the classic "OMG pleez help me, I suck at healing" post

[Zeuq]

What can't be stressed enough is preparation. You need to juggle several things, which includes looking at the boss mod to see when an ability is going to be cast soon. If ToC10 is going to be your goal atm there are a few great examples on just the first encounter:
Gormok's stomp. When that has 5-10 seconds left, mash bubbles on the melee (this is why I'm really banal about having groups set up properly. In a 10man you can usually get tanks/melee in 1 group with ranged in the other, more or less. It makes bubbling easier because you can go down a row and get 'similar' targets). This means once the stomp hits, the melee will take barely, if any, damage. The other thing your boss mod can tell you on Gormok is when Impale is going to hit. Impales are going to be big damage spikes on the tank, and Penance/gheal are great buttons for spikes.
*Keep in mind gheal is a tad slow if you don't have that much haste yet*

Depending on your healing team, this probably isn't the most efficient way to handle stomps. Especially in 10-man where your tanks + melee shouldn't be more than a single party, I'd say shield anyone that might be low, then follow with a pre-casted PoH. That'll take about half the amount of time of taking 4-5 GCDs to bubble, unless you're running low on melee.

Edit: mouseover healing is completely alien to me. I much prefer clicking a frame and using the keybinds i have for my heals: 1-4, R, G, H, T, X. For me, having to keep my mouse over grid all the time to heal seems very weird/dangerous.

Quite the opposite. If you click to target then hit hotkeys, you still have to have your mouse over your raid frames to select your targets, so how is it any more dangerous to use mouseover macros? In both cases you have to move your mouse out of the raidframes to mouseturn. Worse, clicking a target then pressing a key bind is decidedly slower than simply clicking a target. You absolutely will react faster and have less "brain lag" once you grow accustomed to mouseover.

I've been using mouseover macros to heal for as long as I can remember. It's probably not for everyone, but I tend to always have a boss targetted and to use grid for mousing over a player frame and letting loose with whatever. Also, decursive is invaluable, as you simply click a square to cleanse.

Personally, it seems redundant to me to have decursive when you're using VuhDo, Grid+Clique, or Healbot because you can just bind your cleanses to some click combinations. Worse, if you use that, you now have to watch two different frames and have heavier mouse movement from going back and forth between the frames, which will ultimately reduce reaction time. I think decursive is fine for mages and other non-healing specs that may need to cleanse (mages, ret/prot pallies, moonkins, shadow priests, ele/enhance shammies), but I think it's probably a poor choice for healers.

[Fantasy777]

I'm so appreciative of all the thoughtful answers. Getting so much quality advice is really helpful and I have to say that it seems the healing community is much more supportive than say posting a dps rotation question where you get 5 l2play comments for every 1 helpful bit of advice.

Time to get some practice in on AVs and buy some enchants/gems (i was aware they were far from optimal, but it's past time to get that fixed)

thanks again!

Yea, AV is a great place to get learn healing.

Also, some general advice:

* Mouseover healing isnt necessary. I use Grid, click a target, and hit my keybind. Never much liked mouseover:ing.

* Disc is harder to play than holy. Try a holy build, you may go OOM alot, but its easier to play since it uses mostly instants.

* Get a cooldown addon, like tellmewhen, so you can easily see the cd's.

[Sphyx]

Yea, AV is a great place to get learn healing.

Also, some general advice:

* Mouseover healing isnt necessary. I use Grid, click a target, and hit my keybind. Never much liked mouseover:ing.

* Disc is harder to play than holy. Try a holy build, you may go OOM alot, but its easier to play since it uses mostly instants.

* Get a cooldown addon, like tellmewhen, so you can easily see the cd's.

But you are slower than doing just on click in grid with a mouseovermacro. In addition to that, you can still focus an enemy or boss to dispell while doing that, if you click and then cast your heal you loose your target.

[Pisholina]

I have a a few healers at lvl 80 that i play with. The only addon i use is the X-perl unit frames. I keybind all my heals and buffs. When i am healing, i click the persons raid frame and press the required key to heal them. And that's it. I am usually at the top healing and at the bottom of the overhealing recount.

[Pendulus]

The trickiest thing I find to do as Disc is predict damage and bubble it before it hits. Sure, a pre-casted PoH is nice but not as nice as bubbling up 5 people and getting 5 returns from Rapture all at once (if multiple bubbles pop at the same time then Rapture will proc multiple times too, it's awkward to do because if one bubble breaks so much as a split second early you're cockblocked for twelve more seconds).

I wouldn't use Penance 'on CD', I'd use it 'when someone's going down fast'.

Make use of Borrowed Time, and you should be in it all the time just by bubbling people whenever you can. It'll cut your Penance down to a shade over a second, and your Flash Heals will be GCD without needing to go overboard on gemming for Haste.

Prayer of Mending whenever it's available. Try not to use it on the same target as a Holy Priest if you share a raid with one.

[dehlak]

It's been said before in the topic, you need to find your flow and try out what playing style is the best for you. Personally I don't use things like grid a lot (except for fights where everyone is spread around so far that you will have to use it to see who you can heal). Just remember, find something that works for you.. don't copy something that works for others.

[babyback]

Get a mouse over macro for healing. It takes alot of weight off your shoulders.

/cast [target=mouseover,exists][] Flash Heal

Just add the spells needed instead of Flash heal.

[Fantasy777]

But you are slower than doing just on click in grid with a mouseovermacro. In addition to that, you can still focus an enemy or boss to dispell while doing that, if you click and then cast your heal you loose your target.

Yes, you become a tad slower on reactive heals such as throwing a GS on someone getting hit unexpectedly.

On heals where you're waiting for the GCD, which in my case is probably >75% of all heals, it doesn't matter how you do it. In fact, I find it nicer to be able to move the cursor freely while hitting your heal keybind waiting for the GCD, esp while doing filler casting.

[Zanter]

Might not be very helpful, but I learned how to heal the hard way.
Practice, then practice and even more practice.
Healing requires timing and situation awareness alot more than a tank or a DPS.
To be a good healer, heal everything who's not on 100% HP.
To be a great healer, predict incoming damage and make preparations to minimize the time it will take to heal the damage.

[Akashas]

in all honesty the best way to L2heal is to not use any add-ons at all till you can heal, a lot of god awful priests (maybe just my server) relies on them far 2 much and when ever patch day comes they cant heal with out it...

best way to learn is do some Bgs learn that at times you have to let people die in order to save other people

1st tank
2nd healer
3rd highest dps
4th lowest dps

thats the heal order some can argue that healer is above tank but its more personal choice

you have spells learn to use them in situations it will take trial and error, try and get your self into a naxx 25/10 man and drag out the groups 1 by 1 yes its annoying but understand the basics before you go all addons you will find that after a full run you have all the basics and a better understanding

[Zka]

in all honesty the best way to L2heal is to not use any add-ons at all till you can heal, a lot of god awful priests (maybe just my server) relies on them far 2 much and when ever patch day comes they cant heal with out it...

The basic UI is very much useless for healing, even after all the enhancements. Noone will get any kind of extra experience healing on a crappy UI. It's just frustrating and ineffective.

[Azyoulike]

in all honesty the best way to L2heal is to not use any add-ons at all till you can heal, a lot of god awful priests (maybe just my server) relies on them far 2 much and when ever patch day comes they cant heal with out it...

It depends on what you consider a healing add-on. I'd agree healbot has issues and has historically broken frequently on patch days. Grid & xperl however are both fine, mouseover macros are completely safe.

Learning to heal with a bad UI means you have to relearn when you fix your UI. Why learn twice?

[Zeuq]

The basic UI is very much useless for healing, even after all the enhancements. Noone will get any kind of extra experience healing on a crappy UI. It's just frustrating and ineffective.

This. You can get most of the information you need to be a good healer through the default UI, but most is not good enough. "Most" may seem decent, but some of the stuff that's missing is important, like incoming heals, custom debuffs, etc. Even worse, it's terribly organized in a non-intuitive way.

Yes, it can be done, and I've done it in a pinch when my UI bugs out in the middle of an encounter (which hasn't happened in months), but I think it's more helpful to new healers to be sure they have all the information they can get. How does a Priest learn to coordinate his heals with other healers unless he can watch incoming heals? How can he know when to pre-cast or react quickly without custom debuffs? Sure, with experience, I know how to coordinate with other healers to a large degree since I know how they tend to react to various damage patterns, but how do you expect a new healer to know that intuitively?

Yes, setting up a healing mod can be intimidating and time consuming, but there's decent guides out there for how to configure all of the major healing frames that can at least get a basic version available that can be tweaked as you become more familiar with it. Further, you can always ask other healers in your raid, and they'll generally be happy to help set up healing frames.

[piin]

Ok. I've been practicing and I think I'm gaining a little bit of knowledge. Healing a 25man Voa with grid was a bit of insanity though. It was basically spam shields on everyone and hitting the tanks with PoM whenever it was up. When the AoE damage spikes on the newest boss.... GOOD GOD that's a lot to heal! One of our tanks died, but we finished off the boss before the other dropped.

Here's my latest question. If I have clique setup with grid, do I still need mouseover macros? I mean, I've got multiple mouse buttons with shift modifiers right? Or should I be binding mouseover macros to certain keys instead to be more efficient?

I'll say this, healing still hasn't slowed down much for me though. It's like "Oh shit!, oh... ok, they didn't die... OH SHIT!, whew they're ok... FUCK FUCK FUCK! Oh good, some other healer just saved my ass" then repeat.

[Zeuq]

Here's my latest question. If I have clique setup with grid, do I still need mouseover macros? I mean, I've got multiple mouse buttons with shift modifiers right? Or should I be binding mouseover macros to certain keys instead to be more efficient?

No, you generally should not need any mouseover macros, certainly not bound to any keys. You may still need some macros to do special things, like announce when you use important cooldowns, but I'm unsure exactly how those work with Clique.

I'll say this, healing still hasn't slowed down much for me though. It's like "Oh shit!, oh... ok, they didn't die... OH SHIT!, whew they're ok... FUCK FUCK FUCK! Oh good, some other healer just saved my ass" then repeat.

This level of panic is pretty typical when you're starting out. In a raid it can easily feel like you're the only healer out there, so it's important to learn to rely on other healers to do their jobs, otherwise you'll quickly get burned out from the stress or start panicking and making poor decisions. That's not to say you shouldn't help out other people as you can, but you should be prudent when you forsake your assignment to do so because they're relying on you to do yours as much as you are on them to do theirs.

[elitistjerk]

POH /glyphed holy nova are ur friends. cleanup w/ PWS/renews/lessers

[Greid]

On a side note. FIX YOUR PVP SPEC. look at all the threads and debates on this forum and others to find one that makes a little more sense. Gotta have dispell protection and grace imo, get inner focus and lose the 3 (THREE) points in blessed resilience. Play around with spec, if you're going to eventually move up to arenas then youll need to learn to burst switch to dps (meaning more keybinds and spec changes), dont get the spirit offsets get haste. healing is very hard, but very fun. Just as you switched from a dps class who got sick of looking at the boss, many tanks and healers have switched to dps classes only to find that it is repetitive and boring (nevertheless fun sometimes)

[Maxpowr]

POH /glyphed holy nova are ur friends. cleanup w/ PWS/renews/lessers

um...what kind of advice is that?

Anyways, one of the joys of healing, especially on a priest, is that you don't really need complicated macros or rotations to play. As a caveat, some people may not like the "free play" style of a healing priest, which can lead to poor performance. Sure, there are some necessary things like having PoM always on CD (or renewed hope up if you're disc); but after that, you make all the decisions on what spells to use and when. You will find good discussion on many priest forums for each spec (holy and disc) on how to play.

I mostly just use modifers when healing. Of course having alot modifiers for all our spells is annoying at times.

As for the stress of healing, the hardest part is trusting other healers to do their job. It can be quite frustrating when someone isn't pulling their weight in a group. It will happen alot in PuGs (like VoA) but as long as I felt I put in my best effort, I'm content. Group synergy between the healers in a raid is the unsung hero. That's why the common saying about healing is "meters don't matter as long as nobody died".

From my experience with healers, they tend to be the most relaxed player (ignoring ToGC anub) and usually have the best raid awareness. If you tend to be someone with a short temper, healing may not be the best role for you.

[Geekzilla]

I'd also suggest setting up more heals then just your shield to clique. I don't use grid/clique, as I use healbot (just seems to work for me), but I'd imagine you can bind more heals then just a shield to your mouse. It reduces your reaction time and is a life saver, IMO.

Agreed, I've got almost every spell I need bound using Clique. Of course, I'm to the point I'm chording modifier keys, and once a run or so, I'll hit ctrl-shift-click instead of alt-shift-click or something like that, but it usually isn't a fatal mistake. I found that for me, chording modifiers worked better than binding to mouse buttons 3-5. If you have problems remembering which combination of modifiers is for a specific spell, then you may want to continue using mouse-over macros, since Clique (and every other similar addon I've seen) are limited to a small number of modifier keys. I did find that it works best if I have my "panic buttons" bound to all three modifier keys so that if I need them, there's no hesitation about which combination I need, I just hit them all.

Then again, that probably won't work for most people, let alone everyone. Having the target and spell as part of a single action reduces my error rate over targeting then casting, but I'm sure that there are some people that will work out better if they target then cast using a different method. Try different things, and use what you find most comfortable.

Clique can be bound to macros, but I don't remember the exact method/limitations, since I set that up a while ago and haven't used it since. I think you still set up the macro as a mouse-over macro.

Another thing to consider if you continue using mouse-over macros, is which keys to bind them to. Personally, I move (including strafe and backing up) with the mouse, so I bound my normal action bars to keys under/near my left hand.

Of course, all that is UI issues. You sound like you've read up on the various spell interactions (grace, borrowed time, etc), so I don't have advice to give there, and don't have time to check out gear/spec/glyphs/etc.

[elitistjerk]

um...what kind of advice is that?

Anyways, one of the joys of healing, especially on a priest, is that you don't really need complicated macros or rotations to play. As a caveat, some people may not like the "free play" style of a healing priest, which can lead to poor performance. Sure, there are some necessary things like having PoM always on CD (or renewed hope up if you're disc); but after that, you make all the decisions on what spells to use and when. You will find good discussion on many priest forums for each spec (holy and disc) on how to play.

I mostly just use modifers when healing. Of course having alot modifiers for all our spells is annoying at times.

As for the stress of healing, the hardest part is trusting other healers to do their job. It can be quite frustrating when someone isn't pulling their weight in a group. It will happen alot in PuGs (like VoA) but as long as I felt I put in my best effort, I'm content. Group synergy between the healers in a raid is the unsung hero. That's why the common saying about healing is "meters don't matter as long as nobody died".

From my experience with healers, they tend to be the most relaxed player (ignoring ToGC anub) and usually have the best raid awareness. If you tend to be someone with a short temper, healing may not be the best role for you.

He asked for AOE healing advice--so i answered him. After reading your post I can come to the conclusion that you are a baddie If you don't recognize what I was referring to. Your post does NOTHING to help the OP with his request-just a wall of useless text. nice work!~ +1 internetz