I would pick a class with an interesting theme. Or a class with spells I have seen - I got into Druids because I had a Druid friend who would be there to heal and tank and bres back in BC and Vanilla.
I would recommend healing on a Paladin first - it’s pretty basic and intuitive while leveling. It will help you get the idea of when to use cool downs, externals on others, priority healing patterns and such
Evoker and Druid take a little more getting used to. Priests are straight forward but they are very weak and may be frustrating.
I would say start healing with a Paladin - heck, maybe Tank and see which healers are doing what to keep you alive, and if that looks fun.
I was a healbot user, but healbot recently stopped working so I’m looking for a replacement. trying the click casting but Id ont’ like that I don’t have tool tips.
Addons can help greatly, depending on your style of play. Some people like to use skills off their bars and use hover over macros so you can use your mouse pointer to pick and heal.
Others like myself like to click raid frames. In which case there are a few addons that can give you customizable raid frames. I use Healbot and have just about all my heals and decurses setup per mouse button with modiifiers like ctrl/shift/alt. So my heals that don’t require a target stays on my bar, the rest that require targets are setup in Healbot.
Its personal preference though, not everyone wants to intereact with raid frames, so the former with mouse over healing might be preferred.
Its something that requires practice, and I find it fun. It is not for everyone though. Follower dungeons are great for practice, for a little more challenge, let a dps lead the way as it’ll give you a bit more of that chaotic pug feel.
Once you develop your muscle memory, things get much easier and you’ll be reacting without much thought.
Finding a healer that you like is important too, maybe create one and try that max level trial thing to see all their spells to help you decide.
The increasing complexity is why I stopped healing. Just look at the replies you are getting. Get addon’s, make macro’s, watch videos etc. I liked healing better when it was 2 heals and maybe a cooldown and dodge that one or two mechanics. Now it’s a screen full of timer bars and alerts while playing DDR dodging garbage while trying to manage a dozen or more hot keys and still trying to keep people alive when my best heal barely moves the massive HP pools people have now. Gratz to the people that like the micro managing playstyle but I am out.
Agreed, I started this very toon with the intent of learning healing, way too much going on. I switched to DPS at level 34. Sometimes ppl ask in a raid or instance if I can heal, I laugh
I don’t use heal addons and I learned how to play Disc by playing Whitemane in Heroes of the Storm, they both play identical to each other. No video, no tutorials, no nothing.
It’s DPSing to heal, it’s not complicated. Maybe the complication is getting your brain to understand it, but actually doing it isn’t complicated.
I find that disc works best for me as well. I also play a fistweaver. Both can require plenty of “act like a normal healer” moments but for the better part it’s all about keeping your damage transferring to group heals and adding a bit of DPS. The two best healing specs just because of that imo.
I main a dps but I’ve healed on every class as alts at some point or another in my wow career. tldr is know your spells. figure out your cheap filler heals, your single target big hitters, your aoe heals, and then your longer cds.
Also know the fights so you know when to expect big damage that needs cds vs weaving in your cheap heals with your more expensive ones during the normal damage that happens.
Do easy content like heroics, its easy to almost immediately outgear them, to get used to your spells, and just get a feel for the class. Slowly challenge yourself with more difficult content as you gain gear and confidence.
Right now I’m healing on a resto shaman who’s been my main healing alt since SL. I used to find totems incredibly clunky and unintuitive to use but now I love them. It just takes practice. And if you say at the beginning that you’re learning to heal the vast majority of people will be understanding and help you out. I promise! Most people who play wow are actually very kind and helpful despite the impression the minority of those who arent can leave. <3
One thing about healing, if one person is getting chunked and they aren’t the tank, it’s 100% the DPS fault they are getting chunked. They’re either standing in frontals, standing in bad or they aren’t interrupting or the tank isn’t holding threat and people are getting auto attacked.
The only exception to this is debuffs going out, but they’re designed to be healed through.
If someone gets a curse I’m either using Pain Supp on them or Rapture, depends on what’s happening, it might be possible to heal through it normally.
Curses going out nonstop endlessly can be a DPS issue also. If they aren’t killing crap fast enough and prioing, the trash is going to spam mechanics over and over. This is a sleeper thing you will see in low keys: mechanics just being spammed.
When we were doing Priory with bad DPS, mechanics were getting spammed like crazy in there, aka, the consecrates.
Healer to ranged DPS. Melee is also DDR game play, unless it’s like Sin Rogue or Unholy, then it’s check list game play or manage 20 things game play.
All 3 Rogue specs take a dump on healing in terms of APM and management. You think healing people is hard? Try doing your opener as a Rogue with 500 mechanics going off on you the moment the fight starts.
That worked for me in previous expansions (and other games), but it doesn’t work in the War Within due to hero talents. You hit max level and now you have not only pick hero talents, but also the spells that go along with that, and how to optimize using those healer talents. Like, you don’t have a sense of how to play totemic or far-seerer Shaman until you have those talents.
Also doesn’t work in TWW because Normal and Heroic aren’t tuned, so the tank pulls the entire dungeon, takes no damage and you don’t learn or do anything, you’re just playing catch up literally the entire dungeon.
Healing leveling content is more toxic than keys.
I remember my first raiding on my shaman and being SHOCKED I was having mana issues - which turns out to be a trademark of Shaman.
But until that moment, I had never had any mana issues and I had basically been trained to pop all my cds every 30 seconds or whenever the tank decided to stop pulling.
Meanwhile, on my evoker, I was like “What do I do when the group takes massive damage?” and the response was like “oh, that’s their weakness”
In short, I find you don’t truly understand the strengths and weakenesses of a particular healer until you hit content that pushes you.
Well that is crappy. To turn around and change how your whole spec works at the end of leveling seems miserable. I had issue like that in bfa with the azerite power.
If you’re doing time walking scaling is super borked. Honestly a few ways to go about it. Friends, who will help and be patient, or random bgs where if you lose you lose, but it’ll give you a chance to really make full use of your kit.
