As someone that is terrified of tanking or healing in WoW, i have always been DPS. This is in stark contrast to FFXIV where I much prefer to tank rather than DPS.
What tips would you give to someone wanting to try healing? I’m paranoid i’ll overheal so much that I’ll go OoM at the stupidest times.
Any addons etc that make it easy?
do not worry about over healing at first. It will happen, no matter what.
I have found the most important part to healing is understanding how you play. Healing from one class to another is different enough that your play style is important.
I play a resto shaman because I like the way it heals. It is a great aoe healer and there is strong instant and direct heals.
I recommend healing in battlegrounds at first. so, you can figure out how you want your action bars set up. Then run a few normal runs and then some LFR raids. healing is fun and stressful.
with blood dks dont look at the hp but runic power
Always heal yourself first. Sucks to let others go down sometimes (but it was probably their own mistakes) however it’s even worse if you die first.
Crap holy priest here.
Understand how much your spells heal for, and use the most efficient one. Wasting time Flash Healing when I can Serenity is gonna chew through my mana real quick. This also helps overhealing, don’t use big spells for simply topping off.
Fight knowledge. Knowing when big dam is coming to use CDs will make it so you don’t have to use ineficient spells to recover. As you learn dungeons you’ll get a nice CD rotation. You’ll also learn when things are and are not your fault.
OOMing and overhealing happens. Just don’t actively be healing people who don’t need it. And sometimes mistakes happen and you have to use more than you anticipated. Those’ll be the times where you’re probably using less efficient mana heavy spells because it’s all you got.
You’re prio. Don’t put yourself in danger of death to save someone who made an error. Sometimes it’s easier with only 4 people. Idk what tanks are on rn but they seem to be able to handle themselves for the most part.
Micro drink. After every pull, after every boss, you can get at least 2 ticks of mana. Especially if you position slightly ahead. It adds up. Certain affixes can get in the way though. Spiteful keeps you in combat and tanks usually seem to go to the next pack while one is still up. Bursting can be annoying too but it’s not as bad.
The most useful piece of advice I could give you as a healer is:
Keep that in the back of your mind, and just try your best. You’ll be okay.
Don’t try to learn in heroics or timewalking. They are full of bad practices that aren’t representative of the actual role. Same goes for tanking.
Every healer and tank I’ve ever made, I start from scratch. Never quest, just lvl through dungeons. That way, I learn how the spec works bit by bit and with every level and talent unlock. Plus the dungeon ques are practically instant. Then once I’m max, I’ll go on wow head to see how my build I chose stack up to the ‘meta’ builds on there, make changes if needed. Once you get some questing gear it’s time to head out into some +2s. They are simple. If you’re unfamiliar with anything in this game, dungeon wise or even class wise, there’s always a youtube video for it. You go from there. But idk if my advice will really be worth anything to you since I’ve been healing since '07 and tanking since '12.
I don’t use weak auras. Only deadly boss mods, details, omni cc cooldown timers, and pawn is useful for gear upgrades. And raiderio. Weakauras can certainly help, lots and lots of players need them but I can’t stand the clutter.
Don’t be scared of overhealing.
1000 overhealing is better than 1 under healing.
Obviously their are extremes, but nobody is going to care if you overheal unless it’s by such a crazy amount you oom.
Overhealing is going to happen, some specs like druid with hots its just nature of the beast…
I like vuhdo it basically creates mouse over macros for you plus, it’s useful for seeing dispels and other information. As far as healing buff makes them stand out…
And the only other advice I can give you just practice.
The best thing to do to get really good at healing is learn which classes and specs have good mitigation and self heals and which ones don’t.
I use Vuhdo addon for my healers. Makes the process so much easier once you are setup. I put similar spell types (ie small heals, big heals, cures) for each healing class I use tied to the same mouse button. This way if I switch between classes there is some familiarity but each healing class does do things a little differently. Set it up, practice and move stuff around until you are comfortable and like how it flows.
I always recommend starting a brand new character and dungeon leveling. That way you learn one spell at a time and can implement them into your healing. Unfortunately, this method has gotten a bit harder for learning as dungeon scaling sucks and people just zoom through as fast as they can.
Also, try each healer, see which play style best fits you. Some are reactionary (healing after damage is taken) and some proactive (setting up heals before damage comes in - requiring more in depth knowledge of the dungeons).
You could also look into joining a guild or community that can help you learn.
Could it be because tanks are immortal there? 
Don’t worry about “overhealing.” If the boss has 0 HP and your team has at least 1 HP, then you’ve done your job.
Also, Sage = Disc Priest. Frikken’ lub me some Sage in ~THE GAME WHICH SHALL NOT BE NAMED~!
Cracks me up to see peeps standing, feet planted and hard-casting on Sage…
If you are worried about mana, learn which spells help you regenerate it once you spec into that talent. RDruid has innervate. RShaman has mana spring. Disc Priest has damaging spells that can regenerate mana. I have no clue on the other healers.
The tip is be like 4x pickier than you are as dps because you can afford to be now. The better the group, the easier it is for you (by an insane amount). The worse the group, the harder it is for you (also by an insane amount).
You’ll have to learn as you go. Learn to use your cds much like everyone else does - earlier in big scary pulls so you’re not playing catchup.
Learn the encounters. Sometimes the dps at 50% can get a few HoTs and be fine as there is no damage coming out again soon. Sometimes you need to get them topped off again before X mechanic.
Learn the tanks. Most good tanks will be pretty self sufficient; unfortunately you might not see many good tanks in the easier content. Try to stay calm when healing them as they’re generally not at risk of just exploding out of nowhere.
Blood will mostly look after itself but can take a hammering on the first pull before they get rolling (unless they start the dungeon popping cds). As mentioned, as long as they have plenty of runic power they’re just one button away from full healing.
Bear is a meat wall and can do their own healing. Usually they like to pull big around their 3min immortality cd. Might need healing between uses.
Warrior generally won’t take any damage until suddenly they do (magic, bleeds) but they’re usually more a slowly trickling down tank.
Paladin has a batman belt of cds and utility and are usually fine and if they do get low they can instantly heal back up if it’s an infrequent event.
Demon hunter can be a bit yoyo and will happily zoom off at 10% in queued content but they do a lot of self healing. Keep an eye on those weirdos.
Monk is another one that will generally trickle down. Until high level content nothing will ever just make them go splat.
They probably take the most damage but it’s spread out over time so just keeping hots rolling or giving them beacon will keep them fine for the most part. Due to their passive, they have a chance equal to their crit chance (generally 30-50%) for any heal they receive to be increased by 80% and they have the smallest health pool so pretty easy to top off most of the time.
Such a mood tbh. I couldn’t imagine maining anything but Gunbreaker in FF, but tanking in WoW is another level of anxiety for me entirely.
Overhealing is a given the bulk of the time in any sort of content, at least it is for me given holy paladin does a lot of high burst healing which can easily over heal and my beacon over heals constantly.
The primary key though is to know when to press something, in that when you go to heal someone, you are pressing the appropriate button in response to the damage event. In that if a single player is taking damage you could wait a couple ticks potentially and then heal them, or use something minor such as renew or rip tide that heals them for a burst and then HoT’s them to full health. Then for major group events, in my case I would wait for the event to happen and press divine toll on the group, and follow it with daybreak if there is more heavy AoE going out and spot heal with the buffed holy shocks and flash of lights as needed.
Healing isn’t hard once you understand the flow of the fights, in that you know when to press the gas pedal and when not to. As a lot of it comes down to preplanning and reacting to damage events, and then using your spam buttons to spot heal as needed for single target burst hits or rot damage, until the next major event.
I personally use ELVUI and OmniCD as ELVUI will show on peoples health bars when an enemy is casting on them so I can prepare to heal or defensive them. Along OmniCD allows me to track peoples defensives so I can see when they use them and when they may need an external from me.
All in all healing comes down to playing as a healer for a bit and just figuring out what kind of healer works the best for you as each healing class and spec plays differently. Then just practice pratice pratice and you’ll nail it down in no time.
Wait until next expansion.
Refreshing to actually see a helpful topic in GD
I wonder if it’s a reasonable idea to create a “burner” character to learn the ropes. I have a ton of alts in the 60-70 range. Creating a new character that I can delete at any time might take some stress away. Does that sound crazy?