Healing in WoW - The Great Healer Guide (Part1)

February 8, 2023

Healers are an essential part of any role-playing game. While the group beats up bears, bandits or bosses, the healers treat their allies with various skills. Healers have also played an important role in World of Warcraft since Classic. While the game has evolved through the numerous expansions, the gameplay around healing has also become more complex. There are six different healer specializations, all of which use different mechanics.

Yet all specializations are essentially about the same thing: How do I get my party through combat alive? What skills do I use and when? And what do I need to keep in mind so I'm not left without mana in the middle of combat? If you're new to World of Wacraft or have been on the front lines for years - either as a tank or a damage dealer - and now want to try out a healer, you'll learn everything you need to know to get started. Below you'll learn what your job is as a healer, how your playstyle differs from tanks and DDs, and how to master your first dungeons and raids as a healer.

1Thegameplay of the healer
2EfficientHealing
3Playing with foresight
4Overview ofdifferent healer specializations
5Proactivehealing
6Using HoTscorrectly
7Using cooldowns
8Keepingcalm in chaos
9Thefive phases
10Positioningand debuffs
11Standingin the middle
12Using running paths
13Dispeland debuffs
14Thefirst raid
15Setting up the raid window
16Keyboard layoutand macros

Unfold

How to play

as a

healer

ur

job as a healer is to make sure your teammates survive the battle. In addition to the normal gameplay, you must keep an eye on the health of all players. When you are in a raid, you can see the life bars of all your allies in the raid frame. Players take damage from enemies' attacks, from strong boss abilities, or from dangerous area effects. When the heroes' health bar drops as a result, you must act as a healer. Each healer specialization has different healing spells available that shine in different situations. There are healing spells that only restore health to one player.
Power Word: Priest's Shield you cast before you take damage. Source: buffed Tanks in particular need a lot of healing, as they regularly take the boss's melee attacks. So for tanks, you'll often want to use single-target heals. However, if multiple players need healing at the same time, you'll want to cast group heals. These don't restore quite as much health to each ally as single-target heals do. Unlike damage dealers, there is no fixed rotation or priority list, but you always have to react to different situations with the right spells.

The

mana Another difference from damage dealers is that you don't want to hit as much damage, or in our case healing, in the shortest time possible

The healer's most important resource is mana. At the beginning of the fight, the blue bar is completely filled. Your healing spells cost different amounts of mana points. In battle, you regenerate very little of the ser resource. As soon as your blue bar is empty, you cannot cast any more healing spells and are virtually incapacitated.

Many healers announce this as "oom" (abbreviation for "out of mana"). Tanks and damage dealers will know that things are about to get hairy. While you wait several seconds to regenerate just enough mana to give the tank one last heal, you watch as one damage dealer after another dies. To avoid this disastrous scenario, you must always keep an eye on your mana.

Efficient

Healing

Single-target and group healing once again come in a variety of forms for many healers. When a Holy Priest wants to heal a single target, he has the two spells Heal and Flash Heal available to him. The two spells restore roughly equal amounts of health to the ally. However, Lightning Heal only has a base spell time of 1.5 seconds, while Heal requires you to wait a full 2.5 seconds for the target to receive healing.
Position yourself in the middle of the raid so that you have all your teammates within range! Source: buffed So you could flash heal all the time and generate as much or more healing than a Holy Priest who casts both flash heal and heal. Lightning Heal, however, costs significantly more mana than Heal. So you'll be "oom" after several uses of Lightning Heal, while your frugal colleague can happily continue casting his healing spells. However, in some situations, you'll just have to rely on the speed of lightning healing.

There are phases in battle where every second decides victory or defeat

You will need to pump significantly more healing during that time than during other phases. If players are low on health and the next boss ability will defeat them, you won't have time to heal, but will have to resort to lightning healing. So, in summary, your job is to save mana in the right places so that you have enough of this resource for the healing-intensive phases in combat.

HpS

says little: Off HpS only tells you how much healing you generate

. The

most important thing is that your teammates survive and you save them at the crucial moment with a healing spell.

Not only the Holy Priest, but all healer specializations have manaefficient healing and expensive emergency heals. Restoration Druids doctor minor wounds with Rejuvenation and Wild Growth to solve tricky situations with the expensive Regrowth and Rapid Heal spells. Mistcaster Monks have the mana-efficient Soothing Mist and Renewing Mist spells, and can then provide a lot of healing to the intended target in a few seconds with Revive.

Playing ahead

a healer, you'll have to make a lot of decisions in boss f

ights:

Do I use group heals or focus on individual teammates? Do these players need healing urgently or can I cast mana-efficient alternatives? To make these decisions, you need as much information about the boss fight as possible. You don't decide on a healing spell based on the player's remaining health, but always based on the situation of a fight. We'll take two situations as an example. In both situations, your fighter in the party has half of his maximum health left.

Situation 1: There are several damaging area effects on the ground. The hunter has to move soon and has little choice but to run through the fire. At the same time, the boss casts a Shadow Bolt on the hunter. In this situation, the hunter desperately needs healing, as he may die in the next few seconds.
Situation 2: There are no area effects and the boss focuses exclusively on your tank. There is no danger of the hunter taking further damage. In this situation, the hunter does not need healing. When the fight is almost over, you don't need to heal the hunter at all. Your party does not need to finish the fight with 100% of its health.

So you act completely differently in both scenarios, even though in both situations you first see only the hunter with half the health bar. Therefore, you need to keep an eye on more than just the health of your teammates. You should always ask yourself the following questions: What abilities does the boss use and which are particularly dangerous? How often does he use these abilities? Are there phases in the battle where I need to heal a lot? Can I save mana in other places?

How much damage do the tanks take? These are the questions you try to answer in the boss progress. For example, while your first pull on a boss is to keep your entire party at maximum health, you find out that the boss does little party damage and the tanks take a lot of damage. So in the next attempts you use only cheap heals for the group and keep only the tanks at maximum health with your more expensive spells.

Table of Contents1

. How to play the healer2. Efficient healing3. Playing ahead4. Overview of different healer specializations5. Proactive healing6. Using HoTs correctly7. Making use of cooldowns8. Keeping calm in the midst of chaos9. The five phases10. Positioning and debuffs11. Standing in the middle12. Using running routes13. Dispel and debuffs14. The first raid15. Setting raid window16. Keyboard mapping and macros

Overview of different healer specializations

Healing in WoW - The Great Healer Guide (Part1) (1) Source: buffed Below is an overview of the different healer specializations. Each specialization has different strengths and weaknesses. It is advisable to play a healer that suits your play style.

Holy Priest
Signature Abilities: Spirit of Redemption, Blessing Word: Redemption, Symbol of Hope
Difficulty: 1 of 4+

easy to learn

flexible to use
+ high HPS values

can switch to Discipline

Priest-

slow class

few support spells

few defensive cooldownsIn

this guide, we often mention the Holy Priest as an example. The reason is that he is the classic healer par excellence. He brings mana-efficient and fast, but expensive individual as well as group heals. Therefore, the Holy Priest is the perfect specialization for beginners to learn how to heal. The special thing about the Priest is that he has two healer specializations available. With a little practice, you can also try the Discipline Priest without having to level and equip a new character first. In mythic raids, the Holy Priest is unpopular because he only brings a few support spells to the party, which the more popular Discipline Priest also has available.

Discipline Priest
Signature Abilities: Apology, Word of Power: Barrier

Difficulty

: 4 out of 4+

causes damage

strong absorption shields

can switch to Holy Pr

iest-

lots of planning

can react poorly to sudden events
- slow class
- unsuitable for beginners
- few defensive

cooldownsPreventing damage is usually better than healing damage. The Discipline Priest has many absorption shields at his disposal. He can shield his teammates from strong abilities, so they can even survive abilities that would have definitely knocked them out without Discipline Priest. On top of that, the "Diszi" generates healing by dealing damage to enemies through the Apology mechanic. The extra DpS is welcome in any raid or dungeon. However, as a Discipline Priest, you'll need to do a lot of planning ahead. You need to distribute shields before your teammates take damage. You can react badly to unpredictable events. Therefore, this specialization is rather unsuitable for beginners.

Restoration Druids can turn into a tree for a short time to generate more healing. Source: buffed Restoration Druid

Signature Abilities: Serenity, Stimulate, Rebirth
Difficulty: 3 of 4+

strong healer for Mythic-Plus dungeons

many spontaneous spells allow healing on the move

survives many situations due to bear form and tree bark-

no burst healingThe

Restoration Druid can cast a variety of HoTs. It generates high HpS values when the party always takes some damage. The druid can react rather poorly to high, sudden burst damage. Also, healing individual players quickly, that is not the Druid's forte. Since most HoTs are spontaneous spells, Druids can also heal a lot while moving. Add to that strong support spells and defensive cooldowns, making the Restoration Druid one of the strongest M+ dungeon healers. The special feature of the Druid is that he can take different guises. As a bear, you can withstand even more. In cat form, you can sneak past groups of enemies.

Holy Paladin
Signature Abilities: Flame of Faith, God Shield, Laying on of Hands, Blessing of Protection
Difficulty: 3 of 4+

strong tank healing

deals damage

strong support spells-

positioning is very importantSaintly Paladins

are strong tank healers. With Flame of Faith, you occupy one player. That player then receives a portion of your healing as additional healing. So you can heal one tank and passively heal the other tank with Flame of Faith. You can save individual players with the laying on of hands. But also strong group healing is no problem for the Holy Paladin. In addition, there are many powerful cooldowns that make the Holy Paladin a popular raid healer. God Shield makes you immune to damage and many mechanics for a short time. Aura of Devotion reduces damage taken throughout the raid. Your mastery generates more healing when you stand near your teammates. Some abilities require you to stand within melee range of the boss. Therefore, positioning is very importantRestoration

Shaman

Signature Abilities: Healing Tide Totem, Spirit Link Totem, Healing Rain
Difficulty: 2 of 4+

strong cooldowns

+ strong

group healing

strong support spell

weak in Mythic Plus dungeons

group needs to be close together for shaman to be really strong

long spell timesRestoration Shamans

are strong group healers. Chain heal will doctor multiple players at once. Healing Rain is a strong area spell. As long as your party is in the blue puddle, your teammates get a lot of healing for very little mana. However, other abilities require your party to be close together for these abilities to be really strong. The Shaman's specialty is the totems that you ram into the ground so that you can benefit from useful effects for a short time. These include strong healing cooldowns, but also other support spells that remove all fear effects, for example. Because of these cooldowns alone, many raids like to take a healing shaman with them. Restoration Shamans tend to be unpopular in dungeons because of the long spell times.

Mist Caster Monk
Signature Abilities: Invigoration, Rolls
Difficulty: 2 of 4+

mobile class

brings important debuff Mystic Touch with
+ flexible use, does well in any situation
+ deals damage
+ strong control spells-

weak cooldownsMistcaster Monks

are flexible healers. They have some strong group heals up their sleeves. If the tank suffers a lot of damage, the healing monk channels Calming Mist. While channeling, many abilities are then spontaneous spells. So he heals up any target in no time. Spells like rolls make him incredibly mobile. While other healers are still running, he can already heal the party. The cooldown Revive instantly heals all players by a large amount, making it a strong cooldown for emergencies. Other than that, the Mistcaster Monk has no cooldowns worth mentioning. In that respect, the other healer specializations surpass him. There are talents that allow you to generate more healing via damage. This offers you some variety from the normal playstyle.

Table of Contents1

. The healer's playstyle2. Efficient healing3. Playing ahead4. Overview of different healer specializations5. Proactive healing6. Using HoTs correctly7. Making use of cooldowns8. Keeping calm in the midst of chaos9. The five phases10. Positioning and debuffs11. Standing in the middle12. Using running routes13. Dispel and debuffs14. The first raid15. Setting raid window16. Keyboard mapping and macros

Proactive Healing

The Mistcaster Monk uses Essenzborn to heal multiple players at once. Your teammates can also stand spread out. Source: buffed Some healing spells require this proactive play style. A good example of this is Power Word: Shield of the Discipline Priest. The spell grants a player a powerful absorption shield. If you cast the ability before a strong blow from the enemy to the tank, you will prevent a lot of damage. However, if you cast Power Word: Shield after the target has been hit, you will prevent at most the enemy's smaller melee attacks.

But not only do you cast Absorption Shields before a dangerous boss ability

You want your teammates to survive these abilities, not have them at 100% health all the time. So the important healing happens before a boss ability, not after.

For example,

if you have a powerful spell that does a lot of damage to the entire party, you cast Lightning Heal just before it on the ally who has low health and therefore won't survive the boss's next ability.

Using HoTs correctly

Then there are HoTs (Healing over Time), which you also cast before players take damage. HoTs are spells that produce little to no healing when they are cast, but they heal players over a long period of time. HoTs are usually very mana efficient spells. For example, in the case of the Fog Caster Monk, Renewing Fog heals as much over 20 seconds as two expensive Revive spells combined. So before the party takes damage, a Mistcaster Monk can cast Renewing Mist on teammates. After those characters take damage, they receive healing from Renewing Mist and, optimally, have enough health a few seconds later to survive the next boss ability.

Using Cooldowns

The Shaman's Spirit Link Totem is especially effective when all players are inside the ring. Source: buffed Just like tanks and damage dealers, healers have various spells with long cooldowns. These rarely simply increase your generated healing, but have special effects that are appropriate in different situations. The tricky part is not pulling Cooldowns at the wrong time, but using it in the right situation. For example, the Restoration Shaman has the Spirit Link totem available. All players standing in range will receive less damage and the health of the players will be equalized among themselves.

The cooldown is ideal when all allies are close together while standing still. However, if all players have to move a lot, so run out of range and healers also don't have time to cast healing spells, Totem of Healing Tide is more suitable. After you place the totem, it automatically heals all the players over several seconds, so you can focus on running.

Keeping Calm in the Chaos

Even with the best preparation, you'll get to the point where chaos breaks out. This is perfectly normal, as you will have to deal with mechanics that are unfamiliar to you, especially during progression. One mistake can quickly set off a chain reaction. For example, a tank can spot incorrectly and bite the dust. A druid then revives the tank and in that time but can't interrupt the boss. The spell does a lot of damage to the whole party - welcome to chaos!

Some bosses are also designed to make you sweat at the end during the so-called soft enrage. The damage of the boss keeps increasing and increasing until the point where the healers can't fight the damage anymore. Such phases are not avoidable.

It's

just important how you handle them.

The five phases

You can divide each boss fight into different phases. Each additional phase means more damage. So more healing is needed. Then in phase four and five you will find yourself in the situation just described, where the life of the entire party hangs by a thread. Phases one through five can occur several times in different orders. In principle, this is comparable to the gears in a car. With the first gears you drive slowly and relaxed, while in gears four and five you speed along the roads and burn your fuel (figuratively your mana). Below, we'll show you how to react in each phase:

Phase 1: No to hardly any damage The tanks take damage from normal enemy attacks. Here and there a damage dealer also takes some damage. Save your mana! Use only cheap and long lasting HoTs! Most of the time you do damage to the enemy yourself. Every healer also has some abilities up his sleeve that do some damage.
2ndphase: Little damage Most of the time you are in this phase. Tanks and damage dealers take some damage from some abilities. The health of the group is between 60 and 85 percent. The trick is to use little mana, although you need to heal a lot. Therefore, this is where you cast all your mana-efficient spells. Optimally, you'll regenerate as much mana as you spend.
3rdPhase: Light Group Damage Tanks and damage dealers take damage and have 45 and 60 percent health. In this phase, you start spending your mana. You'll still renew HoTs and use some cheap spells, but occasionally use expensive single-target and group heals. Cast cooldowns to counter strong boss abilities!
Phase 4: High Group Damage This phase can contain traces of chaos. Teammates have only 25 to 45 percent health left. Any damaging ability can send a player over the edge. Cast your expensive abilities to get out of this phase quickly! Use all your cooldowns! It's not the mana cost that matters here, it's the survival of the party.
Phase 5: Chaos Basically, the same thing as phase four awaits you, except that players are guaranteed to die. Many players have less than 25 percent of their health. Often, the phase occurs during the last percent of the boss fight.
Healing in WoW - The great healer guide (Part1) (2) Source: buffed In the fifth phase you will get into the unpleasant situation where you have to decide who will survive this phase. You don't have the power to heal all the players, because you have already used the cool-downs in the third and fourth phase. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for who exactly gets healing and who doesn't, but there are a few rules of thumb. Tanks and healers should survive,

but if the boss is defeated in a few seconds, you don't necessarily need a second tank. In addition, tanks in particular can go a long time without healing. Especially Protection Paladins and Blood Death Knights have some tricks up their sleeves and can sometimes beat down the last percent alone. Make sure that you secure your own survival first. It's no problem to save your own butt first and neglect the DDs

because if the healers are defeated first, they can't save any players afterwards and the wipe is inevitable

As for the DDs, focus on the ones with the most health. This sounds paradoxical, but there's a simple reason for it: if, for example, a Holy Priest with Lightning Heal targets the player with the lowest health, that player is likely to bite the dust during the 1.5 second casting time. Lightning Healing is canceled and the priest looks for the next target, but that one bites the dust and the spell is canceled again,

several seconds pass in the most important phase and the priest has not generated any healing

On the other hand, for players with higher health values, he can be sure that the player will stay alive until the end of the spell time. This way he can heal one hero after the next and you can defeat the boss together.

Positioning and Debuffs

Proper positioning is

the key.

For DDs, it's usually enough that they have the boss in range. As a healer, you want to have all teammates in range at all times. This is because you want to avoid as many unnecessary runs as possible. If you have to run to a player before you can heal him, he may already be dead. Depending on your class, you won't be able to heal other players in the meantime. In short, running costs healing. And that's why too much running around is rather stupid.

Stay together

Preferably, you want the entire raid to be together in one camp behind the boss, with only the tanks in front of the boss. That way, you're guaranteed to have all the players within range and you can attack the boss yourself. The best part is that your shorter-range spells will also hit all your allies. The Restoration Shaman is especially happy about this. The aforementioned Cooldown Totem of Spirit Connection becomes really powerful. The Healing Rain ability heals all players standing in the blue area and becomes one of the strongest and most mana-efficient healing spells.

Debuffs at a glance

In the table below you can see which debuff types each class (not only healers) can cleanse. Only the pure melee classes Warrior, Death Knight, Rogue and Demon Hunter are left empty-handed and cannot remove debuffs from other players. Warlocks cannot directly dispell magic effects. However, the warlock's imp can do this.

Healing in WoW - The Great Healer Guide (Part1) (3) Source: buffed This list is limited to abilities that allow you to remove debuffs from other players. In addition, some classes can remove debuffs themselves. This is also possible with the folk abilities of the dwarves and dark iron dwarves. The Mass Banishment and Invigoration cooldowns remove multiple debuffs at once. Shadow Priests can also use Mass Banishment, but the cost is high.

Stand in the middle

Often, however, you can't stand together all the time. Ranged fighters in particular often need to spread out. Then position yourselves in the middle of the room. This way you still have the tanks and melee fighters in front within range, but you can also target the ranged fighters behind you as well as to the left and right of you.

There

is a special feature with Holy Paladins and Mistcaster Monks, who have to be in melee range for some healing spells.

Here it is important to use the melee range as much as possible, so that you have most of the ranged fighters just in range

It is also important to coordinate with the other healers in the group. A Holy Paladin or Mistcaster Monk can then focus on the tanks and melee fighters, while a Holy Priest, for example, takes care of the ranged fighters.

Use walkways

Even with good positioning, you'll need to move around from time to time. You'll need to run out of area effects or you'll move on with the entire raid, for example, for the next phase of the boss fight. When doing this, you want to keep the running distances short. For longer distances, use your mobility spells, such as the Mistcaster Monk's roll or the Restoration Druid's spurt.

If you

just walk straight out of an area of fire that grows larger over time, you'll have to move again a few seconds later or the flames will catch up with you

If you have a little more time to move from point A to point B, just run a few feet while waiting for your global cooldown. This is always the case when you use spontaneous spells, that is, spells without spell time. These can be used while moving.

Dispel and Debuffs

Various abilities place harmful effects ("debuffs") on your teammates

These effects inflict damage or stun a player for an extended period of time, for example. Some of these debuffs can remove some classes. The most dangerous are usually the magic effects (blue symbol). These can only be removed by healers. The removal of debuffs is called "Dispel" in technical jargon. Curses, diseases and poison effects can also be dispelled.

Is my mana enough? As a rule of thumb, if you have the same percentage of mana as your opponent has health, your mana will last until the end.

Table of Contents1

However, not every class can remove all three types of deb

uffs.

For example, monks can dispell diseases and poison effects. Curses, for example, must then cleanse druids, who in turn cannot cleanse diseases. Tanks and damage dealers can also dispell these three debuff types. So Brewmaster and Windrunner Monks can remove diseases and poisons. But only healing Mistcaster Monks can then additionally cleanse magic effects.

Remove debuffs

Healers can revive fallen allies after battle Source: buffed It's important that you know what exactly causes a debuff in the first place. If you dispell random debuffs, you can quickly get into trouble. Each dispell costs mana and has a cooldown of eight seconds. Especially in dungeons, this can be your undoing:

if you're cleansing an unimportant poison effect, and a second later the boss is casting a deadly magic effect on your tank, you can either watch your tank die, or use all your cooldowns to somehow keep him

alive.

To decide which debuffs to remove and which to ignore, it's best to follow these rules of thumb:
1. Identifyunimportant debuffs
You don't need to dispell debuffs that expire soon, don't do much damage, or don't restrict your allies much (for example, "Reduces movement speed by ten percent").
2. Save tanks
If both a tank and DD are stunned by a debuff, dispell the tank first. Otherwise, tanks take too much damage and can't spot more enemies, which quickly leads to chaos.
3. Dispelling Magic Effects
Since healers are the only role (with a few exceptions) that can clean magic effects, focus on them. Tanks and DDs can then remove other debuff types.
4. Heal Debuff
For example, if two magic effects are active at the same time, damaging two teammates over a period of time, dispeel one debuff and heal the other target.
5. Use Cooldowns
If things get particularly tight, there are some cooldowns you can use. Invigoration of the Mistcaster Monk and Mass Banishment of the Priest remove multiple debuffs at once. Some classes can remove debuffs themselves in a pinch, such as the Rogue's Cloak of Shadows. The Dwarf and Dark Iron Dwarf folk abilities also remove debuffs.

The First Raid

Now you know how to use your healing spells efficiently and handle tricky situations. You have chosen a healer specialization, brought the class to maximum level, and already received the first pieces of equipment from dungeons. Now you can venture into raids and mythic-plus dungeons. However, so that you don't appear there completely unprepared, you should do the following beforehand. We will concentrate on the raids. However, most of the tips can be transferred one-to-one to Mythic-Plus dungeons.

1. Read Guides
Just like tanks and DDs, you as a healer should deal with the abilities of the boss in advance. Debuffs and abilities that require a lot of healing are especially important to you. The more you know about the fight beforehand, the better. This way you can estimate when it's best to use your cooldowns and in which situations you can save your mana. Depending on the situation, you'll adjust your talents beforehand. For example, some classes have talents that are better suited when a lot of tank healing is needed. Or there are talents that are only useful when your party is close together. If you choose this talent even though you always have to stand spread out on this boss, then another talent would have been a better choice. If you want to find out more, the "Raids" tab in the adventure guide (and of course our guides on buffed) is your first port of call.

2. Maintaining Equipment
Even if you don't have the best equipment yet, it is advisable to socket and enchant your items. In the Battle for Azeroth expansion, you can enchant your rings and weapon. In doing so, you will only strengthen your secondary stats. Which secondary value is the strongest for you depends on the class you choose. Often there are enchantments that grant you some mana every now and then. In Battle for Azeroth, you can enchant your weapon with Oceanic Restoration and regularly receive some mana. Especially at the beginning of your healer career, this enchantment is worthwhile, since you can be a bit more generous with your expensive spells.

3. food and potions
Finally, fill your backpack with various consumable items.

Foliant of Calm Mind/Foliant of Quiet Mind allows you to change your talents outside of combat.
Buff food you eat before each battle. With it you increase a secondary value. If you bite the dust, you lose this effect.
Large Vial of Infinite Depth increases your intelligence for one hour. The effect remains active even after you die.
Healing potions such as Abyssal Healing Potion restore a lot of health immediately. In the raid, you will also receive health stones from warlocks. You can use both a healing potion and a health stone every fight. Even though you can heal yourself at any time, you use these items. The big advantage is that health stones and healing potions do not trigger a global cooldown. So you can heal a teammate and save your own life with a healing potion or health stone at the same time. Especially when the whole party needs healing urgently (phase four or five), both items are worth their weight in gold.
You can usemana potions once in every battle. There are two different mana potions. The coastal mana potion immediately restores about ten percent of your maximum mana. You can use this mana potion without further thought when you run out of blue juice. For the most healing-intensive fights, where every point of mana counts, it's better to use the Potion of Refreshment. It restores 25 percent of your mana. To do this, you must channel this potion for ten seconds. During this time, you will not be able to move or cast abilities. Therefore, you must be sure to play ahead and communicate with the other healers. If there is a damaging area of fire below you and you want to move, you will have to cancel the potion. It's just as stupid if all the healers want to drink the potion at the same time and the entire raid doesn't get any healing for ten seconds. You don't have to finish the potion. After five seconds, you have already regenerated more mana than the coastal mana potion
.Table of Contents1
. How to play the healer2. Efficient healing3. Playing ahead4. Overview of different healer specializations5. Proactive healing6. Using HoTs correctly7. Making use of cooldowns8. Keeping calm in the midst of chaos9. The five phases10. Positioning and debuffs11. Standing in the middle12. Using running routes13. Dispel and debuffs14. The first raid15. Setting raid window16. Keyboard mapping and macros

Using Healing Potions
Even if you can heal yourself, you'll also use healing potions and health stones to ensure your survival even faster and more efficiently!

Interface setup

As a healer, you need to keep several things in mind at once. A good healer interface will allow you to easily see the following information at any time:

Health bars of all players
Your mana
Timer for the next boss abilities
The cooldown of your abilities and important effects

You can't go wrong with these settings. For example, this profile only loads in raids while you are in the healing mist caster specialization. Source: buffed It is important that most of this information is centrally located on your screen. If you have to look in the margins first to find out exactly when you can use your cooldown again, you probably won't see that you're standing in a shades area right now. There is no one best interface for all circumstances and classes. Rather, you can customize it to your own preferences. There are several handy add-ons for healers, such as Healbot, Grid or Vuhdo. Elvui offers you a complete interface, which is optimal for healers with a few simple steps. Especially at the beginning, not many add-ons are necessary. With a few settings, you are also well prepared for raids and dungeons with the standard interface. Only an add-on like Deadly Boss Mods, oRA3 or Big Wigs is mandatory for you.

Set raid window

The raid window shows the health bars of all players together. The settings for the raid frame can be found in the game menu (ESC) in the interface settings under raid profiles. The picture above shows you the settings you can't go wrong with. "Show Class Colors" is not only used to make the tiles appear a bit more colorful, but mainly helps you with orientation.

When the mage in Teamspeak asks for a dispell, just look for the light blue life bar

The resource bars of the other players are unimportant. Whether the hunter has 30 or 70 focus is irrelevant for healing. You also don't need to see the companions of hunters and warlocks. The other information, however, is quite handy. "Show Incoming Healing" displays in a paler shade the healing the target will receive in the next few seconds. This will show HoTs but also direct healing from all healers. So if the Holy Priest in your raid is currently casting Lightning Heal on a teammate, you'll see this in the raid frame and you can choose another target for the moment instead.

Threat and the red frame

When you turn on Threat Marking, the player who is currently attracting the attention of enemies will have a red frame around their health bar. For many bosses, the two tanks will have to take turns. While the active tank has the boss's attention, the other tank takes very little damage. The active tank with the red frame needs more healing from you than the other tank. With this feature, you can see at a glance which tank needs more healing. But this setting is also handy in dungeons with only one tank. If the tank can't bind all enemies in time and they run to another player, you'll see this and can save that character from certain death with a cooldown.

Buffs and Debuffs

"Show debuffs" does not show all debuffs, but only the most important ones. This includes all debuffs that you can dispell. But also non-removable debuffs that are important for the boss fight are displayed. You'll also see effects like the Monk Tank's stagger mechanic. In the traffic light colors, this debuff shows you how much damage the tanking monk will take in the next few seconds. If this is red for a long time, the monk will then need a lot of healing from his primary

healers

You can find the debuffs in the lower left corner of each health bar

If you can dispell this debuff, you will see a small icon in the upper right corner. A blue icon indicates a magic effect, while purple indicates a curse. In the bottom right corner you can see all the buffs you have cast on the target. These are mainly your HoTs. This way you always have an overview of which player you have already cast your HoTs on.

Settings for dungeons

At the top right, check the "Show groups like raids" box. Then your five-player group will be displayed just like a raid and you will benefit from the above mentioned advantages. You can also create multiple profiles. Click on the arrow next to "Primary"! This way you can create one profile for dungeons and one for raids. Since you only need to keep track of five health bars in the dungeon, you can display them larger than the up to 30 health bars in the raid. In the dungeon profile, turn on "Auto-activation for: 5-player group". In the raid profile, check all other group sizes.

You can also make auto-activation dependent on different specializations

For the DD and Tank specialization there is then another profile. Since the two specializations don't need to see the health bars all the time, it's enough if they choose smaller bars on the edge.

Position raid frame

For the last step, you need to join a dungeon or raid group. The best way to do this is to join a raid that wants to do a world boss. The raid window will appear on the left side of the screen. On the far left you will find a small arrow. Click on the arrow to open a small menu. There you press "Unlock". Now you can move the raid window freely. When you find the right position, click "Lock" to avoid accidentally moving the raid window in the heat of battle.

Many healers drag the raid window to the center of the lower third of the screen

If you use the standard action bars, the raid window will be between the action bars and your character. If the raid window obscures your character, it is set too large. You always need a clear view of your character to quickly run out of dangerous area effects. To adjust the size of each health bar, go back to the raid profiles in the interface settings. At the bottom of Window Height and Window Width, adjust the bars so that they don't cover anything important, but you can still see buffs and debuffs.

Keyboard Layout and Macros

Healing in WoW - The Great Healer Guide (Part1) (4) Source: PC Games MMORE As a healer, it's even more important than damage dealers and tanks to assign the most important abilities to one button. If you have to click on a player in the raid window and then press the ability in the bar with the mouse button, you will lose valuable seconds. It's even easier if you create mouseover macros. This way you don't have to click on your targets anymore.

You

only need to place the mouse cursor on the player you want to heal

, which will

also save you a lot of time. Especially when you want to save a player with a spontaneous spell like laying on of hands, the saved click can decide about life and death. You must create the mouseover macro for each spell you cast on a single target. For example, this macro does not work for the Restoration Shaman's area heal Healing Rain.

Creating Mouseover Macros

To get to the macro menu, go back to the game menu (ESC) and click on Macros. There you press "New" and enter the following into the text field:

#showtooltip

/use

[@mouseover,help,nodead]
[help,nodead][@player] Lightning HealInstead of

Lightning Heal you enter the name of the spell you want to use the macro

for.

Then drag the macro to the action bar and swap it with the original ability. You don't have to find an icon for the macro. Because the line "#showtooltip" makes sure that the icon of the ability is loaded automatically. You will also see the remaining cooldown and the tooltip. Repeat this for all abilities you can cast on a single target.

Here's what happens next

With the information in the last section of this guide, you'll be ready for your first raids and dungeons. In the next part, we'll get into the nitty gritty. We'll show you various add-ons and explain how to master Mythic Plus dungeons as a healer. We'll also go into more detail on how to play with other healers in raids.

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Table of Contents

How to play

ur

Healing

Playing ahead

Table of Contents1

Overview of different healer specializations

Table of Contents1

Proactive Healing

Using HoTs correctly

Using Cooldowns

Keeping Calm in the Chaos

The five phases

Positioning and Debuffs

Stay together

Debuffs at a glance

Stand in the middle

Use walkways

Dispel and Debuffs

Table of Contents1

Remove debuffs

The First Raid

.Table of Contents1

Interface setup

Set raid window

Threat and the red frame

Buffs and Debuffs

Settings for dungeons

Position raid frame

Keyboard Layout and Macros

Creating Mouseover Macros

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