Teach me how to be a healer

[Fascinate]

For the longest time I believed that, however i started using them about a couple months ago, and honestly it made healing a lot easier. You don't have to mouse over everything, but in the long run it saves me around 10-15 seconds of delay over a 2-3m fight which can be the difference between life or death.

Ya lots of people like them but for me there are more reasons to not use them. For someone starting out i think the proper advice is getting keybinds and movement down first, if they then feel like clicking frames isnt for them they can make the switch. Im personally a better healer without them, in cata i had many WoL parses in the top 10 and top parse on archimedes 10 heroic for a long time clicking raid frames. This was on a pally too, so it was a lot of targeted heals.

[MoanaLisa]

Bit of an advanced topic, but since you are asking I'd take a moment to watch this.
Very important part of being a healer now.

That's a pretty good video and I agree with you--if that is you--that people may not be completely aware of how things have changed with respect to this. Especially people coming back after long absences. It's a fundamental shift in how healers need to think to be really successful.

[Deleted]

For the longest time I believed that, however i started using them about a couple months ago, and honestly it made healing a lot easier. You don't have to mouse over everything, but in the long run it saves me around 10-15 seconds of delay over a 2-3m fight which can be the difference between life or death.

Meh, that depends. If he is Holy he don't need mouseover macros, because he have more than 1 second of gcd. That is plenty of time to switch between targets. I've been playing like this for ever with 0 problems. I have vuhdo, so I also have "mouseover"; you don't need to play one way or the other, you can have both things and use them to your advantage.

Now, if he is Disc, you better get used to mouseover macros, because they are 100% mandatory (mouseover every spell you have if you can).

[Djriff]

Well I wouldn't say it's mandatory however it does make it a lot easier to play.

[Deleted]

I do think they are mandatory. With Holy you don't get that much advantage from the mouseover macros (even more, if you are not used to them is easier to missclick the raid frame); with disci you have the same gcd to do twice the targeting (you know, click the raid frame and then the mob again. With holy you only click the raid frame), with the added difficulty of going to the raid frame and goooooing back again to the mob (long distance between raid frames and enemy targets vs the short distance of just clicking the raid frames, like Holy).

You just have to use them if you want to perform good. That is my opinion at least.

pd: ofc you can use tab and all that, but yeah.

[Vampiregenesis]

Guys how do you change the camera? what settings do you have for it? also do you have strafe keybound?

[Morgenna]

If you still decide to heal using mouse to move, keybinding L&R strafe to two arrow buttons of the side of the mouse make things easier especially if you have two side buttons on your mouse. As for the camera I haven't touch the option but it is Never adjust camera.

[Krbl]

I have WSAD, AD is strave. QE are bound to spells.

I turn my character with right mouse button dragging. I use an addon to disable targeting via right click (this is vital for me).

I use mouse over macros for everything that is applied to raid frames.

I don't use mouseover for penance and smite, as I have an enemy in target most of the time. The macro uses targettarget if my target is friendly.

I have played like this since SoO.

Do you guys bind turn left/turn right to keyboard to not have to use the mouse to turn around?

[Vampiregenesis]

Bit of an advanced topic, but since you are asking I'd take a moment to watch this.
Very important part of being a healer now.

Damn , i dont really like this , i want to play a healer so that i wont have to dps lol but i notice healers do a bit damage now or they get asked to do so.

[clevin]

I've not healed a while but when I did I moved with the keyboard (arrows on the Mac are conveniently grouped on the lower right, close to one another) and key bound heals for my left hand. I used mouseover macros and Grid.... mouse over the person I'm healing in the Grid frames, cast, etc. NOTE: hover over the unit, NOT click. Clicking slows you very slightly.

Grid was setup to show HoTs and things relevant to healing like Weakened Soul when I was on the priest, etc. Grid isn't important, I just liked the configurability of it. Mouseovers are key - you do NOT want to have to click the unit you're healing (it slows you down) and you do not want to have to mouseover or click their character on the screen (crap in front of them? They die).


The setup is part of the issue but the other part is this - you need to anticipate damage and keep ahead of things. On the same score, your team can't take unnecessary damage either - "Oh but I'd have to stop that cast to move and lose DPS" is NOT a valid reason to continually take avoidable damage (It might be ok in an execute phase when a given cast might mean the difference between wipe and kill).

[Deleted]

Damn , i dont really like this , i want to play a healer so that i wont have to dps lol but i notice healers do a bit damage now or they get asked to do so.

As a Holy Priest, I don't feel like I'm DPSing when I do my DPS rotation, because it's actually part of my healing rotation. Chastise on cooldown because it has a chance to proc T'uure, Smite when free because it procs SoL and it causes Serendipity for Chastise. In MW monk, DPSing is part of fistweaving rotation (given you've taken the appropriate talents) for mana regen. Don't know about the other classes though.

[Therougetitan]

So my question is I feel like I'm going oom. Not all on all fights but a few really hard mythic fights like Helya. At the end i was just scraping the barrel of mana. I was being mana conservative too and luckily no one died. Yes I was dispelling most of the debuffs.

Is there any particular holy talents that are really helpful for 5-man specifically?

[-Gr-]

I have autorun bound to my mouse and I use it as a sort of toggle while I use Vuhdo to heal.

My 11 on my naga I press it once and turn with right mouse clicked and when i want to stop moving i hit it again and click heal.

[IntellectuallyChallenged]

Change Q and E to strafe (I actually use A nd D). Use A and D (or Q and E) as part of your keybinding. I put my main heals on buttons 1-4, DPS abilities on 5-7, and keybind everything else to various other keybinds on my side mouse buttons, middle click, and Q, E, R F, and G. I have a separate bar that only shows up in combat that i do click abilities on that have long cooldowns and things like potions.

Get rid of healbot. Get Grid, without clique, or something comparable.

[Deleted]

So my question is I feel like I'm going oom. Not all on all fights but a few really hard mythic fights like Helya. At the end i was just scraping the barrel of mana. I was being mana conservative too and luckily no one died. Yes I was dispelling most of the debuffs.

Is there any particular holy talents that are really helpful for 5-man specifically?

Which talents do you use? In dungeons I pick Enlightenment, Binding Heal, Light of the Naaru. I've been OOM on Helya once when I wasn't really paying attention, planned it better the time after and was left with a nice pool of spare mana by the end of the fight (granted, the whole group played it better). By the end of phase 1 you should have 80-90% mana left easily unless people are actual potatos.

I think there's a bias when healing that we are inclined to pick the heals we use according to targets' remaining HP %. It is a heuristic that usually works based on the theoretical model that a group evenly takes regular damage, but the damage taking model in many fights is actually very far from this, and it's more mana-efficient to pick healing spells based on projected incoming damage, or, rather, based on projected time before incoming projected damage. Basically we gotta see the future. Let me take an oversimplified example to illustrate this:

Group is as follows with HP%:

Tank	DPS1	DPS2	Mage	You
80	100	100	10	100

Healer emergency bias will produce a tendency to heal mage with FH. However, you know this fight very well: every now and then, but not too often, someone randomly gets hit by a lance dealing big damage; other than that, no incoming damage except on tank. It's more mana-efficient here to heal mage with GH, costing you half the mana. While doing so, the tank might drop low: that's ok because your HW:Serenity is about to be up, sped up by your GH on mage. Also, you know mage can Iceblock, and he should if he's about to die for some reason and there's no better way to use it in this fight, instead of costing you heaps of mana you are going to need for a future phase. This would obviously not be applicable if you know in 5 seconds there's a massive AoE hitting the group for 3/4 HP each: in this instance, you would FH the mage (or maybe GS if no better way to use it in this mana-heavy fight?), then get everyone up after the AoE -- with a lot of time to do so before the next AoE following the same line of reasoning to avoid healer emergency bias, so not using crazy mana-spenders. Maybe BH instead of PoH/CoH, for example.

So that's just my thoughts and the way I heal, not guaranteed to be the best but I think it's good to predict the amount of incoming damage and timeframe in which it will happen to decide how much mana to spend healing people at different velocities.

Also, while writing this, I thought about the Helya fight and Mythic dungeons in general. You don't always get the full value out of AoE heals because of group members positioning. This is especially true for HW:Sanctify, and I try to educate my guildmates on how to position when I'm healing and there is no particular placement requirement on a fight. But it is also true for PoH, which will only heal players standing within 20 yards of the character the spell is targeting. On Helya, every time I dispel, I either use CoH or PoH. It is an absolute waste of mana if it doesn't hit at least 4 out of 5 group members. To work around this without having to explain it to other people, I usually try and position myself properly and target myself when using those spells. I usually can hit everyone in that way.

[Jaconbacon1567]

For Keybinds I use Shift+1-5 and Control+1-5, the q, e and shift modifiers etc. If you have a mouse with a 4 & 5 mouse button, i use 1 for interrupt (i play holy so the Chastise ability) and the other for feathers because I've found that any ability the requires you to place it somewhere is better on easier keybinds. I personally recommend everything to be on mouse over macros, but you can start out with using the marcos with standard raid frames to get the feel for cast times, etc. with mouse over macros. Then once you're comfortable with that upgrade to Healbot, VuhDu(what i use), etc when you can make special macros to use certain abilities (ex. Resto Druid and Rejuv being macrod to Right-Click button only when hovered over the player's raid frame for that addon). Once you get used to the cast times of abilities you'll become more effective able to skip 1 step in order to heal someone ( that targeting part). Mouse overs are really good to "Oh Shit" buttons because the time it take for you to target someone and use the ability could be the difference between life and death, plus I always feel awesome when I get that clutch Guardian Spirit off that saves a person.

I absolutely recommend mouse over macros for disc because you'll want to be doing damage as much as possibly and its a lot easier when you don't have to worry about targeting allys then tab targeting back, you can just keep the boss/enemy targeted the whole time.

[MatadorMedia]

You'll have to move with a combination of the keyboard and mouse. And learn how to recognize when you need to sacrifice a hit to yourself, or a death of a DPS, in order to keep the tank or the larger group alive.

[Valancer]

Personally I use the mouse for all my key binds. Mouse wheel up for one spell, mouse wheel down for another, mouse wheel click for a third, then mouse 4 and 5 side buttons for 2 more spells. Then I do the same with shift plus those buttons for an additional 5 key binds. I don't use mouse over macros. This setup is the most effective for me, allowing me to never take my fingers off the movement keys and allows me full use of the mouse too.

[zenkai]

Don't be a keyboard turner, you can use your mouse to move and heal with your keyboard, it's not like we have a lot of instant casting spells anyway.

[cruxxy]

Don't be a keyboard turner, you can use your mouse to move and heal with your keyboard, it's not like we have a lot of instant casting spells anyway.

I remember back in Cata my guildies mocked me endlessly for being a keyboard turner. I finally unbound the turn keys and just committed to mouse turning and it's been the best thing for my gameplay.