Friday, March 26, 2010

On Healing

I suck at it.

Really, that's all I have to say.

Okay, okay, my total experiences thus far have included one Setthek Halls run and two Utgaurd Keeps. But, really, I'm terrible at keeping everyone up during a boss fight. Usually at least one DPS dies, and I'm unsure of how to improve myself.

My greatest annoyance so far is the fact that I essentially need two different spellbars/UI set ups in order to be an effective healer and still have the same configuration for my usual DPS-mode. I need to be able to see everything that pertains to me in the group as a healer, but I could care less as a DPS. It rather sucks. I also need to find a listing for all those nifty mouse-over macros and start using them - I'm sure that would help as well.

I don't think healing is good for my anger-management issues regarding DPS doing what they should, either. Just the other night, I ran a GDKP ToC25 to satisfy the weekly raid, and one roughly-equally geared hunter out-DPS'd me by a good amount on most fights. Why? Because he wasn't killing the adds. And now that I'm a healer and totally dependent on the DPS to take care of things like that, I can't see this boding well for the growing twitch in my eye.

I'll keep at it though. Maybe it'll grow on me.

8 comments:

Fig said...

What configuration do you use for healing? Personally, I use grid+clique when I'm healing on my shaman. If you do it long enough, you'll get better at it eventually and be able to predict incoming damage rather than relying on reactively healing. As far as DPS dying, are they dying because they're doing something stupid like not LoSing Ikiss's Arcane Explosion or standing in whirlwinds?

Will said...

Healing Mouseover macros.

/cast [@mouseover,help][]Healing Spell

or if you want to get fancy...

/cast [@mouseover,help][help] Healing Spell, [@target,harm,nodead] Hurting Spell

The first macro is a basic mouseover macro that will cast a healing spell at whoever you are mouseovering if they are a friendly, and if not then it will cast the spell normally. The second will cast a healing spell at your mouseover, or normally if you can help the person, or a harmful spell at your target if you can hurt them. Allows for some double duty for your button presses.

Also, if you don't have any sort of healing frames, I recommend Vuhdo over grid, simply because it is easier to configure, and supports click casting. Which would allow you to leave your bars with all your dps spells, and just have click combinations for each healing spell on the unit frames. This can save quite a few keybinds, however the first time you get disconnected and your game doesn't bring back your healing frames when you log back in, in the middle of a boss fight, you might end up considering keybinding all of your spells again, so that you can mouseover people if you have to :)

Muron said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Vaz said...

I tried healing a few heroics on my pally, I didn't really like it because I could keep the tank alive but that was it. Everyone else, including myself, died a lot. Haha

Negathle said...

I was the only hybrid in both my Utguard Keep runs, and had to run back every time I died. It really sucked.

So far I've only been using the SUF raid frames because I didn't want to download another mod, but I suppose I'll have to get Grid. *grumble grumble grumble*

Thanks for the macro forms, Will!

Kheldul said...

I wouldn't get Fancy. When I'm healing on my alt, I use mouseover healing spells with Grid either in 5, 10, or 25 -- always with showing pets! ;-)

I always try to have the main dps target targeted. This allows you to see casts occur easily and know when and what kind of damage is cranking out. In heroics it also lets you do dps, CC, and interrupts EASILY.

But mouseover is hugely important for healing speed. You also need to know the type of damage that is thrown. That's usually not something we worry about as hunters. We generally try to take as minimal damage as possible and that's all we worry about.

KiwiRed said...

I'm another Vuhdo convert (great for my priests, haven't tried it on other healing classes yet), and I also use it for raidframes on my rogues and warrior.

Criven said...

Vuhdo is absolutely amazing. I hated healing before I started using it - now I love it.

To add to what Kiwi said, I've used it on Paladins, Druids and Priests. It's excellent on all 3. I'd assume it'd be good on Shammies as well but my own isn't levelled to 40 for dual spec yet - so that's theoretical.