Heal through raid wide damage

On tutorials I see "heal through raid wide damage", but I'm still new to high end whm. Is there a good drill down on this specific topic? Thanks.

It means there will be a damage taken to the whole party in the raid. You need to heal or mitigate it.

Is it not obvious? raid wide means its the entire raid or rather, party wide. Unavoidable damage you need to heal up preferably before the next mechanic
Its not exactly high end stuff. Its thigns you have been dealing with since halitali

Can't you guys just explain "Use your party-wide healing actions to get the whole party back up to normal"?

The hand-waving is not helpful.

For instance, White Mage: Medica, Cure III, Medica II, Asylum (to name a few).

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Originally Posted by Thmas

Is there a good drill down on this specific topic?

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As a healer, while it is your job to ensure that the party survives incoming damage, we also have to maximise our DPS like both Tanks and Damage Dealers.
You maximise DPS by ensuring that you spend as few GCDs on Healing spells, which means more Glares. Your assistance will make the boss die faster, and so people take less damage overall.

You said you're new to WHM so I'll give a simple overview of your healing skill priorities, but if you want more info, I can go further in-depth on this.

Multi-target: (skills marked with * can be buffed by Temperance and Plenary Indulgence)
Assize - Always use on cooldown. The damage is too good to save it for incoming damage.
Asylum - Your strongest AoE skill for raidwide damage at 980 potency (100 base + 8 ticks of 110 potency). Try to weave with Dia refreshes, or Afflatus Rapture/Solace if you won't have time.
Afflatus Rapture* - A weak heal compared to your others, but it contributes to the Blood Lily which makes it more efficient than your other GCD heals. It's best to save multiple charges and use them with Plenary.
Medica 2* - Medica 2 is your strongest GCD healing tool, as it heals for 700 potency (200 base + 5 ticks of 100 potency). However, as a regen effect, it cannot be used multiple times in succession.
Cure 3* - Cure 3 is weaker than Medica 2 overall and requires people to be stacked closely around the target, but it is spammable, so best used in emergency cases.
Medica* - Your lowest potency heal. The only merit it holds over Medica 2 and Cure 3 is its lower mana cost, but mana should not be an issue for you.

Single Target: (skills marked with * can be buffed by Temperance)
Assize - Always use on cooldown. Yes, Assize is that important.
Benediction - A 100% heal on the target. This isn't something you want to use ASAP, but rather get the most healing out of (for instance, if a tank uses Living Dead/Holmgang/Superbolide).
Divine Benison - a 30s cooldown means that you can usually pair this with refreshing Dia. Don't try to save it for tank busters, it's better to get more uses over the fight.
Tetragrammaton - at 700 potency, it's equal in strength to Solace and Cure 2, it just doesn't require giving up a Glare
Afflatus Solace* - It's Cure 2 but contributes to the Blood Lily, so better than the other GCDs.
Regen* - Strongest GCD at 1200 potency (6 ticks of 200) over 18s, but it costs a Glare to use.
Cure 2* - Weaker than Regen but you can spam it
Cure 1* - Weaker than Cure2 but more mana efficient. Avoid using it unless you're having big mana problems, like if you were just raised.

Honourable Mention: HOLY
In dungeons, chain-casting Holy will stun the monsters for about 10 seconds. It's best to start with that so you don't need to do nearly as much healing. This doesn't work on bosses though.

Sorry I know what it means, but was hoping for tips on the choices, médica II or cure iii, asize just after or hold when multiple rounds of damage coming. Asylum for raid wide or save for tank and mele? Etc. Thanks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Thmas

Sorry I know what it means, but was hoping for tips on the choices, médica II or cure iii, asize just after or hold when multiple rounds of damage coming. Asylum for raid wide or save for tank and mele? Etc. Thanks.

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use assize on cooldown. its great damage (especially on mob pulls) and its cooldown is so short it comes up a lot. as a cherry on top it restores MP so you really want to use it as much as you can. in fact some dungeon bosses can be done without healing the party outside of assize since it comes up so often

aside from that asylum and medica 2 are really nice. if you let their regens tick theyre a cure 2 on everyone, so dont panic and just trust the regens to heal up

cure 3 is very niche as it needs the party to be stacked, and heals less than medica 2 for a higher mp cost. but its very good for huge damage spikes in endgame content

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Thmas

Sorry I know what it means, but was hoping for tips on the choices, médica II or cure iii, asize just after or hold when multiple rounds of damage coming. Asylum for raid wide or save for tank and mele? Etc. Thanks.

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Keep Asylum for raid wides and place it on/behind the boss to heal yourself and the dps players with it.
If you have Rapture already, priotize this over any other AoE heal, because it is free and will lead to Misery which is a strong instant AoE damage skill. You can also pair up Rapture with Plenary Indulgence to double the potency. Make sure to use PI before Rapture tho.
Also mitigate AoE damage with Temperance. It does not only reduce damage taken by 10%, but also boosts your healing potency by 20% for 20s.

Once you got into it and got familiar with the pace of the content you usually don't ever need to touch Medica/ Medica II/ Cure III at all, because the other tools you have are generally strong enough. :)

It depends on how much damage the party is taking. Healing is more adaptive to what is happening as opposed to using a set rotation. I am just mentioning the AoE heals you asked for in the first post, but let us know if you want one for single target as well.

If the damage is considered on the light side for the party, you can generally counter it with Assize + Afflatus Rapture, Afflatus Rapture x2, or a Medica 2.

If the damage is starting to hit moderately harder and / or more consistently, Asylum and Temperance start to get cycled in with the "light cooldowns". You preferably try to stagger these 2 rather than stacking the cooldowns so you can last a longer amount of time healing through the moment. These are also important cooldowns to use when the tank pulls really big for those 4 man Expert dungeons.

Then when it starts to get heavy, almost all of the tricks come out of the bag. The remaining cooldowns Thin Air and Plenary Indulgence start getting used with the multiple Medica / Cure 3 casts that are needed to keep up. The choice between Medica and Cure 3 depends how tightly stacked the party members are.

The cooldown Lucid Dreaming is always used on all 3 occasions too. Don't wait until you are out of mana though. Try to time Lucid Dreaming at around 80% of your max mana. You will want to make full use of it just like with Assize.

Amelia covered it well. Asylum is a bit hit and miss in pugs whether they all stand in it, but if they do it's amazing raidwide healing. It's also very useful for those first raidwides on 8 mans and such, since you won't have a lily available.

While Rapture is generally priority over GcD heals, don't forget that GcD aoe heals are better for intermissions or boss ultimates where the boss isn't targetable. Medica II works great here and saves a Lily for later.

Use Assize on CD but also keep an eye on Assize and try to map the fight as you learn it. If a boss has just used a raidwide, Assize has 12 sec left on cd and you know another one isn't coming for another 20 sec or so, wait for the Assize instead of instantly reacting with a Rapture by force of habit.

And of course, while a lot of guides will just tell you GcD healing is bad, learn to realize when you actually do need it. If you're out of lilies and instant heals, dps stood in the bad and people are going to die, spam those GcD's. A great healer will focus dps and efficiency but can snap into saving a group with their full toolkit the moment it's needed.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Asylum is a bit hit and miss in pugs whether they all stand in it, but if they do it's amazing raidwide healing.

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There is another skill we can use to at least bring one more person in: Rescue :)

Thank you Togre and Liam, exactly the kind of insights I was hoping for. Much appreciated!!

Thank you. Very helpful tips. Especially the last paragraph as it underscores a bunch of the great feedback others posted.

I just want to thank everyone who replied. I have returned and read these now several times and things make much more sense now. Yusikha's long note has been particularly helpful. Now just need more practice :)