First time healing (AST) - what should I know?

[Skatedudeguy]

So to add on what others have said:

Healing in general: Get a good feel for the "chunk" of the HP bar each heal can do (if you are a numbers person you can go that route too). You'll get a feel of what each heal can do and if it will overheal or not.

Don't be reliant on your Benefic II spell. Unless the target is going to die if they do not get another heal right after, your Benefic I heal will do great and save MP. That being said, if their HP bar is going down quickly, go ahead and use II !

Make sure your gear is up to snuff. Even moreso than a tank, you need to make sure you can recover from those big hits.

For AST in particular:

I wouldn't worry too much about the cards when first starting out. If you can apply the cards to the right person, great. Heal first, DPS if you feel comfortable, and cards are last when starting. Once you get into a groove, you can balance all three parts.

[Jim_Berry]

As a new AST, I love it, especially since I started the game as CNJ/AST (plus AST reminds me of COR, which was my main job for years in FFXI).

The problem I have with AST is, I'm almost always in groups where I am off-healer (OH). One of two things happen:
- If there's a WHM, the group MAKE me got OH stance for the shields. Often-times, we find our MT dying from lack of heals or he's always critical on HP because I'm doing mechanics (generators) and healing the party.

- The main-healer (MH), if it's WHM or AST in Duirnal, stays in Cleric Stance often. My shields as OH would go so far, then I need to spam a few Benefic IIs.

My point is, I prefer to MH, so I may have to go back to WHM for that reason alone, unless it's content where I can solo heal (A9S).

*EDIT*
On a side note, I guess I also dislike people telling me to hold cards. While I know WHY and WHICH to hold, I don't want to always spam Royal Road and Redraw while I have Balance sitting in queue from Spread because I'm hoping to Royal Road the next Ewer or Spire for Balance AoE.

If I have Bole, I like to hit the MT with it rather than Royal Road'ing 5 times and NOT applying buffs for 150s all because I want to AoE the Balance.

[NocturniaUzuki]

Well, I've got a few tips and tricks, although some of them are more advanced.

1. Learn to stay calm in the face of a healing crisis. This mainly just comes with time as you become accustomed to healing. And honestly, nobody ever gets perfect at this. When a crisis happens, even the best of us get distracted from other things. But the mark of an experienced healer is being able to keep track of what you're going to cast in which order as a situation unfolds, regardless of how bad that situation gets. Be Captain Kirk: the one who doesn't believe in unwinnable battles. What I love about healing is pulling off miracle comebacks when everyone else is saying "wipe".

2. Keep your eye on the party list and use focus target. Since healing is all about keeping the party alive, the party list is your primary target list. Enemies are something you usually keep in the corner of your eye on. But sometimes it's vice versa. Your eye movement is a lot like Cleric Stance. If there are no incoming damage risks, my eyes are on the battlefield, with the corner on my party list. If there are, my eyes are on the party list, with the corner on the battlefield. Always have the focus target's cast bar in the corner of your eye as well.

3. Don't use Cleric Stance until you either know the fight, or are experienced enough to be able to decently guess when you can go into it on a new boss. If it's a hard boss, I recommend never using Cleric Stance the first few tries. The leading cause of Healer-caused tank deaths, IMHO, is when a healer switches into CS right before a big tank buster and has to wait 5 seconds until they can heal.

4. Preemptive healing is huge. When you know an attack is coming, start casting the counter-heal before the cast finishes. If you do it perfectly, your allies' HP bars won't even appear to move. This may seem a little overkill, but in some content it really helps, or is even necessary to at least get the timing somewhat. The most obvious example is A12S, where there are multiple enemy casts of high-damage attacks in a row. If you wait to cast until the party takes damage, you'll fall behind and the next casts will land before the party/player is healed.

5. Both sects have their uses. Diurnal is great for passive healing and DPS. I use it for mobs and some bosses. Nocturnal is fairly useless for most mobs, but is very strong in many boss encounters. Not that it's always better for bosses, but mitigation is just better for preventing deaths in general. Aspected Benefic on Nocturnal is one of AST's strongest tools, as an instant-cast shield with fairly high potency. If you don't have time to cast Benefic II, if a player has too many stacks of Vulnerability to survive an incoming hit, or if someone is out of position and is about to take heavy damage, it saves lives.

6. This is very much a preferential one, but I personally recommend holding Spear as often as you can in harder content, particularly if you're in a PUG where you can't count as heavily on everyone playing consistently. This is to use on yourself when a crisis happens, or when you need MP, because it significantly reduces the cooldowns of your emergency spells. Since I prioritize safety over speed, I run fairly heavy on the MP sustain because I tend to overheal for safety's sake. My basic MP regen method is to use my held Spear, followed by Luminiferous Aether and Celestial Opposition for the duration increase. This basic combo is very versatile because you can throw in any other abilities you need to use in a pinch for reduced cooldown and before extending their duration on yourself and others, including other card effects, Lightspeed, Synastry, Time Dilation, Swiftcast, and Collective Unconscious, to name the most significant. One of my favourite combos, and what I use if the raid is in need of a Healer LB3 but either doesn't have enough LB gauge or I don't think it's necessary yet, is this:

Spear (held) > Luminiferous Aether > Swiftcast Ascend > Draw/Redraw (hope for the Arrow) > if Arrow: Arrow myself; if Bole: Bole the tank + Time Dilation; if Other: Royal Road > Lightspeed > 3x regular Ascend with massively reduced cast time > Synastry the MT > Celestial Opposition > Helios spam like mad.

This can be difficult to pull off, depending on the boss and how much damage it's putting out on at the time. But if it's a moment of low total raid damage, this combo can bring the party back from what seemed like a wipe, or at least some of it (getting the full 3x regular Ascend is next to impossible due to having to heal the tank too).

[Maero]

Diurnal and for bosses i tend to prefer to switch to Nocturnal, just personal preference. (Especially in Palace of the Dead)
Cleric stance but know when to switch it off, sometimes damage can happen quickly. So a party member could have 13K health and drop down to 5 or 6 easily at times as example and your heals are not worth much while in cleric.
As others have stated just start off for now perhaps as healing (not using Cleric) until you get more comfortable, with time you will get there