Yes that is def an option, but I doubt they have the customizability that an addon does in terms of what is taking health off of someone in your raid, which tank has a dot that needs to be healed or they will 100% die.
I’m sure some current mythic raider here can comment more. My high level raiding days are over but the good habits I gained from it are not.
I’m not a mythic raider, but I am aotc and in 8.3 I was parsing 90+ on almost every fight. I need to be clear on something I said above, but I do use a healing addon. I am speaking from experience with other healers in my team and by the basic theory of knowing how many actions are needed and how adding keybind presses would not prevent a person from healing perfectly.
Regarding dots and things, in general those should be called out regardless of whether someone uses an addon that makes it visible or not
In progression you don’t know what is required yet though, and I would bet if everyone used this method that the raid would have more success overall. Afterall, tanks and healers are really the most important part of a raid.
Can’t I just use focus target?
Sure, if you want to change that several times through the fight, and you can easily with a /focus button bound to a key…remember you may have several bosses, adds, etc, mind controls. I don’t know what else. You might actually have trouble with the cast bar on that focus target too unless you plan on further configuring your focus target to show cast bar and buffs. I use Shadowed Unit Frames and you can do that with those.
For a single boss, sure, but again it’s more difficult than just setting up the mouseovers once.
What am I needing to watch for? (I’m not trying to be confrontational — I’m generally asking because I’m trying to improve my play over what it was in BFA.)
I can’t interrupt as a holy Paladin so why do I need to see casts and such beyond what DBM/my nameplate adding might show?
That is fair. The original post of this thread basically boils down to “healing addons are required or you can’t heal properly,” and that is just not true. I would personally always choose to use an addon, but if I decided not to, I am certain that I could perform at the same level once I got used to it.
My main point here is that the default ui is enough to do everything required to heal to the best of one’s ability. Yes, addons make some things easier than they would be without, such as boss damage and dot tracking, but these are problems that can be easily solved without the use of an addon.
I mean, just generally speaking, any ability that would hit you and you need to move from, or the boss targeting someone with an ability you know you’d need to heal immediately, gives you a heads up.
there is still time between casts and gcds to target bosses and adds or w.e you want. I don’t understand how you aren’t understanding that. I’ve been playing for 10+ years I have the mechanics to do those things. I’ve healed at 2200+ duelist level which is full of constant swapping between enemies and allies and I have never had a problem. I use 2 macros only. focus hex and focus wind shear. I would not be doing better with addons or mouseovers because there is nothing I am doing that isn’t already maxxed in efficiency.
So you’re comparing arena with mythic raiding…
Ok.
Healing threads tend to stay fairly civil, don’t they?
With DBM & casting bars that show up over enemy mobs, probably no real reason to have them focused. If you can see cast bars, that’s probably good enough - even then you can still select that target and HoJ if needed. And a spell like Blinding Light doesn’t need a target selected at all.
Ugh, now you’re reminding me I need to hop over to BL.
I know its not a good comparison since mythic raiding is easier but its the closest i’ve got.
You have 1 or 2 targets to heal in arena, or whatever you’re doing.
The entire conversation is about raid frames so you don’t even HAVE raid frames in a party lol.
We are just going in circles now though so GL all.
I’ve been healing for years. Main as a Monk and Druid healer… don’t use any healing specific addons.
I have raid frames enabled for all sized parties. I click on them always. I tried f1 f2 f3 etc in the past and didn’t like it. I have 3 targets to heal and 3 enemies to target as well. If it matters, i’ve done the same in heroic raiding as well (heroic including back in the day when it was the hardest difficulty).
Hello, I know you’re not asking me, but I thought I’d offer my 2c as to what one can do to improve generally in a raid setting.
The single most important thing a healer can do is to understand the damage pattern of a fight. Over the course of many pulls, you will get a feel for when you need to move, when peoples’ health will drop suddenly, and when you have time to do something other than heal, like chug a replenishment potion or toss out some dps.
Pairing your cooldowns to the biggest damage spikes in the fight will not only make your throughput look better, but it will prevent wipes. You should always coordinate with other healers when cooldowns will be used IF that is going to matter. For instance, if a fight has 9 instances if big raidwide damage, and 3 healers each have 3 cooldowns, they should be staggered to avoid overlap and to cover every big spike.
Aside from having a great understanding of the fight, understand your toolkit. Knowing where each ability shines makes choosing a heal basically a non-choice. Over time it will become almost an instinct to use certain abilities in certain situations, so the important thing is to make sure you are in graining the right habits.
That is really all it takes, though. Understand your abilities, and understand how the damage is going to come out. On a fight where everyone is performing well, there should be nearly no surprises.
Agreed. Raids are scripted, so it’s like everyone has to learn their dance moves for it to go smoothly.
Keys can be a little more challenging, but even then, by mid-season, you’ve got a feel for affixes and routes, so it’s not too bad. Only thing that really changes is the overall difficulty, and then if you’re pugging, that’s it own ballgame, trying to learn new players every time.
Indeed, I think keys are a lit harder than raiding, maybe its just because there are more dungeons so more to remember. Over time though you fall into the same mindset, like, “this trash pack is difficult” or “I might need to use a cooldown during this bosses ability.”