White Mage

So I've decided to go the healer route in the end, and I figured I'd get some advice on that front. I'm only a few levels away from getting White Mage, but I'm taking a short break to level up my thermatuage (or however that's spelled) so I can get swiftcast. I've read Eye for an Eye is another pretty useful ability, but I really don't want to level up the arcanist right now as it's a relatively high level to get that ability.... and I'm getting a bit bored of fate grinding and whatnot. But I'll probably go for it if enough people say it really makes a difference end game.

Anyways, what are some suggestions for being a good healer?

Swiftcast and Raise is a godsent combo. As well as Swiftcast and Medica II if you know you won't be needing to raise anytime soon. Usually SCH and SMN are on raise duty in parties because of their MP regenerating skills, but don't assume they will raise.

Presence of Mind and Divine Seal are both your friend, especially when you need to spurt heal.

Benediction is your hail-mary before death ability but takes a bit to actually enact so try to remember that before using it.

Hit Shrouds of Saints after using about 1k-1.5k MP to make sure it will be off cooldown when you need it.

If you are DPSing, opening with Swiftcast and Holy is good, then longcast Holy spams. Just remember to use Shroud of Saints after Holy spamming to lose your enmity gained and to regen your MP.

Don't stand next to Smitten in Ifrit HM, she always gets the cracks.

Yeah, you NEED Swiftcast, to the point that people may give you a lot of guff if you don't.

Bobby is a pro WHM and said most of the stuff I wanted to say, but there are a few things I want to add.

- A really common mistake which new CNJ/WHMs make is to spam their most powerful heals. Even in endgame, your go-to heal will be Cure. Cure II, Cure III, Medica, Medica II are all for specific times and if you use them too much your mana will plummet in the blink of an eye.

- Furthermore, WHMs can generate a LOT of enmity. Medica, Medica II and Cure III are great ways to rip aggro from the tank, especially at the start of a pull or when they're undergeared relative to you.

- Try to learn to heal so that you're not spending cures on players that are almost at full HP. Topping your team off too much is a good way to burn through your mana and generate too much aggro. I'd say that if more than 50% of a heal is above the players max HP, you're wasting it. That time is better spent throwing an Aero or Stone II at the enemy.

- Learn to stance dance with Cleric, so you can DPS while you heal! It makes the job heaps more fun and people like a healer-DPSer.

I'm with the low level dungeons focusing on just healing and then planning on practicing the cleric stance stuff to dps/heal on my second times through. I wish swift cast was a low level skill so I wouldn't have to spend so much time on the other class.

I seem to have gotten the hand of at least only using cure as I've used Medica only once so far. No need to use it generally anyways.

If I'm White Maging, I will usually only toss out Medica in a boss fight if everyone gets hit just to keep them okay until I can get them individually with a Cure. I've also learnt that Regen is my friend in dungeons where sometimes your LoS is going to be a problem.

As a tank, my advice is limited. General things such as getting a good feel for certain primal fights and when a tank will need to have his HP boosted and when he doesn't. Particularly in the case of Titan.

Talk to your tanks/bards. If you're struggling, say "low MP" or "no MP" - the bards can then throw out their MP ballad and the tank can boost their defences/self-healing/convalescence etc.

If you have a second to glance at your enmity bar, do so. It's the little white bar that sits in the party and if you select an enemy, it will tell you how much enmity you (and every other party member) have on that mob compared to the rest of the crew. When fighting bosses, it's important to know how your enmity is doing because if you are holding back out of fear that you might pull the boss, you may be doing so without reason.

Essentially at the start you might be very close to the tank, but over time you will find that you will drop considerably behind him (if he's a good, well geared tank) and that means that you can really start throwing out your Medica II's etc. with less worry.

Overall, again as a tank, my primay advice will always be something I have to remind Smitten on a regular basis: Don't forget to heal. ;)

If there is one person a tank will always listen to, it's the healer. If you feel he should be doing something differently, suggest it. Don't order - suggest. If he's a good tank, he should listen to his healer. If you wipe, explain what you struggled with and the tank (and other party members) can adjust or advise you for that specific run, too. But personally, I want a healer to tell me if they are struggling for any reason.

Make a macro for swiftcast raising too, just something that announces in Party Chat that you're raising X to avoid both healers blowing raise on the same person.

Cure 3 > all for healing a bunch of people who are tightly grouped up and in need of healing.

Also Esuna, Esuna, Esuna, Esuna. Cleansing is one very important part of playing support that way too many Healers neglect to do.

A lot of it is just general practice really, once you've done a dungeon enough times you know what the heavy hitting stuff is and can pre-plan accordingly around it.

Also once you get to 8 man content, you do get to hold the balance in your hands. If someone is constantly getting hit by every bit of avoidable damage in the fight, unless they're the tank it eventually becomes counter-productive and far too mana intensive to keep them up. In the rank and file of priority targets, they will be rock bottom, and it's okay to let them die for it.

Ooh, good point. Yeah, this is how I see it: If a DPS pulls something, they should take it to whoever should have hate on it (ie, the tank, normally) and let him grab it. If you heal this DPS constantly and the tank doesn't take the hate from the mob, the moment the DPS dies (or even before then) the mob will switch it's hate to you. And that's not good for anyone. So if a DPS grabs hate when they aren't supposed to (which is most of the time they grab hate in my experience) then let the DPS + tank sort it out.

As a side note, I keep getting in groups for dungeons where the DPS refuse to attack the adds and just go for the boss. And we get so close to dying because of it. I'm only level 29, and so far I've not had a person die in the dungeons, but we come pretty close before the final hit. I tried to pick up the slack there in the last dungeon, but I couldn't get many hits in before I'd have to go back to curing everybody. It was no fun.

Also, how would that macro look? I've actually never made a macro before. I just don't know how to have something appear in chat through a macro... and I'm assuming that would go at the beginning of the macro before the swiftcast/raise thing starts up.

Yeah, a lot of lower content is brute-forceable by making the healer pick up the slack while the DPS pulverise the boss. It's a bit annoying for the healer but makes the fight go faster. On the plus side, think of it like a trial by fire. The more you heal through unnecessarily difficult stuff, the better healer you'll become.

As for the macro, this will send a message and play a sound to your party, and then cast swiftcast and raise on your target:

Code:

---

/micon "Raise"
/p Swiftcast > Raise on !
/ac "Swiftcast"
/ac "Raise"

---

Don't forget Regen gives you hate, so try not to cast it at the end of a fight. Same with Medica 2. Also as I am a Bard and a WHM I have made a Macro for asking for Ballad. I dont like it when someone "shouts" at me if I didnt see their mp low. I guess I'm just too polite... but manners dont cost anything :p The swiftcast macro is great, as if I see Mages raising I usually pop a ballad on for a bit anyways :D
ps good to see you playing again

Swiftcast is a must for Raise IMO.

Everything that need's to said is said, all great points. The last point that Ravan made is important. I didn't know until recently that Regen gives you hate if it's on the tank or others.

Yeah, about Cure III procs, it is awesome to heal up your tank and any melee DPS nearby. Proc Cure III uses less MP than straight-up Cure II. To clarify Medica AoE cures outwards of you, the healer. Cure III AoE heals outwards from the target. Cure III covers a smaller area and Medica has a rather large range. I say this because it wasn't the most obvious to me when I started as a CNJ.

Note to self: add a target shout to my Raise macro...

I find having Cleric Stance bound on an extra mouse button is awesome. I have two thumb buttons on my mouse (Razer Deathadder) and one is for Run (Titan did this to me) and the other is Cleric Stance (Transpose as a THM/BLM). Stance dancing becomes so much easier!

Aul is right about Esuna, I cannot emphasize it more. While some debuffs cannot be cleansed, it is important to cleanse the ones that can (like after goal in Titan, or Heavy in fights that require a lot of movements).

In end-game content (ilvl 50+), you don't have to be shy with Medica I/II because usually you are facing a single boss and tanks at this time are more than capable of handling the hate. Medica was rarely needed in low level dungeons and you had to be careful of ripping hate off the tank.

Also, always keep an eye on the Enemy list which will have icons in front of their names. Green, you're good. Yellow, be careful. Red square, you are about to take aggro. Red triangle, you have aggro. POP SHROUD! If need be stop healing, if you can't just keep healing as you go towards your tank. They should by then realize you are squishy if they haven't taken hate back again. DO NOT KITE around the field. If you can, Fluid Aura the enemy to the tank is sometimes suggested.

Also, I love popping Eye for an Eye (ACN 34 skill) after Stoneskin drops on the tank. It helps! Especially on difficult boss fights or speedruns.

Do we have a general n00b questions thread? I feel I may make use of it if we do have one or will be making one for my random questions if there isn't one.

Anyways, on topic I'll be reaching level 50 soon (level 35 now) as a black mage and I pretty much want to jump straight into conjurer. Besides jumping into the fates and hunting log quests what's the best way to get Conjourer to 30 and Arcanist to 15 in order to get white mage up and running?

Make use of the challenge log which resets each week. You can get it from a quest in Limsa Lominsa.

Run your dungeon roulette each day and the guildhest roulette also - you get heaps of exp for them.

You can also power level if you team up with a White Mage, and go to a high level area, pull a load of mobs and have the White Mage nuke em. Tonnes of exp.

I honestly found though, just doing the roulettes and challenge log each week gets me there pretty quickly at a good pace.

With my Thaumaturge I've been doing dungeon roulette and grinding fates while I wait. That seems to work well for me.

I thought I'd started a general noob question thread at one point, but it was actually just a thread about how to be a tank back when I was in the free trial a year ago, haha.

This forum doesn't get a huge amount of threads made in it - I think it's safe to make a new thread for any questions you have.

Does power levelling still work, Tara? I thought they nixed that. I always get told that dungeons + roulettes are the fastest way to level, though, yeah. Some dungeons will work out better than others - if you get a full party together you can focus on areas with a lot of monsters, run through, kill them, everyone zip out of the dungeon and restart it, repeat etc. Not sure if there are good low level dungeons for that, mind you.

Yes, power leveling does indeed still work when done right.

Partying with a healer for FATEs is also good, you can whip through them quicker. Controversial, but Levequests. They stack up quick enough so that if you do Levequests at your level, like 10 a time you will get a tonne of experience and possibly level up. You'll also get gil, ventures and other equipment that would match your level.

Level 40-50 is the quickest, for me it is always 30-40 that sucked!

Levequests really help me zip through levels too. I do them in the down time when there aren't fates in the area. I've heard its better to do the crafting and gathering stuff for those, but I've not gotten involved with those yet.

They're also great for that. I use em for both and I always have like 80-90 leves at a time. I've never ran out.