FFXIV: ABC - A Beginner's Guide to Healers

[Music] a b c always be casting mantra you may have heard many a player repeat over your time in the game whether or not you realized it this is one of the most important pieces of information you could ever be given and so we come to this guide welcome to abc a beginner's guide to healers don't let that length scare you if you've seen any of my other content you know i take a thorough approach attempting to explain in ways a newbie will understand so i will be covering a wide array of topics that will get you into the healer role and performing better than you ever thought possible for yourself i'll be covering topics a beginner should deal with while also going in depth later into more intermediate and advanced topics that you would benefit from thinking ahead about just because you're a beginner doesn't mean you can't make use of these topics either and if you want to land beyond just a service level the more information you would benefit from take learning slow though learn a concept at a time instead of all at once it might all be info you want to know by the time you hit level cap but you don't need to learn it all right now immediately level one you are a pro everyone starts somewhere you may already know some info due to osmosis or you may have none either way take it slow and steady and with end walker only two months away as of the release of this video and the sage drop releasing many new people may be jumping into healing along with all the normal newbies and i highly recommend don't start your healing journey with sage practice first also when you queue for dungeons as a newbie nobody knows your experience level if you're not confident in yourself tell your group hey i'm a newbie advice is appreciated there's an unfortunate fear in people that causes them to typically not give advice unless asked for it first so i recommend asking for advice even if you think you're doing well you never know what things you could be doing better make heavy use of the chapter select for traversing through subtopics you already understand and such but you never know if you might learn something new let's get started in the wide world of healing before we get into any specific topics let's dispel some rumors and misconceptions first off and most importantly healers do not have more responsibility than dps or tanks they have different responsibilities the trinity system is called as such not just because there are three roles but because the three roles synergize with each other all three roles also have many shared responsibilities such as learning boss patterns or dealing with mechanics all rules can be performing at bare minimum or high contribution levels all roles affect how much effort the other roles need to put in good dps and tanks lower how much healing a healer must do mistakes from those people need to be cleaned up by the healer but are not the responsibility of the healer if things go wrong someone screwing up a mechanic and dying is not on the healer alt-right blowing up a samurai isn't your fault it's theirs no matter how much they scream about where are the heels as a healer you're not the leader or the arbiter of who lives and dies you're an equal member of the team you alone can be responsible for the success of an entire run but just because someone is being an idiot doesn't mean you are allowed to just stop healing them further people argues that say dps are of little to no importance because you can clear without them well then healers are also of little to no importance because i play without a living healer all the time i finish the boss as a dps tank because the tank and hina are eating the floor or such you're not some higher level of importance or a god [Music] healey's adjust is not a thing adjust your corpse into being a good player instead of yelling at healers to adjust people will use it as a joke all the time but people who genuinely think this way well the corp speaks for itself they'll end up killing themselves at some point just remember they're an idiot and trudge on and of course learn your healer's toolkit the healers all have differences and their own respective toolkits if you need to learn how to use a specific keyless toolkit there are plenty of videos out there about each including my own that seems like a good baseline to get into more specifics so let's get into it this seems like a weird place to start huh but it will quickly make sense there's been a lot of debate over the years about this topic people call it many different things green dps dead enemies can't hurt you or my personal mantra holy is a heel but it isn't exclusive to white mage and holy it's something all the healers can do and should be doing you can say whatever you want about what the role of a healer is all that stuff but fact of the matter is if you want to be a good healer you will learn to add in dps the better the healer you are the less you will need to actually be healing and without using dps you will spend most of your time standing still doing nothing that's just how healing works in this game it's not about pushing out as much healing as you can constantly your party will survive with far far less healing and will survive better with your added dps you do significantly speed up duty clears but it's not all about speed like detractors make it out to be you increase the safety of a run if you only skip one mechanic in a fight with your dps added in you could be skipping the most dangerous part of a fight some things are only safe or even outright possible if the healer is helping dps then there's the matter of learning to fit in dps unless you're getting a tank who is doing giant pools as early as sastasia you don't need to heal 95 percent of the time the footage you have been watching for this section has been a run of sastasia with me healing as little as possible because that's basically how i heal every dungeon you can see the full run in the description if you want but just just look how little i have to heal and then apply that to yourself it is extremely safe to learn how to dps as a healer in the earlier dungeons then you can slowly follow the difficulty curve as you level up start practicing when it is safe to dps and when it is not measure how much a single heal will help the tank then start playing limbo don't start healing the tank until they are below 60 percent health or 50 percent or 40 percent find what is safe for each run tanks who have better gear and higher skill levels can afford you to go lower while less geared and less experienced tanks need more healing either way you don't need to be putting out all the dps all the time immediately add in a little more at a time and eventually it will become second nature for you and of course don't overdo your learning you do need to remember to heal at some point some players end up entirely forgetting to heal becoming a green dps is all well and good and to be encouraged but you're still a green dps that green part is important if you start letting people geared or obviously skilled players die a lot you need to start tuning your dps back a little there is a balance to be struck but it's not the hardest balance to find but of course some you may not be convinced maybe you've heard the arguments against healer dps and believe them so let's entirely debunk those myths if you already understand that you should attempt dps as a healer skip ahead to the next major section otherwise strap in because i reject your reality and substitute my own the first argument is that gila dps is too weak to matter i mean if you're bad it is but if we're being objective healers put out plenty of damage there's a lot of variables that can change how much a healer is contributing from gear to skill level of the team or a lot else so let's keep things consistent generally there's an idea of tanks do sixty percent of a dps's damage and healers do forty percent but it's probably closer to fifty five percent and forty five percent but sixty and forty are rounded numbers so let's take some numbers and remember dps stands for damage per second a dps doing 100 of a dps's damage is 1000 dps a tank doing 60 of a dps's damage is 600 dps and a healer doing 40 of a dps's damage is 400 dps effectively every dungeon has three dps players total since the tank and heli together add up to a third dps so let's assume an 18 minute dungeon run but the heli is doing no dps that's a total of 2600 dps and 18 minutes is 1080 seconds 1080 times 2600 dps equals 2 million 808 000 damage required to clear the dungeon now let's add in healer dps for 3000 dps and while we're at it let's also do a test of 2000 dps where you're missing an entire dps 2.8 million divided by 3000 dps equals 936 seconds or 15 minutes 36 seconds 2.8 mil divided by 2000 dps is 1404 seconds or 23 minutes and 24 seconds the gila dps improved the clear time by two and a half minutes almost and having two dps instead of just one improves dungeon times by over five minutes here's the thing though that second one that wasn't actually a test of having a dps missing that was an average dungeon test 1000 dps let's just say isn't optimal play but it's still good and potentially above average 1000 was just a baseline what your average dps player might be doing and not some super ultimate triple legend by the way so let's say between the tank and the dps you're missing 600 dps total dps1 is only doing 800 dps dps2 only 750 and the tank 450 dps and the healer is doing zero dps so let's do one more test these numbers but the healer is now doing 400 dps 2.8 mil divided by 2400 is 1170 seconds or 1930 an almost four minute faster run if you want to talk about how ineffective hello dps is you have to actively fight against math like this in reality gila dps is significant and because healers have much simpler dps toolkits compared to a dps or a tank it's easier to get the full damage output it's never as simple as the numbers show there's so many variables like i said how much healing you have to fit in which will lower how much dps you do but if we keep everything but dps output consistent the time saves prove the effectiveness but i also said it's not about the overall time saves even if the time saves do add up to be literal hours of time over your gameplay no it's about the minute time saves the little seconds that you save people act like dps doesn't help your healing but it does you actively need less healing if you do dps which means you can do dps more which means you kill enemies faster which means less healing which means more dps which means it's a positive feedback loop but actually exists shortening a fight by say 10 seconds is 4 less skills you need to use and 10 seconds the tank needs to survive for less however much health that 10 seconds is worth is 10 seconds of healing that is no longer needed be it one heal or three heals a few seconds isn't nothing resources are limited a tank only has so many defensive cooldowns you only have so many healing ones and when they run out it may be impossible to survive of the pool any longer than you have it might become an inevitable race against time before you all die because the enemies weren't killed fast enough but a dead enemy can't hurt you holy is a heel and you make something like a big pulling safer or even outright possible to do let's get into actually healing now that we've established that you should fit in dps from this point forward i won't really be mentioning doing dps much it will happen here and there but for the most part i'll be focusing on the main part of healer which obviously is healing and how to heal better when playing as a healer gameplay tends to be very simple target a player cast a heal hp goes up this can be with keybinds clicking with the mouse or using the d-pad up and down arrows for controller but if that was all there was to it we wouldn't be here the real lesson to learn is the community phrase the only health point that matters is the last one that is to say if the tank has one hp they're still alive if they never hit zero you did your job this applies to the entire party even if they're not dead you successfully healed now this is a bit of a hyperbole or only applicable to emergencies or high-end content you generally should never let your tank get that low unless they're using an ultimate cooldown which will always set them to one anyway i'm sure most experienced healers will tell you that they play limbo with their party's health but they all know when to stop playing limbo if they ever do let the tanks drop that low well they've probably seen worse the opposite end of the spectrum is healing when anyone has even a speck of missing hp making sure everyone is at max hp is known as topping off you're topping off the bars and this is typically not something you should be trying to do unless you're healing a significant amount of hp with that top off or you're doing harder levels of content everyone has a built-in region it's very small something like 1 hp per tick but consider your dps players they might not be taking any unavoidable damage for a while if they're sitting at 90 hp and no damage is coming out for a while they'll just naturally hit max hp before the next attack that will damage them then there is the actual regens healers have instead of trying to rush a player back to full health use some kind of skill with regions if everyone drops to half health you can use an aoe regen if you have one not all the healers do and let that handle the rest it's almost never a race to heal back up to full health unless things are already going wrong let me say again there is time tanks are the ones you might be tempted to constantly keep topped off meanwhile they're taking constant damage from enemies and will need healing every little bit again unless you're doing harder content or the tank is really into performing for whatever reason you don't need to be keeping them at full health tank hp bars are a lot beefier than you or the dps's hp so while 90 means the tank is theoretically missing a lot more hp you're probably still not going to need to heal them yet it might take five six auto attacks from a boss before any sort of healing is needed in your average content there is nothing that will require you to constantly keep your party at max hp at all times tank busters attacks meant to do major damage to a tank will typically only take out half of a tank's hp bar in the hardest hitting dungeons and that's without them using a cool down trials and rage later on will push this damage higher but by that point you've had time to learn and already know how to deal with it raid wide damage meanwhile will typically do half the hp of all non tanks and significantly less to the tank because well they're a tank now obviously every dungeon is different in all that sometimes the numbers do go higher or lower but the numbers never become 90 in a single hit in a dungeon again that's saved for more intermediate content at a minimum at the earliest the story mode raids [Music] if you're ever unsure of how much one of your heels is going to heal a tank at the start of a dungeon look at their hp total and throw a single heel on them if kira q1 say heals 500 hp and the tank has 1500 hp you heal one third of the tank's health in a single basic heal so you don't need to consider healing the tank until they're at least around 70 percent health or lower and then your dps allies or even yourself 500 hp is worth a lot more percentage-wise so it is a limbo but not as dangerous as it sounds from the name how low can you go but how low are you comfy going that's how low you can go the more experienced healers really can play like the last hp is the only one that matters no matter what but as a newbie you should be more flexible especially because not every group is the same some tanks might not have more hp because they're using bad or weak gear i've had a lot of tanks have less hp as me as a healer they might not use cooldowns correctly either tank cooldowns drastically change how much healing you have to do you might end up panicking which is also to say don't panic if they aren't going crazy with their pool sizes or making mistakes to rack up vulnerability stacks which a vulnerability stack increases how much damage someone takes you are still in full control of the situation and even if the tank does take a tumble it's not instantly going to lead to a wipe you have to adjust your healing based on the group for better or for worse but generally you can always follow your own limbo rules and if you ever overestimate the ability of a tank or the power of your heels well the last point is the only one that matters afterwards adjust your healing and keep pushing forward communication will also be a huge boon in situations like that but of course not everything goes as planned the tank may end up going below that one hp mark and die and the enemies will then turn on the group and eat you all giving you a game over the game will then delete itself and wipe your hard drive but not before calling homeland security to come detain you wait a minute that's not what happens when your tank dies you just keep fighting keep you and your allies alive and try to raise the tank as soon as you can ideally without letting anyone else die that's really it some people act like it's the end of the world quite literally if even one person dies yes it's a mistake pick yourself and them back up and get back to healing things aren't over yet firstly let's just mention swift cast it's a free raise every 60 seconds well it still costs mana but no cast time the ability to instantly solve the problem is right there tanks back up but as you get better as a player you might start using swiftcast for more things or accidentally use it so you don't have it for raising at most things have become a bit harder now you and your dps friends aren't made to take a lot of damage depending on the situation spam cure might actually become the ideal strat sure you're going to overheal a little but if you try and play limbo at even 90 hp and the next attack is going to be a tank buster you or the dps will die before you get off another heal if it's just auto attacks it's not too major an issue but that's the extreme end as well the other extreme end because everything is a spectrum and not just two possible futures is this one very weak enemy alive that will gently pat you on the head over and over while you have time to slow cast a raise to bring the tank back up this goes back to not panicking and keeping control on the situation it will be harder than having a living tank but completely doable things aren't all going to instantly kill you it's not always the tank either it can be a dps or even you if it's you hope your party has a dps that can raise or it is an eight-man party and you have a co-healer to raise you in this case here's something extremely important to know raises make you immune to most damage typically unless you're getting into raid content or harder everything the boss does is unable to damage you for a few seconds after you raise use this info to your advantage if you have five seconds of immunity and the boss is going to do a raid wide attack that hits you in three seconds let the boss attack first then heal yourself and get back to healing your group use those three seconds to take stock of the situation and use the attack as your green light also be sure to inform anyone else who doesn't use this invincibility about said invincibility but also try and wait until after you see the attack finish before reviving use the animation time of the revival to carry you past the raid wide attack on the off chance the attack does go through resurrection immunity when it comes to a dps dying you should make it a point to raise them as soon as you can too but it's not as imperative you get them up as fast as a tank or a co-healer but a dead ally is a dead ally if there is any threat to the tank dying make sure they are kept alive first raising the dps is not worth it if the tank is going to die too of course this would only be in difficult pools or bosses or when the tank grabbed a lot of enemies at once typically you have time to raise a dead dps2 top off the tank throw a regen or shield on them then start raising this is where topping off is important in normal content raising without swift cast takes a long long time to the point that most tilas entirely avoid at all costs if they aren't the type to always hold swift cast for raising they'll wait until it next comes off of cooldown to even begin to raise the only other option is to slow cast which means you can't heal the group until the cast finishes as a result top off everyone regens shields and then get raising if the group is going to survive through the long 7 second cast it'll be because you prepared or there was no danger to begin with then there's what happens when you have multiple dead people this is where an order of operations absolutely needs to start being enacted things can get really bad in harder content but when all else fails you have a near foolproof method for maximizing your survivability first save yourself you can't heal if you are dead if your co-healer is alive they should be focusing on saving themselves too second save the tank third save the dps if at all possible may not be possible without first raising them fourth raise the healer fifth raise the tank however these two can swap based on the specific situations if you have one tank alive you'll want to raise the healer first but if both tanks are dead you'll want to raise a tank so that it's not constantly punching you over and over and then finally start raising the dps and then even within the dps there is a res priority summoners and red mages are dps who can raise too red mage especially is strong at raising allies then there's also play a skill to take into account that dead dragoon is called the legend and has a shiny weapon maybe the memes are stupid and i should raise this guy who spent a minute tanking the boss because the tanks both died i'm definitely not venting here totally hypothetical [Music] the point is make sure everyone alive is safe and sound before starting to raise follow the flow chart and if things are so bad sacrifice the life of someone else to save yourself if all the races are dead it's a race against time of if the remaining players can finish the boss without you this can be very doable especially if you have a paladin who knows the proper and correct use of clemency but longer and more difficult fights won't have that same level of leeway further notice i said nothing about whose fault it was whenever someone dies typically you're gonna blame yourself aren't you well stop not all mistakes are on you you can fail to heal when it was needed and that is on you you can fail to heal when someone makes a mistake and that's on them you should still learn to prepare for when those mistakes happen and heal them in time but you can't heal stupid as the saying goes everyone is human except me and so mistakes will happen stay calm heal and if they die well figure out what went wrong and plan for next time not everything is your fault not every death is because of you clean up the mistakes of others but don't take responsibility for the mess they created like i said before just because they scream were are the heels doesn't mean that any heels were missing healers have a basic heel and a stronger version of this basic heel here 1 and q2 physic and ad locrium etc i will always be calling these kier1 and kir2 from this point forward but just realize i'm not only talking about white mage the problem is people tend to rely on this earlier spell far too much the hero1 spam healer they maybe see that q1 is more efficient mana wise but in almost every other way it's inefficient you may have heard the idea that cure2 replaces kia1 and you should remove it from your bar this is basically true but also not cure 1 does remain useful for level syncing and more intermediate and advanced play so keep it on your bar but avoid using it where possible when you have to cast a spell for a heal make it cure too generally you should always be using the advanced toolkit but why simply put bigger heels are better why use two heels when you can use just one then that second spell can be a dps spell instead if you're never running into mana issues you're actively wasting a resource mana is meant to be spent not wasted mind you but it's still a resource for you to use lucid dreaming is going to cover most mana issues you will ever have until getting into intermediate or advanced content i have to keep saying that over and over because this is a beginner guide keep that in mind and i imagine the mana cost is the only reason most newbies tend to fall into the trap of tier 1 spam maybe in the low levels where you have very few healing options you will have mana issues at points stone vigil is the dungeon i will point at if you regularly get through stone vigil with no mana issues at all mana super high the whole run never using lucid dreaming you're actively wasting mana your goal of saving mana had the opposite effect lucid dreaming is 3500 mana every 60 seconds mana you could be using to do cure2 instead with your mana where he's gone you'll start using cure2 and healing less and dpsing more which means less healing required that feedback loop is back i call it the opportunity cost because you have the opportunity to use better skills time you are spending spamming tier 1 is time you can't make proper use of all the stronger things you will get the q1 versus q2 is a matter of gcd cost gcd being global cooldown any spell dictionary of terms linked in the card in the top right appearing now and this issue compounds once you start getting healing abilities why use q1 or kia 2 when you can use say on white mage tetragrammaton if you spam in q1 you don't evolve to use kier2 which means you never evolved to use your even stronger abilities and this isn't just about kier 1 and tier 2 either every healer you overall outgrow parts of their kit the older skills never completely become worthless but they become a lot more situational refusal to use any of these much stronger much more efficient options shows an unwillingness to evolve or improve that segues nicely into the next topic let me emphasize again you should eventually start to outgrow parts of your toolkit but never entirely get rid of them kier2 replaces kir1 almost completely but not completely they become situational into higher end content but still useful you otherwise should be using every button in your tool kit unless it's something like fluid aura your buttons all should be getting a workout this is closely tied to the next topic too so be sure to listen close to that one as well but you really should be using every button as pointed out you're evolving into having stronger stuff eventually even in the easiest content you're not going to be able to survive on just cure spam alone even in dungeons it just becomes physically unviable i'm pretty sure even if you only used kia one and used lucid dreaming you would run out of mana before some boss fights end but again though it's not all boss fights some easier than others yadda yadda but if you're ever feeling like you're doing a lot of work in healing either people are standing in avoidable damage or you're ignoring part of your toolkit or i guess that gear sucks as well that's an option it all exists to make your job easier and harder healing even possible to begin with like how can you ignore a button you could use every 30 seconds that gives a target a shield with 500 potency that's a free cure one and some change that you can weave and can overheal because shields count as separate hp and yes use every button even include scary buttons like rescue maybe don't start using it until you are more experienced and confident maybe that's more for an intermediate guide but rescue is meant to be used as the name says to rescue people from danger naturally you're gonna get people who complain if you don't use it right and you can be outright banned if you use it incorrectly on purpose but when you know how a mechanic works and another player doesn't you can potentially save their life with forcing them into position granted they will probably still get angry because that's how bad plays work the number of black mages who whine about me about their ley lines when i rescued them is already into the millions okay not quite but you know being dead is apparently preferable to most black mage players so much for the meme being dragoon black mage is actively attempting to commit suicide which if nothing else take that as advice of who most often will need to be rescued out of death second most often will be ranged players standing right next to your healer bubble but not inside of it and then they will just walk out of it again making you stupid sad over here further on the using every button thing there is no such thing as an emergency button you should plan out uses for everything where you can your spells even when heals are less effective versus hp totals are strong enough to recover from most if not all emergencies even up into the highest ends of content every button gets used for normal healing the only button if any that should be an emergency button is as we went over swift cast this is so you can instant race if anyone dies but every other button should be used as normal keep in mind though i recommend swiftcast as an emergency button for beginners only because you might make more mistakes than a more experienced player once you're more experienced you'll outgrow swiftcast as an emergency button too the main reason we avoid this is like i mentioned earlier if you're not learning to use all your buttons you're not evolving as a healer if this first new button is for emergencies well the next button is two then so is this one and this one and then your entire toolkit is emergency buttons that sounds nice in theory you're prepared for anything but also why let that anything happen to begin with your heal should be used to prevent the emergencies entirely you're a lot more likely to see emergencies happen if you're ignoring these powerful heals that can instantly heal your party or in the case of ones with regen slowly but assuredly heal your party if you're relying on only one or two buttons you're going to take longer or have a harder time healing the group by the time you can heal them up your many buttons could have healed them up to 10 seconds ago you have plenty of buttons by max level a lot of them even if you do use a couple of them you're almost guaranteed to have a few more of them around you would have to actively just dump everything at once to run out of buttons to use and then the cooldowns on most of them are pretty short meaning they come back before you know it that's the ultimate issue here even if you're throwing everything but the kitchen lalafell you're still going to have buttons to use and when you get to that really high end healing you're just outright planning out when and where you use specific abilities button a completely solves the healing you need for this mechanic button b for this other mechanic afterwards not because you're saving them but because they're most of all you need granted there is a little bit of exaggeration here since usually you'll also throw in a gcd heal and have a second hand also using abilities the point remains holding onto your buttons is just not earning you any favors it's actively earning you a deficit and finally maybe i have a different definition for emergency but your buttons aren't going to save an emergency anyway emergencies are where people start dying which is why swift cast is the only real emergency button it helps you instantly heal someone with a swift cast here if you truly are out of other heels and they will die in the next three seconds or instantly raise someone after they die when i think emergency in dungeons it's everyone took an avoidable bit of damage right as unavoidable damage goes off there's no time for me to react and save them and they will either barely survive with like 100 hp and a vulnerability stack or be dead when i think of emergencies in eight man parties i think three or more people died especially if one is my co-healer sure the buttons can help the emergency but you're not going to just save the emergency instantly at the best of times you can at least have prevented the death in the first place but part of healing is dealing with death as they happen having a mental plan when one happens is all well and good but if that plan is save this button forever and ever and never use it otherwise then you're only hurting yourself and your party in the long run springboarding off the idea of what is or is not an emergency when talking about dungeons trash mobs are the part you want to be putting most of your effort into often even single groups of enemies can be doing more damage to a tank than a boss will do outside of tank busters which if you forgot tank busters are those attacks that specifically are meant to do a lot of damage to a tank when trash are doing more damage except for the one attack meant to do a lot of damage you can already see why trash is more dangerous i hope specific types of enemies are obviously extra dangerous too during large aoes in unison or at an awkward interval where bosses are typically choreographed dances even with random aoe element but most tanks don't just grab one pack of enemies because there's really no reason to no they pull 2 3 or even wall to wall pool that is to say when a tank is wall to wall pulling they are running from one wall to the next dungeons are separated into sections typically requiring you to kill groups of enemies before the path forward is opened these are the walls in wall-to-wall pool once you hit level 50 content and beyond wall-to-wall polling becomes very common this is where you'll get challenged the most in dungeon content and where you'll be needing to use the more powerful tools i've been harping on all video if three enemies can be doing more damage to a tank than a boss 10 plus enemies will most certainly be hitting the tank like they're a paper bag this is where proper cool down usage from both you and the tank comes in reducing damage where you can with defensive buffs or doing dps to shorten the length of the fight but also this is where doing dps is hardest you have to watch your tank's hp at all times because of bursts of damage or running out of cooldowns to bolster their own defense etc this is the hardest part to learn as an average healer and is the part of healing that most relies on having a good group of party members consider everything we've already talked about for you to do dps you need to not be spamming heals which means the tank will need to be doing defensive cooldowns to be able to finish the fight without deaths your dps need to put out enough damage to not have you and the tank run out of resources without these things from your party it's often difficult to tell if a wipe is your fault pools were i did balance dps and healing with pools where i ended up only spamming heels were indistinguishable by the time of the tank dying or outright a wipe but in all scenarios proving how much more dangerous trash ends up being than a boss and then becomes way more dangerous once you start getting tanks who try and pull tons of enemies but again it is doable there will always be tanks who pull too much for their ability there will always be tanks with too low a gear level but a proper team you are ready to be doing big 10 plus enemy fights with is both rewarding and fun to heal at least to me i don't know maybe you hate teamwork which hating teamwork makes this topic a bit harder for you now because while the tank isn't more important than any other person everyone should follow their lead the tank is the one responsible for pulling you or the dps pulling for them is rude at a minimum without an established agreement that they are allowed so all you healers who keep pulling extra for the tank without asking stop it maybe try communicating first and asking them to pull more because you can handle it instead of just doing it silently more importantly though than if they are not pulling enough for you to not be a jerk is where they are if they aren't running ahead you should stay behind them if they are running ahead follow them a very common thing i see new healers complain about is how the tank was running ahead i can't heal through walls they run too fast well why are they able to get so far ahead that's your fault not theirs if you were that far away to begin with you were too far behind before they even took a single step your job isn't to stand as far away as you can while healing your job is to keep the group healed from anywhere within the map as required from moment to moment if the moment requires you to be way far ahead of where you currently are get moving you have a button specifically for making you go faster it's called sprint you can use this in dungeons if the tank pops sprint you pop sprint it's really not any more difficult than that like of course it would be proper protocol for the tank to wait for everyone to be caught up before sprinting away but at that point the tank is the only one doing as they should that is because you and the dps are lost puppies you should be following the heels of the tank like your lives depended on it notice in basically all of my footage go back if you have to i'm standing very close or outright on top of the tank because of my aoe being melee based you physically cannot use your magical aoes because they're melee based attacks and then astrologin i'm there so that i don't fall behind now of course this doesn't mean stand on top of the tank at all times avoidable aoes are a thing and bosses you should never be in front of but you can always be close by right behind enemies is putting you close enough to be in range for any melee spell aoe without being in the danger zone of aoes all going towards the tank even the general position of in melee range is a good place to be you don't need to eat the leg of the boss just be within range where an aoe heel would hit your dps and the tank but if you stay this close at all times you never fall behind the tank never runs out of range because you're almost always right by them if you ever need to cast a spell before moving you have a space and time because they aren't already rounding a corner without you you rounded the corner with them the tank running out of range is usually your fault did you not see what happened to the other healer who canonically let her tank get out of range she's on a watch list now like nothing else consider why a tank might round a corner if you can't cast spells through walls well neither can the enemies magical and ranged enemies are common enough to need to deal with if the tank rounds the corner to where the enemies can't hurt them the ranged and mages have to round the corner as well that's right the move you thought was suicidal or was a mistake was an actual strategy to get enemies grouped up together so your dps allies could properly hit them with aoe and even you to hit them with your aoe sprint is a similar case it's not just a make the dungeon a speed run button sprint actually helps them pull better yes it actually helps you pull as a tank standing with the tank also allows you to do strategies as well you may have been told once or a thousand times to never use regen pre-pool if you do you will die or some guff like that that is completely incorrect for one regen is an extremely useful tool for keeping the tank's health up while they are pulling they're likely not going to start using defensive cooldowns until they've pulled every enemy they intend for the group to fight but they will still take a little bit of damage along the way not a lot but enough to matter for two you have a bunch of hp2 you can take a few hits before you die pop a region on yourself as well and you are safe for three the big reason why they warn you away from this is you make it harder for the tank to pull um not if you're where you're supposed to be chain to the hip like a good little lost puppy from there the enemies aren't going anywhere unexpected for the tank they might move one four or two in a different angle of direction but not enough for the tank to wonder where they are off to if the enemies do come after you you'll take one or two small hits and then that's it tank will have gotten enmity and started moving again which speaking of enmity there's this weird idea floating around that we avoid spamming heals because of enmity no enmity is a tanks game the dps are far sooner going to steal enmity than you spamming cures we avoid spamming cures because healing and already full hp tank does nothing for the team as we've already established plenty i hope but it really is as simple as that follow the tank stand behind enemies and not literally on top of the tank when the fighting gets going the end i touched on this slightly a moment ago but you should learn more about the other roles and the other healers than just what they are even a surface level learning of a role and the individual jobs can make you a more experienced healer i touched on the idea of why a tank would round a corner or pop sprint these are actual strategies tanks end up learning from osmosis or teaching because of how it makes their jobs easier or in the case of sprint actually making a job as a healer easier these are the kind of things you can land by knowing the other roles or even specific jobs the tanks especially would see immediate benefits for you to learn about each tank has the specific unique pieces that slightly change how you might need to heal them like warrior is arguably the weakest tank for most dungeoning because their ultimate ability is the weakest for dungeons but later on they get an extremely powerful ability that essentially makes them their own healer for six seconds that's quite the change isn't it it's all the way at level 76 as of this video unfortunately but going from potentially the worst dungeon tank to being their own healer is a huge leap in effectiveness for dungeons paladin meanwhile has the worst healing spell in the game because they constantly spam it when they have no reason to be and actively make you effectively healing them harder yes actually we've already mentioned that speed of a fight can dictate survival and clemency makes fights slower it also often causes you to waste heals hey if you're one of those people who thinks clemency is actually helping for one stop it for two go look at the scala skill excocktation and get back to me on if your clemency helped or not save it for when you are actually out of cooldowns or in an emergency situation not literally the entire dungeon also use your magic dps please many rant aside these are the differences you can learn by looking at or even playing other jobs knowing the intricacies of the tanks can help you know what to expect for a run's duration of course this also assumes that tank knows their own job but hey vegas can't be chooses and then there's also the other healers well you yourself can get away with only playing one healer actively you should know how the other healers work too especially for the harder content you might be able to mostly get away with hard trials and story raids not knowing how other healers work but anything harder than that and you're in for a world of hurt let's get into a bit of why you want to know all healers and not just the one you were playing it's all of the many many many eight player instances and 24 mans which are three teams of eight while most of them won't need you to know the other healers really well you will be able to heal more effectively what skills might this other healer use at this specific point of the fight which of your abilities synergize with those skills and which if any will actually hurt your ally for example i mentioned the scarless skill excocation if the targeted player falls below half health they will automatically be healed if the scholar puts this on the tank for a tank buster but you're trying to keep them at max hp the entire time before during and after the tank buster it will never go off until the timer runs out and when the timer runs out well who knows what health the tank will be at they might already be at max health again now usually skills aren't this specific in their use but you see where i'm going here knowing how scholar works you can watch and plan for situations like that things that job excels in you can count on and you can shift your focus onto other aspects of a fight something bad happening might be something easily cleaned up by specifically only that job this is also practiced for higher level and harder content the actual difficult content will test you and both healers making proper use of their toolkits can make or break the healing difficulty of a fight you can communicate make suggestions of when to use specific skills and turn a hard mechanic into a breeze for you too then there's the kind of things like knowing which healers are pure healers white mage and astrologian and which ones are shield based scholar and sage shields can't stack and knowing you don't have anyone with shields can very much change how you tackle a fight there's no guaranteeing a player will act the way you expect even with communication but you can try and steer them in the right direction with suggestions on how to use their toolkit at that point though you're no longer just a beginner you've become more experienced and have made a leap forward in your time as a healer more worrying would be the dps who refuses to stay near the boss and make your life harder you're more likely going to need to babysit people in these larger arenas and where you will most likely get yelled at for something not your fault you had a heli bubble down they're just the bard who refused to stand in it finally and potentially most importantly for things i want to specifically mention their largest skill content is healer lb3 limit break limit break is normally a tool healers should entirely ignore lv1 and lb2 are almost worthless as a healer but lb3 is amazing it is a full heal and raises everyone within range it doesn't increase the damage penalty from raising either if your group is half dead four five or even six people on the ground and you have lb3 run to the middle of the arena and hit that lb button the ability does have a limited range but from the direct center of an arena it almost never will miss and in end walker they're increasing the range to 50 yards which may even mean lb3 can hit the entirety of 24 man arenas which if you don't know are huge though they may still miss in some of those cases try and get the most people you can into lb range but this alone can be the singular thing that saves runs ultimately this goes back to that order of operations you save yourself and let everyone else die if absolutely needed for the sole purpose of being able to heal at lb3 when the time arrives save people where you can but you may never get the chance until you hear that ding of the gauge filling to three bars get this on your bars if it isn't already there and now for some miscellaneous topics that might help you heal better some of these are more specific than something most newbies should do or even specific to a control scheme others are just too small or not important enough for their own section firstly edit your ui as much as you need to some people like to move their party list closer to the middle of the screen maybe make it larger if you notice my party list is much smaller maybe not the most optimal idea placing the enemies caspar in a good position to keep track of what attacks a boss is doing may also be useful additionally focus targeting in the targeting section of keybinds is the focus target keybind right click your target or use the keybind to focus target on controller it's square wall targeting then select focus target in dungeons focus target on your tank can be useful and an 8 person or larger fights focus target the boss this will give you a closer eye on important factors also to target other alliances in 24 man raids press l1 and hit left and right on the d-pad similar to ui and targeting is our skill essena when you see a debuff on an ally if it has a white line above it you can use esana to remove the debuff please do remove debuffs when they need to be removed it can't be anything as non-threatening as a very very very light poison that won't even do 10 of the health to instant death which also you should lay in your job and every skill you have if it wasn't obvious read your tool tips they explain what a skill does pretty well but there's some bad tooltips in the game but they're a rarity not the norm please read and maybe watch my leveling guides something to make sure you understand your skills at least when you get into a dungeon examine your tank and their gear and the same window focus target is in is examine this is where you can see their gear if the gear sucks you may need to heal more if they're wearing top of the line raid gear you'll have a generally easier time when a boss is dead don't bother raising people every time you kill a boss a shortcut turns on from the start of the dungeon or any other duty really you can teleport straight to the boss you just beat raising does have a penalty of 25 percent lower stats that can stack twice to 50 percent lower stats this is a huge amount of power just make them raise themselves and teleport back to the boss and we earlier talked about not panicking when everything goes wrong don't have fear in general being afraid is going to distract you from otherwise obvious and easy to see things save your fear for the harder content that deserves it and by then you probably won't fear it because you're more experienced and realize something isn't so bad now as long as you have good gear at least which have good gear that one should be obvious but i'm going to state it anyway just in case that rounds out the miscellaneous tips but let's move right into the finale of course a b c always be casting you may have come into this guide not understanding what abc actually means always be casting the explanation for abc is abc that really all that is to it what it says is exactly what it means always be casting this is the most important tip that will take the most practice to get right anytime you could be casting a spell you should be casting a spell this can be a heal when needed or a dps spell unless you're almost at zero mana at least maybe don't be abc when you have no mana a major part of this is learning where to position yourself for boss fights some bosses would appreciate you moving somewhere else without putting your party in danger the rest of the time it's about minimizing movement and making use of your instant cast abilities anytime you have to put your dot on an enemy use this time to move use swift cast to move as needed and maintain casting up time just remember you no longer have it around for raising and also get learning on slide casting which will benefit all casters and not just healers slide casting is abusing the fact that this is an mmo due to latency there is a delay between when the game sees you moving locally and the server's understanding you are moving if you have 200 ping that's 0.2 seconds of latency so if you try to move when there is less than 0.2 seconds left in a cast the cast will still complete this is what slide casting is the actual numbers don't matter and there's no in-game way to check ping but there's also some built-in slide casting tolerance and the window for slide casting widens the worst ping you have but even if you have amazing internet little to no ping because you live near the service slide casting can increase how much casting you can fit in within a fight in more complex or harder fights this isn't one or two more casts it can be done dozens of casts more and if any of those can be a heal it could even save the day healing when you need to be moving and people are about to die your special cast speed skills aren't the only way to achieve this you may have also noticed in watching other people play they do something like this where they mash the keys a lot this isn't just to look cool or be fancy they're trying to abc you don't need to massively match the buttons like this but just learn the lesson of why they are doing it it's called ability cueing much like slide casting lets you finish casting ability cueing lets you cast sooner the game will still recognize skill inputs even when you can't be using another skill yet the window is relatively small only maybe about half a second but if you press a gcd half a second before your character is able to execute it they will execute it immediately upon your gcd rolling to zero again maybe not recommended to mash the keys like this but do maybe try to hit it once or twice as the gcd is rolling over to try and make the skill go off sooner this too adds up extremely fast and there's always a few other small things here and there you can learn to abc like weaving your off global abilities between global cooldowns properly learning to time these will also increase how much casting you are able to do as i said this is something you will be learning for your entire career as a player of the game keep pressing buttons but reasonably so so you don't kill your hands but if you want to be improving as a player abc is the most important thing to learn and practice every chance you get there's learning how to play a healer then there's mastery of something that applies to every job in the game thank you for watching abc a beginner's guide to healer as i said this went over a lot of different topics that may or may not be evolutions on previous topics and something you will learn as you go don't try and force knowing everything at once learn a little bit at a time push yourself a little further every dungeon eventually you'll be doing amazingly feel free to leave feedback or further advice for newbie healers to know as they train themselves or even ask questions on something you didn't understand within the video this is here to help after all be sure to check the description for any added information as well maybe end walker changes more than we expect or such perhaps at one point i will also create a video on intermediate level healing keep an eye out for that but the future holds many possibilities but otherwise take care and may the power of an endothogs lay waste to your enemies and this was a monster to complete so i'd like to give an extra special thanks to all my patrons on patreon and an extra extra special thanks to ayman alkatib benjamin hahn body clock dmitry shibanov tell me if i got that one right ethan ethan olson james kevin lowe kyle steinhauser mizella scott stanley and valerci link's down below for my twitter my discord all that good stuff thank you for watching have a good day

Channel: WeskAlber

Views: 161,595

Keywords: ff14, shadowbringers, beginner, learning, guide, endwalker, healer, role, always be casting, basics, healing

Id: hTfv8psolXA

Length: 70min 3sec (4203 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 27 2021