How to heal without tunneling?

[goblingirl]

Lots of good feedback above. The most important thing to take away from Fontaiine's (sp?) layout is this: the health bars displayed by your raid frames ought to be front and center, so that you can easily keep an eye on both those bars AND what's happening under your own feet. Especially if you have a large monitor - I have a 24" monitor and if I park things too far off to the side, moving my eyes over there means I no longer have a simultaneous view of my own toon's situation.

Once you get a layout you think might work (and copy other people's until you have one - z-perl, all of them let you move your frames around pretty much)... recommend two things to help you learn to watch bars AND be aware of what's going on under your feet. Do lots of LFR, even if you don't need the loot anymore, for the practice, and honor the mechanics even if they won't kill you in LFR because it's good practice to get used to moving yourself while also healing others. You will also have to heal a whole ton of stupid in LFR, also good practice. Secondly, do some random BGs, because the unpredictability of other players will force you to keep track of what's happening to your toon as you simultaneously heal others. Both are good training for healers.

As noted by others, raid encounters are scripted, and as you "learn" each fight, you will eventually get to the point where you know when to pop what spell to gain the most benefit from it. PvP is by it's nature far more random. Spending time at both will help you become a better, faster-thinking healer.

[Deleted]

Practice imo.

I used to raidlead when I healed in MoP and it's just something that gets easier over time. Goblingirl had a good tip of even just queueing for LFR where you don't die if you stand in shit, so it gives you a safe environment to learn.

When you do an encounter enough, you're almost going to know who gets hurt, when they get hurt and what intervention is needed to prevent more hurt. That's why healing gets boring as you move beyond progress into farming territory.

[pkm]

That's why healing gets boring as you move beyond progress into farming territory.

Lol isn't that the same with all roles though...

[Osmeric]

Practice imo.

I used to raidlead when I healed in MoP and it's just something that gets easier over time. Goblingirl had a good tip of even just queueing for LFR where you don't die if you stand in shit, so it gives you a safe environment to learn.

There's a lot of downtime in LFR though, which is one reason I suggest PvP to practice healing and develop muscle memory.

[Deleted]

Lol isn't that the same with all roles though...

Not really. I've played all those roles and DPS just gets more fun with better gear to pull higher numbers and try out weird tactics.

[Luthadal]

Very true... That's why I usually swap from healer to dps once we get bosses on farm. Otherwise we would be overhealing anyway

[Chirri]

For me, I spend my first few encounters with a new fight working out what's important to watch the ground for. I'm straight up paranoid about the floor. If there's something on the floor that I don't recognize, I get the heck away. Raid frame is to the right of my feet at all times - 3+ inches to the right, and below. My health is cluttered in with everyone else's - it's not my sole responsibility to keep myself alive, the other healers will note my dipping health as just another bar they need to fill up and I return the favor.

Particularly on new fights for my guild, we're all pretty darn lost as we learn the fight. We can look things up and watch videos, but those only take you so far. I tend to learn the "dance" tempo of the fight and go with that. During Phase 1, this area is usually safe - keep eyes peeled for this color on the ground. During Phase 2, this area is usually safe - keep eyes peeled for this color on the ground. Safe area can be in relation to the room itself, or simply where the boss is being held. Depends on the fight. Audio cues are very important for me, and even now some of those cues get tuned out.

Familiarity allows you to tune out what's unimportant and focus on what is.

If you're healing 5 mans, you're kind of on your own as far as figuring it out and keeping yourself alive. If you're healing LFR, there's not a whole lot of pressure on you and it's a good place to learn the pace (generally) and phases and which spell effects to pay attention to (anything that deals dmg, because it'll deal more on higher difficulties) and which spell effects you can ignore. If you're healing guild raids, well, I'd highly recommend practicing a lot in LFR until you know what to focus on and what to ignore.

If you're experienced at the places you're healing as a DPS and are simply having a rough time transitioning into healing those encounters, patience. I imagine there's some confusion as you learn at which points people are taking more damage, and which points they're taking less so you're not feeling the need to stare only at health bars.

So. What are you healing? Difficulty of the instance? Level? Class? What's your UI look like? How zoomed in or out are you?

I actually have the same layout across all of my characters, so I don't have to switch mind sets when playing alts. I know where the info I want is, no matter who I'm playing.

[lmryll]

Practice.

The more you do it, the better you get. Try some dungeons that you are vastly overgeared so even if you tunnel visioned again, it wouldn't cause a wipe.