your mp
4. Assize also heals mp, keep it on cooldown unless you are going for the 2 min burst or a mega heal check
5. Balance discord has some awesome rotations up.
6. Have faith between 60-80: I call it the awkward whm phase, just survive those levels and you'll be fine ðĨģ
7. HAVE FUUUN. Mistakes in tanking ends in death, slow dps ends in death, lack of cures ends in death, stepping on the sick ends in death. Not all deaths are the healer's fault.
Don't be discouraged, I'm leveling my remaining dps and need other healers to take the mantle in roulettes . Baby healers, we need you! ðĪ
You can use Assize on cooldown :3 It's one of your main OGCD's for damage.
For Aero, you don't really need to keep putting it on every mob in pulls, once the tank stops it's better to swap to Holy spam(just make sure to wait till the tank stops, cause Holy has an aoe stun and makes the mobs stop moving :'3)
Aero is good to use on boss fights and/or if you're moving around.
You can also make a little macro that automatically places Asylum under yourself or a target instead of having to manually click on the ground to place it, it's pretty convenient xD
I haven't read ALL of the comments so I don't know what if these tips have been mentioned, but I'll mention them just in case. These are my personal tips that I use when I heal on WHM. (I am a tank main for the most part, but I tend to run WHM often)
1. Regen is your best friend. Keep Regen on at all times as the ticks help on healing. If you cast Regen as the tank is pulling, you may get some aggro, but if you cast Regen a few seconds before pulling, you will get no aggro. This was a recent change during EW.
2. When you get Medica II/(Lv50), the added regen from that stacks with Regen, so use this to your advantage.
3. Use your Asylum when pulling large groups too. The regen of that stacks with Medica II/III and Regen!
4. When tanks go nuts and start pulling 2 to 3 rooms, use Holy/Holy III. Holy stuns mobs. This is a mitigation I do not see a lot of WHM do. I just spam Holy until the mobs are immune to the stun.
5. Keep an eye out on your MP and use Lucid Dreaming around 6000-7000 MP. It has a 60s cooldown. By the time you will need it again, it will be available most of the time.
6. Use your Lilies often. Do not use them for ohshit heals. While they can be used for that, they do not heal enough for an emergency and you may need to pop 2 or 3 when in an emergency. Just use them at 50-60%. After the appropriate level, you get an extra AoE attack when you use 3.
7. Use Assize when pulling groups. Assize heals the party, attacks the group of mobs, AND refreshes some MP. It's a great spell for attacking, refreshing MP, and healing the tank a bit.
8. When tanks are being hit by a tank buster, (red round marker), throw them Divine Benison (Lv66) as it shields. This can mitigate some of their damage and it will be easier to heal them back up after a buster.
9. Macros are invaluable! I have an insta-cast resurrection macro, an Asylum macro that will cast the dome on target, a Liturgy of the Bell macro that will cast the bell on me, and I have a hotbar next to all the group window going down with Macros next to each person. These macros are insta-cast heals that I can click in an emergency to heal each respective person.
10. Have fun and experiment!
Don't hesitate to ask people to take it easy in a dungeon and not pull the entire thing in one pull. Most tanks won't mind, really. (I prefer going slow, tbh)
I hope to see another video on how you're progressing! It is interesting to me when people go out their comfort zone to try a new job and they end up liking it!
If you have questions, ask! I am more than happy to share my macros and any other tips! :)
heyyy thanks for all this! super helpful and the percentages of when to use certain abilities makes it a lot more understandable. ð i haven't dove into the world of macros (yet) but i can see how that would make things a lot easier.
The thing with healers is how you heal changes directly to how other players in your group play. Lots of Tanks/DPS players say healing is easy ... HA! Most players are focused on the enemy and mechanics and thats it, then as a healer you have to also focus on every party members health/debuff status understand when a HoT will be usefull or a AOE HoT for the group, knowing how to pop these off to counter group wide damage but while doing all this you also have to watch the boss and the mechanics. It really can lead to overload. When i went from Tank/DPS to healer OMG! Healers in FF14 are the true GOATS!
Regen and Medica III on the tank. usually those are the things you keep up when pulling happend and when they stop
My method for dungeons...
1. While tank is collecting mobs, ignore healing and DoT everything you can.
2. When tank reaches wall, run in the middle of the mob and Holy -> Regen tank -> Holy -> Medica 2 -> Holy -> Heal tank if needed.
3. Get out of mob and concentrate on DPS
4. Keep regen on tank and Medica 2 on everyone.
If your team is halfway good, and you pop asylum when you can, this will take care of 90% of healing, just spot heal as needed when bad stuff happens.
i am going to use this exact strategy next time i do duty roulette. thank you! ð
As a healer main, and someone that has played my fair share of WHM since ARR, here are a few rules to really understand to make playing a healer a bit more enjoyable. First things first, most healers will feel incomplete until a certain point in there leveling due to missing a few specific spells or abilities, WHM has that problem until a much higher level than the other three. WHM won't really feel as cohesive until around the level that you get Afflatus Rapture, so don't let the lower lever stuff make you feel weak, it's just that the major pieces of the puzzle haven't been given to you yet. Second thing, regardless of what people tell you, you are allowed to make mistakes. You can't learn something until you have managed to screw it up at least once or a dozen times, just look at PF savage. Third thing to always remember, the only HP that maters is the last one, keeping everyone completely topped off is practically impractical, and rather pointless. Just make sure you keep people high enough to survive the next hit, usually the game does a really good job with explaining when that is. And for a final rule to always remember, it doesn't mater how hard you try, it doesn't mater how good you are, and it will never mater how much you play a healer in the game, The final rule to always remember is, YOU CAN'T CURE STUPID. People are gonna make mistakes and if people are willing to work together we can all be happy to add a new player to the ranks of the dark side of raiding, but you may have to deal with those idiots that expect everyone to play at the level of absolute perfection so they can get carried through content faster. DO NOT LET THOSE PEOPLE CONTROL HOW YOU FEEL when it comes to playing a new role all together.
Also, Welcome to the role that will one day make you realize that you are in fact the most important player in the party.
the most important player in the party. what a title! i don't feel like that YET but maybe one day ð thanks for the tips!
OK, as a healer main i just wanna say 1st off welcome to the healer club. i.e the club where it is literally your job to keep track of a thousand things at once ;P
it is not an easy role and when i started out i was confused as well so here are some of my tips and tricks
1- you already do this but keep regen on the tank at all times (the aggro problem you mentioned really only applies in duty support as the tank doesn't use its AOE attacks, thus losing the aggro of the mob)
2- on mobs pulls in dungeons you are going to want to spam holy on 3 or more enemies and keep it up until it gets down to 2 then use stone.
3- use your flowers and tetragram as your main heals instead of cure 2 to save mp (i.e cure 2 is to use only when you don't have a flower-its a backup)
4- keep assize on cool down. it helps with your mp management
5- to help you with mob pull healing -> cast a holy for stun then thin air and medica 2> holy again> refresh regen on tank if needed and pop an assize and keep it on cool down>spam holy and heal as needed.
6- continuing on from 5; medica 2 and regen stack thus giving you constant heals until the timer runs out. it takes a lot of the pressure off.
7- for a massive pull or a heavy hitting one you are going to want to throw in presence of mind and lucid dreaming at the start and add in the bubble after the first holy.
8- cure 3 is a group heal on the target so if you need to heal multiple people at once and they are far away target one of them then cast it.
9- the focus target thing is a personal preference, there is no wrong answer so do what works for you. :)
I have a few more but these are the basics that'll carry you through most of the content until endgame just with a few more spells to add in.
Hope it helps :)
1. ooooooh i didn't know that. got it!
8. oops i don't think i knew cure 3 was a group heal on the target. thanks for letting me know ð
thanks for all of these helpful tips! â
I am by no means an expert at the game, but I've been playing Healers since before Stormblood and here are a few things that I've kept in mind and have helped me through casual content.
General Healer Tips:
...Prioritize off global abilities for healing and mitigation. Every healer has tools that do not trigger the global cooldown and help to restore HP or even mitigate damage. If you need to heal, try to prioritize abilities like Tetra since you can weave them in-between your spells like Stone. Besides, dead enemies can't hurt the party, can they?
...Try not to over heal. When you use moves like Regen or Medica II, they provide healing over time, and unless a party member is taking a lot of damage or at very low health, the regen typically works enough to get them up to par for the next part of the fight.
...Don't worry about making sure party members are topped off. While it does help ease the anxiety, as long as a party member has at least 1 HP they have survived the attack. Obviously it's good to keep party members closer to full HP, but as long as they are close you should be good.
...Experiment with your actions. Obviously practice makes perfect, but getting an idea of how much certain moves restore gives you a better idea of how much healing you actually need to do. As you get more used to the actions at your disposal you'll have more insight on how much you actually need to focus on healing overall.
...Put your party list in easy view. It doesn't need to be center screen but it is easier to parse when you don't have to look as far to see it.
...I'd personally focus target on the boss, however you may want to swap it around depending on the fight. That being said, being able to keep a eye on what mechanics you need to focus on helps tremendously when healing.
...Try to cleanse debuffs with Esuna when you can. Not every debuff is cleansable, however debuffs that have a white/blue line above it's icon can absolutely be cleansed. (Also, fun fact if you haven't already noticed debuff icons look like an arrow pointing down while buffs look like arrows point up.)
White Mage Tips
...Unless you are in a really low level dungeon, don't worry about using Cure 1. It's underpowered and even the bonus effect of a free Cure 2 means nothing in the grand scheme.
...Always use Assize whenever it is available. Yes, it heals nearby party members but it also restores MP and deals damage to nearby enemies. These later two effects are the important parts of Assize, the healing is just beneficial if the party has low health. Plus, with it being an off global action you can weave it in between spells with relative ease.
...Don't worry about keeping Regen on the tank if they are at full health. While it may help with large mob pulls, in moat boss fights Regen is more of a supplement to healing than a core tool, especially at higher levels.
...Don't be afraid to use the Afflatus spells. They're instant cast, cost no MP, and you get resources for them as the fight progresses. I'd go as far as to say use them first over things like Cure 2 and Medica II as you'll have an easier time conserving MP.
...Cure III is a massive MP sink compared to other AOE heals, so I'd recommend saving it for when you need them for big heals. Although, Thin Air can give you a use of it for no cost so if you feel you're running low on MP, don't be afraid to use that.
...Holy is your AOE best friend. Unlike most AOE actions which tend to be more effective when there are 3 or more targets, Holy's added effect of Stun makes it useful when there is more than 1. That being said, enemies will grow resistant to Stun the more they are inflicted with it, and once it can no longer be applied then it may be better to focus on Stone and Aero if the enemies fall below 3.
While there are more tips that can help in the long run, especially as some of these don't necessarily apply to the raiding scene, these at least should give you a decent basis for how to approach both White Mage as well as Healers in general. It's gotten me through most content and in some cases saved a lot of parties.
wow THANK YOU for this insight, especially your explanation of what debuffs look like. i had no idea ð but this was all super helpful!
certain mechanics you can follow up with certain skills. Like after a stack marker, everyone takes damage you can use Assize or your aoe heal while everyone is still stacked together. Healers, particularly pure healers like WHM, and AST are very reactionary healers and tend to do their healing after taking damage.
You're gonna be fine, most players are patient and understanding. And lots are also willing to help you learn, be it just to be helpful, or because they want more healers to learn and stick to healing to make queues faster... the more people that swap to maining healer, the faster the DPS queues get.
And also: I believe a lot of couples play healer and tank together is cause the easiest way to learn healing is with feedback from the tank - the party member who can most clearly see the effect of what you're doing, or not doing.... but this is also helpful yourself! Give tanking a try and ask an experienced White Mage to run a dungeon with you specifically to learn to heal better, and watch what they do while you're taking damage (focus target them so you can see what they're casting, and also watch for the flyover text poping up over your character when they heal you - particularly to see the names of spells that are instant-cast, and therefor don't have a castbar to see when you've focus targetted them). As long as your tank stance is on and you're doing your aoes to keep trash mobs attacking you, you're doing the same as about 50% of random tanks in dungeons, and a good healer can keep you alive without breaking a sweat, especially with gear over the level cap of synched-down content. Throughout the run or just at the end, ask questions: about things you saw they did, spells you don't fully understand, or whatever else!
thanks for your input! that's definitely one area where i can improve. i don't know any other classes abilities! i think i am going to try tanking next. curious, which tank class do you think i should try? ðĪ
@@HeatherJustPlay Although most people would recommend Marauder (which later becomes Warrior), because of its straightforwardness and ease of play.
I will instead say Dark Knight, which is almost as simple to play as Warrior, but starts at level 30, which saves you from having to level up from lvl 1 again (pick up the quest in Ishgard - near "The Tribunal" aethershard in The Pillars). It also has the best Job Quests storyline in the game, written by Natsuko Ishikawa, who is beloved in the community as also being the lead writer of the Shadowbringers MSQ (among other things, including the Rogue class quesline - later turns into Ninja - which is also very good).
Though, whichever tank you think is most interesting or looks most fun to play should be the one you choose, they are all more-or-less equally simple to play in the earlier levels, differing complexity and more unique playstyles come about level 60 or so.
I will say if you wanted to start again from level 1 as a tank and later move on to one of the expansion tanks, I'd say start with the one that plays more like the one you want to play later: which would be Marauder (Warrior) if you want to move to Dark Knight (starts as level 30), or Gladiator (Paladin) if you want to move on to Gunbreaker (starts as level 60).
For targetting, there is a keybind you can assign that will let you target the target of your target (whoever the monster is targeting, IE the tank)
100% recommend a keybind that is easy to get to that will target the tank. Will make your life so much easier
I have my ~ key set up to focus on my focus target. I set the tank to my focus target and I can switch to them in a second. Sometimes it gets a little hard if there's a boss I have to focus target to watch out for specific mechanics, but it isn't too hard to switch around I have to.
oooh this is super helpful thank you!!
2:46 I main healer in a lot of games lol. Everyone is your baby to take care ofðž . The chaos is the fun part of being a supporter role though cause a lot of ransoms will die without you paying attention.
For healing, I would work on keeping party alive, then gradually work on weaving damage in.
So focus on healing, then work on getting dots on mobs, then adding stone etc while managing your own, tank then dps's health
Don't forget to heal yourself as well
watch Rinon's guide on WHM. He explains how to play that class and the order of abilities you want to use in your healing rotations alongside the optimal DPS rotations for when you're not healing
sweet, i'll check it out thanks!
Glad you're getting back into XIV! That said... hoo, gurl, I got some WHM tips for you. I wouldn't say it's my main - that's BRD - but realistically it IS the class I play the most often once I've learned new content, because I love those short queue times. I'm sort of a "hardcore casual" player - I play a lot, but I don't play EX's or Savages or Ultimates, so I'm not trying to push the limits of what I can do, but I do typically perform more than adequately using these techniques in regular content.
-Your priority should always be: keeping yourself alive, then the tank, then any other rezzers, then anyone else. You can't heal if you're dead, the group will likely wipe if the tank is down for too long, other rezzers can help you if things start going south, and everyone else... if they stood in bad, they should have thought about that beforehand ð
-Once you've gotten to about 7000-8000 MP, start hitting your Lucid Dreaming on cooldown. You'll have a hard time running out of MP if you do this, unless you're really having to burn all of your high MP cost heals all the time.
-Any debuff with a straight white line over it on your party members vitals (including your own) can be cleansed with Esuna. If there's no white line, it's not cleanseable.
-"Noob" techniques to use until you get more comfortable with healing: abuse the hell out of your regens (Regen, Medica II/III, Asylum). Put all 3 down at once if you've got a tank that's wall-to-wall pulling. Unless the tank is undergeared (or you are), you probably won't need to heal again until at least one of them wears off. You can drop Asylum as you're running, once you know roughly where the tank is going to stop. You can also Regen them as you're runnning. You have to wait until you stop to hard-cast Medica II/III, unless you want to Swiftcast it (not recommended unless it's an emergency).
-Once the tank stops and you've got those regens set up (or even if you've got one or two and can sneak this in): Holy spam commence. Holy has a diminishing return Stun attached to it - IMO, Stuns are effectively also healing, because it's however many seconds that people are not taking damage. If you Swiftcast your first Holy once the tank stops running, that can give you a few seconds to hardcast Medica II/III without incoming damage going on. Do note that you need to be "in the thick of things" to have your Holy stun hit everything though, so be careful where you position yourself.
-Once you're comfortable with the regen(s)/Holy combo for pulls, start adding in your Aero/Dia DoT's as you're running. I like to try to tag all the mobs as the tank goes from one pack to the next with an Aero, to help with DPS. That's one you can cast on the move, so if you've Regen'd the tank already and you're still running, it gives you something to do while you're moving.
-Once you're more comfortable with healing, try to pull back on the Medica II/III spam a bit. I used to like to keep it up almost all the time because I don't trust anyone, but it IS an MP and "action economy" suck - you could be instead contributing DPS every time you cast it, if you're confident it won't really be needed. This takes some time to understand your heals as well as the content (and other people's likely pain points/difficult areas in that content), though. That's why this is a "later" tip. I like to try to play a game with myself now when I'm comfortable with content called "Can I run this whole dungeon without casting Medica II/III at all and still not have anyone die?" ;-p
-Cure III is great for large group heals after raidwides and things like that, but keep in mind everyone has to be relatively close together. Medica has a slightly wider range but less potent heal.
-Whenever possible, USE YOUR LILY HEALS OVER CURE I/II!!! First of all, they have no cast time, so that's great - you can also cast them on the run. Secondly, you'll later get an ability that lets you use an AoE DPS burst skill for every 3 lilies you consume, so healing with those actually helps your DPS in the end. Cure I/II should basically be a last resort for heals. If you're not comfortable with content or your party's skill level, consider holding lilies in case you need to burn some big heals in a pinch.
-Assize is possibly the best skill in the game, IMO. AoE damage + healing + small MP refund = use it on cooldown, basically. In the beginning, you'll probably see it as a healing skill that you need to hold for emergencies. It's actually a DPS skill ;-p
-Tetragrammaton and Benediction are your "OH ISH" buttons, but you can also use them in less urgent situations. Don't be afraid to put your skills on cooldown.
-Make yourself a "Swiftcast Raise" macro. Use it as needed. If multiple people go down at once in a raid, Presence of Mind + Thin Air and I've generally had luck either rezzing the rezzers first, or starting at the bottom of the party list (other cohealers usually tend to rez from the top down, creating redundancy overlaps if you're both rezzing the same person).
-They just added a dash skill to WHM in Dawntrail: Aetherial Shift. Learn the rough distance you'll travel with it in low pressure content, so you don't yeet yourself off a ledge with it in a group situation ;-p Then put it somewhere that you can easily access it but never accidentally press it during group content, to avoid more "fun times" there.
And then, there's my most "controversial" piece of advice. I originally played LotRO before this, which had "skill target forwarding" - that is, if you had a friendly targetted and cast a damage spell, but THEY had the enemy targetted, the game was smart enough to filter your damage spell through to the "target of target." So... you could keep the tank targetted all the time but still cast damage spells, or vice versa. This game does not have that feature innately... but what it does have is macros. Now, people will tell you macros are bad because there's no skill queueing and you loose some tenths of a second every time you go to cast, etc. - this is all true, but I find that if you're not trying to do "bleeding edge" content (Savages or Ultimates, really), you'll still perform just fine with all that in mind. This would allow you to keep the tank targetted, focus target the boss so you can see whatever they're casting at any given time, and not have to switch targets for your heals or DPS skills. For me, the slight optimization loss is worth it in exchange for the EXTREME QoL I find this to bring. If you are interested in this, then, I have a macro like this set up for each of my DPS skills (exchange the DPS skill name for whichever one you're trying to macro):
/micon "Holy"
/ac "Holy"
/ac "Holy"
What that will do is try to cast Holy on your target first (if you have an enemy targetted) or your target of target (if you have a friendly targetted). This way you can use it either in solo content where you'd be directly targetting enemies, or group content where you'll likely be targetting through the tank. I'm a button masher, so this works great for me, since I"m usually mashing it again well before it's come off cooldown. Again - this is NOT OPTIMIZED GAMEPLAY, and the general consensus of the internet will be that it's bad, but shrug, it's worked fine for me for years now, and it saves me the nightmare of having to target switch all the time just to do some damage.
There's other things I could tell you about some higher level strats/skill usages as well, but since you don't have those skills yet (and I've already written a novel), this is probably enough for now lol. I wish you luck on your healer's journey! I hope you come to love it as well! And always remember: you can heal a lot of things, but you can't heal stupid.
Macros aren't recommended on a healer. They don't allow your action to queue meaning you might lose the input.
@@SeifellAlmancht That's why I said that part was controversial and gave a lot of warnings - I know it's not optimized. Yet I will tell you, from literal years of playing this way now, I've never had any noteworthy problems with it or really any problems at all that I even remember. I HAVE had problems trying to macro heals though, and I wouldn't recommend that, but DPS skills have worked for me (and in fact are a DPS GAIN for me vs. me trying to fat-finger target switch all the time, as well as being a more calming way to play healer). However, everyone is different, and your mileage may vary - again, I heavily disclaimered that part before I added it.
-oh wow i didn't know the thing about Esuna, thanks. i actually haven't ever used Esuna because i don't know what the status icons mean yet and heals have been enough to keep everyone alive so i figured just do that.
-i've gotten pretty good about doing Aero as i'm running to catch up with the tank â
-didn't know to use the lilies over cure! now i know. for some reason i thought it was the "oh ðĐ" move but clearly i had it backwards haha.
-"In the beginning, you'll probably see it as a healing skill that you need to hold for emergencies. It's actually a DPS skill ;-p" yes this is exactly what i thought hahah ð
-i haven't used tetra or benediction yet so thanks for the explanation
THANK YOU for the in depth guide, seriously! this was very helpful! ðŊ
Duty support just takes longer (the DPSs attack enemies one at a time). If you force wall-to-wall pulls in duty support and can keep the AI tank alive, you can heal anything. That's how I got good at AST.
For assize, Iâd recommend just using it on cooldown. Itâs much more useful for the mp regen and damage rather than saving it for the healing aspect. Thatâd help with your mp issues as well, itâs an extra 500 mp youâll be getting back every 45 seconds.
Good Morning,
as a fellow Dragoon main, and then going into White Mage as secondary, here are a couple of things that i like to do when i play this healer
ditch Cure III, i find that Medica II + Assize will do the same job but better
in terms of maths,
Cure III = 600 potency
Medica II + Assize = 650 potency Plus 150 Regen potency
it also Cost Less MP and you actually gain some back due to Assize
if you need to heal a DPS, i would just put a Regen on them, if they're like below 50% HP, then i would probably give them Afflatus Solace + regen
that way you're not wasting so much MP and time casting a Cure II
i definitely prioritize using Afflatus Solace and Tetragrammaton over Cure II
you save Time bc they are Instant Abililties and MP, well bc they are Free.99
Good Luck in your Roulettes
i hope these will help you
yay a fellow dragoon main to white mage! thanks for the tips! ð this makes total sense.
I literally had the same problem with Dragoon and just had to learn my own rotation for it. Those rotation guides I find are a bit mad anyway, I don't really play the savage content, I get along fine with a more basic rotation.
I'm fairly new to FFXIV, been playing for 4 months...XD but I am a white mage main at level 100 lol and I'll share with you what some of my mentors taught me!
Assize - damage to boss and heals with no MP cost! For big pulls, and the tank rushes on ahead of you and you need to heal him immediately use assize. Also when taking on a boss save it until the boss does a big hit and the party's HP is down to half.
Focus target - Use this on the tank when pulling mobs. When you face the boss focus target the boss. After the boss is defeated focus target the tank again. Keep switching depending on the duty.
Holy - the stun effect lasts 3 times. If the tank does not pull on ahead and you can reach him use Holy FIRST. It'll stun the mob and allow the party to do damage while the enemies are unable to move. After the 3 times you still want to use holy because it does damage even if it no longer stuns. Using stone and aero will take too long and slow down the party. Now you can still do aero on each enemy after you use Holy 3 times. Also you want to use Presence of Mind when using Holy. It speeds up the casting time.
Raise - First it's good that you use swiftcast and thin air when raising people. But you want to create a user macro that combines raise with swiftcast. If you're not sure how to do that I'll be happy to show you what I have! It just speeds up the time to raise someone.
Tetragrammaton - Single spell heals with no MP cost! If your MP and HP are low you want to use Tetra until you get your MP back up.
Benediction - If your HP is super low and you're about to die make sure to use Bene! It's great in a pinch. But only use it if you're within 10% of dying. Also use if it you do die and need healed quick!
Reagen - Yes you always want to use reagen on a tank so keep it up!
As for being afraid of leveling it up more because you'll get new stuff, you will find healing to be a lot easier when you get to a higher level cause there are traits and abilities that can do your healing for you while you dps! Don't be afraid to level it up. So far I've done White Mage and Scholar and prefer White Mage but it's all about preference. I love being a healer main and hopefully you'll grow more confident and learn to love it too!
If you need extra tips on how to play I'll be happy to help as best I can and if I don't know then I'll ask one of my mentor's to assist! That's what I love most about this game. The majority of the player base is extremely supportive and wants everyone to succeed!
thank you so much for this awesome guide! it's been super helpful. i'm scared to jump into the world of macros... they seem very intimidating ðģ but maybe i just need an explanation and start with something simple like you said?
@@HeatherJustPlay You're welcome! Yeah I was intimidated in the beginning too but macros really helps to simplify everything. I'm not just new to this game but new to gaming in general and once I was taught about macros it helped me to learn the job better. Starting off simple is a good idea and once you master healing then you can do more complex macros.
F2, F3 & F4 selects the other players in a light party. F5-8 for a full party.
WHM is the most straight forward, thatâs true.
Holy is great for pausing damage to heal folks up. Just be aware the effect is halved each time you use it.
Let the tank pull before you start healing, or the enemies will get really upset at you.
Duty support is a great way to learn mechanics because the bots nearly always get them correct.
Donât be afraid of new abilities, they always expand your toolbox options.
Your grasp of abilities is very good.
Start using lucid dreaming at about 75-80% mana, and then on cooldown. Assize is used on cooldown as well, as it also has a mana regen as well. I try to alternate them.
Few tips:
- Assize also restores MP so not using it until the end is not a great idea. Should basically be used as soon as it comes off cooldown, also Assize is off the GCD (it does not take time to cast, and you can straight away cast something else) and deals a ton of damage, so not using it often will reduce your damage. A great moment to use it is 5-10 seconds into a boss fight. Open up , put up your aero, perhaps a regen on the tank, start spamming Stone. "A lot" of bosses open with some kind of AoE attack a few seconds into the fight. Assize is perfect for this. You can heal up the party without stopping to deal damage and you get the MP back you already spent. In short, use Assize as soon as you can, unless you know AoE damage is coming up then it's okay to hold onto it for a short while.
- Lillies shouldn't just be used when MP is low, since they don't cost MP themselves they should be used to prevent getting low MP in the first place. Sitting on 3 full Lillies is bad, and this becomes even worse later on when you receive your blood lilly. Healing ability priority should generally be use oGCD first (Assize, tellegramation,...) > Lillies > Hard casting spells that cost MP like Cure II . This will result in the highest DPS and lowest MP cost, but if you're not comfortable with a fight it's also okay to hold onto your oGCDs until you need them to help keep everyone alive. Just prioritize using Lillies over hard casted heals that use MP.
- Yes Thin Air (free MP spell) is best used together with Raise, but people (luckily) don't die all that often. You get 2 charges of the spell. So it's also fine to use a charge in combination with a spell like Medica II or Cure III, you won't save as much MP as you would with Raise, but it's still a lot of MP saved and better than not using Thin Air at all when noone is dying.
- Aero is really only worth casting if it can stay on the full duration on the mob, so it's great for bosses. It's also great to put on mobs while the tank is still running and fetching them as you don't have to stand still to cast it. As soon as you're in the neighborhood of 3 or more mobs, Holy is always going to result in more damage than refreshing Aero or casting Stone. So Aero in typical mob packs should only be put up at the very beginning while everyone is still moving.
- Lucid dreaming should indeed be cast ASAP but try to be down to 8000 MP or so before you put it on so you're sure you will get the most out of the MP regeneration. Unless you know you're about to cast some heavy MP heals then you can use it earlier.
There's plenty of more nuances to the job, but these tips should already help you out a lot if you're struggling with MP.
thanks so much for this! SUPER helpful! ðĪĐ
Assize is a damage oGCD, don't wait to use that, ignore the heal on it, use it off cooldown, for heals you are gonna learn the fights be proactive and not reactive. Example, a raidwide AoE is coming up cast your aoe oGCD or GCD heal and time it to go off right after the party is hit. Remember that there is a lot less to heal if the enemies die faster, Healer damage is quite considerable so don't ever stop casting You'll manage your cooldowns better if the fights don't drag out for ages. The most healing intense parts are dungeon mob pulls and raid bosses that specifically have healing/mit checks.
Use assize on cooldown, use afflatus first for heals before gcd heals
Healing is not terrible, and WHM has the easiest Barrier Of Entry to overcome. Low lvels, get used to keeping pace with the tank, make sure to throw him a regen before he wades into battle, and spam Holy to stunlock the mobs (Damage lost to stunlock is damage prevented to your tank!) If your DPS is taking damage but not in immediate danger, throw out regens. instant cast and as long as they stay out of the fire, they will be fine while you focus elsewhere.
Also, F1-F8 keys. Instant target party members without those precious miliseconds being wasted by locating your mouse in all the flashy effects and guide it to the party member in need of help
ALSO: I can only assume you have seen Jocats' crap guides to FFXIV by now, but its always good for a laugh and some solid advice
YES the F1-F8 keys. i haven't done any 8 person+ duties yet as a WHM but i'm getting better at using at least F1-F4 haha. and i haven't seen Jocat's crap guide so thanks for the heads up!
Started as a white mage and is still my main. I've grown more comfortable along the way. Scared to fail as a healer and letting the team down and ... Now ending in runs with friends and trying to kill eachother XD healers are brutal cause we can pull people to safety (sure).
I play the way I feel comfortable. I do target focus the boss to have an idea of what is coming, and just makes it easier for me personally to click on his name and have him ready to do damage to again. My party list is on a place I know I can easily reach. Keep playing with your hud until it works for you. Also feel free to not like the whm in the end. I love my whm end enjoy astro alongside. Scholar and Sage ... no thanks and that's ok to. Holy is nice in big pulls. You can keep your focus on the tank while still doing damage, putting a heal in here and there if needed. Aoe heals are my lazy healing ^^. Regen on a tank is never wrong. Could you have done an extra damage spell sure, does it give you a sense of security to do regen instead go for it. The lillies are so nice and rest assured more is coming. A healer feeling at ease and enjoying themselfes is a pretty good start. Oh and healer LB3 ^^ such a nice feeling. Take your time, see what works for you. Heck only recently I was watching a vid and the whm used Cure 3 this 1 time. Never used it myself before seeing the vid, it was on the right on my bar to be forgotten. Now it has it's place among the rest, still on the side cause hardly used, but it has a purpose here and there.
You know what is actually wasting everyone's time? Roulette queue times! Don't worry so much and learn from experience ð
ha truth!
Especially for lower level where your ogcdâs are more limited/nonexistent, itâs ok to play a bit safer. Sometimes trying to be optimal actually makes things riskier, and if you arenât confident, itâs better to heal a bit more excessively and do less damage, then trying to maximize damage and accidentally let the tank drop. Also avoid the compulsion to max hp bar right away, which I did when i started. If you got regen from medica 2/regen then itâs ok to let their bar go up slowly unless another ape is coming. Canât tell how many times i overhealed and used up my mp before i realized i was trying to hard.
yes i feel like this is where i'm at but i see the light at the end of the tunnel as i'm getting better at it!
I don't use focus target but I probably should. If you're having trouble with yourself dying it might be good to adjust your HUD layout a bit like you said. I had a bad habit of not watching my own bars so I moved my HP and MP directly above my hot bars at the bottom middle if the screen and made them bigger so if I was looking down to check a cooldown timer, they were right there. I just had to make them harder for myself to miss. One thing I do for my health dropping is if I notice that I took a bit of damage, I will use my F key for (deep breath) "Target the target of your current target (Assist Target)". Yep, that's really what the function is called, it's in the targeting section of the keybind menu. I can't remember if it's F by default or not. Basically, if the tank is targeting an enemy and you press F, it switches you to target that enemy. If you press it again, it switches back to the tank (or whoever the enemy is targeting). During the fight, I will press F off of the tank onto the boss/enemy and then cast regen. Since you can't heal an enemy it automatically casts the heal on yourself. Then you can refresh your Aero dot and press F again to go back to the tank. A lot of these are habits I got burned into me by playing priest in WoW over a decade ago that never went away. If you find yourself having to heal a dps directly and target them, they're usually targeting something that is targeting the tank already. So, you can target the dps, cast the heal, then tap F twice quickly. This will switch your target to the enemy, then back to the tank quickly. Generally if the DPS took damage it means they either made a mistake or it was a party wide hit. If everyone is missing health, medica 2 will take care of it and you don't even have to change targets. If you're fighting a group of enelies like a dungeon pull and a couple of people need to be topped off, assize is good for that since it damages all of the enemies around and heals the party.
Once you get the lily gauge and afflatus heals, those will eventually replace cure 2 as your standard spot heal. Tetragrammaton is basically another lily heal on its own cooldown (eventually it gets a second charge at 98 I believe). Neither afflatus heals or Tetra cost MP so that will take some of the MP bar stress off. Otherwise I use Lucid Dreaming any time my MP is 7,000 or below and it's off cooldown.
I have seen some healers spam holy like crazy and you certainly can. I usually space out the casts a few seconds at the start of a dungeon pull. You can think of the stun as extra mitigation for the tank since they're not getting hit during that time. The stun has a diminishing return where the first cast stuns for 4 seconds, the second cast for 2 and then the third for one second. After that you're just doing damage.
oh wow the assist target thing actually sounds nifty and practical but also something i'll have to practice. "topped off" is a good term that makes me understand when to use assize. thanks for your input! ð
Sounds like you're getting pretty close but I do have a few tips:
1. Focus Target your tank on trash pulls in dungeons, then switch your target to the Boss on Boss fights.
2. Use Holy on any pack of 3+ even if the stun drops off because the stun is the secondary effect the damage is the primary purpose of Holy. Particularly useful for trash packs because you can use Presence of Mind to speed up your casts causing a minor stun lock on mobs which will give you enough time to weave in an Off global CD heal such as Tetragrammaton or Afflautis.
3. Position yourself to use Medica more often than using Cure III because of the stark difference in MP cost. Medica II is an AOE heal over time so only use it as a top up.
4. Assize my beloved, use it often use it always.
5. Asylum is a mitigation. Think of it as a little bit of extra protection during trash pulls and right before unavoidable aoe attacks. It's also very helpful to signal to a tank how far to take a trash pull.
6. If you're shaky on mechanics or feeling anxious during a boss pull, put Aero (dot) on the boss and focus on healing. It's okay to lower your dps a little to make sure everyone is up and healthy than to lose a party member. You'll add more and more DPS over time as you get used to the mechanics.
7. When things get hectic and you're kinda panicking a little, use a Medica, then use an individual heal. That way if you're getting hyperfocussed on the party's health bars you can make sure you're getting healing too.
I know it's a lot but honestly it sounds like you're doing pretty great and I'm so glad to hear you're having fun playing a healer. It can be stressful but once you get the healer mindset really working for you, then you can apply it to other healing jobs and find the one that really clicks with you and then it's all gravy. :D
i don't know why it didn't occur to me that i could switch the focus target from the tank to the boss during boss fights. seems obvious but thanks for pointing it out to me ha ð
and yes, i've had to switch my mindset for some boss fights and tell myself to just focus on healing vs damage until i get better. i'm obviously trying to do too many things at once when i'm still learning.
thanks for the tips and the encouragement! ð
I main as a SCH and really struggle with LOWER level dungeons actually. I will literally wipe because I don't have a group heal until level 35. We do have a group regen we can pop after level 20, Whispering Dawn, but it's just a regen. At least WHM gets Medica I at level 10! And, Duty Support is so much easier of course. When you do Duty Roulette, you have to deal with Tanks who think they can pull wall to wall but don't actually have the gear to handle it and forget it's a poor little SCH without their awesome higher level tool kit to help.
Usually I would pop Adloquium on the tank pre-pull to pop up a shield for them, but there is no chance in Duty Roulette when they are running all the way through and by the time I reach them, they are almost dead and I just have to Physick them back up. It's really hectic and stressful! And, there have been times I totally forgot to summon my fairy before someone noticed and said, "Where's the fairy?" But, honestly, I think it's so much fun. When I played as Dancer, it was so much easier and no one was really paying attention to me or relying on me too much.
Healther, you are still solid. Keep at it.
Some of your worries are outdated, regen ticks don't reap aggro anymore, and i think cure 3 area is a lot bigger.
For UI, i use the party list a lot to see my hp/mp at the top.
And as for fear of new abilities, consider that the more abilities you have, the more it's ok to use them slightly ineficiently (like your fear with the bubble ability).
Once you are a bit more comfortable with healing/whm, consider looking up a bit about the different tanks and their way of mitigating/healing themselves. For example knowing that when a warrior uses bloodwheting they will not require any healing for 6-8 seconds. Or that blackknights require a bit more babysitting of their health than other tanks.
Anyway good luck with healing, i find that the awareness it teaches makes you a better player in general.
(sorry for my bad english)
As for what to do with your new abilities.
Assise : use on cooldown, it deals damage, heals and gives you MP back.
tetragramaton: priority for healing any single targets, it's free and you can use it between stones :p.
Afflatus anything, it's free, and it comes back really quick, use it before considering Cure 2/3.
Even benediction which might seem like a panic button is probably a good use just to restore half a hp.
As a rule of thumb, using your cooldowns before your MP is always a good idea.
And something that comes with experience, is to let your regens do the heavy lifting when the team wont take damage for some time. Asylum is great to get people to full after team wide damage while you do other things.
UI and Button set up.
Disclaimer, im a sch main but i organize my spells in similar fashion.
I think this is something people overlook when playing healer is an intuitive button set up. The tip i can give is to consolidate types of heals to a specific button. For a very simplified example. Let's use you keybinds 1, 2, 3 and 4
Single target heals would go to 1, instant single targets on 2, group heals would go to 3, and 4 would be instant group. Now with the use of commands, you access the different types of heal such as alt, shift, ctrl, ctrl+shift, alt+ctrl, and alt+shift.
Example
1: regen
Alt+1: cure 1 (i know we don't we use c1, but for sake of example)
Shift+1: cure2
2: Tetra
Alt+2: beni
Shift+2: lily Single heal
3: medica1 (direct group heal)
Alt+3: medica2 (direct plus HOT)
Shift+3: cure3
4: assize
Alt+4: asylum
Shift+4: lily group heal
Take note that holding shift will give access to lily heals. So you know shift is for instant lily heals either single or group, depending.
But again, this is just simplified example, and keybinds can be categorized in different ways depending on play style. This grouping and organizing of your heals to make it less confusing.
I do the same thing, but the opposite way. I have the heals across 1-2-3-4, and the AOE/party counterparts on Shift+1 (etc). I find this a lot easier to remember in a pinch because for tank/DPS I use Shift+key for the AOE counterpart to the single-target, so that just keeps things the same.
@@onyx.avenger Yup. i know of others that do the same. So really again its playstyle. Either using keys to categorize the type of heal and shifting using command combos (my preferred playstyle) or through command combos and shifting using keys (your preferred playstyle). Although different, both serve the same purpose. Organizing our heals to promote efficiency. /cheer
Agreed. As long as you can find the right keys when you're in the thick of combat, that's what matters :D
i have so much i could say about white mage but I'll leave it to a tip that i don't see said very often. holy on trash pulls will stun on first hit and third hit before they are immune. i generally use holy, then try to put my dot on as many as i can during that, then regen tank before casting holy 2 more times for the second stun. after that if your at 4 or 3 enemies or less your single target attacks are better.
got it, thanks!
It's a normal thing to get back to being used to the game once you've taken a break, specially a long one like yours. Even me, who had capped all jobs, finds it daunting to get back to how I used to play. Healing is more stressful but very rewarding once you've mastered it. If you can't keep up with a fast pulling tank you can always tell him to do small pulls instead. Being a WHM, your heals have more potency than other healers but the problem lies on mana consumption because it depletes faster than the other healers. What you will do instead is keep casting aflatus to manage you mana better. Since you're using a keyboard, try to practice pressing f2 instead of targetting the tank. Also set you party HUD to where you can observe the hp better. These are just a few that I can suggest. Most of the things you mentioned are already correct and I'm sure you will get the hang of it as time goes by.
"Healing is more stressful but very rewarding once you've mastered it." love this! thanks for your input! ð
My first healer was actually Scholar because you level up Summoner at the same time. I would say I am adaquate, not spectacular. This is just me, but my priority for healing is Tank, then self (or fellow healer), DPS who can res, and then other healers. This allows for highest surrvivability. The reasoning is because if Tank dies, you can heal properly due to aggro. If you or other healers die, you can res other players. Then DPS with Res, because it always good to have another who can ressurect players. And finally all other DPS because they dont add to survivability.
At least thats just how my brain works for healing.
I can heal but i do not know how to switch target from foe to allies
I don't really main healer (but I can comfortably heal casual content up to 100), and when I do play I generally play barrier healers, but the best realization I had when I started leveling healers with WHM was that you don't need the party tl be 100% healed. As long as there isn't a big attack coming ofc. There also isn't anything bad in letting DPS getting low during trash packs and focusing on the tank if you can't keep up.
For single target heals on WHM you should prioritize
Afflatus solace (you get funny spell later that depends on your usage of them) > single target instants (Tetra, Benediction, etc.) > cure II
For multiple targets it should be
Afflatus rapture (lv 76 and forward, it's the AOE version of afflatus solace) > medica 2 > medica
Cure III is mostly for rare cases such as the rest of the party being in Narnia and your mesicas not reaching them
I usually try to pop lucid dreaming at 7000-8000 MP, bit often forget to...
This should allow you to heal most casual content (it does for me at least), but I also learned WHM during EW tho and can't be considered a master in any way, so WHM makns are welcome to correcting me
thanks for chiming in! this was helpful ð
OK, I started out FFXIV years ago and I wanted to play a caster or healer and my friends said to play Conjurer as they turn into a WHM and you can play both. Joy! I was a very experienced healer from other MMOs from over the past 20 years I so had this, right? No. It was hard because I was also expected to do damage. In other games, you do one thing. You have a role in a group or a raid and you do not stray from that. Getting cussed out by someone in a Roulette Duty that it took 15 minutes longer than they had planned because the tank couldn't mitigate and had crap gear, was MY fault because I kept us all alive was the end of that for me. I play all four healer jobs. All but Sage are maxxed out, fully geared and yes, I'm healing current trials, but refuse to do savages because life's too short to want to measure things. When I get into a duty, I focus target the tank. I click, on them, right click and click on focus and his name and health bar go up the my HUD there I have it and can see it even if I'm healing, casting or rezzing. That is the most important thing to do when you are healing. Never, ever take your eye off the tank. That's why I utterly hate AST right now, too busy. It's the Sage's main weakness, and frankly, SCH doesn't really need to. Assize is an AOE mass heal as well as doing damage to the enemy/enemies. I start off AOE pulls going wall to wall as it heals the tank, does damage, hit the tank with a heal and then start Holy so I don't have to heal so much as it stuns the mobs.
Know what your spells do. As a white mage, you use every tool at your disposal, Asylum, Bell, and do as much of your awesome damage going so you ALWAYS have lily spells at your disposal. Use Termperence like you invented the spell at higher levels. Use Aquaveil on your tank whenever it's ready, Benediction on yourself and your tank after 90. Never ever forget that medica 2 is your best friend and always have your lily heals ready for stack markers. Also, know your rotation forward and backward, running FATEs will help you with that for solo and group work, while getting bicolor gems for stuff you might need. I love the role, and now we're even better than ever. Have fun with it and play with people you trust to get into your groove.
You *can* actually pre-regen a tank now as long as you do it before they target the next pack :) if theyâve already drawn aggro on it and then you cast regen, thatâs when all the mobs will target you.
I donât bother focus targeting the tank, myself - Iâm healing them often enough that I donât need to and I have my UI set up so I can see cleansable debuffs and my regens on them. I DO have the bossâs cast bar massive and right in the middle of my screen so I donât miss any boss casts while busy topping up my team.
Youâll get used to it though! I find Dragoon way harder than healing, personally - having to focus on a rotation while I avoid mechanics is way more difficult for me to get my head around :)
ooh i didn't realize that about pre-regen. thanks for the heads up! also knowing that you find dragoon harder is very encouraging so thank you ð
Holy adds a short stun to your aoe damage to enemies that aren't bosses so I would feel free to spam in trash mobs because it helps mitigate damage against your tank/party but remember to cast Regen and Medica II every so often but it sounds like you've found the right track!
Alright. I do not know if you will see this, 141 comments is a lot.
I have 2 years exp playing, i have tanked/heal/dps from ARR all the way until the end of DT.
I will do like a quick 10 tips that imo, is what the qualties of a good healer.
1. Stick close to the tank at all times of a pull. If the tank sprints, you should be too.
2. Individual Regen and group Regen STACK! I know, right? Tested this one day, and i was so pleased to see the heal factor doubled with both on.
3. Healing classes are more or lese the same at its core with just different names for abilities. But they do have a few differences. I highly recommend trying different ones. Imo. White mage is the least fun healer.
4. Playing tank / dps / healer is so good to understand what is required in each role to make an efficient unit.
5. Esuna. The number of times i have seen healers, not esuna bad effects, blows my mind. A tank with 3 or so debuffs on (the one with a blue line at the top can he removed) will die fast in a big mob. Make sure to remove them asap.
6. Swiftcast + Raise should be 2 buttons close to each other. If the tank dies, it does not automatically mean a wipe.
7. And this one is super important. Some tanks are just bad. If they pull 15 mobs but just use 1 tiny mitigation, then the healer takes a lot of strain.
8. This sort of ties in to 7. Mob pulls are what hurt, not boss fights. When i tank, i pull wall 2 wall, as soon as i stop pop 2/3 mitigation abilities and repeat. By the time i get to the boss fight, everything is on cooldown. And thats fine, because bosses don't hit that hard.
9. Prioritise in your head. Healing is more important than dps. Tank hp is more important than dps hp. So make a little one of these for yourself:
Heal > Esuna > Attacking
And you will only attack once the first two conditions are met. With holy, it has a stun, so you could alternate 1 holy/1 cure 2 or something, for example.
10. Don't be afraid to fail. You will learn more dying to a wall 2 wall than you will to surviving a single mob pack.
Bonus: Do hall of the novice for healers. It teaches you what the tame wants from you. They really should make it compulsory to unlock different roles.
I always say: Fear not him who isn't afraid to die. But fear him who fears dying.
I hope that helps! The rest is just practice!! And try the other healing classes as well!
Just remember that *Holy is a heal* and should be a priority when the tanks sits with a mob pack. If mobs are stunned they cant do damage and you can think of all that damage that you prevented as "Healing". Just remember you can only stun a mob 3 times before they become immune to it. After that you should be prioritizing ogcd's and lilies then gcd's. Of course there is more nuance depending on the situation but that will come with time and experience.
I loved playing white mage until I got to the Eden raids. I kept dying to the swirly bird mechanic and letting the team down, and completely lost confidence.
aww i'm sorry to hear that ð
I have a job for each role quest (5 in total), my main one being melee dps, and I suffer when I need to level up my tank and healer. I confess that to level up these two I end up using the Trust or Support dungeons because they give a lot of XP and no one will insult me, lol, especially healer... I'm terrified of playing Duty. My problem with Healer is that you have to memorize all the mechanics of all the enemies, because if you die it's game over for everyone.
yeah i feel you ð
For damage - spam spam spam. Use Presence of Mind at the start of a fight and then when available so you can spam more. It's a 2 minute cooldown and everyone's (BRD, DNC, MNK, DRG, SCH, AST, etc.) party buffs are 2 minute cooldowns, so it should line up and let you spam the most damage you can into their buffs.
If there are 3 or more targets, spam Holy constantly. If there are 2 or fewer targets, spam Stone on 1 of them. Keep Aero up all the time. On one target, Aero does more damage than a Stone cast if it will be applied for 15 seconds or more. On up to 6 targets, Aero does more damage than a Holy cast if it will be applied for its full duration. On dungeon mobs, I would put Aero up on each mob at the start and then not bother reapplying it. On bosses, apply Aero at the start of the fight and reapply it whenever it has 5 seconds or less remaining.
While you're getting comfortable, you might want to hold your Swiftcast in case you need to Raise someone. Personally, I start every dungeon trash pull with Swiftcast + Holy > Assize > Presence of Mind > Holy spam, but that's probably not wise if there's a chance that the tank could die and you need a speedy Raise. Worth thinking about later though.
Lower level WHM is all about trusting the regen effects. You don't need to keep Regen up on the tank at all times, but Regen is a good thing to cast as soon as the tank is taking some damage because it's a very high value heal at the cost of 1 cast. I would usually put a Regen out at the start of a trash pull or before a boss fight starts and then not use it again after that. You also have other great regen tools...
For AOE party healing - Medica 2 is preferable over Cure 3 unless you REALLY need healing NOW because the initial heal + regen from Medica 2 is actually much higher than the healing from Cure 3 and it also costs less MP. Cast Medica 2 and just let the regen that it provides do its thing. Cure 3 is preferable over Medica 2 if you know there's more damage incoming and you don't have time for the Medica 2 regen to heal people up. In those cases, you might want to cast Cure 3 so that people have enough HP to survive the incoming damage, then use Medica 2 afterwards to slowly heal off that 2nd wave of damage.
Asylum is also a very high value regen. It's good any time there's damage going out. You can throw it down during trash pulls or after the party has taken damage in a boss fight and it will just do its thing. It's like Medica 2 but it costs 0 MP, has no cast time and is an ability rather than a spell, so it can be used between spell casts. It's literally free. We love Asylum.
For single target healing on the tank (or anyone else who has taken damage) - the highest value abilities that you have are benediction and tetragrammaton. These are great because 1) they're abilities, not spells, so you can weave them between spell casts and 2) they have no MP cost. Aim to use these first.
Once you've let the tank's HP dropped low and used your bene and then used tetra, it's a good time to start using your afflatus lilies. Again, no MP cost - so these are nice to use over Cure 2.
If you've run out of bene/tetra and your lilies, now it's time to start falling back on Cure 2.
As you said, you pretty much want to be pressing Lucid Dreaming when it's available to prevent yourself from having MP issues. If you press it shortly after the fight starts and then keep pressing it whenever it's available, as well as prioritising your 0 MP cost heals, you shouldn't run into MP issues. Thin Air has 2 stacks, so you use one of them freely on anything that costs a big chunk of MP - any time you have to cast something like Medica 2, you might want to Thin Air it - then hold on to the 2nd stack of Thin Air in case you need to raise someone. Assize does damage, heals and also restores MP. I would use Assize at the start of a fight and then literally just press it on cooldown after that. If it heals, great. If everyone is already full HP then it's whatever. It still restores MP and deals damage, which is the main thing you're using it for.
That was a lot but hopefully it helps!
see it didn't even occur to me to spam damage in the beginning when everyone else is casting their 2 minute cooldowns - that totally makes sense!
thanks for the holy, stone, aero explanation. i feel like you did the math that i was trying to do in my head ð
and i totally understood everything else you explained so thanks for taking the time to share it! super helpful! now i just have to practice â
@@HeatherJustPlay Good luck! Healing feels like a lot of responsibility at first but once you've had a bit of practice and are confident in what buttons to use when, it's honestly really comfy.
I heal a lot and never use focus target lol. I just always forget to look FT bar.
Forgetting to look at your own health: that took me forever! I had to move my own health bar to be right under my character's feet, so as I dodged AOEs i would see my HP.
yeah i did that but i think i need to make it bigger cuz i'm still missing it ð
Coming from a veteran healer thatâs been at the game for over 8 years, all I will say is that, should you stick with it, youâll find out that healing, more than any other role, has the most control over the entire party- Youâll become an all-powerful force. Also, Iâm sure itâs been said already but just making sure: use assize on CD, always and holy 1 on 2 or more targets, and holy 3 on 3 or more targets. Have fun
thank you! ð
First, establish a God complex. With everyone's life in your whims, you might as well enjoy the power trip.
You mostly got it. Here's some other pointers in no particular order.
1. Assize is great as a heal if you're uncomfortable so you can save it until you're comfortable, then use it on cooldown.
2. Try to only rely on OGCDs, Afflatus, and Medica II/Regen (in that priority order); if you're out of heals and forced to Cure II, it's a desperate situation.
3. I normally don't recommend macros but this one's too useful - /ac "Divine Benison" - you can keep DPSing the boss and shield the tank for tank busters without having to click away.
hahah a god complex sheesh. i have the opposite right now ð thanks for the pointers!
As a healer in FFXIV, your enjoyment depends on rather or not the tank knows that the skill "rampart" exists for trash packs. . .
If you want a way to level with your husband and also have short queue times you could swap to tank. I suggest Warrior or Paladin. Use your defensives (cycle them on trash packs weaving in the short 20s CD between them) and you'll be fine to max level.
I can't speak for everyone, but I'm ok with playing with a healer who's struggling. I've definitely been there before. I still struggle with sage sometimes