1. #1
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    The way to learn how to heal

    Hey,
    So i was wondering what is the best way to learn how to heal ?

    I didn't hit cap before mop hit on my priest but i healed cata normals with no problems, when cata was up, but now when i step into mop heroics i kinda suck big time, i really have trouble keeping group healthy, especially on shadow pan monastery, the last boss trash, i do not have such problems on jade serpant or brewery.

    I normally get kick from the group since i cannot heal properly so my question is where can i learn to heal properly since i cannot heal properly, since when i try to do it, i get kicked, people say to learn how to heal but is there a place i can learn doing it outside heroics ?

    I would be thankful for any advise you can give me.

    Cheers,

    Sew

  2. #2
    Some generic tips:

    -read a guide
    -know what your spells do, which spell is effective when 3 people are missing hp etc.
    -practice
    -tweak your interface with addons
    -learn the mechanics, understand why people are dying, it might be that other people are messing up
    -don't bother with keeping everyone at 100% hp unless necessary
    -queue an instance you know you can heal and try to heal it as effective as possible

  3. #3
    Field Marshal darassper's Avatar
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    This early into the expansion its all about mana management, there is no need to keep everyone at max health, except for the tank.

    Use more efficient heals, like Coh, PoH, heal and PoM, keep away from Flash unless you have no choice.

    Stack Spirit its really needed and use you mana cds as much as possible and raid wide cds help.

    This is of course for Holy.
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  4. #4
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    Hey Seweryn!

    To answer your first questions shortly.

    Pugs are the stuff that comes out of your bellybottom after wearing norwegian fisherman shirt for a week without showering. So get a guild with normal people and friendly attitude to practice with. LFG groups want to move fast and ignore everything thats possible and its easier / faster for them to kick you rather than advice you.

    Shadopan Monastery last trash hits quite hard without CC and defensive cooldowns, if youre in half green gear and lacking healing experience its easy wipe. It happens to more experienced players too when squishy tanks think too much of themselves.

    Its bit too late to write long healing guide, but i'll try to point out few important things.

    1. Mana regen - If youre running out of mana, you obviously need more spirit, but more importantly you need to get rid of overhealing and start to priorize your spells.
    For example Flash Heal. Its a nice fast heal to spam on the group under heavy damage. But don't do it, the short cast time comes with a very high mana cost.

    2. Timing - Try to time your heals better, use big and slow heals together with hots. Don't hesitate burn your cooldowns when things get hot.

    3. Spellbook - Open it once again and read spell descriptions and mana costs and think where each spell is supposed to be used. Theres place for every spell but not all of them are meant to spammed.

    4. Dispelling - Know when and what to dispel by reading how debuffs affect players. There are many dispelable debuffs that can be ignored but few that really shouldnt be ignored, specially when on tank.

    5. Sacrifice - Sometimes (actually quite often :P) theres a dork dps standing in every pool of goo, flame and poop wasting hes health like EU tax payers money. Let him die if keeping him alive means great mana loss and tank is already taking heavy damage.

    6. Stay healthy - Dead healer is the worst healer. Second comes a healer that spends most of his spells to selfhealing. So stay out damage and use defensive cd's when needed.

    Beside all that i can recommend having a good set of addons for healing and some damage meter (recount / skada) that can track overheals and give you data of your spell use and effectiveness. Save that data and read it with thought after dungeons. It helps figuring out what spells are doing what. If HoT's and AoE's are doing little ovehealing its ok, but if theres lot of overhealing from direct heals (single target spells) it tells that youre doing something wrong.

    I'm repeating myself here but WoW gaming experience is really all about the people around you. Thats why good guild is important. Friendly fellow players can give you more than any website guide out in the interwebz.

    ...Though there are some good starter helps like Noxxic.com

  5. #5
    The Patient crazymack's Avatar
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    buy plenty of water

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cristox View Post
    Hey Seweryn!

    To answer your first questions shortly.

    Pugs are the stuff that comes out of your bellybottom after wearing norwegian fisherman shirt for a week without showering. So get a guild with normal people and friendly attitude to practice with. LFG groups want to move fast and ignore everything thats possible and its easier / faster for them to kick you rather than advice you.

    Shadopan Monastery last trash hits quite hard without CC and defensive cooldowns, if youre in half green gear and lacking healing experience its easy wipe. It happens to more experienced players too when squishy tanks think too much of themselves.

    Its bit too late to write long healing guide, but i'll try to point out few important things.

    1. Mana regen - If youre running out of mana, you obviously need more spirit, but more importantly you need to get rid of overhealing and start to priorize your spells.
    For example Flash Heal. Its a nice fast heal to spam on the group under heavy damage. But don't do it, the short cast time comes with a very high mana cost.

    2. Timing - Try to time your heals better, use big and slow heals together with hots. Don't hesitate burn your cooldowns when things get hot.

    3. Spellbook - Open it once again and read spell descriptions and mana costs and think where each spell is supposed to be used. Theres place for every spell but not all of them are meant to spammed.

    4. Dispelling - Know when and what to dispel by reading how debuffs affect players. There are many dispelable debuffs that can be ignored but few that really shouldnt be ignored, specially when on tank.

    5. Sacrifice - Sometimes (actually quite often :P) theres a dork dps standing in every pool of goo, flame and poop wasting hes health like EU tax payers money. Let him die if keeping him alive means great mana loss and tank is already taking heavy damage.

    6. Stay healthy - Dead healer is the worst healer. Second comes a healer that spends most of his spells to selfhealing. So stay out damage and use defensive cd's when needed.

    Beside all that i can recommend having a good set of addons for healing and some damage meter (recount / skada) that can track overheals and give you data of your spell use and effectiveness. Save that data and read it with thought after dungeons. It helps figuring out what spells are doing what. If HoT's and AoE's are doing little ovehealing its ok, but if theres lot of overhealing from direct heals (single target spells) it tells that youre doing something wrong.

    I'm repeating myself here but WoW gaming experience is really all about the people around you. Thats why good guild is important. Friendly fellow players can give you more than any website guide out in the interwebz.

    ...Though there are some good starter helps like Noxxic.com
    it is kinda hard to see if someone is sitting in something because most of the times i am looking the health bars, so i kinda do not know if he is sitting in something or not.

    I tried using healbot but decided it is not for me since i am not a clickers, plus i have keybind every healing spell as holy priest to different key on my keyboard.

    The problem with me is i am getting this big panic thing when a lot of mobs approach and the group is taking alot of damage, you could say i am loosing my mind

    So when the shock wears off, the group is already in bad situation.

  7. #7
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    When theres huge damage incoming to lot of people cast the aoe heal and then directly after that cast the instant aoe heal. If the tank is duying too faasat pop spirit of mending on him and the instant heal from chakra and cast a flash heal and dump a shield on him and then continue to cast the aoe spells. keep everyone hotted during heavy damage also means you dont need to keep an eye as much on them as you think you do. Start planning some greater heals to get tanks health up, if it drops to fast use flash heal and the instant chakra heal. You can use the most left 90 talent to refresh renew on everybody also. Thats a nice thing to do in heroics.

    I´m tired, please don't look to far into my writings.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by pippen1001 View Post
    When theres huge damage incoming to lot of people cast the aoe heal and then directly after that cast the instant aoe heal. If the tank is duying too faasat pop spirit of mending on him and the instant heal from chakra and cast a flash heal and dump a shield on him and then continue to cast the aoe spells. keep everyone hotted during heavy damage also means you dont need to keep an eye as much on them as you think you do. Start planning some greater heals to get tanks health up, if it drops to fast use flash heal and the instant chakra heal. You can use the most left 90 talent to refresh renew on everybody also. Thats a nice thing to do in heroics.

    I´m tired, please don't look to far into my writings.
    ok i will do it, thanks for the tips.

  9. #9
    Field Marshal darassper's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seweryn View Post
    it is kinda hard to see if someone is sitting in something because most of the times i am looking the health bars, so i kinda do not know if he is sitting in something or not.

    I tried using healbot but decided it is not for me since i am not a clickers, plus i have keybind every healing spell as holy priest to different key on my keyboard.

    The problem with me is i am getting this big panic thing when a lot of mobs approach and the group is taking alot of damage, you could say i am loosing my mind

    So when the shock wears off, the group is already in bad situation.
    I would really recommend Healbot it frees up keybinds for cds, CC and some damage spells.
    If you dont like healbot there is Vuhdo which you can try. Place this at the bottom middle of your screen, this will keep your screen open to observe the fight.
    Grid could also work for you, but a healing addon is a must there are a few exceptions to this rule but they are far and few.

    Now the signs of a good healer is one that can keep an eye on the raid and heal them while staying out of the fire also being able to determine what heal would be most efficient in the current damage taken, Who must he prioritize and who is going to be a waste of mana.

    When lots of mobs approach trust your group each has the assigned tasks, The Tank should pick them all up if he has aggro on all you should throw CDs on him, he himself should throw out a few. The dps themselves should pop a few cds if it raid wide damage use your raid wide cooldowns eg. barrier or Hym.

    It takes practice to do this and like one of the people before me said get a guild not Pugs. I have been healing for 3 years and I still do sometimes panic but it has become far less like once in a blue moon when a new situation comes around that I havent faced before.

    It just takes time

    P.s. A good way to tell if someone is standing in stuff they shouldnt, by just looking at their health bars they will be taking a lot more damage
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  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by darassper View Post
    I would really recommend Healbot it frees up keybinds for cds, CC and some damage spells.
    If you dont like healbot there is Vuhdo which you can try. Place this at the bottom middle of your screen, this will keep your screen open to observe the fight.
    Grid could also work for you, but a healing addon is a must there are a few exceptions to this rule but they are far and few.

    Now the signs of a good healer is one that can keep an eye on the raid and heal them while staying out of the fire also being able to determine what heal would be most efficient in the current damage taken, Who must he prioritize and who is going to be a waste of mana.

    When lots of mobs approach trust your group each has the assigned tasks, The Tank should pick them all up if he has aggro on all you should throw CDs on him, he himself should throw out a few. The dps themselves should pop a few cds if it raid wide damage use your raid wide cooldowns eg. barrier or Hym.

    It takes practice to do this and like one of the people before me said get a guild not Pugs. I have been healing for 3 years and I still do sometimes panic but it has become far less like once in a blue moon when a new situation comes around that I havent faced before.

    It just takes time

    P.s. A good way to tell if someone is standing in stuff they shouldnt, by just looking at their health bars they will be taking a lot more damage
    I disagree with the thing about a healing addon - the blizz frames are fine

  11. #11
    Try healing a few battlegrounds. That will up your reaction time and help you tweak your keybinds. It will also train you to pay attention to what's going on around you, and to pay attention to your own health. Setting up a notification addon like Weak Auras can really help, along with those key bindings. You can get a raid frames addon, but the default UI also has passable frames these days.

    That will get you the basics. From there, you can graduate to mouseover macros, adjusting your raid frame addon, centering your UI, and learning mana management, and improving cooldown use.

  12. #12
    Hmm, Holy priest

    My way of healing is best described in the spells I have most accessible: Holy Word(I tend to use the insta heal mostly), Power Word: Solace (when renew is keeping tank up, I spam this), Renew (keep it up on tank, always), Circle of Healing (using this to heal the group tbh), Greater Heal (my main healing ability, with Solace it really does work out for 5 mans), Prayer of Healing (for more party healing), Fade (My best friend ).

    By keeping Renew up and using Solace to avoid oom situations (and Shadowfiend if mana go below 50%) its usually pretty easy to heal thro most things. No matter how you put it the tank do have a work to do as well keeping himself up. But, the first thing you should always do is to get an idea on how the tank do Greater Heal if he's taking a lot, Holy Word -> Greater Heal if he's taking a REAL lot.

    In all honesty tho, learning to heal is a lot on finding Your way of healing hehe
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  13. #13
    Field Marshal darassper's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by undercovergnome View Post
    I disagree with the thing about a healing addon - the blizz frames are fine
    That is why I said there are exceptions to this but it improved my Healing Greatly
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  14. #14
    - don't hesitate to use your cooldowns, if you wipe and you still have a big cooldown available, that wipe could have not happened.
    - keep a clean and simple UI, have your raid frames close to your character so as to easily see yourself standing in the flames while keeping an eye on the raid.
    - read guides to know what spells do what and what stats you need and when.
    - learn the fights, when damage is heavy, when movement is needed,... Once you know a fight, think about how to use more efficiently your cooldowns.
    - don't hesitate to yell at those dps who think void zones give some kind of buff.

  15. #15
    Are you Disc or Holy? Because disc is largely about preventing damage, as opposed to healing it up. I myself play disc, so I've got better info about that for you ... but here are some general healing tips, since that seems to be your issue.

    - Tank is top priority, yourself is second, DPS are last. Simple priorities, if the tank dies, you're probably all dead. If you die, the tank will probably die, then you're all dead. DPS are expendable (there's 3 of em anyways =p )
    - Use your cooldowns. As DPS, people tend to use them every time they're up. As a healer, you don't want to blow CDs every time they're up, but you also don't want to sit on them forever. Most of your CDs are short, so use them if the pull is hard.
    - Most trash pulls are front-loaded, meaning that the first 5 seconds will likely be harder than the last 20 seconds.
    - If you're having trouble with trash packs, make use of CC. Also, learn the mechanics of the trash packs if there are any, like facing mobs away from the raid.
    - For example, in Shadow-Pan Monestary, those Sha packs have healing mobs, kill them first. The spirit packs, someone needs to purify the corpse or the packs are invincible, and you need to kill the orbs to purify the corpse.
    - Be proactive. I play disc, so this is pretty important for me, but it still applies. Pre-hot or shield people, use slower / more efficient heals where possible.

  16. #16
    Field Marshal darassper's Avatar
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    Adding on to what "KidCanuck" said one thing that helps ALOT is to shield the whole group before a pull.

    I can stack a 140K shield before a boss saves TONS of healing and mana for that fight just maintain that shield.
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  17. #17
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    VuhDo has been a very good tool for me to heal with. If you have a mouse with more than three buttons on it, it's awsome, . I would recommend it.

  18. #18
    1: If you haven't done so already, make macro's or use an addon that allows you to heal a target you are simply mousing over, rather than targeting.
    ::This will allow you to heal in a single click of your hotkey/mouse rather than two, and increase how quickly you can bounce between healing multiple targets.::

    2: If you use the Blizz frames or an addon that allows it, turn on the option that makes the frames of the target's health also show a number equal the the amount of health they are missing. After doing that get very used to how much each of your spell's heal for.
    ::This will allow you to better spend your mana on effective spells and overheal less.::

    3: Use your mana cooldowns as soon as you have used enough mana to get the full effect. If your shadowfiend restores 50k mana, use it as soon as you are below 250k.
    ::This will give you a lot more mana to play with as the cooldowns will come up sooner and possibly be useable a second time before an encounter ends.::

    4: Learn all of the encounters as well as you can. Get to know what will kill people if they don't take care of it themselves, like the green fire on Liu Flameheart in Temple of the Jade Serpent.
    ::This along with preventing you wasting mana on people who you cannot save, it will also help your selfesteem because you will not blame yourself for others mistakes.::

    5: Practice Practice Practice.
    ::You can only improve by playing more, there is only one direction you can move by trying. (Forward)::

    Goodluck!

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