I have always been a dps player in wow. But recently I’ve wanted to take a step back from the damage meter obsession and look into a new role. I thoroughly enjoy leveling new accounts through battlegrounds and don’t really want to tank, so I kinda have already eliminated that role. So I started doing some research on healing. However, almost every youtube video that is considered an “introduction” to healing seems extremely overwhelming for someone who has never even healed. I don’t even know how new players would feel without any wow knowledge at all. All these videos recommend complete ui overhauls with about 6-10 addons that they say are REQUIRED just to learn the role… Maybe I’m a bit lazy, but it all seems like so much… How does a complete noob healer get into healing?
Bonus question: How do you level healers 1-60? If I went priest for example, would I need to do shadow priest for pve and use healing only on BGs and dungeons?
A good UI with addons goes a long way when healing higher end content. However, if you’re just leveling and learning, the default Blizzard UI is enough to teach any new healer the basics.
As you level you probably won’t heal more then 5 man parties for PvE and whatever size BG for PvP. You can use the default UI and frames to heal and then as you get more comfortable you can custimize it as you like with addons. I’ve been healing for multiple expansions off and on and I just use ElvUI and Weakaruas for my interface.
One thing I would recommend though even as a beginner healer is to make mouse over macros for your healing spells. They’re easy to make and you can even google them for each healer class. More or less what they do is, they make it so your healing spell activates as soon as you push the key your spell is bound to, as long as your mouse is hovering over a friendly player frame. This way you don’t have to click on each unit frame beforehand to cast a healing spell.
4 Likes
This is pretty much it. If you get your UI set up right it’s pretty straight forward. Mouse over macros (or Clique addon which sets them up for you - if your lazy like me) are pretty much required.
I learned level locking at 20 (before the squish) and spamming dungeons till I felt ok to add a few more skills, locked at 40, rinse and repeat. Mix in BGs or whatever… send yourself gear/enchants and be a noob healing god. It’s a blast.
Resto Druid, Sham, or Holy priest are the easiest to pick up. Questionably Epic is a good site for RDruid tips, others for other specs, but I don’t remember the names at the moment.
For the bonus question… you can level as heals pretty easy till like 54-56, then the ilvl scaling makes it pain. 1-50 no need to change spec, even with a monk.
could you elaborate on what some clique addons are/do/named? I will look into these. No experience with them before but if theyre pretty straightforward I will download some if it makes healing that much easier
The addon is named clique. It lets you create shortcuts that let you cast spells on the raid frame you are hovering over - so you don’t need to target friendly players. Just hover over them and click.
Frees up action bars, as those spells don’t need to be bound otherwise - though they can be.
For raid frames I use ElvUi which is a total UI overhaul. It’s good if you want to put the time into setting it up, there are others that are simpler, just look up healing and/or raid frame addons.
Icy-veins has an addon section for each spec. The healing ones have recommends for better healing.
Keep peoples HP above 0 ez game
For priest, if you’re wanting to quest, you could go shadow, pretty easy and fun or disc, which doesn’t do as much damage but still can heal while you damage.
Holy is pretty easy for healing, very smooth and straightforward. Disc is more complicated due to atonement healing, but is really fun when you get the hang of it.
As I leveled my priest this xpac, I did a lot of BGs, both epic and regular to try to get the hang of Disc atonement healing. It’s more forgiving in that environment in the sense of taking the time to figure it out, whereas in a dungeon, it’s more noticeable if people die 
But that’s just me, I wanted to be comfortable healing in fast paced, high stress situations so I could be good at keeping people alive in dungeons.
Addons I use are Elvui, Decursive and Healbot. I am trying to work myself away from Healbot to just mouseovers, but it has been difficult to train myself away from just clicking even though I have my mouseover macros all set up. The ones I use are harm/heal mouseovers which you can look up for whatever class you decide on.
Just do it.
Roll a healer, start questing, kill things, join some groups, and leave their fate in your hands.
The painful truth is that below 60, odds are high that you won’t learn diddly about being a healer since everything else will be OP for the content. So, spamming anything will work.
The addons and macros can make things easier, but don’t bother with all that right away. Just click on portraits and/or toons and heal.
What better way to grasp what benefits (if any) the addons give you if you don’t try it “raw”.
Just go forth and heal. Make it up as you go. Once you’ve tried it, then you’ll better understand what the healing guides are even talking about.
Learn by doing. Groups never kick healers…
Unpopular opinion: I’d you need addons to play your game, it’s bad game design.
3 Likes
Just levelled a Priest, did 1-48 purely in dungeons swapping between chromie time periods to mostly always have a quest to complete in each dungeon.
Did 48-60 by questing just for a change of pace.
Honestly just get VuhDO as your healing addon. I use Vuhdo and Blizzards default ui, with some mouse macros and I hold my own.
Cut your teeth on healing random bg’s, IMO. Once you get setup and accustomed to that, the move to PvE content should be a bit smoother.
Healing is terrible now days. Go do that in classic or tbc you’ll have more fun. Holy Paladin use to be fun now it’s for try hard as an example.
Level through dungeons to get a feel for it
Easy to see frames are your friends. A big part of healing is just knowing how much damage is coming and how much healing you current have available and that comes with just practicing.
Make sure you see debuffs on the frames so you can dispell asap, mouseovers are fantastic if you don’t want to constantly reclick/retarget between the target you’re damaging and your heal target
I really don’t think you need that many addons, i don’t use any for healing, really just learn how much hp your spells do and use them when hp bars drop
You level your character as a DPS.
As a Tank, leveling in the world is slow. It helps with rares and elite mobs.
As as healer, it must be slower i guess: with the exceptions of druid who can bear, cat and ckicken their way out of everything even as a healer…
Never healed in my life until 8.2. Did what the YouTube folks and guides said and profited. Only thing you need is your frames in a good spot and some way to mouse over heal. That’s it.
A great place to practice healing is epic battlegrounds. Then regular battlegrounds. Then lfr . Then normal dungeons and so on.
Edit: and your frames need to show debuffs from enemies and the buffs you put on them like a heal over time.
1 Like
You should do it. Healing is easily my favorite part of this game. It’s never the same “dps rotation” for 35 minutes….you need to react and plan.
Class: I’m biased to Shaman, but resto Druid and holy priest are easy to learn.
Helpful addons: get Elvui. It’s raid frames are superior. Also, get CLICKED not “clique”. Clicked is new and updated and is amazing for mouseover macros PLUS key binding them. It’s absolutely super good.
Have patience. People will die. It’s not always your fault. It feels great to heal a tough run, and come out the other side.
That was my worry when making my first healer (this character) I had been dpsing for a while and wanted to try healing but was worried it would be too hard and people would yell at me for not being able to do it. But that quickly proved to be wrong lol healing isn’t overwhelming at all it’s quite easy as long as you know what you are doing once I got this char to 90 in mop healed dungeons after my first Lfr this character instantly became my main and has been ever since and I have healed on every class and main healers.
Don’t worry it isn’t hard or overwhelming at all to learn how to heal it’s pretty easy lol just gotta learn the class and rotation like any other class
The hardest part about healing is the bored confident tanks, lol. WoW really is a tough game to learn, unless learning on the run is something you’re good at, because of the other players.
I did a few dungeons today. Heroics, just for the renown on my MW monk. Tanks just pulled entire floors at once without saying a word. I couldn’t imagine being someone new right now, lol. I mean they could probably solo the dungeon themselves, but the DPS was taking a mighty bit of damage.
If you don’t have friends you can practice with, the other best option would be to form groups for a M0 or +2 and make it apparent you’re learning. Worst case it takes a little longer to fill up.
This is why I’ll never heal… sadly though… I’ve always wanted to be a Resto Shaman, most if not all games I’m usually a support or healer, but I play with no addons… so dps is really my only option in WoW. 
I despise the thought you need addons and macros to play your class well especially in a competitive level… on my main I’ve gotten CEs in the past, my last being in BFA with no addons and macros.