Healing Advanced Guide - Essential Tricks & Tips

By Pelinal Updated: 2019/01/18

This Is A User-Submitted Guide!

Wowhead only updates official guides, so information might not be up-to-date.

PelinalHoly Paladin GuideIntroductionHealer Vocabulary

Direct Heal - Nearly every healer has access to some kind of "Standard" heal, this is a heal that generally has a sub 2.5s cast time and heals for a set amount on a single target. Spells such as Heal, Shadow Mend, Healing Touch, Holy Light, Healing Wave.

HoTs - These are spells that heal for a smaller amount but over a duration. Spells such as Rejuvenation are an example of this.

Absorbs - An absorb is any spell that places a buff on the target preventing the next damage event that would hit them. Such as Power Word: Shield.

AoE Heal - An AoE heal is any spell that heals multiple targets at once, such as Light of Dawn, or Chain Heal.

External - An external is a cooldown that reduces the damage or heals an individual target, but on a long cooldown. Such as Guardian Spirit or Ironbark.

Raid Cooldown - A Raid Cooldown is a long cooldown spell that reduces the damage or heals a large number of people in your raid. Such as Power Word: Barrier,Tranquility or Revival.

The Healing ClassesHoly PriestBinding HealPrayer of MendingPrayer of HealingDivine HymnHoly Word: SalvationHoly Word: SerenityFlash HealFor more in depth information check out the Holy Priest Guide.Discipline PriestAtonementAtonementPower Word: ShieldPower Word: ShieldPower Word: RadianceRapturePower Word: BarrierShadow MendFor more in-depth information check out the Discipline Priest Guide.Holy PaladinBeacon of LightBeacon of LightDivine ShieldBlessing of SacrificeBlessing of ProtectionAura MasteryFor more in-depth Information check out the Holy Paladin GuideRestoration ShamanHealing Tide TotemSpirit Link TotemChain HealHealing RainRiptideHealing SurgeAncestral Protection TotemFor more in-depth information check out the Restoration Shaman GuideRestoration DruidTranquilityIronbarkRejuvenationBarkskinBear FormFor more in-depth information check out the Restoration Druid GuideMistweaver MonkEnveloping MistRollTranscendenceRevivalLife CocoonFor more in-depth information check out the Mistweaver Monk GuideUser InterfaceHere

The raid frames are your focus so they should be centrally located, but not covering your character.

You should track all of your classes relevant buffs, or HoT's on your raid frames.

You should track relevant Debuffs on your raid frames so that you can see who is about to, or is taking higher amounts of damage.

You should track any dispellable Debuffs so that you are ready to dispel them when necessary.

Try and have your core rotational abilities located somewhere close to your raid frame so they are easy to see and you can react to abilities as they come off cooldown.

You should have your longer cooldowns somewhere accessible so that you can plan around when they are available,

You should have an external cooldown tracker and/or Raid Cooldown tracker so you can see the situation of the other raid healer cooldowns.

Have your mana bar located somewhere you can see it when you need to, it doesn't need to be a focal point of your UI, but you will want to be aware of it frequently.

Triage Healing and You!Your responsibility as a healer is to keep everyone alive, as such it may be necessary at times to do things that are less efficient for youHealthstoneExternal Cooldowns

Blessing of Sacrifice

Raid Cooldowns

Before the Fight

Let's say, hypothetically; you determine that the fight you are preparing for is going to be about 9 mins and 40 seconds. The first thing you need to figure out then is, how many uses of Holy Avenger will I get in the fight. So with this scenario, the most you can possibly get is 5. So knowing this you ideally want to fit 5 wings casts into that window. But note, due to the restraints of the encounter this may not be possible, nor optimal popping Holy Avenger on the pull will often result in next to no healing; thus you may as well have had four casts anyways and getting 4 "good" uses out of it would be more beneficial.

You can now look at a graph, or try to make your own "mental graph" based on logs or a kill video. For this example, I will use a random log of a 9min 40s Mythic Argus kill from Legion. You can see in "Damage Taken" a graph that looks like this

As you can see there are significant damage spikes at roughly, 3:45, 6:20, 7:20, 9:20. From this, you need to figure out when your other healers will be using their cooldowns, and communicate with them to make sure you have good coverage of all significant damage events. If no one in your guild already does "healer cooldowns" you can always take on the task yourself!

Maximum solo efficiency

So going forward you need to figure out two things, where do you place your Avenging Wrath and where do you place your Aura Mastery. So you know that the first two real major damage events are at 3:45 and 6:20. In this example, I will assume both are equally threatening to your raid (Because each encounter is different this may not be the case, particularly for argus which is the example I'm using here but we are talking hypotheticals here!). But if one is more threatening than the other you should prioritize most of your strength there, or if you are allocating the rest of your healers' cooldowns assign them on the more dangerous event, but don't neglect the still risky yet less perilous event.

So at 3:45 you acknowledge that using a 2min cooldown there it will be up again for the 6:20 damage event. But it will not be up again for the 7:20 damage event. So you can safely use Aura Mastery at any point in the first 1:30 of the fight ( it will be up again when you need it for 3:45), then again at 6:20 and finally you can use it at 9:20. In this scenario, you can also use Aura Mastery in the first 45 seconds of the encounter, then again at 3:45 for that damage event, and again at 9:20.

Teamwork makes the Dream Work!

In this scenario however, you personally have no cooldown for the 7:20 damage event. Which emphasizes why teamwork is so crucial to healer cooldowns. Because if you go into that 7:20 damage event with nothing because all of your healers thought in this manner, then A: you may die and B: if you use too many raid cooldowns at once that devalues all of the raid cooldowns used. So it may very well be more optimal for your raid if you have said a Resto shaman who is going to use his cooldowns at those points we already pointed out, for you to instead acknowledge that the 7:20 damage event is what you want to counter. As such you want to ensure that you have both Aura Mastery and Aura Mastery there, and trust that your Resto shaman has the 3:45,6:20 and 9:20 events covered. This means that unfortunately, you will have to lose some value on your cooldowns effectively. You are getting one less use overall. But this is inevitable that it will happen to "someone" and its a part of being part of a team as a healer.

So let's approach this same encounter from the mindset that you need to make sure the raid lives at 7:20, the resto shaman has everything else covered, but he can't get it all himself. So, you see that the rest of the fight isn't particularly threatening so you can allow for some "overlap" with the shaman's cooldowns on the 3:45 damage event with Avenging Wrath. But it will come up shortly before the 6:20 event, but you will need to HOLD your cooldown and NOT use it, to make sure it is up again at 7:20. You then use yours at 7:20, and it will be up again for the 9:20 damage event.

But let's say hypothetically that the shaman's raid cooldowns are just so active that the 3:45 damage event you are just wasting your wings. Then you need to look at the encounter, such that you have wings for 7:20 but DON'T use your 2nd wings at 3:45 so you need to look for the second largest weak point, look for a damage event that may not be threatening to your whole raid, or as threatening but may still be challenging on its own right, but the damage event needs to happen before the 5:20 mark. So as long as you still get *some* use out of your 2nd set of wings, and get it cast before 5:20, it will be up again when you need it. But you can still fit in 2 extra wings casts now! So look for those smaller more "medium" damage events that occur, and you can use wings in the first 20s of the encounter let's say cover the very first hit of damage. You then have 1 minute of wiggle room when it comes up again, so you can use your second Aura Mastery at any point before 3:20 and still have it up before 5:20.

So even though you don't get to cover the "highest damage" events and your HPS will likely be lower for it, you ensured your raid succeeds and doesn't crumble at 7:20, and were still able to wiggle in 5 wings casts one at 20, again at say 2:45(you had a whole minute of wiggle room), again at 5:20, then 7:20 and finally at 9:20.

Every encounter is different

Now, this is just one example of a purely hypothetical example, using your healer cooldowns, and allocating the resources of all of your healers is in its own sense an art form and takes practice. Every encounter is different and as such you need to analyze it with the goal of A: Covering every major damage event with a cooldown, and B: getting the most # of uses of your (or all your healers) cooldowns as possible. The above example was a hypothetical one but shows the logic behind approaching healer cooldowns on an encounter.

Priority Healing vs Throughput

The first is that X amount of damage goes out, and as such I must do as much of Y (healing) as I possibly can to counteract X. This means that the more raw HPS you do, the better, at the end of the fight your Y value was as high as possible thus you did the best you could.

Additionally however you can think of it as, Everyone needs to live, I must do as much as I can to ensure that everyone stays alive, and what my HPS is at the end of the fight doesn't matter.

There is merit to both of these thought processes.PaddingDamage Reduction Talents vs Throughput TalentsDOESMerciful AurasMerciful AurasMerciful AurasEarthen Wall TotemAncestral Protection TotemAncestral VigorAncestral VigorAncestral Protection TotemEarthen Wall TotemLenienceLuminous BarrierPower Word: BarrierLuminous BarrierLuminous BarrierUltimately, padding is a somewhat complicated thing. It certainly exists, however very rarely is it so cut and dry. Often there is merit to things that "appear" as padding, and other times it can be outright hurting the effectiveness of your raid overall. Try to think about how your actions as a player affect the rest of the raid because as I have said before healing is a team sport. Sometimes it is necessary to take a personal HPS hit, for the success of the raid as a whole.Mana and Mana ManagementExternal Mana

Balance Druids have Innervate which they can cast giving you a short period of time where none of your spells cost mana, try to line this up with a cooldown of yours for maximum effectiveness.

Retribution Paladins can give you this is just a passive increase in your mana regeneration giving you a significant amount of mana for a time.

Holy Priests have Symbol of Hope which makes them channel a spell for a short period of time giving all other healers in your group a percentage of your missing mana meaning the lower your mana is when this is cast, the more you get back.

Innervate

Looking for more in-depth information? Check out our Healing Class Guides!
Restoration Druid	Mistweaver Monk	Holy Paladin
Discipline Priest	Holy Priest	Restoration Shaman

Comments

Comment by ticks187

Great article! I remember padding my holy paladin healing meters back in WoD by pre-building mastery shields on both tanks before the pull :-) it wasn’t much but it helped.

Comment by Lethalize88

Thank you so much for taking the time to make this easy to reference, neat and concise place to come to refresh or learn the pros of cons of different specs not just for healers but all specs. Amazingly well done It is obvious you put a lot of effort and time into this and even if it only helps me it was worth it because its allowed me to easily see which healer class would be best in which situations, which will allow me to feel more confident when discuss our raid groups strategies.

Healing Advanced Guide - Essential Tricks & Tips

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