I’ve returned after a long break and saw a new healing class with all new mechanics, so naturally I got excited. My best play time was healing ICC25 when it was “current.”
It’s reasonably fun, but I found myself falling behind the party. The tank would use every speed boosting ability they had and pull several packs of mobs while out of healing range, then the DPS would catch up and start burning down while I blew cooldowns to keep the tank alive. DPSers stood in all the goo and got few heals, and naturally blamed me if they died. If I paused to top off the party after trash or a boss, I’d be way behind the tank again for the next pull. Hover should be a cooldown IN COMBAT, not to just try to keep up with the aggressive pace of the party.
Okay. Maybe I just don’t know my class. Let’s try the priest and druid again. Nope: Same problem just a little slower to arrive. The priest and druid have more range and the druid has more HoTs (and instants, when Tree of Life is popped) so that was the easiest.
If people are running like this and still actively playing, it means I have my healing philosophy wrong. I just don’t know which direction to go without angering my group. Do I ignore DPSers and just try to keep up with the tank? Do I stop topping off after damage-heavy battles and just hope I can keep up with the healing once they slow down to take the next pack? Am I expected to pop cooldowns on every 2nd or 3rd trash pull? (I can - just gotta make sure I stop doing it 2-4 minutes before the boss.)
Even tanks “in training” go for the fast pace. I had to teach more than one that they shouldn’t expose their backs to mobs and to take a quick glance at party health/resource bars between pulls and the rest of the run was fine after just the most basic of tank tips. These admittedly inexperienced tanks still tore through LFG instances at insane speeds.
I honestly want to get better and I want to be a healer, but if I am expected to keep this pace I’m just not going to be able to keep up with what is expected of me. I saw there’s a big “go go go” thread and people on one side saying it’s terrible and we need a solution, people on the other side saying it’s how it is meant to be, and people in the middle saying it’s terrible but it’s how it always has been so “get good.”
From experienced healers out there: what can I do differently to keep the pace and make a happy party? How do I communicate that evokers have much lower range, few instants (though empowered spells are neat) and may need to catch up between pulls?
Give it time, you’ll get use to keeping up.
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good luck but its gogogo now. I avoid groups with a passion and friendly guilds are not raining from the sky as some folks seem to think.
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Unfortunately it’s just a matter of practice.
Watch videos about fights, get comfortable predicting damage phases. Keep at it, don’t let disrespectful players dissuade you from playing.
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I don’t heal in pugs/LFR/LFG/etc. Only guild.
That is the only advice I can give otherwise there is not a whole lot you can do to stop speed runs.
When I do pug (which is not often) as dps, I don’t really see any issues w/heals or dps keeping up with a fast tank but again, my milage may vary .
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This is just the norm when it comes to LFG, and it only gets worse the further along in a season/expansion as more people get geared. It’s partly why I stopped playing my healer alt because the “Go go go” mentality made an already stressful role more stressful and no longer fun. So, I totally get where you’re coming from.
Once you get into mythics(+) and raids, that rushing method no longer works and groups slow way down. It’s mainly just a problem in LFG.
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Ok so I’m going off the assumption that this is in low dungeons like time walking or heroics because you mention just coming back to the game and you mention tanks taking hits from behind, in M+ they would just vaporize. So the first thing I would tell you is that these low lvl dungeons don’t represent the actual game, in there the mobs die so fast that while you catch up and try to cast a heal everything is dead and they are already running to the next pack, you constantly have to play catch up. In M+ things take for longer to day so you always have time to catch up and cast stuff.
Second point about evoker healing, no one in low dungeon have the skill or awareness to understand positioning with their healer, or they literally don’t know what evokers do, you will have this issue for the rest of your life in these low dungeons. Better players in higher dungeons sometimes (but not always) understand that and stand in better places to help you out. But you will still find more traditional healers easier to play.
The “gogogo” attitude was always a thing, no one wants to waste their afternoon in one dungeon when it can be cleared in 20 minutes. The only moments where dungeons go a bit slower is the beginning of the season where everyone is learning. Right now you started at the worse possible time, no one is learning dungeon 25 years into the season, they just want to farm things quick to gear up for next season. When Season 2 starts you should have a much better time and I suggest you try to keep up with the “front wave” as much as possible, avoid getting stuck with the worse players who fall behind, they will make everything terrible for you as a healer. Healer is the role that is most affected by the group performance, in a good group you have way less to do, in a bad group you have to fix all their mistakes.
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Well, first of all my level 70s have better gear than you do at lvl 80. So appropriate gear will help a lot. My healer just tries to keep up with the tank and keep him alive. If I have time, I’ll throw some heals out on the dps, but they are pretty much on their own in a speed run.
Honestly, in 5-mans, speed running dungeons is just the way the game is played now. You can debate whether that’s by design, or driven by the players, but it is what it is. Unfortunately, healing is the least compatible with that style of play unless you have a lot of speed and instant cast spells.
Healing kind of gets silly late in a patch cycle, too. The longer people have played the content, and the more gear they have, the more likely they’ll just plow through things. Heck, in 5-mans, I spend more time DPSing now than actually healing. When the next patch releases, you’ll see a small bump in difficulty (but probably not much) to the point where things might slow down for a bit.
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Thank you all for responding. You, especially @Pritcha, caught on to something I didn’t mention explicitly—this is low dungeons for initial gearing. Better gear always helps healers, and I’m in that in-between stage where healing feels punishing, between reaching 80 and being able to even enter heroics or raids. When I left around patch 6.2, the growth path was open-world content and LFG, then PUGs for badges or lucky drops, then heroics for enough badges to even enter raids. After that came LFR to get used to mechanics before tackling real raids, and finally, progression raiding with a regular group. There’s a lot of content after step 2, but I haven’t reached it yet. Guilds help, but I don’t have the time to dedicate every Tuesday night to heroic ICC 25 like I did back in 2010.
Evoker feels very different, both for me and for the rest of the party, since they don’t realize how short the range is, how long the cast times are, or how positionally dependent the best heals are. It doesn’t help that one of the most powerful AoE heals is not only positional but also empowered—by the time it finishes charging, players may have already scattered. Hover is a good skill, but it doesn’t help empowered spells. I’d rather it functioned as a flight stamina bar with an on/off toggle instead of a fixed duration with charges. That would feel more dragon-like.
I’m having the easiest time on my Druid, which pleases me since that’s a 16+ year-old character. Being able to toss HoTs on the run makes it much easier to keep up with fast-moving groups, and I suspect that’s what will get me through this stage the fastest. It’s a shame that the newest healer class since 2012 has a bigger wall to climb before even reaching raids. I may have to shelve the Evoker.
Again, thanks. I’ll give it a few more weeks before my next renewal and see if I can push past this and start having fun on the other side. I like some of the new stuff and miss some of the old, and I don’t regret reactivating and upgrading to the new expansion, but auto-renewal isn’t turned on yet. Knowing I’m not alone in this is reassuring, and there are multiple ways through, so I appreciate the suggestions.