Sushomi's Beginners Guide to Healing
| CAUTION! | ||
| This article is only a guide. Information expressed in a guide is usually more opinion than fact and should be taken as such. Guides are written by players, based upon their experiences, successes and mistakes, and are meant to aid other players. However, there may be differing opinions than those expressed in a guide. Strategies and information in guides may not work for everyone. | ||
So you want to learn more about healing in FFXI? Well, you've come to the right place. This guide will cover the basic aspects of healing, from stat priorities to MP management, as well as recommended addons to help you along the way.
Healing Jobs
Currently on Horizon there are two jobs that are considered main healers; these being Red Mage and White Mage. While there are some slight differences in the playstyles of both, they are equally capable of filling the role as a party healer. In addition to these, there are also a couple of off-meta picks that can work in certain situations, such as Summoner, and even Paladin.
White Mage
The classic healing job. With access to area of effect cures, status healing, and regen spells, White Mages are a great all-round healer.
Their high Mind stat also enhances the potency of their debuffs such as Slow and Paralyze.
White Mages have access to the highest tiers of Clear Mind, making them able to regenerate MP while healing quicker than any other job.
Red Mage
Red mage is often seen as a jack-of-all-trades. Their direct healing and regen abilities are not as strong as a White Mage, but they make up for it with higher enfeebling magic skill, and access to some unique spells.
Refresh is a staple of the Red Mage toolkit, allowing them to slowly regenerate MP over time, even while not resting, and can be cast on party members as well.
A Red Mage will not regen MP while healing as quickly as a White Mage, but they also have access to Convert, a job ability at level 40 that lets them swap their current HP and MP values, giving them the ability to carry on healing for longer.
Summoner
Summoner has no innate access to healing spells (besides a few avatar abilities which are on a 1 minute timer), and so needs to rely on their subjob to fill this role. Using White Mage as the sub is generally recommended to give access to status cures and aoe healing where needed.
Using Summoner as a main healer will be sub-optimal in a lot of party setups as they will not gain access to stronger healing spells until much later than a White/Red Mage due to their subjob always being half the level of their main. However, it can work well in parties where all the melee are using Ninja sub to mitigate the majority of the incoming damage. In this situation, the Summoner can offer support through Hastega and Earthen Ward to keep the healing needed to a minimum.
Personally, I have main healed as Summmoner up to level 60, and it can work. But I wouldn't recommend it past the mid-levels if you have a Paladin tank (unless they have some crazy MP regen) as the regular incoming damage would likely make it hard to sustain your MP.
Addons
Below are a few addons that I have found useful. This won't be an exhaustive list, nor are any of those listed required to be able to heal.
HXUI
Provides lots of handy UI options, including HP/MP/TP bars, a better party list, exp bar, etc. The main thing you'll want this for when healing is the ability to see buffs/debuffs on your party members, making it easier to see when someone is missing haste/protect/shell, or when to use those all-important status curing spells.
hticks
Provides a countdown showing when you will receive your next healing tick while resting. I've often found the countdown can be a second or so off, but it's still a good indication as to how close you are to the next tick so you're not losing out on extra MP you could have had if you'd stayed down 1 second longer.
targetlines
This is such a useful addon. It provides FFXII-style lines that show the target of specific actions. For example, if a monster decides to go after your Black Mage, it will show a red line going from the enemy to the Black Mage, essentially giving you a quick heads up that your wizard friend may need a bit of healing in the near future.
ttimers
Not to be confused with the recently deprecated timers addon. Ttimers allows you to see a countdown bar for your buffs on party members, letting you know when they need a new refresh/hate/protect/etc.
Stat Priorities
MP Recovered While Healing
Increases the amount of MP restored while resting (/heal). It's a good idea to set up an equipment set with as much MP Recovered While Healing as possible to macro in while you /heal.
Parties will need to wait on your if you run out of MP, so recovering quickly and ensuring you always have MP can have a huge effect on the amount of experience per hour you and your party can achieve.
Max MP
Your maximum MP affects one thing, and one thing only - how long you can heal before needing to rest (or Convert if you're a Red Mage. It's a useful thing to have, but as a healer it's important to recognise that you could have all the +MP gear in the world, but if you can never recover that MP fast enough then it's really just going to waste.
Mind
Mind does a few things for healers. Firstly, it increases the amount you heal for up to a certain point. For example, when you start using cure you'll likely only be healing for ~10 HP. Equip a few pieces of Mind gear, and this will increase slightly. However, your cures will likely cap out very quickly as you also increase your Healing Magic skill. This makes Mind not a great stat to stack purely for healing purposes (Cure V is an exception to this for high level White Mages).
However, Mind also increases the potency of your white magic enfeebling spells, such as Slow and Paralyze. It can also make these spells easier to land, which in turn can greatly reduce the incoming damage taken by your tank, saving you MP in the long run.
-Enmity
Enmity is FFXI's version of "aggro" or "hate". It's a measure of how much the enemy wants to kill you. Every action you take against a monster, or on a player that has engaged that monster, generates enmity.
Healers are general quite squishy, and therefore it's important that we try not to grab the monster's attention. They tend to notice the person constantly spamming cures on their party members. This is where -enmity gear comes in. The more you have, the less enmity your actions generate. And the more likely you are not to pull aggro off your tank.
At low levels you are unlikely to find much -enmity on gear, but it's something to keep an eye out for as you level.
Food and Drinks
Food is vitally important when you join an exp party. They offer large stat bonuses for a short time that can easily make the difference between a bad party and a great one. There's a lot of food to choose from, so let's look at some of the options available to you.
Pies
Auction House Category: Food > Meals > Sweets 
Pies are generally use by Black Mages as they offer bonuses to MP and Intelligence, as well as MP recovered while healing if you opt for the High-Quality (+1) versions.
They come in a variety of flavours such as:
Can be good if you're mainly looking for a boost to max MP, however, I would say they're probably the worst of these options for healing.
Rice Cakes
Auction House Category: Food > Meals > Sweets
Sweet Rice Cake are a decent food for any kind of mage. They offer MP, Intelligence, Mind, MP recovered while healing, and -Enmity. They're a good mix of all the stats you could possibly want, but don't provide as large a bonus to any one of the stats as other foods in this list. Depending on cost, they're worth a look at though.
Cookies
Auction House Category: Food > Meals > Sweets
Ginger Cookie and their HQ version, Wizard Cookie are very short duration foods, lasting only 5 minutes each, compared to the usual 30 mins that most foods last. However, they provide +5 and +7 MP recovered while healing respectively, and are quite cheap considering they also stack to 99.
This is the largest +hMP bonus you will see from food, and is what you'll see a lot of mages using at lower levels. Their only real downside is the short duration means you have to keep eating them regularly and their buff can often wear off while you're resting.
Mushroom and Stews
Auction House Category: Food > Meals > Vegetables
My personal favourite food for healing is the mushroom category, and this includes:
These foods provide MP, Mind, MP recovered while healing, and -Enmity. All the stats you could possibly want as a healer. The stews also have the added bonus of lasting for up to 3 hours, so are great for when you know you're going to be in a longer party.
Refresh Drinks
Auction House Category: Food > Meals > Drinks
I've put these in the food section, but they're technically separate as you can drink these even when you already have a food buff.
Refresh drinks apply a short buff that regenerates MP slowly over time, which can be great for keeping your healing going in a pinch. They don't stack, but it can be handy to keep some on hand in case of emergency if you can afford them.
MP Management: Tips and Tricks
I've mentioned a few times now that being able to recover your MP quickly is absolutely vital as a healer. After all, without MP we can't do much of anything, and having MP allows our party to continue fighting which increases how quickly we can all gain experience.
Regen spells
These spells are super efficient in terms of MP spent vs healing done. As an example, Regen costs 15 MP, and restores 5 HP every 3 seconds for a total of 125 HP. You would need to cast a little over 4 Cure spells to reach the same amount of HP, which at 8 mp per cast would cost you 32 MP, over double.
If you have a tank that doesn't have shadows to avoid damage, then keeping regen on them while they fight should definitely be a priority. This is even more important for White Mages as they later gain access to Regen II and Regen III, which can restore massive amounts of HP over time for their MP costs.
This spell works great for your melee damage dealers as well if they're not actively taking hits. If they're not in danger of dying anytime soon, cast Regen on them and let their HP slowly tick up between fights so you can continue resting to get your MP back.
Watch your healing ticks
When you rest, your first tick of MP regen happens at 20 seconds, and then every 10 seconds thereafter. If you sit down for 18 seconds, and then get up to cast then you've just wasted those 18 seconds and got nothing for it. If you had waited 2 more seconds, then you would have regenerated some MP at least.
Having an addon like hticks that shows roughly when to expect your next MP regen is great for planning when to cancel your /heal.
If you're only a few seconds away from that next MP tick, then ask yourself if you NEED to cast your next spell immediately. Is someone in danger of dying if you don't immediately cure them? If not, wait those extra few seconds before you get up to cast. That extra 20 MP you got back may not seem like a lot on its own, but it all adds up over the course of an exp party.
Debuffs Save MP!
Paralyze and Slow are incredibly important debuffs when exping. The first can cause an enemy to completely skip an attack round, while the second increases the delay between their attacks. They cost 6 and 15 MP respectively, which is less than the cost of a Cure II, so even if they only cause an enemy to lose a couple of extra attacks per battle they are well worth it.
As important as they are though, remember to try and get that extra MP tick off if you can before cancelling /heal. And if you're really running low on MP, don't be afraid to just leave the debuffs off for a fight or two to give yourself more time to recover.
Don't cure just for the sake of it
Casting random cures on party members who don't need it is a good way to waste MP, especially if said party member is also a mage. Mages have to rest often to recover MP, and while doing this they also gain back some HP too. So if your Black Mage has taken a hit and aren't actively being pummeled by the enemy, let them regen some HP naturally rather than wasting MP.
For non mages, there's nothing wrong with leaving them with a little missing HP if they're not actively taking regular damage. If someone is missing 30 HP out of their 400 HP pool, consider just leaving them like that until they start taking more damage. Even then, ask yourself if regen would be more efficient, even if it overheals a little.
Job Specific Advice
For this section, I'm going to focus only on the two main healers - White and Red mage. The others are niche picks anyway, and likely won't see much use outside of low levels or specific party compositions.
White Mage
- Regen, regen, regen. I've said it before, but regen spells are incredibly MP efficient. If a few of your damage dealers have taken some small hits, cast regen and let them heal over time. Only if they're in danger of taking some big hits or nasty aoe attacks should you worry about immediately curing them.
- After level 50, you gain access to the Divine Veil trait. This makes Divine Seal double the potency and duration of your Regen spells. This makes for a great combo to help keep your tank topped up while you recover your MP.
- At level 50 you get Devotion which sacrifices a portion of your HP to recover a party member's MP. Works great with a Paladin tank so they can continue healing themself.
- Big Curaga spells generate a lot of enmity, and if you don't have a good tank can easily get you killed. If they are absolutely necessary, try to time them to finish casting just after the enemy dies.
Red Mage
- Don't just convert because it's off cooldown. Try and recover your MP normally first, you might find that you've still got a few fights left in you before you actually need to use it.
- Refresh is nice, but if you're struggling for MP then don't cancel your /heal just to get it back up. You and your PLD/BLM/etc can manage with a couple of ticks missed.
- If your max HP is lower than your max MP, then you won't get full MP back when you convert. Considering using some +HP gear to get the most out of this ability and its long cooldown.
- A good rule of thumb is to try and keep your max HP/MP as even as possible for best results.
Useful Low Level Gear
Weapons
| Item | Level | Stats | Obtained From |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pilgrim's Wand | 10 | MP recovered while healing +2 | Nunyenunc ((NM)) |
Pilgrim's Wand drops from a low level NM in West Sarutabaruta. You will probably want to be at least level 15 to solo it, possibly higher. But it's an amazing piece for any mage that will last at least to level 40 when you get your artifact weapon, possibly even until 51 when you gain access to Dark Staff. Well worth a little time investment to camp the NM to add to your /heal macros.
Body
| Item | Level | Stats | Obtained From |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seer's Tunic | 29 | MP +8 MP recovered while healing +1 |
Auction House Category: Armor > Body |
Another great piece that you'll likely be using in your /heal gear right up until 72 when Errant Houpelande becomes available.
Hands
| Item | Level | Stats | Obtained From |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mycophile Cuffs | 25 | INT +1 MND +2 Enmity -2 |
Mycophile (NM) |
The NM for this is level 35, so you'll likely want a level 50+ to help you out. Also, the drop rate is 24% without Treasure Hunter, 48% with TH1, so having a THF or /THF really helps.
No camping required, just need to pop the NM using a Sleepshroom, Woozyshroom, or Danceshroom at Carpenters' Landing (I-11).
Legs
| Item | Level | Stats | Obtained From |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baron's Slops | 20 | MP recovered while healing +1 | Auction House Category: Armor > Legs |
This might seem a little expensive (currently 27,000 gil at the time of writing this) for a beginner's guide, but I still use this piece even at level 75 for my /heal macro. There's nothing else in the leg slot that provides more MP while healing until you get to endgame and beat Ultima weapon, so it's worth the investment if you can get the gil together.
