This is advice I could’ve used in the last two dungeons I did. That’s why I mixed my rotation up to include a bit of DPS, and a few heals. (Resto druid for reference) If the tank is really as immortal as they claim they shouldn’t rely overmuch on heals. and If the DPS are really as deadly with those weapons of theirs how are they being out DPS’d by NPC’s. (Yes I know I’m super salty right now.)
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If I could only give 1 piece of advice for healing, it would be practice your cooldowns. You don’t wanna be saving CDs when you need them and that definitely will be a problem when you first start healing, I still struggle a bit with CD usage, but it’s because Resto Druid has a lot of busywork. Repositioning Efflo is almost a game unto its self and that’s just one ability.
Ground targeted abilities are always OP for Blizzard because Blizzard knows how out dated and stupid they are, so they always make them mandatory. Don’t ask, they just love their out dated stuff, it reminds me of the US government.
So you will be at a disadvantage if you don’t use the ground abilities properly, keep that in mind when you pick a healer.
I forgot to mention… if you don’t have one, having a mouse with a bunch of buttons makes this game ten times easier. Mine has 14, but I only really use 9 plus my keyboard and keybinds.
I find click-casting mouse binds are invaluable to me. I wouldn’t be able to do it without it. And since they implemented their own in-house version of it, I don’t have to install Clique anymore. Though I wish they would allow a bind of mouse wheel up and down.
Also, in terms of ease of use, I would say that Holy Priest and Resto Shaman are the most straight-forward, then probably followed by Resto Druid. After that, things get more complicated to varying degrees. Holy Paladins and Mistweaver Monk need to do melee damage to fully utilize, Disciple Priest requires keeping Atonement on people while constantly DPSing, and Preservation Evoker is huge on positioning of spells.
If I were to recommend a first try at it, even though Shaman is my heart, Holy Priest just has SO many “break glass in case of emergency” options that are all reactive, rather than necessarily anticipatory.
Do you know if theres an in house version to do hover over healing? Like if i hover over a tanks nameplate and hit a heal, itll heal without clicking it
My first healer was an Evoker and I didn’t even try it until I was already level 70, didn’t like devastation, and at the time it was the only other Evoker spec. Might be considered a bit unorthodox, but I learned to heal in Epic Battlegrounds. The teams tend to be 35-40 people so it’s unlikely that you’re going to be the only healer (still possible though) which for me at least took some of the pressure off of me. Especially because if someone dies, they could’ve easily died because 10 people were attacking them, you’re not always gonna be able to keep people up in PvP, so it gave me breathing room to feel like I could mess up.
Beyond that I do have to agree with many of the sentiments being said here. I have a paladin that I haven’t tried Holy on because whenever I switch to the spec, look at all the buttons, and my mind is just not ready to do all the reading and actually comprehend what is being said. Leveling from 1(0) to 70 helps you learn what your spells and talents actually do and how they synergize.
I haven’t seen anyone mention this yet, but while you can at level 70 just go and grab the optimal build from places like Wowhead and Icyveins, a suboptimal build you can play optimally is better than an optimal build you play suboptimally. Make your build from scratch if you please, play around with talents to find what you like and don’t like. On my MW, whether I’m doing the Ancient Teachings or Clouded Focus raid builds on Wowhead, I tend to make slight changes that I feel like help me do better even if it’s not necessarily the ‘optimal build.’
And the tank second.
Dont be afraid of using long Cool Downs. Far better than dying. And bring mana drinks.
Run regular dungeons, then Heroics, then Mythic +2s. And warn people. If they zerg and die its on them not you.
And ignore all criticisms but listen to advice.
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In good groups, you will rarely have to heal the tank or dps every second of every pull.
The best advice is to learn when unavoidable dmg is about to hit your dps. Tanks will live if you pay any type of attention to them.
Groups won’t always be like this.
For underperforming groups, you will need to heal more and can actually carry as a healer to an extent. Find out which buttons aoe heal and which buttons single target heal. Then figure out which single target heals are cost efficient. Then go from there.
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People dying is okay. And you need to not let failure phase you. There is no real way to practice other than doing it live.
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This is important, you have to at some point let someone die to save a more pivotal group member. Sometimes someone needs to die, often times people are asking for it.
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You can do it with macros. Just replace the name of the spell below with the one you need and make a macro for each one you plan to use.
#showtooltip Flash of Light /use [@mouseover,help,nodead][help,nodead][@player] Flash of Light
Also, here’s one for instances where you might want to save keybinds. Eg chain lighting and chain heal on the same key but it does dmg or healing based on your target.
#showtooltip /cast [@mouseover,nodead,help] chain heal; chain lightning
You could also use this for riptide; flame shock or dispel; purge.
If you want to heal, or tank, there is a lot of learning and knowledge you will need and ultimately you are going to fail a lot in the learning process. But if I had to give a few healer specific tips it would be:
- you will get blamed a lot, and you have to have a level head in determining whether what they are commenting about is right or wrong without taking it personally and hindering your learning by ignoring it.
A lot of players will look for an easy way out by blaming a healer for their mistakes in order to not look bad to the rest of the group. There are many times where it will not actually be your fault, and there’s nothing you could have done to save them. Ignore these players and don’t let it get to you.
On the other hand other players may come across as toxic, but are in fact right in placing blame on you. Don’t get defensive and discredit what they are saying and instead be honest with yourself and learn from what went wrong. You don’t have to argue, or even respond to them, but truly think about whether they were right and make that change for the next run.
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practice adding dps in during healing downtime as early as you can into your healing journey. Healer dps isn’t crucial until higher keys, but you don’t want to be waiting until high keys to start learning how to weave in damage or you will just be overwhelmed. Not everyone needs to be 100% health at all times if you know the damage patterns well.
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record your gameplay. There’s too much going on in your mind when you’re in a key to fully see and breakdown your mistakes and things you could be doing differently. You learn so much from watching your recordings
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Some of the things i wish i knew when i started healing are.
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If you and a dps are both on deaths door Always choose you.
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Make sure your party and raid frames are in a prominent part of your screen that works for you.
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Keep something that helps you de-stress close by, For me that’s chewing gum or drinking tea etc.
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Dps are gonna yell at ya bu try your best to block it out and believe in yourself.
There is just one rule for healing.
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Level whatever healing spec you want to try entirely from scratch. You’ll be infinitely more familiar with your toolkit and not overwhelmed by the bajillion buttons on a maxed toon, and you’ll get practically instant queues as well.
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This is definitely the way to go, for anything, really.
Be careful if you do leveling dungeons, randoms will not give you time to learn, they just zerg through the content. If possible, get a friend to tank with you so it can go at a normal pace.
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True, but very early on they’re usually capped at just how hard they can push.
Whenever I leveled my first healer, I’d often start a dungeon with some version of “this is my 1st healing toon, don’t go all MDI on me” and more often than not, it’d get me plenty of leniency from the tank along with a chuckle or two.
Other times, you get a Main Protagonist tank who just solos the entire dungeon nomatter what, so you just take the free XP and move on with life lol
Get comfortable with mouseover macros, it’ll make you much quicker to react to damage, and will allow you to keep an enemy targetted so you can toss out some quick damage or a kick.
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I made a few the last week, and theres a lot of twinks (exp locked) tanks that just zerg everything. Problem is, if you fall behind TOO far you wont get kill credit and no loot. 
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That’s nuts. Didn’t encounter much of that last season on my Priest.
This reminded me - you can now just enable mouseover casting in the game options. It’s pretty much required so you can just hover across everyone’s frame for your casts.