I have no idea how to heal raid

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
1

So i have 60 priest i thought i’d play as shadow. But that was dumb idea, i was dumb thinking it wasnt.

So i’m trying to start healing, dungeons are easy (but no one runs strat and i can’t get that healing robe).

Never actually healed before even in retail (outside of LFR on one of my alts, but that doesn’t count really)

But in raid i just have no idea what to do. I start healing, some else already healed this target and i either cancel cast or waste mana. And my hps just so low because i can’t actually heal right people.

On heavy dispel bosses all mana goes to dispel, how do i even heal there.

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People use mods that will show you if someone in your raid is already being healed by somebody. If you start there that will probably help. Guilds will also usually assign targets to healers whether it’s one of the tanks or the raid.

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any addon in particular?

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I think most healing addons come with “healcom”.

Most common are probably grid and vuhdoo

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I use ShadowedUnitFrames but you could use XPerl or Grid or some other frames addon to show your raid frames.

They will all show incoming heals on targets so you can see if someone else is already casting a heal.

That alone is a huge help.

I also use mouseover macros to cast my heals on the target that mouse is hovering over (so I don’t have to change my target). They look something like:

/cast [@mouseover,help,nodead] Heal; [help,nodead] Heal; []

That macro says cast heal at my mouseover target if it’s friendly and not dead, otherwise cast heal at my target if it’s friendly and not dead otherwise just cast heal and let god sort it out.

Put the macro on your action bar and keybind it to R and then when you press the R key it will cast your heal macro. Repeat for all the spells you want to mouseover.

The only other healing mod I use is Clique so I can mousebind dispel and things like that (eg Shift Left Click casts dispel on my mouse target, Shift Right Click casts Abolish Disease).

With that setup you can heal anything on any class. I’ve used variations of it in retail for a decade and it’s nice.

As for a healing strategy, it will take some practise to raid heal effectively. Use a medium heal as your go to. Note that you can choose the rank of your spell. If you have a lot of +healing you can get good value out of a lower rank heal and spam it cheaply.

So, max rank heal, or maybe a few ranks lower. Or maybe a max rank lesser heal if you have good gear. You can cast that heal quite a few times before you go oom. Figure out a nice medium heal based on your gear.

Use flash heal if you have to heal them fast and mana be damned. Spamming flash heal will make you oom fast. Use greater heal when you will get good value from it, it’s a big slow expensive cast and you want it to heal for the full amount.

Renew is not that good in raid, it will get sniped and it takes up a buff slot on the player. Don’t use it too much.

Prayer of Healing heals your group for a good amount and costs a lot. Use sparingly but it’s effective if you get full value.

One trick you can use to go easy on your mana, cast a heal and stop the cast if it’s not required. Always be casting but just keep stopping until you need it to land. This keeps you outside the 5 second rule. The 5 second rule is: if you haven’t cast a spell for 5 seconds your combat mana regeneration from spirit kicks in. If you cast, you regen from spirit stops. Regen from mp5 stat works regardless of the 5sr.

This takes some practise but good for healing a tank or someone taking steady damage and getting healed by multiple healers.

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Down rank flash heal so it doesn’t screw you as bad when you get sniped.

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i use 4 and 7 ranks. Big heals feels poinltess, if target needs big heal he either will die or someone else flash him before i finish

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It takes some experience and addons surely help. If you use Luna it already has healcoms inside to show predicted healing.
You gotta reach quick as you see the health dropping and quickly search with your cursor for your next target to heal.
At this point MC is very easy content and if your guild runs with many healers it might not even be your problem - there’s just not much damage to be healed and a lot of healers waiting to waste their mana. Fights are so fast that before you realize its over

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If you target the boss and get a swing timer you can anticipate when the damage will land and cast around that.

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My first healer toon must have been after rolling 6-7 dps and tank toons. Thought healing was passive and lame. But after adopting the philosophy of healer-fu, it became fun.

You can l2heal in low pressure environments like AV. That’s where I tested out different addons and ui’s. No consequences for bad heals there. Dps are usually grateful for any heal they get. lol

And if you can keep your enforcers, fc and yourself up in WSG, you can easily heal pve like a 5-man or a raid easily. Might even be boring by comparison.

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It’s a complicated issue, really.

Healing isn’t so simple that there’s always one solution. As a DPS or a tank, you do the same thing over and over and it never changes outside of RNG giving you a lucky crit or proc.

As a healer, though, you have to adapt to the other healers’ capabilities and your raid’s incoming damage.

As a Priest, you’re uniquely equipped to heal people “reactively” with Flash Heal, just slightly faster than a Paladin’s Flash of Light if you have 3/8 T1, otherwise equal. However, reactive healing generally produces poor results no matter what class you play. The best way to improve your healing is to learn to play proactively.

What that means is essentially always being aware of the damage people are going to take, rather than the damage they already have. When playing reactively, you’re noticing a health bar isn’t full, then casting a heal on them. This can be improved with mouseover macros or add-ons, practicing reaction times, etc, but is ultimately limited by your cast speed + your reaction.

By contrast, proactive healing involves casting the heal before the damage is taken, so the cast finishes immediately after. This is easiest to perform on dragon fights with the breath abilities like Shadow Flame and Breath of Fire. Simply charge up a bigger, slower heal on a target that is about to take lots of damage.

On Firemaw, for example, there is lots of proactive healing you can do. If you are particularly skilled, you can time Renew ticks with the tick of Flame Buffet, or a Flash Heal. You can use the easy method of just using Power Word: Shield to prevent the damage in the first place, as long as you know that damage will actually be taken (though this isn’t very mana efficient or high HPS). You can also charge a Greater Heal when you know a breath is being cast on the tank.

There’s only three bosses that come to my mind: Lucifron, Baron Geddon, and Chromaggus.

For Lucifron, your raid should use Restorative Potions and you shouldn’t need to dispel anything aside from Mind Control.

For Baron Geddon, there’s very little healing that needs to be done in the first place, so you should be content to just dispel spam away. If your guild has healing assignments, you can save some mana by only having to dispel 5 people before going back to healing.

For Chromaggus, there are usually two dedicated dispellers, and one will be a Paladin, while the other is a Druid. If you’re Horde, there’s probably something you’ll have to do as a Priest, Shamans are using Totems, and the Druid decurses as normal. For that, if you’re assigned to dispel, you ONLY dispel. Otherwise, you only heal. It’s fairly easy.

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Turn on Raid Frames.
Play Whack-A-Mole.

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Exactly what I was gonna say. Healing is whack-a-mole. Just have your finger on the jump or cancel button to cancel the spell you’ve been casting at the last second in case someone gets their heal off first.

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It’s also a fail of the raid leader/healing class leader if healing assignments aren’t given out.
Or if they are and you don’t have an assignment, you just spot heal the raid.

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If you are a tailor, craft Truefaith Vestments. If you aren’t a tailor, drop one of your professions (preferably a gathering one), powerlevel tailoring, craft Truefaith Vestments, then drop tailoring and pick up the profession you dropped.

It might sound like a lot, but you’ll keep that robe until you get a T2 chest at the earliest, so unless your guild has Nefarian on farm, you will get a lot of use out of it.

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Just reroll Paladin and spam flash of light on mt.

Done.

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you should try spamming ubrs until you get good at healing

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i will reroll paladin in TBC. There’s no paladins for horde in classic tho