Ok.. im having difficult problems with targeting players to heal. I use f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 buttons to target player. sometimes i just do it the old fasion way click with mouse and go down and click heal. but im having troublehealing fast enough. .lvl 20 templar atm. now the groups get hit harder and lose life faster and im not fast enough to heal. can anyone give me some pointers?
Make sure you're fighting the correct difficulty of critters for your group and that everyone understands that the tank is to take the brunt of the damage. I'm willing to pop off a few combat heals on scout classes that do a bit too much damage before the tank has fully taken aggro and I'm willing to do likewise for mages. But if I'm expected to save every group member at any time given my power pool... well, I'll fail. If your tank is taking so much damage that you have to burn your instaheal then it's time to move to easier encounters or see if your tank is in appropriate gear. Also, remember to use the debuffs available to you. They definitely help in the damage department.
Use reactives before and during fight. Use hotkeys and hotbar, Press F1-F6 to target players and use hotkey 1-0 for heals. Also you can stack heals on the target... When in emergency use combat heal first (what seems to be fastest for me), then stack the other heals on combined with a reactive and you should be doing fine. If tank are getting hit for more than you can heal, probably the tank suck or you fight too hard opponents. Always try to keep reactive heals on the tank as these are much more mana efficient than the normal heals.
I allways use hotbuttons for healing and targeting. One of the nifty things I like about eq2 is if you target the mob your fighting and cast a beneficial spell it lands on whoever the mob is hitting. So if agro switches you don't need to worry about changing target at all just smack your heal hotkey. This only becomes a pain when there is a large group of mobs, under those circumstances I have the tank targeted on incoming, hit my assist key as fight starts then when mob is 10% or so hit assist key again wait for the exp message and hit assist again to get new mob targeted, rinse and repeat till all mobs dead. The extra couple of seconds you save by just throwing the heal on the mob rather than having to switch targets can make a big difference.
I posted this before somewhere, but here's how I manage power and heal in groups. Assuming the tank is pulling, I will pop a Bestowal Adept3 on him. I strongly urge you to get your first Adept3 in Bestowal. Silver and coral are rare, and as a cleric your job is to HEAL, not nuke. Nuking is secondary. Anyways, while he pulls I have a choice to make: Is it a solo mob or group of mobs, hard for the group or fairly simple, etc. If I feel the need, a Soothing Sermon while he's pulling is my next cast. If it's a group of mobs and we have a chanter I'll give him/her a Bestowal too, in case of resist or mez break. Then I concentrate on the tank, and only the tank. Bestowal stays up and if it's getting eaten quickly, Radiance if it's up. If a scout or mage takes aggro away from the tank...I'll get to them when I can but I can not and will not take my focus off the tank. My words to these people when they get pissed: Don't overnuke and steal aggro. It might put me on the negative side of some circles, but ofw...I am not hurting for lack of group opportunities.
Hopefully you only have one person getting beat on. The tank. Assuming they are the ones that pulled, and are using thier area taunt you should be able to focus on just them. The thing that helps me out, is putting Bestowal of Vitae on them right before they pull. But you have to be carefull with that, if you cast it just as they pull, when it lands your going to get that aggro.
At level 23 I am finging that even BoV tends to be healing for less than they get hit in the Thundering Steppes. Trick I use. Soothing Sermon is a group spell..however it only gives HPs back to a hit target (to some Templars this is hard to explain, I have cast on myself and I see exactly what it does). So if you tank is doing his job he will take all the HPS for the sermon, now BoV on top of that, they do stack. He will get heale3d twice for each hit he takes. One from the BoV and one from the sermon. Pretty mch will get you back to when your BoV was all you ever needed in VS This will be power draining..but you will find you have much more control over the fight (a little leway incase a random rouge or mage gets hit) and a little piece of mind. Besides if your in TS at 20-25...Get another healer!! Druid or Shammy with wards is great. Make sure you work together..talk it out. Druid ward, templar BoV..you guys can conserve good power and really allow the group to chain pull. my 3 cents
Drackore, I've heard much about adept3 spells. Is this a bonus that we get as we hit a certain level? I'm currently level 20. Or do you mean just saving up your pennies and buying adept3 through a broker?
I'm also a lvl 19 scholar that will become a lvl 20 sage. I was harvesting one night in Ant and got a silver cluster (rare component from mining). I skipped like a fairy to my workshop and made the ink to make the spell myself.
My main concern is the MA in a group. If I have time and power I will heal others during a fight and also if it looks like they are going to die. Afterwards I have a short talk about agro control and what is and is not possible to do as a healer. But on a tough pull, if you lose the MA and there is not another tank type you _WILL_ wipe the group. And at that point it is your fault for not taking care of the group as a whole by keeping the MA functioning. You must keep the MA alive on hard mobs. Everyone else is secondary. Just as it is your responsibility to keep other members ticking it is their's to control agro. Tell your melee types to attack from behind to stop riposte damage. Tell your caster types to stay back out of ae range if possible. If you have a secondary healer, that changes everything. I usually take care of BoV and let the other do spot heals and any debuffing. Kind of depends on the type of healers in the group. Sorry to let this ramble...
