So i’m quite the accomplished ranged Hero player the past 3 years, with my Boss Hammer & Azmo blowing stuff up left & right. For the first time ever recently, i’ve attempted to play the Healer class. OMG.
Let’s say you have bad luck and get stuck with a team of chumps, who can’t hold their own for anything. They’re getting slapped around in every encounter the whole match. What can you really do? You can try to be a great healer but, it’ll be in vain. Because your guys will immediately resume getting their butts handed to them 3 seconds later and, they’re on death’s door yet again. It’s a futile effort.
As a long-time Hammer & Azmo player, i’ve found most of my success through High-quality team back-up. Even if i’m matched with a bunch of losers, i can still turn garbage into Gold with my back-up skills. I don’t think that can be done well, if at all, if you’re playing as a healer.
Any insight from long-time healer players here? Are you just stuck witnessing your team getting smacked around until the inevitable loss?
I personally climbed from Gold to Master with a high amount of Healer games.
My choices were: Uther, Deckard, Rehgar, Alex, Stukov, Khara, BW.
These are high impact Healers who don’t need to sit in the backline praising for your team to not be bad (there are others like Lúcio and WM but I used them like once, in ranked?).
What you must do, is healing a ton, obv. But what you can also do with these, is getting non-heal based values.
Uther, BW, Stukov, Deckard has tf changing CC.
Rehgar, Alex, BW has good macro impact.
Rehgar, Stukov, Khara has good dmg.
Alex, Deckard has exceptional heal numbers, above the usual. (And Alex also has DQ, her Trait, which is good for securing objectives.)
My tactic was, to be super aggressive as Healers. I never abandon my job to heal, but I also seek opportunities to go in, deal dmg, CC and kill. Some Heroes obviously need build-tweaking for such, but everything depends on what works for you.
For me, for example, I went Horadric Staff as Deckard. It’s good for peels, but usually I went in and set up my CC combo with it to get a kill on a key target.
With Alex, I used E build for more and more uptime on the awesome Trait, while it also provided some safety against enemy divers.
Healers are not weak or useless. They’re legit scary, but less obvious, harder to utilise than Assaasins.
You should remember that healers are peelers in comparison to something that a tank does, tanks priority is to create plays and punish anyone who get close and create “space”.
Healers on the other hand, heal but also peel through their abilities to avoid getting one of your teammates dead, this is very pretty self explanatory for a lot of healers who have CC in their kits, even something as simple as a slow from Alex plays a massive peeling role, your priority is to slow, halt or push away anyone getting close, this is why some of the strats like Anduin ends up with him light bombing himself to shutdown an engage and subsequently “peel”.
This is one of the “primary” essentials of healers and makes each healer unique in their way, peeling stronger against certain heroes whilst weak or almost redundant with others, the other one is they should played like assassins in the form of aggressive play, as mentioned in the previous post, some healers are entirely built on aggressiveness (Alex, Anduin, Lucio, Tyrande, Auriel) whilst some are around a hybrid of booth (Li Li, Stukov, Uther, Rehgar) and then there’s passive which is more less like poke (Ana, Malfurion).
Healers are easy to play when it comes healing, its pretty no brainer, but their biggest skill comes from learning what makes them click and how to capitalize the most out of their abilities, passives and ultimates. My most played is Tyrande who requires a lot of micro management to get the most out of her but I like playing stuff like Lucio, Rehgar, Anduin and Alex, all have their aggressive styles, feel free to ask anything about those in particular.
What do you think of her trait build currently? I’ve been playing it recently and its both fun and decent. I like the fact I can send out team wide healing during fights by AAing someone who’s marked with her trait, in addition to the Q’s you can throw in the mix. It also helps blow up enemies due to the armor reduction. I know I’m not at the same level as other people who play her, and my gameplay would probably be laughable… but I’m still interested on your thoughts.
Auriel and Morales will get utterly decimated if the team is bad. They are some of the lowest impact heroes in the game if you don’t have a team to back you up. I am a bit wary of playing them solo because of that.
Plenty of other healers do excellent alone without team help though, even though their main function is still helping the team by erasing enemy damage and CC.
Rehgar is one of the best solo Q heroes. Uther can act as an offtank, or replace the tank temporarily in a team fight if your actual tank dies.
I suppose i could give the helping hand thing another try given that healers are my specialty.
Like the others have stated, anyone can pick the plus class and restore some hp. Where the skill comes from is often how you distribute that healing and how you utilize your utility.
Healers aren’t by definition reliant on their team to some extent but they aren’t all damsels in distress. Rehgar, kharazim and lili come to mind in that regard. All of these strong independent healers who don’t necessarily need a friend to be effective.
If your sick of your team dieing all the time there are healers who excel at either rescuing them or making them so unkillable that an otherwise dumb overexetention becomes a fight winning move. Anduin, whitemane, brightwing, and lucio are pretty good at this.
If you’ve got a friend who you trust to be good, there are healers who will make this person downright oppressive. Stuff like morales, tyrande and auriel are all about that coordinated teamwork that wins fights.
If you’ve got questions on any specific healers ask away. Im pretty comfortable playing all of them and ive played about half of them in actual competitive tournament play.
This is the way i usually play her except i like to take flare at 1. Imo it’s one of the more powerful builds in the game by level 20. Flare on like a 3 second cooldown that hits for around 1000 damage and thats not even including the auto flare from 20. If both flares ever hit the same target it’s basically like you just pyroblasted them.
Plus at 13 you can solo take camps almost as fast as xul can if your willing to dump your mana for if and thats cool :p.
not necessarily
I found quickly that if we lack damage to convert into energy, I can usually make it on my own fairly quickly id my aim is on point with the whip, the only problem I found when this is the case is that the low damage allies would do is exactly that, deal low damage an Auriel can only do so much damage, but I could prevent deaths with minimal deaths myself
I’d rather die then play either of thos heroes I hate them almost as much as I hate Kharazim
People say this a lot, but I don’t really agree, at least with Morales. Especially early game, if you can ride that advantage, I find that I can still make quite a big impact with pretty awful players. Good healing is just useful. Bad teams will make your life difficult no doubt, but that would be true no matter what role you play.
Auriel, is a bit different, and that could be that I’m just not as good with her. However, from my observations, though yes, there’s the whole energy battery side where if your teammates don’t produce enough damage, you can’t heal as much, there’s also who you play against.
If the enemy team doesn’t have much a front line where they’re bunching, that also restricts your ability to generate energy. So in no frontline QM games, it’s incredibly hard to reliably gather enough energy by yourself because being in AA or sweep range against ranged is just often not feasible without endangering yourself, so you’re much more dependent on your team for energy. Your knock back is also much less likely to find opportunistic stuns and push enemies into compromising positions.
Maybe it’s just a semantic interpretation, but that’s exactly what I see a healer as, high quality back up to your teammates. You’re just probably not at that point where you understand your tools to be high quality yet.
I feel like with most non healer mains, it’s really more of the focus. They’re used to doing the damage or soaking, so they know when their teammates are lacking and focus on that. The problem is they’re looking at it from what their allies are doing wrong and what they would do if they were playing those heroes. However, that focus is worthless, you can’t be them. Rather YOU should be focusing on what you can do AS the healer in response to what they’re doing wrong.
A good healer doesn’t just heal in optimal situations. They heal teams through awful situations and mistakes that inevitably will happen. A good healer will also be proactive in trying to set up where their allies are less likely to make mistakes in the first place or at the very least, minimize their impact. If you’re being proactive, and keeping people up, or even running interference, then their mistakes are less likely to be fatal. And even if your team sucks, if you can keep them up long enough to suck longer than the enemy team, that’s all you really need.
In theory very busted, in practice its too micro intensive like mentally too too micro intensive, main offender is the level 7 trait which I honestly don’t pick and swap it with moonlit arrows most of the time.
One thing about trait build is essentially the amount of disruption and intense pressure comes from it, which is the CDR on 13 for both trait and the stun, you can deploy 2 stuns with 4 seconds gap between both and almost keep your trait debuff permanently, and if you can hit them with those stuns you can put anyone in a threatening position and deal massive damage.
By 20 you can delete about 60% of kalethas HP with 3 stuns and almost perma stun, not only this is a game ender, it makes her very strong damage dealer who can punish anyone who slip in their positioning.
In general my primary build, I find owl kinda of a meme despite being mostly picked, trait does so much for you and your team which helps a lot in the process.
Biggest issue with this build? Too much mana consumption.
Also Starfall for massive heals, saves games where people unironically death balling over a kill.
Never pick a healer if you don’t know if your teammates will be decent. This is why I often don’t fill the healer role in ARAM. I have no idea how skilled the players are on my team or who I go against. If you know your teammates are good or they are on heroes that will crumble w/o healer, then pick one. If my DPS players are on any sort of DPS hero that has sustain or can poke well from range, I won’t go healer also.
You’ll have a hard time and maybe even suffer a bit regardless of your pick/role if your allies are bad.
So pls don’t discourge ppl from picking Healers just because of some personal experiences. The @Op clearly struggles as well. But they asked for help in their own way and not for comfort knowing they’re not alone so why even try.
But tbf, you might have a point, that at first they should play Healers with trustworthy allies (friends), if that is an option they have and for some reason didn’t give it a try yet.
If healing isn’t your main role, practice in unranked. you’ll get similar to normal team make-ups as ranked, so its easier to practice healing, when you have a proper, balanced team with frontline and DPS.
Don’t bother trying to learn in QM, as the matchmaking will make some unbalanced teams that just wastes a lot of your time when trying to learn a new role.
Sometimes, if you’re the weak link, and also the healer, it may seem like everyone else is the problem, when it could also be you, who’s new to the role.
Don’t listen to anyone here about trying to pick “carry” or more advanced healers, that won’t help you learn if you’re new to support.
That’s like telling a new player to start with Genji, or Kel Thuzad to get good at DPS.
Imo, the best healer to learn the role with is anduin. I feel his kit subtly pushes you towards the kind of positioning you want with most healers as well as how to fallow up and set up combos with your team.
If those are your favourite heroes then I think it’s safe to assume you know how to macro. Macro is so incredibly important and as you said, even if your team is no good you can still hold things together.
For me, the hardest part about being a healer is that most of them have very poor wave clear and rely heavily on others to do it. It hurts my brain seeing a lane not get soaked. Sometimes if no one better is going to do it then i often just leave the team just as a wave is about to crash into our towers and soak it myself.
Sometimes someone might say “healer, dont solo. Stick with group”. This also hurts my brain.
Yes you’re right, i shouldnt be doing this role…but can one of you take over???
For this, i like Rehgar. His wave clear is great. He’s also good at doing mercs.
Doing this for a wave is fine if your teammates are careful and have sustain. But I find non healers do this to the point where they see it as their role and just end up being a really bad healer. This is the EASIEST way to be an ineffective healer. What people don’t seem to realize is if your soaking comes at the cost of an ally dying, you don’t really come out ahead.
Had a Rehgar do this early game, went to soak bot, left main group, even though Naz was nearby to do it. We were doing poorly, then magically, once he started grouping up again, we started winning again. It was clear the Rehgar knew how to heal and was even good at it. But if you can’t show off those skills because you’re doing the least skilled thing by killing minions, then really, what is the point of playing a healer?
You often are just better sticking with the group most of the time.
Had a game recently where this happened. Group wasn’t responding to pushes. Stuck with the group and we lost so many buildings. Ultimately, it didn’t matter because we were winning almost every fight.
I mean in some games, it’s hopeless, but it’s not really because of playing a healer. Honestly, this is really defeatist attitude.