Recommendations for someone who has never

[Visagex]

Played a healer :O

Been playing since BC and I have never once played a healer in raids / pvp

Kinda wanna Roll a holy pally

Any suggestions on the type of play style differences, what to expect?

My mains have been Mage / Feral Druid / Enh Sham

[SLSAMG]

Honestly, it depends on what your goals are. Are you casual, semi-hardcore or hardcore progression oriented? If it's the latter two; it's simply not worth the headache (imo).

[Thelxi]

I hope you like cooldowns, because paladin is all about those. Small, medium and big.

[Deleted]

Dont make a belf.

[Schattenlied]

what are you planning to heal specifically? PvP or PvE? Both? If you want to PvP heal with any seriousness (like doing Rated BGs for example), you should roll (pun intended) a Mistweaver Monk, they are the best PvP healers right now where Holy Paladins are very easy to lock down and kill.

In PvE it honestly doesn't matter that much, they all perform within an acceptable margin of each other...


What I would suggest is taking that shaman or druid you have, if they are 110 already, sinking some AP into their healing artifact, and going and healing some stuff, just to find out if you like healing at all before you bother trying to level a whole new character... You wouldn't want to spend a bunch of time to level that healer up and then find you hate healing endgame content... You won't really be able to tell if you like healing or not whille leveling, most classes can basically solo instances until the mid 50s, and the instances are still laughably easy until at least 100 after that, so you won't get any feel for how healing feels at cap until at least when you start Legion normals at 100.

[Kikazz]

Dont make a belf.

if hes rolling horde he should roll a belf, if its for healing.

arcane torrent 5% mana might not seem like much but its a fair bit.
that coupled with the silence.

belf is pretty good for holy pally.

[Aeula]

Play holy Paladin. Then you can fall back on ret if you don't like healing.

Also, play a blood elf.

[Faenskap]

what are you planning to heal specifically? PvP or PvE? Both? If you want to PvP heal with any seriousness (like doing Rated BGs for example), you should roll (pun intended) a Mistweaver Monk, they are the best PvP healers right now where Holy Paladins are very easy to lock down and kill.

In PvE it honestly doesn't matter that much, they all perform within an acceptable margin of each other...


What I would suggest is taking that shaman or druid you have, if they are 110 already, sinking some AP into their healing artifact, and going and healing some stuff, just to find out if you like healing at all before you bother trying to level a whole new character... You wouldn't want to spend a bunch of time to level that healer up and then find you hate healing endgame content... You won't really be able to tell if you like healing or not whille leveling, most classes can basically solo instances until the mid 50s, and the instances are still laughably easy until at least 100 after that, so you won't get any feel for how healing feels at cap until at least when you start Legion normals at 100.

I think this guy gave some good advice; try healing with your classes that can heal before starting the leveling
MWs are in high demand now, I see people rolling with 2 or 3 in RBGs

(please no belf female, they are everywhere)

[aziras]

Other advice to supplement what has already been given:

Don't forget to heal yourself. Might seem like stating the obvious, but you can easily get carried away healing the whole group and forget yourself. Same applies for your defensive cooldowns, use them liberally.

Play around with unit frames and mouse-over macros. Some swear by mouseovers, others hate them. The important part is to find your own preference. Imagine healing being like multi-dotting on speed in terms of target switching. If you have a setup that is not working for you it will be much harder than it should.

Positioning is very different compared to dps. As dps, especially as caster, you want to move as little as possible. As healer, if you want to be optimal you should try to move whenever possible, and try to leave paths/space for dps in the encounters that require spacing out. Very often the encounter mechanics that require everyone to move has some more or less direct link to healing required. So if you can somehow be outside damage zones prior to such effects you can start pumping heals when everyone else is moving.

And just to repeat one: Try healing on one of your current characters. Unless you want a ret pally, then grinding one up to try holy only to find that you did not like it seems a little silly.

[fangless]

Before anything, get a healing addon that you'll learn to use/love. People have their preferences, but typically the first step is to get used to all the key bindings for different spells to cast all your heals on your raid frames.

Like for vuhdo, I have left/right click, alt left/right click, ctrl left/right click, thumb button, shift thumb button, middle mouse wheel.... etc. After awhile it becomes memory at least.

As for holy paladin specific gameplay, a lot of it is reactive, no HoTs (bestow faith being a delayed heal I guess), and vastly different healing styles from 5man to raids. 5 man you're obviously responsible for everyone, and have to use your spells as best you can to get everyone topped off constantly. In raids, your beacon healing is doing work on Tanks while you do what you can for the rest of the raid. Also, early on their mana kind of sucks :|

For healer playstyle in general, mostly it's knowing what dungeon/raid abilities cause lots of damage, which dots/debuffs really suck. Once you get to know how capable you are, and when lifebars just aren't going up, you'll also learn when to use the CDs that paladins have to assist.

[Bling]

If you have your shaman maxed I'd recommend seeing how you like healing on him first before you try a holy pally, at the core level they are somewhat similar. In fact Shaman probably has more "oh crap" buttons for learners.

Riptide = Holy Shock
Healing Wave = Holy Light
Healing Surge = Flash of Light
Along with a talent that is like Light of Dawn if you want practice on it.

They do have a lot more AoE options as Holy pallies have few. Basically a Holy Paladin is a gutted Shaman with single target heals that hit harder. Plus Beacon of Light making us great single target healers with the cost of all that AoE healing.

Personally I main a Holy Paladin and do quite well on it, I'm ranked on several fights on warcraftlogs for my server, but my alt is a Resto shaman and I found that I was able to handle far more at lower gear levels than I could as a Holy Paladin, especially in 5 mans when you have a bad group. I found that sometimes due to the lack of AoE healing I sometimes have to let someone die in 5 mans if shit hits the fan simply because I lack the tools, I have a lot more save the day stuff on my shaman. When playing with a group though that knows what is going on I don't need that stuff as much and can probably easy mode it with my Paladin.