Healer newb

[Deleted]

Played this game for 10 years, never really went into healing, healed 5 men at most. Now with nothing to do in WoD, I thought about giving raid healing a shot.

Ok, leveled a holy priest to 100. Dungeons were good, nothing annoying. Now as soon as I hit 100, I went to the only place where you can test raid healing without pissing people off: Ashran.

Holy crap! First thing I noticed is that the left side of the screen is almost completely covered in health bars and severely lowers your FOV. Ok, the default UI obviously isn't gonna work, so I checked the forums for recommended healing addons.

Tried Healbot first as people said it's pretty simple and straightforward. Not really needing the mouse-only healing spell, tbh. Now the lower half of the screen is the one covered in health bars. Tried Vuhdo next, same deal, except this time I could make the health bars smaller so they don't cover so much screen. Yeah, if I make them as small I need them to be, then I can barely make out the names and the bars themselves.

So is this it? How does that actually work in raids? You can barely see shit like raid mechanics and stuff not to stand in. This part of the UI looks like some serious fucked up shit. Or am I doing it wrong?

[time0ut]

Yes, if you are a healer, your raid frame will take up a good bit of your UI. It shouldn't affect your raid awareness though. Just keep the central area around your character clear of stuff and you should be fine. For example, I keep about a 4x6 inch area clear in the center of my screen with my unit frames on the left, target unit frames on the right, and raid unit frames underneath. This works well for me because my eyes are always close to the center of my screen.

You mention not needing mouse only healing options. I also do not care for mouse only, but all of my healing spells are mouse over. Its very important that you do not need to target a player to heal them. Having to switch targets for each heal can severely limit your throughput.

[Deleted]

Yes, if you are a healer, your raid frame will take up a good bit of your UI. It shouldn't affect your raid awareness though. Just keep the central area around your character clear of stuff and you should be fine. For example, I keep about a 4x6 inch area clear in the center of my screen with my unit frames on the left, target unit frames on the right, and raid unit frames underneath. This works well for me because my eyes are always close to the center of my screen.

You mention not needing mouse only healing options. I also do not care for mouse only, but all of my healing spells are mouse over. Its very important that you do not need to target a player to heal them. Having to switch targets for each heal can severely limit your throughput.

I see... Good tip. Didn't think about moving the bars in such a way.

[Gunners]

Realize as well that when you are raiding you will not generally have 40 people in your group so that will also cut down on the amount of frames.
Personally I use elvui for my healing but have used heal bot and also grid. Mouse over macro regardless of what ui you use will greatly increase your through put even if you don't like using them. Especially in raids where you will likely over heal a lot if not using them since other healers will beat you to it.
I would strongly recommend checking out the healer ui threads and look through to find ideas on what you like and what you don't like as far as where stuff is positioned. I do find that most people tend to either put the frames slightly to the side or at the bottom. As long as your feet are clear you should be fine with not standing in stuff as long as you are zoomed right in.

[time0ut]

Oh, also, I use elvui which has nice and easily customizable raid frames. The default ui kinda sucks, but I've raided with healers that made it work well enough.

[Zantos]

I suggest raid healing random bg's. Though only problem in there is when they start to focus you down. Though it will be a better environment due to fewer health bars and ability to look at the screen board to see how much healing you did. It only counts healing done to missing health. Also try to aim for being killed as few times as possible while doing the most healing.

[Amantino]

Default raid frames are actually really good. Compared to Grid (Which I'm using), they don't require any customization, while in Grid I need to manually add a lot of stuff, own Grid-addon for extra icons, etc.

Anyways if you want a really good setup, you need to put in the work as well. Grid, Grid2 (I think Grid2 is good too, right?), ElvUI. Some also use Vudho(?).

[Deleted]

Haven't tried Elvui yet because I once tried for general gameplay and I didn't like the new fonts and shit, so I'm guessing that if I use it, it will change a lot more than just the raid frames.

[Adramelch]

The default UI might be bad in general, but the raid frames, correctly utilized, are really top notch. Only problem I've had with them is positioning as MoveAnything seems to bug a bit when I move the raid frames.

[Gunners]

Haven't tried Elvui yet because I once tried for general gameplay and I didn't like the new fonts and shit, so I'm guessing that if I use it, it will change a lot more than just the raid frames.

Correct. It is a basic replacement of the entire default ui. There are a lot of people that have taken it and their own edits of it that they have available for download. But default ui with move anything will suit fine if that is the appearance you like.
Could try something like shadowuf or pit bull if you just want a unit frame change. That leaves the text intact.

[drivec]

just a tip the best place to play with your ui is to join someone who has invites open to their garrison for daily npc.

[Spotnick]

The default UI doesn't suck if you set it properly, you can pretty much put it exactly like Grid and use it with mouseover (pretty much what you have to do on alpha/beta), but you better unlock it and put it in the center-bottom of your screen if you want it at the best place possible for you to still follow what's going on. You'll only miss the customization the other addons will give you to show things the way you want it.

But healers use Grid, Vuhdo, Healbot or ElvUI in healer mode usually. Personally I use Grid with mouseover macros but before when I didn't need to improve my reaction time I used Clique for mousebindings. The rest is up to you.

[Deleted]

The only secret of healing is good mouseover macros. But I'd strongly suggest to those liking seeing numbers on meters to stay DPS. The worst healers around are those mainly looking at the meters since their new role is no longer mainly about doing numbers.

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Grid

Grid has very slow updates lately. The best appears to be vuhdo. It's configuration Interface is crap but you can't have everything.

[Amantino]

Grid has very slow updates lately. The best appears to be vuhdo. It's configuration Interface is crap but you can't have everything.

Last significant issue with Grid was the broken debuffs during WoD prepatch (or around that time atleast). It's been fine whole expansion, theres no need to constantly update something thats not broken.