I want to learn to heal, advice?

Community General Discussion
1

I consider myself a good solid group/team oriented player.

As a dps I can self dispel, avoid bad, put out great numbers, and provide support at the cost of my own dps to allow the group to succeed.

As a tank I can manage my pulls and create solid death balls while locking down casters and important enemies while minimizing my damage intake.

As a healer, I flounder. I panic most of the time and have issues managing my CDs and abilities/mana.

Here’s an example: My wife plays a Resto Shaman, I told her I wanted to learn to heal so she sat me on her comp on her shaman and my guildies took me along on a UR +4 to try it out.

I was in full on panic mode the whole time. 90% of my time was “OH GOD CAST FASTER, DONT DIE ON ME” While spamming heals to top the group up.

I screwed up every Spirit Link and would drop rain only for bad to be throw right on top of it and end up being useless.

As someone who wants to do well with every role, this bothers me. Is there a healer that is considered “easy to learn, hard to master” that I should try? Any general tips or things I could watch/read to get a better idea or how to handle situations?

I want to improve as a player and being well rounded and able to play all 3 roles is important to me so any advice is helpful. (GIT GUD, got it bois)

I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read and reply. I hope you have a wonderful day!

2

Either some aspirin or a few bottles of rum will help :+1:

11 Likes
3

leveling a healer will probably let you learn to play one better than just jumping straight in at max level, imo anyway.

or at the very least, start with a normal/heroic dungeon, hell even a m0, having little/no experience in a role and jumping straight into a m+ doesn’t seem like the best learning experience.

16 Likes
4

Practice.
Then get more practice.
Repeat.

1 Like
5

We learn by doing.

1 Like
6

Yeah I totally get that but even if I use a trial just to kinda get a feel for it before I level one so I dont end up with a 115 or so that I hate playing. Thanks for the reply!

Edit: We did a +4 because my wife’s shaman is 392ilvl so a normal or heroic would’ve been a faceroll.

7

Pick Priest. Go Holy Priest. Press 3 buttons and equip any high level gear not caring about stats or traits and top healing meters.

Also… avoid Holy Pally unless you wanna be the token devo aura scrub and constantly bottom of the meters.

8

I echo the earlier poster about healing a heroic or M0 dungeon. It’s more about getting used to your toolkit and learning when to use what ability for what situation. Also note some healers use different abilities in dungeons vs. Raids. Monk for example, I rarely use essence font in dungeons, but use it a lot in raids.

9

I’ve tried HPally and it felt really really awkward. We have a HPally who is crazy good but the playstyle isn’t there for me. Other than HPally and Shaman I’ve never played a healer past around 70. My main shaman experience was in Wotlk anyway and that was lolchainheal 24/7 in ICC

10

It’s pretty easy. Don’t let anyones health hit 0%.

And if your successful be prepared to get kicked anyway because the tank feels slighted that they dropped below 25% hp.

I jest, it’s not that bad.

My real advice is remember all of your abilities. I’ll be sitting there struggling to keep up and be like “oh yeah healing totem…” Or some nonsense.

2 Likes
11

Literally after a fight ended I’d go “son of a- I didnt use Healing Tide”

1 Like
12

IMO Resto Shaman is already basically this, maybe Holy Priest if you want a bit better of an "o shi - " button in Holy Word: Serenity. For RSham remember to drop your healing totem, use them Riptides for Tidal Waves procs, and if you’re talented into Spiritwalker’s Grace mash that bad boy if you have to move a ton like a bunch of the UR bosses. Echo of the Elements is also OP for dungeons IMO; two charges of heal totem and Riptide are lit.

Shammy healer is pretty strong but not the strongest for M+ - I still think they’re a solid healer for a healing newcomer to start and practice with though.

13

You just gotta practice to really get it but each healing class handles differently so it’s hard to give you a one-size-fits-all beyond that.

14

It’s literally all about muscle memory and knowing your toolkit inside and out. This only comes from spending hours at the wheel, nothing else.

Healing is easy to start – you have usually 2-3 main healing spells, and one or two obviously useful cooldowns for emergencies (commonly referred to as “oh sh!t” buttons) – but very difficult to really master.

Level something up from scratch. It’s the only way to really know your toolkit inside and out, learn what works when, and just get down the habit of your different spells. Then, once you hit max, spend a lot of time running dungeons. Queues pop fast so there’s no reason not to do PuGs, and despite how painful some of them can be, you’ll learn a great deal carrying them through runs. Taking care of that one idiot DPS who can’t stop pulling aggro or standing in bad over and over and over, for example, will mean you know exactly where to go to save someone when something bad happens on the runs that matter – and teach you how to manage your mana expenditure for harder keys when there’s no time to sit and drink between pulls.

Try several different classes. The healer specs all play quite differently, so what you are best at will vary depending on your personal style. Some of them will “click” better with you than others. Be open to changing it up halfway through the leveling experience if something just isn’t working for you.

Look into a couple of helpful external tools, like mouseover macros. They’ll really help cut your reaction time, which means you’ll feel less like you’re floundering around. I know that “oh god heal faster” feeling, and it’s scary. Anything that will help eliminate it, or reduce it, is good.

Personally, I think resto druids are a great first learn. You can keep HoTs running to the point where you really feel much less desperate to get out a hard-cast heal (as opposed to holy paladins who, IMO, are a non-stop “oh god cast faster” fiesta lol). They’ve also got some nifty damage mitigation skills to help you catch up to the damage the tank is taking. Monks are great too, if only because they have hella single target healing, so I rarely feel left behind on the damage the way I sometimes do on my disc priest if I don’t know the fights well enough.

TL;DR: healing is purely reactive, there’s no set rotation to memorize, so the only way to get good is practice practice practice with a little experimentation thrown in for spice. :wink:

5 Likes
15

  1. the way you play your character is half the battle. set up click casts, bindings, and a ui that lets you see what you need to know in a way that works for you. the goal is to focus on the fight, instead of targeting, clicking all over the screen, and looking everywhere for buffs/debuffs/cd’s, etc… you want your eyes on your character

  2. you’ll have a better idea of how to use your cd’s with some practice in each dungeon. you obviously outgear the +4 underrot by a lot. so you have the power to cover a bad group and their mistakes. knowing what kind of dmg can happen over the next few minutes is what lets you plan cd’s. pay attention to the TYPE of dmg that comes out and use the spell that fits

if you don’t trust the group to interrupt harrowing despair, i’d slink that. the rest of the dmg from trash up to the first boss is spot healing unless you pull ticks. if you do pull ticks, i say pull both packs and pop healing tide totem. there isn’t much need for group healing til second boss casts tantrum. so you’ll have 3min til then. if noobs are stacking for dark omen you can use healing rain and healing stream. the first boss is all burst dmg on one player if an add cast goes off. so you’re just using normal spells there.

i could go on for days lol, but hopefully this gives you an idea of how to think about healing

1 Like
17

I have been healing at a decently high level for over 10 years, and here is my advice. I would not start off trying to learn to heal in M+ (or at least high M+). Shaman kind of struggle in M+ compared to other healers depending on the Affix (but they still do fine). M+ imo, is the most stressful environment for new healers. I would suggest learning in Normal or LFR raid environments. Since you are new to healing, having your raid frames set up correctly is very important. Most healers pull their raid frames to the bottom center of the screen or off to right or left. The default healing frames in the top left corner is far from ideal. I would suggest you have mouse over macros set up for all your healing spells, or download VuhDo/heal bot for custom raid frames that you can assign mouse clicks to your certain spells. Whether you use Macros or VuhDo, it comes down to player choice, one is not really better than the other. I personally use VuhDo and swear by it.

CD Usage is the most important aspect of healing, and how you use each big CD is very important. However, you do not want to be conservative on healing CDs, one of the biggest mistakes healers make is holding on to their CDs for too long. In raid environments, I am looking for excuses to use my CDs. Generally, you have a good idea on when the dmg spikes are coming on each boss, and I try to have some type of big heal or CD ready to go for each spike in DMG. This will not only increase your HPS but will also save you and the other healers Mana over the coarse of the fight. If you are in a 7-9 minute fight, it would be a huge waste if you don’t get off your big 3min CD at least twice. For example, if there is a decent spike in dmg near the start of the fight, dropping a healing tide totem is far more mana efficient than trying to healing rain/Chain heal everyone back to full health, and that CD will be ready again at the end of the fight when you need the big heals for the burn phase.

M+ healing is far more reactive and can vary heavily on trash packs and groups over pulling. Good healers, learn to look out for when a big dmg spike is coming (tough pack or overpull) and are ready to drop at least on big CD as soon as the fight starts to turn south. Many healers wait until the group is well below 50% health before they hit their “oh s**t buttons”. Try and stay ahead of the dmg the best you can. On healers like Shaman and Monk, they have an AOE stun that is super helpful to buy you time to catch up when you fall behind on healing.

Healing is the one role that requires more of a feeling out process than other roles. This just takes some time to get use to. So just remember to get your UI set up so you are comfortable, be quick to use CDs, and find a healing class that fits your play style. I have mained every healing class in the game at some point and they are all great for different reasons. I have stuck to Monk and Shaman more recently though but that is just me. I hope this helps!

3 Likes
18

Ive played most of them. Restoration is the easiest, as far as Im concerned.
I think youre just getting the jitters. Just give it time. A few runs and you’ll be more relaxed.

1 Like
19

And the most underappreciated and thankless.
I always try to toss a couple drops at our healer just to say thanks.
Tanks and DPS never pay attention to the healer who’s keeping them alive unless something goes wrong, then its all his fault, supposedly.
If we’d start treating healers right, then there wouldnt be so much anxiety on their part when theyre just learning to heal.

2 Likes
20

Why don’t you start in a bit easier content - starting in a mythic plus 4 doesn’t sound like a good idea. Also, I would like to comment about the motives about why your wife would do that to you but well…

2 Likes
21

In pve almost all healers are easy to learn but it just depends also on your play style. Going to heal a +4 mythic as a try out honestly wasn’t the best idea. Start off with normal or even just a regular mythic with a group of friends/guildies.

There are certain situations where either you and your group are familiar with each other’s play style and understand when to drop what or it is better to be in voice chat first few times to let them know you’re dropping spirit link for example on shaman.

Personally I find holy priest in pve probably the easiest healer to play and then resto sham/druid right after. Just remember it really depends on style. Holy paladin is not hard either but it doesn’t have as much oh fork buttons! It does have other utilities though that are helpful.

1 Like