Advice for healing 24-man raids?

I've been gearing up with Void Ark and esoteric tomes for awhile now, but I've dodged around healer and tank gear. So I'm looking at some options as far as acquiring the healer and tank sets for Void Ark:

1. Run as dps and:
a. hope neither healer (or the tank) Need their gear (if it drops)
b. beat out the others on the Greed roll (if it drops)

2. Run as healer (or tank) and have almost exclusive access to the gear (if it drops)

So before people bring up Diadem, or save up esoterics, or simply "don't", I like to see this as an opportunity to learn some things about the other end of 24-man raids.

I've been thinking of probably testing myself in the Crystal Tower raids first before diving into Void Ark, but regardless of what I do, is there any advice I could get as far as healing these raids? I'm assuming I'm still just concerned with party (as with a trial)?

Your main concern is with your party. Unless you're using a mouse, targeting Alliance members is hard and it most likely won't be worth the effort. Usually, you'll be DPSing more than healing unless your group is tanking the boss, and when you heal it's usually AoE. Since a lot of people are bad at their jobs and most people like to stray far away from their healers, WHM is the best choice for healing Void Ark, in my opinion; not much to shield in there, so SCH is meh and AST has less range and the cards are usually wasted by the baddies.

The skill level for Void Ark is the same one you need for the Crystal Tower raids, so don't worry about practicing. If you can heal a dungeon like Fractal or Neverreap as healer, or if you can handle Alexander (Normal) you're more than fine to heal Void Ark.

Depending on how you play (Keyboard + Mouse vs Controller), cross party targeting can be problematic. In general, I tend to keep the following priority order in my healing:

1. Your party
2. The MT (if in another party)
3. Other party healers
4. Everyone else

If you're a HoT enabling healer (Regen on WHM, Aspected Benefic on Diurnal AST), make sure to keep that HoT on your MT if he's in a different party. Fairy can be made to heal them too if you happen to have the targeting macros for it and don't mind the micro.

While Void Ark itself is kinda facerolly in nature, there are a couple small things to keep track of as a healer. Ensure that dead healers are raised ASAP. If the MT party happens to lose both their healers, be prepared to provide back up to the tank. The MT is not just the MT for the party, it's the MT for the raid. There are far too many healers that focus on their own party and don't realize "Hey, the MT's party is getting boned, I should probably help out!". There's nothing worse than a tank who's MTing but not getting any heals because both their healers derped and died and none of the other four healers is picking up the slack, thus leading to MT death.

In terms of healer job/class to use, I'd recommend WHM > SCH > AST for ease of use. WHM is straight forward. SCH has some stacking issues with shields and their buffs are limited to their own party. AST tends to get the short end of the stick in any stacked scenario (cards don't stack, Diurnal Aspected Benefic don't stack with others, Nocturnal Shields overriding others/SCH shields) and unfortunately, you'll probably run into a few other ASTs in Void Ark, thus limiting your usefulness. It's not impossible by any stretch of the imagination to be an AST, but it's definitely frustrating being in a group that has two other ASTs and I'd rather avoid that risk entirely if I can.

Go healing like any other content, focus on your party. If another party needs help and your party is fine at that moment, you can lend a hand.
One thing about 24-man raids that may happen sometimes is that some boss arenas are huge! So try to staying a good spot to heal everyone and point out if you need someone to get closer to you.

Switch to Cleric Stance immediately to establish your dominance and intentions with the other healer. Also, raises are for suckers. Make them wait and pretend you don't have Swiftcast up.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bounddreamer

Switch to Cleric Stance immediately to establish your dominance and intentions with the other healer.

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Should probably be the first line in most healing guides for full parties.

If you're gonna heal in Void Ark, just be ready to be super frustrated in the Cuchulainn fight. It's not a difficult fight, but people keep getting hit by everything, and the permaBleed doesn't help one bit. If DPS is low enough, you'll end up seeing 4 or 5 stacks of the permaBleed too. Also, even if you mark yourself and ask nicely for people not to stray too far away, they will, so you're gonna have to move around a lot. That fight is the reason I despise Void Ark, but I still need my healer belt :C