Healing 201; Advanced Healing

[DarumaRanger]

<p>Hail and well met all,</p><p>I once started a thread for healing tips/tricks etc... and after parusing the following thread regarding placement of the extra 40 AA's coming our way in RoK; <a rel="nofollow" href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=387480" target="_blank">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=387480</a> I decided to start this thread.</p><p>Why you may ask?  Well two of the folks in that thread; Sotanyavejin and Milaga got to discussing some more "advanced," at least to me, points in healing and I thought I'd start this thread to flesh those things out and to learn to become an even better healer.</p><p>I'm currently a Lv 68 Fury and I'm MH for my more or less regular guild group; Lv 70 Guardian, Lv 70 Coercer, Lv 68 Necro, Lv 63 Monk, myself, Lv 68 Fury, and then we also tend to pick up another DPS from our guild.</p><p>I like to think I've become a pretty durn good healer... my group seems rather content to keep me <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/385970365b8ed7503b4294502a458efa.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /></p><p>This is in large part due to the advice I've gotten here.</p><p>However, despite being Lv 68, (that and a quarter MIGHT be you a cup of coffee), there still seems to be so much I don't know... things Sotanyavejin and Milaga were discussing in the aforementioned thread.</p><p>I've recently joined a larger Raiding guild and I want to make sure I can pull my weight... so it's time for the next lessons to begin.</p><p>Some of the things they were discussing that had me lost were:</p><p><span style="color: #0000ff;">MILAGA: "...but I also want the Feral Potence by ditching the Bestial Feast and going down deaggro, emergency regens and feral potence to get to Hibernation..."</span></p><p>I've never once used my deaggro... guess my tank is just THAT good <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />  I don't know that I've ever cast Feral Potence... I am a religious user of Beastial Feast and Hibernation, (have the early trigger AA for it too).  I've also never been in the fire often enough that I've needed my insta-cast heals and not had them ready.</p><p>Then again... I've not yet ever raided and maybe this is the reason for everything I've just said?</p><p><span style="color: #0000ff;">SOTANYAVEJIN: "...although honestly my group heal and hiber do that well enough 99% of the time,</span> <span style="color: #ff0000;"><b>and I use those to proc infusion anyway</b></span>..."</p><p>Then Milaga talks about proc'ing Infusion too...</p><p>Er... "Infusion?"  </p><p>Sotanyavejin's advice about how to create a macro to double cure arcane to counteract some stun; Furious Storm... oye... It's like growing up and learining in RL... the more I learn the more I realized how much I do NOT know and need to still learn <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/499fd50bc713bfcdf2ab5a23c00c2d62.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /></p><p>So... advanced tips... of course... one person's "advanced" is another person's "well DUH !! that's obvious" hehehe... so let's have 'em please </p><p>Thanks folks.</p><p>Take care.</p>

[Ferunnia]

Infusion is the end of the line ability from Int on the KoS side. Procs damage to any mob near you on any beneficial spell...i.e. a group heal/cure with 6 targets hits six mobs with the infusion. The stun cure he's talking about is this-If you can start casting a cure before an aoe stun or any stun for that matter goes off, you'll finish casting the spell after the stun hits and you will be unstunned. In practice anyways. It can be harder to pull off than that comment makes it seem. Gotta have good timing. The only time potence helps on raids is if by some weird stroke of fate you're in the mt group or the off tank group. We're better off in a mage group but regardless. Let's see, miscellaneous healing tips eh? You can precast hibernation before a pull and when it goes off it gives the healing aggro to whoever it heals and not you. Hmm... Never use abolishment unless you have 5 pieces of our EoF fabled set, Lethal Abolishment can be cast while running...and it works on anything you'll be fighting for a while. The deaggro is good if you go for a more dps'y build (like me) and pull dps numbers approaching or breaking 1k. It helps to be able to drop aggro from those three linked mobs you just peeled from the larger group, so forth and so on. If I recall some other stuff from my three years playing this toon I'll toss it up there.

[Gutwren]

<p>1k DPS should never pull aggro off a tank...</p><p>In a raid, I've seen some people that can do 3k+ DPS and not pull aggro, I've even done 2.4k and not seen anything but mob butt.</p><p> And if you're talking group situation... a decent tank should be able to hold on the mob if no ones parsing above 2k consistantly...</p>

[Catsy]

I can parse over 2k on some fights, and am consistently between about 1.3 and 1.8. I usually have about 50% spell crits, so if I'm not careful it's very easy for a string of crits to pull agro early in the fight if a taunt gets resisted. Doesn't happen often, but when it does I either deagro fast or I go splat. Did it once last night in EH. Keep in mind that these numbers are from being in the mage group; when I'm the only healer in a heroic group I have to focus more on healing.With that said, there are a number of situations where the need to use your deagro has nothing to do with your numbers. There's a named mob in MMIS called the Tactician's Armor, for example. First of all, he's immune to tank taunts, so you have to have a Brigand or other correctly-specced scout tank him. Secondly, he will periodically memwipe and go after a random healer, and if he kills that healer he will heal himself. This means the healers have to have their deagros ready, and use them as soon as they see themselves targeted.This is just one example. There are others.<hr />Okay, so, here's the deal on Infusion. Like Ferunnia siad, it's the INT end line ability and it procs somewhere between 100 and 300 damage on a nearby mob (depending on your INT) every time you apply a beneficial effect to someone. This means that if you use your group heal in a full group, it procs 6 times at once, effectively turning your group heals and buffs into a nuke that averages over 1k damage. There is a small power cost every time it procs, which considerably increases the effective cost of any spell you cast that procs it.There's a few things to remember about using Infusion effectively.- It sucks down power like nobody's business. Load up on gear that boosts your power pool, increases your regen (both in and out of combat), and recovers power. I'll talk about that later.- You need to be close. You don't have to be in melee range, but you should usually be in there swinging anyway to boost your DPS. You will not proc Infusion at or near max spell range, but jousting out is a good way to stop the procs while you recover power, without toggling the spell off.- You do not have to be targeting a mob to proc it. If you are targeting a mob, it generally strikes your target. If not, it seems to pick the nearest mob.- Procs will not proc Infusion (procs never proc procs). This means that proc effects like Natural Boon, or equipment procs, won't.- Any other beneficial effect you cast will. You can use your lowest-level group heal to proc it and save power, as well as Abolishment, Fae Pyre, Hibernation, Pact of the Cheetah, and any heal spell or group or single target buff.- Any of your four primary nukes and dots will do more damage than Infusion, so if one of those is up, cast the dot or nuke instead. Throw Infusion procs in between the recast timers of your primary damage spells.- It sucks down power like a big sucky thing sucking. Did I mention it sucks down power?So, how to avoid going constantly OOP?If you're chain pulling big encounters, you won't. Just accept it. You will rarely end any fight above 50% power if you're using the class to full effect, and you will frequently end the fight OOP or close to it. But the mobs will die disgustingly fast.With that said, there's a lot of things you can do to boost your mana longevity. Here's a sampling of what I do:- Boost your power pool as much as possible with WIS and +power gear. Keep in mind that once you get to around 500 or so WIS, it's better to use +power adornments than +WIS, as you will get more power pool that way.- Load up on Flowing Thought gear, but not at the expense of having better gear--if something's an upgrade, a few points of FT won't make that much difference.- Use the best drink possible. I drink Halasian Icebrews when raiding, and Gigglegibbery Juice when solo/grouping.- Use Spirit Totems of the Beholder. These provide a massive boost to out of combat regen, speeding up your recovery in between battles.- Use Essence of Clarity potions whenever the recast is up and you aren't at or near full power.- Use Elixir of Transcendence potions to increase your max power.- Use your Manastone and all other power recovery items whenever they're up. As a helpful bonus, they proc Infusion.- Ask for and use Hearts and Shards if you're in a group with a Necro/Conjy. Since you run with a necro, make a macro that asks for a heart <i>please</i> from him.- Learn to use and love gear that procs power, especially on hostile spell. The best one that can be purchased is a Focus of the Magi adornment for your primary weapon; V'Ncenzi's Voluminous Cape from the Castle Mistmoore Sage is an awesome legendary cloak also.- Create and use Power Roots. These are items you can get from the Carnivorous Plant house item that comes with KoS; you feed it the bones/fertilizer/water that drops off mob bodies and it gives you a single-use item that restores a percentage of your power. More information on creating these can be found <a href="http://eq2.eqtraders.com/articles/article_page.php?article=g77" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>, and it's worth noting that you can create six of them--one for each tier except for T6, which doesn't have these items.<hr />Now, as to the self-cure of stun, the trick is to begin casting before the stun and have the cure land afterwards. This is harder than it sounds; your cure has a fast casting time. It requires the mob's stun to have an identifiable animation that you can recognize and respond to. The reason for macroing a double-cast is that with the exception of the half-second of cooldown in between casts, it gives you two seconds of grace in which to land your cure instead of just casting it once and having it land early.This is an advanced tactic that is only really useful in very specific raid situations. I don't know of any heroic mobs that have a recognizable stun or stifle that you can reliably respond to like this.