I just got Nalia here to level 10 and dungeons opened up. I am brand new to holy priest and rather brazenly (and foolishly) just dove into dungeons (Deadmines, Wailing Caverns Stockades) to try to practice healing. I learned rather quickly that I need some experience and some heeeellllpppp. I wasn’t party-wiping bad…but I wasn’t good either. So, I’m wondering…other than getting Nalia to MoP and running Proving Grounds tests…how can I physically practice healing so I start getting the hang of which buttons to hit at what time? Just running dungeons seems to be the only option but I’m rather afraid of letting people die while I practice. (And yes…I’ve watched tutorials, but watching and doing are two different things).
Can anyone help please?
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best way is trial and error
dungeons will be the better teacher
Edit: blood dk health is a yo-yo dont freak out about blood dk
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Heal Bot…press a heal spell when the health gets low?
Healing is best learned while doing. Knowing what buttons to press and when comes with experience. People in levelling dungeons aren’t typically mean spirited and aren’t likely to be nasty after a wipe. Only other thing I can suggest is to que with a friend who has healer experience. But I learned just by doing it over and over again after watching / reading a couple guides. Learning healing takes time, its not as straight forward as tanking / dps as its more about reacting at whats happening less about just “doing” things.
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Just to add to this, for healing Blood DKs you need to pay attention to both their health AND runic power bar.
Only use big heals if the Blood DK has both low HPs and low runic power.
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I appreciate all of you very much. I will learn by doing, reading, and watching!
Keep that prayer of mending going ping ping ping ping
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A few things, first I’d say having a decent UI will help a lot, doesn’t need to be anything too fancy but the one thing I’ll suggest is to make sure to enable Raid style party frames, the default UI provides pretty good ones just need to enable them and then move them somewhere closer to the center either to the side or below your character. (You can enable class color and re-size them as you like to make them look nice too).
And the other piece of advise I have is more of a social thing… Many players will often assume everyone is a 10+ year vet and knows everything already, and might have very little patience… However I’ve also found that if you communicate at the start that you are new and learning most players will actually be waaay more understanding/patient and willing to help.
So just start the dungeon with a message like: “Hey team I’m new to healing but I’ll be trying my best but please have a little patience with me if I make some mistakes” or something like that. Might not be 100% effective but I’m fairly confident in that most players will be willing to slow down a bit and even help you out if they can… And I mean if it turns out the players you were grouped with are not willing to cooperate or be a bit patient then honestly you probably don’t wanna be in that group either.
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Trial and error is the best teacher, I have been healing for 15+ years and there are moments in high Dungeon keys I completely freeze and don’t know what to press. Just keep practicing, keep playing the game. The more you play the more things will become muscle memory and eventually get easier.
The more you play the same class helps a ton, stick to your priest and I promise before long it’s gonna click.
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Healing largely comes down to 2 main things:
- Using your most efficient standard heal for said scenario; these are usually ones without a cooldown.
- Being aware of your cooldowns, and planning which one to use the second crap hits the fan.
All you need to do from there, is spam single target or AoE heals, and figure out prompts for using spells with cooldowns. For example, prayer of mending is good to use when you don’t see it as a buff on your party, and holy word sanctify (once you get it) is good to instinctively use when you see multiple people taking damage and are close enough together.
Panicking as a healer happens the most when you’ve lost your pre-planning for higher-damage situations. So stay relaxed, and start off by figuring out spells to fall back on. If you use everything, just spam heals. If you wipe, you will usually realize “I could have done that” or “oh no this CD was still up.”
You’re a low enough level that all you really need to do is spam heals, though. Low level dungeons hit surprisingly hard at times. Some leveling dungeons wreck tanks in 3 hits, others barely tickle. It’s a flaw in WoW’s leveling…one of many.
Anyways, if my post was too long, just refer to the two numbered points made near the top.
GL.
Oh also, switch to raid frames for 5man parties. Makes healing sooooo much easier.
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When i played my resto sham, i practiced in pvp since its fast paced and its ok if people died
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Yep, having a UI that you’re comfortable reading to know when you can do what is basically the number 1 thing. Doesn’t matter if it’s Blizzard default, or festooned with a dozen addons, so long as it works for you. Next is making sure you’re keeping up with stuff that’s good to use on cd for your spec. Easiest one is Prayer of Mending, since it’s fire and forget.
Healing is all about muscle memory. So just get in try it out. Have fun, and if people are hassling you over your inexperience…ignore them. Either IRL, or literally with /ignore.
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This won’t apply as much while leveling, but really good healers can anticipate when the damage is going to come in, and be ready for it ahead of time.
This is just a skill that comes with practice, and doing the same dungeons/raids multiple times.
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I’m sorry, I didn’t see people had continued to reply to this - thank you so very much. I’m definitely still having trouble but will be trying some of your solutions. I really appreciate all the help you guys are offering!
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you always have ‘trouble’ with reactionary roles like healing. half the time the players themselves are leaning on you more than they should so it’s disproportionally hard.
don’t worry about causing some deaths, it comes with the territory.
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This largely depends on the spec/class but in this case it’s better to probably not go that far into details. 