First time raid healing

[Greenbeing]

Hey guys!

I'm reaching 60 in about week. I also have most of the pre-raid bis gear acquired. I think I'm ready to join my first MC and Onyxia raids next weekend. I don't have earlier raid-healing experience, except for 3 UBRS runs during past 3days. I have leveled up all the way from lvl15 by only running instances, so I would be experienced healer when the time for raids comes up. However I realized during my few UBRS runs how difrent raid-healing is compared to casual instances. So, I would like to ask some few things to improve and prepare my-self for first raids.

Firstly, since I'm not the only healer anymore, when I start casting heal on target with low hp, very often other healerd are picking the same target, and my slower cast time heals will tick last and cause lots of over healing. I sometimes stop my cast at this point if situation isn't critical, but by doing that a lot I find my self just stop casting all the time and rarely doing actual healing, since other healers are a bit faster with their cast times. (sometimes I pick 3rd most dmg taken targets to give me enough time to finish my casts before others start casting on them, except if situation in critical)

Secondly, not sure when to stick with most mana efficient R4 heals and when to use higher rank heals. When someone is close to die, I would cast highest heal (with NS if not on cooldown). But when my target isn't going to die that soon, but still taking heavy dmg, I could hope that other healers simultaneously cast mana efficient heals on same target with me (and hope avoiding over healing), or I could play it safe and cast higher rank heals with risk of huge over heal if others reside to do the same at the same time.

Thirdly, if there is no mention about decurses, should I decurse or leave it up for mages. (I'ts ofc good to ask before starting the fight, if not sure) but how its usually done it no instruction about it?

Is there something else I should know? Considering that I'm only experienced on 5man dungeons.

[Garfunkel]

Welcome to 60!

Get Detox. It's an addon that makes decursing fast and simple and it offers lot of customization for priorities and so on. If you can decurse, you should always do it.

As for healing, the raid leader or the healing lead should assign you a target for each boss and hopefully for trash as well. It might just be "raid wide" or it might be a specific tank, so that obviously affects how you're going to heal. Communicate with the other healers on who is focusing on what if the raid doesn't have a healing lead. You're right that as a druid you probably shouldn't just heal the one with most HP lost (whether percentage or absolute) because another healer is probably spamming their macro and already healing that person. Pick someone else instead, it's what I do as a priest with my Heals and Greater Heals. Getting everybody to use Luna (or Healcom if they are adamant on using other unit frames) helps a lot as it will show incoming heals from all healers plus hots on targets.

Cancelling casts is not a bad thing, just don't do it too early. If you're lagging out, it's better to be safe than sorry.

Check a couple of other threads for further assistance:
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=27233
viewtopic.php?f=41&t=28259
viewtopic.php?f=71&t=33573&start=30#p237295

Hope that helps!

[Ziphr]

Link to healcom? Very curious about this and google only brought up wotlk libhealcom

[Greenbeing]

Thanks for helpful reply!

One thing I'd like to know is, should I always try to heal my targets to full heal with one cast or is it fine to use 2-3 R4 HTs to save some mana. I don't have any mana problems in UBRS, but it may be good to train and get used to healing like I would in near future MC/Ony raids.

[Daedalos]

Thanks for helpful reply!

One thing I'd like to know is, should I always try to heal my targets to full heal with one cast or is it fine to use 2-3 R4 HTs to save some mana. I don't have any mana problems in UBRS, but it may be good to train and get used to healing like I would in near future MC/Ony raids.

This is not decisive and will not be the same in every situation. Normally, casting 3x R4 heals, means that you'll have wasted enough time for another hit on the raid, and you'll be back to square one. You don't have to aim at getting everyone to 100%. Aim at keeping everyone above 85% instead.

Unless you're assigned to the tanks ofc. Then just Rejuv and lel.

[Garfunkel]

Link to healcom? Very curious about this and google only brought up wotlk libhealcom

Sorry my typo - it's HealComm:
https://github.com/Aviana/HealComm

Thanks for helpful reply!

One thing I'd like to know is, should I always try to heal my targets to full heal with one cast or is it fine to use 2-3 R4 HTs to save some mana. I don't have any mana problems in UBRS, but it may be good to train and get used to healing like I would in near future MC/Ony raids.

This will take experience as it depends on your healing target, the other healers and the encounter. My rule of thumb is that if you're unsure of any of the variables I mentioned, you want to use a spell that gets your target to 100-125% of their health at one cast. What spell that means depends on your gear and talents. If they get hit more during the cast time, don't panic and let the heal go through while preparing to cast the same spell again or a bigger heal if necessary. If someone else heals them up, cancel the cast.

If you are sure of the variables, then it's usually better to use a spell that only brings them back to around 80-90% as Daedalos said because more than likely there will be a paladin sniping your heal with their quicker heals or a shaman's chain heal jumping around. That way you won't do too much overhealing.

So much of healing is situational and really only happens with experience but as said earlier, talking with the other healers to swap experiences is valuable as well. Some healers are obsessed with topping HPS meters and spam quick, mana-inefficient heals, only to end up OOM. That's stupid. Most raids do not want to pause for healers to drink between every (or every other) pull - preferably the raid only stops before a boss to make sure everyone is buffed and has 100% mana, never during trash clearing. That doesn't mean that you can let people die to conserve your mana - it's why you collect mana pots and dark/demonic runes - but if raiders are not in risk of dying, don't worry about maximizing the meters. A paladin spamming quick heals on the MT will always top them anyway

[Hammersplat]

Thanks for helpful reply!

One thing I'd like to know is, should I always try to heal my targets to full heal with one cast or is it fine to use 2-3 R4 HTs to save some mana. I don't have any mana problems in UBRS, but it may be good to train and get used to healing like I would in near future MC/Ony raids.

raid healing is easier than 5 man etc imo. Just pick a spell HT4 and use it, if you run out of mana you can go down a rank or buy some cheap mana pots (superior ones). It won't take long to get some gear.

[Darkeyez]

Hey!

Generally in the raids will be assisted by many healers, so you will be given healing assignments by the Raid Leader before each boss. For instance, in Molten Core we usually have 2 or 3 healers per one tank, rest of healers heal the raid. So it's your job to keep your assignment alive and sometimes combat ress somebody else Also it's better to overheal than to let the MT die because you were too slow. Also spamming HT 3 or 4 won't get you out of mana that quick. There's nothing wrong with casting R8 or R9 if you know that you won't overheal. And as it is said above, it's better to keep more people around 80%, than to top less and let others die because of fire or sth else. Remember, the dead can't heal or dps

I highly recommend LunaUI. It shows you debuffs that you can dispell and highlights your target if he's cursed/poisoned. Also shows incoming heals, if more people use it.

For "oh-shit!" situations, when your tank is almost dead, use Nature's Swiftness + maximum available HT rank. If your mouse have more than 2 buttons it's great to have NS under that third button, so you can pop it right away and then Shift+1 (upper left action bar) for Healing Touch (R9 or R10). Here's my UI so you can see what I'm talking about
https://i.imgur.com/VRhXlXd.jpg

Decurse assignments are up to RL, but you should decurse your tank ASAP if you have the chance. Also you'll need to bring some Major Mana Potions for the raids

Have fun and good luck