Learning how to heal as a druid (or anything for that matter)

[Caimunion]

What's good guys.

I've been a long time lurker, visiting MMO-champion and its forums to extract knowledge and news but have never taken an active participation. Here's to hoping that changes .

I've played a rogue for the last 6 years, and have an 85 DK and Warrior as well. My druid is coming along as well at 82, and should be max level shortly. I have decided I want to use him predominantly for healing as I made my warrior a tank. I want to experience the healing part of this game as well. Small problem. I have never played a casting class (not counting my druid since leveling is a joke and I could have done it blindfolded). This obviously therefore means I have never played a healing class. That being said how does one learn how to heal/play a casting class when already close to max level.

I realize there is a beautifully written resto guide as a sticky, and it does a great job of telling me many things but I'm looking to get down even further into fundamentals. Getting the right specc, gear, and skills in some sort of "rotation" I think won't make me a stellar healer if I don't anything beyond the surface. So does anyone have some resources perhaps ?

[Thedistant]

Well when I made the switch from being a long time rogue to a holy/disc priest (never having played a caster before like you) the best thing for me was just getting the pratice in running tons of normals then heroics and eventually trolls to raids, but a good tip is when you are healing, unless you are expecting a crapton of damage coming in the next few seconds don't use your big heals, just the small efficient ones to keep people up and if a DPS gets hit for 30k(hypothetical number, but just as long as they aren't about to die) don't do a giant heal (nourish I think it'd be for druids) Just use a small hot and continue healing you tank, of course all of this may change in specific raid encounters.

[Moistie]

Throw the Rotation concept out. Healing is reactive.

You will have a tough time learning to heal as a druid... I'll say it outright from my own experience - of course that is my opinion. Druids require you to think ahead of the damage. What I mean by that is the more damage you can predict, the better mana efficiency you will have. When I was learning my druid (had healed on shaman through Wrath.. if that counts for anything at all), I noticed that if anyone was dipping low on health, I went OOM no questions asked. This was due to my inexperience. Resto druids require you to manage your cooldowns efficiently in 5 mans and dungeons until higher gear levels.

The mistakes I made at first were:
1. If they aren't in danger of dying... DON'T HEAL THEM! Seriously, it saves mana to heal them up slowly or not at all.
2. I was reluctant to use my cooldowns, and they might as well not be there if you don't use them when you need to
3." HOLY SHIT THEIR HP IS FALLING! REGROWTH THE CRAP OUT OF THEM!" ... don't do that unless they are in extreme danger of getting gibbed. Swiftmend is amazing... use it.
4. "Oh yeah lifebloom fell off ... let me re-apply that"; you'll want to keep it up as much as possible. It is huge for mana efficiency and it evens out the incoming damage.
5. Tree of life is a life-saver. Use it.
6. If a boss is going to use a painful ability, pre-emptively HoT those who will be effected.
7. Nourish is your friend. Use wild growth on cooldown.
8. Gear for Int>>>Spi>>>Haste. I have seen great results with this setup. Refer to the sticky for gearing though.


That's all I have to give you off the top of my head :/


http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...lriding/simple

[Museigen]

Learn what your spells do, learn what boss mechanics do then react properly. A perfect example is normal cho'gall, he has the particular move called shadow orders where he just does raid wide damage. Outside of it though, there's no other significant raid damage that isn't avoidable. So don't spaz out when everyone hits yellow hp and spam inefficient spells. Just WG, a RJ or two then wait for WG's CD and WG again. Because you know there won't be any major damage incoming, you can spare yourself mana and heal nice and neat. Knowledge is first and foremost, which sadly means you simply must know how the damage will be incoming for each fight before you can plan properly.

Some people disagree with me but honestly the second biggest thing about healing are just addons. A great start is an addon called VuhDo, very easy to setup and use in seconds but also had tons of in-dept options if you prefer to spend time customizing. An addon that does it all granting multiple modifier mouse button keybinds, and easily trackable debuffs. An example is rage faces, face rage. You can assign it to be big, bold and dead center of a characters health box. Then you KNOW that person is about to get raped if he's not freed and are ready to go just that one second quicker.

Use CD's early, so you can use them multiple times but make sure they're up for the "Burn Phases" most bosses have at low health. Just started an alt group raiding firelands 10-man and we took down beth'tilac with me coming in around 22k hps, is mostly 359 gear (One piece of 346, couple 365s) while the other healers clocked in between 10-15k hps. On normal bosses they're much closer to me, the only difference was I used a mana pot and had both Tree and innervate off CD for P2 after having used them both once already. This just goes in with #1, know the fight and know your spells.

Also in lower gear levels don't even attempt to go for the magical 2005 haste cap, get 916 haste then reforge everything you can into mastery.

[skoobiedoo]

Yeah gone are the days when you can go HoT... oh they're dying quick Swiftmend! Ahhhh whew I can dance around a lot

[Mystile]

The mistakes I made at first were:
1. If they aren't in danger of dying... DON'T HEAL THEM! Seriously, it saves mana to heal them up slowly or not at all.
2. I was reluctant to use my cooldowns, and they might as well not be there if you don't use them when you need to
3." HOLY SHIT THEIR HP IS FALLING! REGROWTH THE CRAP OUT OF THEM!" ... don't do that unless they are in extreme danger of getting gibbed. Swiftmend is amazing... use it.
4. "Oh yeah lifebloom fell off ... let me re-apply that"; you'll want to keep it up as much as possible. It is huge for mana efficiency and it evens out the incoming damage.
5. Tree of life is a life-saver. Use it.
6. If a boss is going to use a painful ability, pre-emptively HoT those who will be effected.
7. Nourish is your friend. Use wild growth on cooldown.
8. Gear for Int>>>Spi>>>Haste. I have seen great results with this setup. Refer to the sticky for gearing though.

Pretty much this is exactly what to do. Use wild growth and swiftmend practically on cool down. Keep a 3 stack lifebloom rolling on the tank. Rejuv when a wild growth won't top up a player. Tree form for heavy healing situations, you can lifebloom more than one person during tree form, use it and get a crazy amount of clearcastings for free regrowths (knowing what the boss does helps when you can time this.) Do not spam regrowth, you'll destroy your mana. Nourish is fantastic, practically no mana cost for a decent heal amount.

[Departeg]

Would be nice to pve gear, thanks for the info

[Myrrar]

Everything that can be covered, and everything already posted, is in the sticky. What you are looking for isn't something people can type, it's something you have to learn for yourself. Once you know the basics, like how the sticky explains what each spell does and how they interact with each other, just the basics, that's all the advice that can be given. Every situation will be different, and people can't teach you how to react on the spot. Jump in, get your hands dirty, and you'll learn. =]

[Stealthedbear]

The hardest thing for me was keeping up LB on the tank through nourish or whatever, when I started healing post 4.0
But it all just takes getting used to, just like any other class.

[Ica]

This is also a good site and the info is good..

http://theincbear.com/

http://theincbear.com/math/resto-haste-breakpoints

Enjoy more reading

[Beasty]

There's only so much reading you can do really before you just have to get ingame and do some heroics or pug raids.

[Deleted]

Practise Practise and more Practise, read the sticky, read what your spells do (and how much mana they cost), then jump into a Dungeon and heal away - oh and get some decent raid frames / setup - Vuhdo, or Grid + Clique, or Healbot seem to be the usual 3 choices.

[Deleted]

All of this is great advice, but would stress the point that you can read as much stuff as you like but there is nothing to match actually doing it. If i were you i would start out pugging (or with guildies if you're in a position to do so) normal 5 man's until you get a feel for things. Then switch up through the various difficulties until you are confident of your healing.

[aqthedruid]

Another option if you feel kinda scared about doing dungeon is heal bgs. Its not the same but you will learn what does and doesnt make you go oom.

If you do want to try out healing using bgs the best thing would be to queue up for WSG and heal the FC.