Intimidation of Healing

[brodyblam]

Well I just dinged 80 on my Paladin a few hours ago, and since level 75 I used the dungeon system, I healed my way to 80. So after I hit 80 and couldn't wait to start healing heroics. So i queue up and get into H HoL, and something just hit me. All I could think about was what if someone dies, will they think I'm bad, what if I go oom, and so on. I don't know what happened but the fear just hit me and hit me hard, and it resulted in a wipe. I felt so guilty and now I'm afraid to even queue up for another heroic. Just wondering if some other Holy Paladin could give me some advice.

[Neichus]

Biggest thought - seriously relax. Healing heroics is easier than healing leveling dungeons. While leveling half the people aren't specced or geared or anything. The two hardest dungeons I healed in Northrend were Heroic Halls of Reflection and normal Nexus. I kid you not. I've had several real hair-raising Nexus runs because people hit Northrend and have have no level-appropriate gear whatsoever (this going double for the tank). You'll find that unless you get placed with a ton of new 80s the tank's damage intake should be minimal and stuff should be dying so rapidly that you can often not heal for whole pulls and it won't hurt anybody.

[Negrido]

A bit of overhealing in a 5 man wont be the end of the world, so try to heal preemptively if you see damage coming.

Communication is really important. Don't be afraid to ask for a mana break, or tell a dps that they are causing you a lot of stress. You are the healer, people will be very hesitant to try to kick you from a group, so long as you are not abysmal.

I find healing quite stressful myself, it may just be a personal thing. Some people feel the same about tanking or dps.

[kaloryth]

Paladins are by far the hardest class to heal heroics with. They have so few tools to deal with AoE of which there is plenty. If you just hit 80, I'd really recommend hitting up some more of the normals or maybe getting some gear from normal ToC5 if you're worried about it. The extra gear really helps since mana problems can be solved by more intellect! (And obviously more SP helps too)

I'd also let the tank know that you're a newly dinged 80 and that if he gets low or the party starts taking heavy damage he should pop cds. A lot of tanks are lazy and forget when healers are overgeared these days.

[Ithnaar]

There's quite a big difference in difficulty between a standard level 80 Dungeon (Say Halls of Stone, for instance) and its Heroic counterpart.

If you feel like you need to ease into it a bit (and collect some better gear) I suggest you do the regular 5-man Trial of the Champion instance. You can do it as many times a day as you like, and you can get some decent level 200 epic healing gear there.

Also, instead of hopping right into the heroic randoms, you might consider doing the high level instances on regular mode a few times to build back up your confidence. Culling of Stratholme, Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning are good choices.

All you need is a little success and/or some gear to pick up the slack while you gain experience doing heroics.

[einaschern]

Remember that these are random people you are grouping with you will never group with again. That said, don't slack . Beacon tank, use holy shock generously on aoe damage, keep your haste buff up, and be ready to holy light or wings on bigger damage. There are some fights when gearing up that people may just die if they're undergeared as well. Don't worry about choking - if someone complains, it'll upset or piss you off likely anyways. I've been healing as a paladin for years and I still get angry when some 10 year old who refuses to acknowledge their own shortcomings yells "FAIL HEALER" or some other idiotic thing.
Just ignore it. If someone pesters you, tell the tank to help kick the idiot. If it's the tank, drop group and go get a cup of coffee.

--- The only way you will get over being intimidated is just by doing it over and over.

Good luck!

[Merlandec]

Just part of life being a healer....you'll get a lot of blame for wipes even when you did all you could to keep people up. If you do your best to suceed, you will the majority of the time. Worrying about it won't change a thing, just have fun and enjoy. I do understand this though, my Resto Shaman is not my main currently, and I had these thoughts originally as well (which is why it hadnt been my main). But I have been doing more with it recently and really enjoy healing. Will likely make it my main for Cataclysm.

So, just do what you like....other players will act however they want.