What makes a skilled healer in WoW?

I mostly have played FFXIV, and in that game, since healing is so scripted, the goal is to heal as little as possible in the most efficient way. This frees yourself and your cohealer up to spend as many gcds doing dps as possible.

Knowing the fights and the mechanics of the game and your toolkit and your cohealers/tanks/dps toolkit in order to maximize your personal dps contribution while keeping the party alive on the lowest possible amount of healing marks a skilled healer in that game.

So far, I haven’t observed anything like this in WoW (at least that I’ve noticed). It seems people brag mostly about their hps on the meters, which would be laughable in FFXIV.

Because I really enjoy the challenge healing brings, I’m curious as to what makes a good healer in WoW? Is the damage really so unscripted in high end content that your hps is what’s important? Is it really just whack a mole reaction to emptying health bars and filling them back up?

Thanks for any light you can shed on the topic!

It really depends on the content and the healing class. In pvp a skilled healer is not only focused on keeping their team members alive but also on bringing dps pressure and using any of their utility spells to help out team members.

In high level dungeons (mythic+) healers are absolutely expected to dps as well as heal. How successfully you can do that will depend on your other team members avoiding avoidable damage giving you the space to actually do dps.

In raiding, you will generally be more focused on actual healing and when required pumping out as much healing as possible because there are usually mechanics that require that response. This will also to a certain extent depend on the skill of your team members and the level of raiding you are doing (mythic raiding generally requires very high hps). Any extra dps you can bring will also help but it will depend on the individual mechanics of any particular fight.

Raids are certainly scripted but the level of damage will also vary depending on the skill of your raid team. In organised raiding (not LFR) healers will coordinate their healing, rotating their healing CDs and utility spells to best effect and perhaps focusing on particular team members who are targeted by mechanics.

Finally, some healing classes have a damage to heal mechanic which means that in order to heal you will also need to dps. Disc priests are the most obvious of these, but the current best spec for holy paladins also requires you to dps in order to reduce the CD on your best healing spell.

People who boast about hps are being disingenuous. You can only heal if there’s damage. If my raid team are highly skilled my hps will be comparatively low because they will be using their own damage mitigation and avoiding taking damage so that there’ll be nothing for me to heal. If my raid team are fire standing idiots my hps will be sky high. That being said, all fights have a kind of minimum hps required to get through the fight so sometimes looking at hps is necessary but generally it’s not the only factor to look at if a raid team are wiping on a boss.

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Thank you so much for your response!

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Healers need a good understanding of their own toolkit: Each healing class/spec heals differently, and while each has the same basic toolbox (a slow, low mana heal, a fast, expensive heal, and some kind of AOE heal) their overall toolkit can vary greatly. Trying to heal on a disc priest does not work like healing as a mistweaver monk. It takes practice and time to master a specific healer’s kit.

Prioritization: this is key-healers have to make decisions very fast about who to heal and how much/which power. Make bad choices and people will die, because you didn’t use the right kind of heal for the situation. You’ve got to assess in seconds and make a very quick judgement about what to respond with.

Encounter mechanics: also very important. If the boss is about to do an AoE effect that reduces everyone’s HP, you need to know about this so you can shield or respond with a big AoE heal to get everyone back on their feet. Healers really have to understand how the encounter works.

Having done all three roles, I’m of the opinion that healing is easily the most difficult and stressful role in the party-which is why it’s not my cup of tea. I much prefer to tank or DPS.

And LOL at people bragging about their numbers-this means nothing. anyone can pump out big numbers with a high gear level, especially if your party is full of idiots standing in fire. That does not mean you know how to heal. The real proof is “did your party die?”

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I’ve played all three roles in ffxiv…and I’m of the same mindset. Healing definitely requires the most out of a player. Which is why I like it! Feeling skilled as a healer makes me feel powerful in a way dpsing or tanking just can’t :stuck_out_tongue:

Of course I love my dps and tanks, I just get to decide when they live or die lol.

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It depends on the content as others have said. In raiding, HPS does matter, in large part because of the trend of bringing as few healers as possible. When underhealing fights, individual hps becomes a key metric. (And the things like overhealing aren’t really a factor.)

In 5 man content and PvP, hps isn’t nearly as useful a metric.

Back when I seriously raided, my mana usage goal was to run dry just after the boss dies. Even though I haven’t done serious raiding in years, I suspect that still applies today.

If you’re looking for healers where intimate knowledge of mechanics let you shine, you’ll want to gravitate towards proactive healers. (Primarily disc priest and resto druids.)

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Thank you!

I hadn’t thought too much about mana usage and how that could relate to skill.

I’ve only done heroic raiding so far as a dps, and the healers just talked about their hps. Granted I didn’t ask them about any of their other goals or attempts to maximize their efficiency, but I don’t think they were very good lol.

It’s cool to hear all these different ways I can put effort into improving myself!

And I’m definitely leaning towards Discipline. :slight_smile:

Often you will get that sort of thing on farm bosses or where the raid outgears the encounter. Those fights are pretty boring for healers as people tend to take less damage and the fights go faster so there’s no danger that you’ll run out of mana before the boss is down. In those circumstances one of the only mini games you can play is to try to beat your fellow healing team members on the meters. On progression fights you might still look at hps but generally only as part of looking at things to improve or change in order to beat the encounter.

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did healing on a Holy back in LK and before was a fun class to play My main function then was the tank and was told by our raid leader Focus on me alone off healers can deal with the others Lose the aggro magnet everyone eats mud. That being said personal changed within the guild and any time the fire standers died we the healers got blamed Have since gone over to Disc Love it and I never enlist to heal BUT with the shields and what not a Disc priest has can help out the entire group by tossing a few bubbles out there and going back to DPS. Gives the main healers a slight reprieve Disc heals are limited and have eh cool downs Overall fun class to play in group or doing solo work very rare to get the red screen of warning your health is down. But hey it is just a game some take it way to seriously

Healing is essentially the same in all games. The main difference in wow is that the game is so easy that all the little brainlets think HPS matters more than mana efficiency.

oh and aggro management is a much larger thing here!