Earth Elemental holds back healing

Today I cast Earth Elemental for the first time. What I noticed from having one is that my healing was almost noneffective. Each time I cast heal after a battle my bar would only move 1 or 2 points with the Elemental. Without the elemental I could see the bar visibly move the number of points the chat said I healed.

 

You have to target yourself for some reason (F1). I've noticed that too. If the earth elemental is out it seems my healing gets directed at him instead of me. But by setting the target to me it redirects to me instead. This seems backwards.

 

Yeah, is is sort of backwards.. by default, your heal is targeted to your reticle target, and you have to select yourself (F1, but I prefer to hold ALT to do this).. I think they leave it like this for group healing to be 'easier'.. too bad there's more solo healing than group healing. This should be a user-configurable choice.

 

As they denoted, you auto-target pets/party members over yourself by default. Face away from the elemental and fire a healing ray and you will heal yourself. You auto-turn towards your pet with healing touch rendering it quite useless in those situations.