I really like the idea of playing a healer. I have enjoyed playing MW especially, but my awareness of what is going on feels severely hampered by having to stare at the raid frames.
I usually play with friendly health bars off, but recently turned them on to see if mouseover macros and player health bars might work, but the confusion of who is on what team is real. I like having class colours on.
I use help/harm macros to help with keybinds, so I can deal dmg too.
What are people doing to overcome this? Are you just constantly looking from frames to the battlefield? Do you use an add on to better differentiate nameplates?
How can I make healing feel as fluid as DPS in a BG?
If I can figure this out, you’ll have another healer in the fray!
try either Healbot or VuhDo addons. Position the interface near the center of the screen just below your character and it makes healing the team easier and increases your awareness of what’s going on due to where you are eyes are.
After you get used to using either of those addons you will not believe how you ever played with out.
I used to use healbot, but it is the same as using mouse over macros and rad frames (which I move to the center of my screen)
The issue is the constant watching the bars vs watching the BG around me. As a DPS all the health bars I need to see are out above the players’ heads. With using healbot/raid frames I don’t even know which player is just about to LOS or outrun my healing, if the tide of battle is about to turn and I need to run, etc.
It is the constant switching between frames and the environment around me that is the issue.
This isn’t really a solution probably, but when I used to BG as a healer most of the time I’d tab target enemies, and by looking at their target I could see who is about to be in trouble.
I don’t heal but one of the best things anyone can do is consolidate the location of important information. The default UI has important information literally in all four corners of the game window, so you’re wasting a lot of time and effort seeking out things with your eyes. Move all that crap.
Some things you can move just by right clicking and unlocking it, for other things you need an addon to replace a UI element with something more mobile.
A good place to start is move your health bar down to by your toon, as well as your target frame. Others have mentioned Healbot and Vuhdu, I’ve heard them mentioned enough they must be useful.
You can also go into options and change party frames into Raid Frames and increase the size, tell it to use class colors, and other options. This is what I do. I may not be a healer, but I am always keeping an eye on what my teammates status are for peels kill pressure, etc. If my team’s Mistweaver is at half health with rogue poisons, I want to know about it.
If you need more real estate to move stuff around, switch to Bartender for your toolbars and Sexymap for your map.
Positioning of UI elements is important. Generally you want your unit frames centralized and not blocking your character or the area around your character. Then any alerts nearby as well.
When you get familiar with your action bars you’ll start to look at the screen during cast times , instant casts, and any repetitive action like dealing damage. If you need the help try nameplate cooldowns and gladius for some alerts to help call out things.
I wound up quitting as a healer for this reason over time, but what made things easier was keeping allied health bars on and enemy bars off.
Use class color for their names, not their healthbars. Health bar color should indicate how badly they’re in need of healing. I used dark blue for healthy and light blue for high priority.
This made it so that I could survey the field instead of unit frames to determine who needed the most help. However, in larger team fights, there’s no substitution for unit frame tunnel vision.
How long have you been doing it? You really need to force yourself to retrain your mind. I use a combination of keybinds, mouseover macros and vuhdo to heal and everything is so second nature. It wasn’t the case when I first started. I made myself do BG after BG after BG until everything was second nature. You might just need more experience.
I do exactly this and use the default raid frames, but position them just to the left of my character, and then a combination of WA2 and TMW for alerts of CD’s and procs.
My issue is the shift between the raid frame the players in the BG (enemies or friendlies). As a DPS, this is a non issue because the nameplates are what I focus on and they are attached to the player running around in the world and I am way more aware of everything as a DPS.
Imagine if we had raidframes for the enemy team you had to click on to do dmg. Seems stupid, and yet that is exactly what I feel like I am doing while healing.
I think what I really need to do is something along these lines. I need to find an addon that lets me customize the friendly/enemy nameplates so I can see all of this at a glance and over the players’ heads. I do like having the enemy health showing, because sometimes it might pay off to help finish someone off or to CC on another healer at just the right time.
Maybe I need to make better use of the tab targeting too, and have a keybind for target next/previous friendly (which I do not use atm).
Any suggestions for addons that would help me to customize nameplates?
This is true, this time around (BfA) I have not been healing it all that often, but in the past, I did a lot of healing and have played this game for longer than I like to admit. While I do need to play it a lot to train myself to do better, I feel like I need to re-train on the most effective and efficient way to both heal and keep my head up.
You can set one (enemies or allies) to “name only” in which their name is displayed as text with their class color and the color drains as the unit loses health. You can use healthbars for the other.
It’s great for seeing health for both friends and foes without all the confusion of everyone having a bar over their head; they’re very easy to differentiate.
Elvui for customization of UI components, including nameplates + Vuhdo situated over just to the left of the quest frame = the easiest way I have found to heal, in any situation. But even with a clean, organized screen and all of the right addons, it’s still a matter of watching bars and boxes and everything in between.
(Mostly raid) Pally healer here (play disc at low level bgs).
I use mostly default everything except unit frames (note - not party frames). Mostly so I can keep track of my debuffs on enemies (disc priest) as well as stuff like stuns poly etc.
Using default frames I have it set to show when people are near me (so I’m not trying to heal a guy at lm when I’m at mines). Some people like the inverted bars I just have it all not class colored and green and heal indiscriminately. Class colors is fine. Show debuffs is on (even ones I can’t cleanse) so I can track stacks of stuff or like MS.
I would recommend getting very comfortable with keybinds and binding everything. Less important stuff I use Opie for. It’s good for long CDs or like mount hearth toys imo. The goal should be to play without looking at your keyboard.
WeakAuras helps show class procs without having to look at your buffs or bars. Very useful. Lots of good starter wa you can just download.
Basically if you don’t have to look at buffs/bars and only healthbars and wa that is by your character/party hp. Its easy to see the battlefield. Also I second making sure your target, yourself, and your focus (pocket healing op) are all easily visible too. I personally to focus and self left side and Target right side, slightly above my party frames. WA are kinda whatever works for me. Idr what I use for unit frames (it may actually just be default rn). Also having in range and visually noticable at a glance HP bars means less time searching for that guy to heal and more time healing (and doing damage).
Also something I just figured out that works really well in case you didn’t know. You can make a macro that will give you mouse look without the click. That will let you pan the camera and leave your mouse still ontop of a party frame. Probably you can do that with addons too. But you could do it manually.
I’m using a steam controller to do it, but if you have a mouse with button customization you might be able to do something similar.
Bind an “on press” key to activate a macro with "/run MouselookStart() "
Bind that key’s “on release” to activate another macro that says “run MouselookStop()”
