i decided to give white mage a try and wow, it’s hard 😬 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!
🟣 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 here’s what has helped me
6:23 here’s what i still struggle with
8:58 here’s what i’ve been doing, correct me if i’m wrong
13:16 so how do i feel about healer now?
#ffxiv #finalfantasyxiv #finalfantasy14
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🟣 CONNECT WITH HEATHER —
My Vlog Channel: @heatherjustcreate
My Tutorial Channel: @HeatherRamirez
My Video Game Channel: @HeatherJustPlay
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/heatherjustplay
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🟣 i decided to give white mage a try and wow, it's hard 😬 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! 😊
🟣 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 here’s what has helped me
6:23 here’s what i still struggle with
8:58 here’s what i’ve been doing, correct me if i’m wrong
13:16 so how do i feel about healer now?
Thanks for resurrecting me many times 😬
Healer and Tank are my worst fears. But I also want to conquer.I deal with anxiety about being the reason people die.
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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 😛
-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" <t>
/ac "Holy" <tt>
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.
Thank you for sharing your experience with white mage. I’ve got a WHM leveled up to the low 30s, and I keep telling myself that I’m 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 overcome…now it’s not nearly so bad, and when I’m firing on all cylinders, it’s quite fun!
I don’t have any specific tips for your gameplay as a WHM, being a noob and all…just encouragement to keep at it. You got this!
Live stream! Let's gooooo!
I made the mistake of always focus targeting the tank. Doing that i didnt realize that my "Medica" AOE wasnt healing the whole party, just the Tank because i was focusing.
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 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!
Confetion: ive only playd crystal chronicles😢. And i have the 3 encyclopedias…and ive never playd ff14…or any game exept the one i mentiond. I stil like final fantasy😊
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