FAQ: Healing

Pray.. that i will heal you in time

Hi welcome to this weeks FAQ section. I was just recently asked to help a person heal on her alt. Healing has its perks and downs. For those who have been healers you can understand how frustrating it is when tanks pull and youre OOM, or when party goes out of LoS. But more importantly you have probably heard that each healing class has its limits. AoE healing vs single target healing, mana regen, instants vs shortcasts, etc.

This post will help shed some light on newbie healers, how to handle spec, skills, and UI. I will start off with some simple suggestions.

Download A Raid UI (Xperl, Grid, Boxer, etc) there are a ton. These make it easier to have ALL raid targets in screen and are much easier to click than the standard Blizzard UI icons. Furthermore some of these have advanced options that will make your life easier. I.E. These can be configured to gray out icons of ppl outside 30yard range, to put a purple shade on icons for ppl with curses, a green shade on ppl with poisons, etc.

Download Clique.
If you have ever heard of healbot, Clique is a revamped version of that. Only clique is MUCH easier to setup use and fix. for starters, you choose what spells go with each mouse+keyb combination.

Short and easy run thru on clique:
open Spellbook (´p´) you will see a 5th tab. Open it. This opens a second window with a pulldown menu on the top right and some options on the bottom frame. If youre gonna use Clique to heal, choose from the topdown menu: “helpful actions”, then go to each tab where your skills are and hold the button u want to use for combination with your mouse click (let me rephrase that: if you want to link Alt+left mouse click on Flash of Light, hold down “alt” then left click on the Flash of light spell on the spellbook) and you will see that on the second window it will now show: Alt+Left mouse click   Flash of Light.

(note: i do not recommend using ONLY left or right click as in without a key combination, or u will not be able to target or right click that person to uninvite or such, you will constantly cast the programmed spell on him/her. It can be VERY frustrating trust me.)

Now to cast that Flash of light all you have to do is hold down Alt, and left click on a party frame or a raid frame.
gratz! you can now heal with simple mouse clicks without having to change target. Your Reaction time will now be much faster and your healing meters will go up a bunch.

I am at the moment writing a GnT on how to set up Raid Frames, and I will also write a Healbot GnT.

Perks:  You get to roll on a LOT of offspec gear (when no one else needs it)
Cons:

YOU NEED TO KNOW YOUR LIMITS

Limits: Each class has a preferred stat. This is usually because such a stat benefits your class above all other for a certain purpose. As i’ve said before no 2 healing classes heal alike. Druids can HoT indefinitely but cant really drop big heals, Pallys can spam cheap quick Flashes of Light, (but they need a ton of crit and mp5 to keep it up) or spam Holy Light with a ton of crit and a huge mana pool; Priests can hot, flash heal, aoe heal, but they’re limited by mana regen; Shamans can chain heal or raid heal with riptide, leser healing wave spam, but they depend entirely on MP5. Some classes can dispel different debuffs, some cannot. In the end it comes to knowing what YOUR class can or cant do.

Also dont trust healing meters. At least not as if the were a proved and very well knowledgable science. Hots tend to favor healing meters, since they get to heal while the other classes’s heals are being cast. Shields prevent a lot of damage and do not show on healing meters.

Overhealing mechanics have changed since pre BC. In the past the best healer had the most healing with the least overhealing. today we face harder bosses, cap limits, crushing blows, inevitability on big hits. Healers have to predict, or try to at least, when big hits are coming and start a cast before something (not totally) unexpected happens and finishes off a tank, even at full health. Overhealing is now a necessary evil to keep targets alive. Thankfully there are ways now to predict such blows. Raid Frames can show a red square around a person who just got aggro (including yourself). Bosses tend to have skills with cooldowns and addons like DBM can warn about some of these skills. So if you know its coming in 5 seconds and your heal is 3 seconds cast, count to 2 and start casting.

Just whack them heals on the raid

So the healing game is a very reactive, and at times proactive,  Whack-a-Mole game. Having mousover macros, or using healbot or raidframes+clique, helps your response time. Most important thing is to use keybinds you feel comfortable with. so you are hitting dispel when you are trying to heal someone.

Most important thing is to remember your class specific abilities. Earth shield and riptide for shaman, have to be up whenever possible. Pallys have to refresh sacred shield, beacon, use holy shock when available, and for those with enough brain space to remember use hands (sacrifice, salvation, etc) or improved auras, or even divine sacrifice (for those specced into it). Druids need to remember to swiftmend, priests use divine hymn and hymn of hope, also should use prayer of healing and mending when possible, use divine guardian on tank,  etc.

Some tips for each class:

Druids:

Always keep a rejuvenation on a tank (and if possible a regrowth as well), so you can swiftmend them in those pesky moments when they will get hit by a lot. Its much quicker to nourish than to put a lb, or a rejuv+swiftmend. Macro your Natures Swiftness with Healing touch and if possible rebirth. If the healers are good you probably won’t use your “Oh shit Biggest instant heal” button, or if a tank dies, you might want to bring him up as quickly as possible (long cast on brez)

Priests:

Don’t forget about pw word: shield (don’t use it if there is a disc priest), Prayer of mending is Awesome. On raid AoE damage make sure you tell healers that you will heal group #, use a prayer of healing for the most HPS. Holy nova if a lot of people are near you. Divine Hymn  for heals on the lowest health raid members, and hymn of hope for more mana.

Paladins:

Holy shock, holy shock , holy shock. JUDGE, 15% haste for a minute from judging is OMGWTFBBQPWN. If you remember to always keep that 15% haste up and use holy shock whenever you can,  you will do ok, since holy shock gives bonus to your other heals. Read about your hands and divine sacrifice, so you can practice on using them.

Shamans:

Earth shield is FTW. riptide gives your next lesser healing waves haste, sometimes you can heal more from riptide LHW spam than from chain heals. Healing stream totem, specially if specced into it heals for a LOT, ask for wisdom if you are using it. TOTEMs: Don’t be afraid to use your fire/earth elemental totems.