How To: Be a Primary Healer

[Ed. Note: Revisions made on 2-5-05 to correct ambiguous terminology and add a few extra tips.]

(This article has a heavy Shammy bias, but should have good fundamental info for all healers)

Just as Cal and I were getting warmed up in Feralas, Hyjal hit a huge a rock on the tracks and de-railed. So, I guess I'll write up a little tips page.

The primary healer's job in a party is to keep folks alive. I'm really only called upon to be a full time primary healer when I am in an instance. Instance play as a primary healer is characterized by long stretches of nothing much to do, punctuated with short bursts of intense activity and concentration. Your ability to be a successful healer depends on 2 things. 1) To maintain a fully supply of mana, and 2) don't agro monsters.

Accomplishing #1 isn't quite so hard. Basically, don't use mana for any reason other than for healing. (Shammys will still be expected to drop a few basic totems though, such as Healing Stream and Stoneskin.) At first you may feel like you are being lazy and everyone else is doing the work during the easy periods. Don't worry, a good party will recognize that you are dedicated to keeping them alive and will appreciate it. The last thing in the world you want is to blow a bunch of mana fighting along side everyone during an easy stretch, then suddenly get multiple adds or jumped by a boss. Trust me, it happens.

Accomplishing #2 can be a little more tricky. It is extremely important that you don't agro as the healer. The reason is simple. For every hit you take, a heal you are casting to keep someone else alive is delayed. Additionally, every hit you take means you need to waste mana on healing yourself and not others. Avoiding agro is difficult because healing party members builds hate quickly. Lots of it.

The amount of hate you build via healing is directly proportional to the amount you have healed someone. If you wait until your tank's health is half-way down, then hit him with the biggest heal you have, almost without fail one or more mobs will switch focus to you. If you get lucky and roll a critical heal, you're even worse off because now you've just built twice as much hate as normal. Instead of waiting for party members health levels to drop significantly, try healing them in much smaller increments when their health is down only a little bit.

On my icon bar, I keep a total of five healing spells at all times. One of those spells is called "Lesser Healing Wave." This heal is lesser, not because it's weak (it is a bit, but that's not the point), but because it's fast. It is a 1.5 second cast, compared to the standard Healing Wave which take 3 seconds. This heal is right on my main combat bar, and is used in emergencies. Because it's a faster cast, it costs me more mana so bang for the buck is not as good. The next three heals on my bar are all standard Healing Wave spells. Starting with my most powerful and recently learned (rank 8, at the moment) then the next after that (rank 7) and the next after that (rank 6.) When I am high enough to learn rank 9, I will roll 8 to the second slot, 7 to the third slot, and remove 6 from my bar. In this way, I always have 3 different levels to choose from quickly. By far, it is my low-ranking skill (in this case 6) that gets used the most. The moment I see a perceptible drop in a party member's health, I cast it. This topping-off method keeps everyone's health full without increasing my hate beyond what the tank can handle.

It's not until things get really ugly that I start moving up to my middle and top ranking heal. Usually by the time I need to start using them, the fight has been going on long enough that the tank has built up lots of hate. Even still, my most powerful heal is almost always likely to get me targeted by a mob. In this case always be ready at the keyboard to say to your party "on me" or something similar. This indicates to the tank that he needs to stop fighting his current mob and come over and take a whack at the mob attacking you so it switches focus away. If the mob that agro'd you is a ranged mob, it's helpful to the tank to say something like "caster on me" or "ranged on me." This way when the tank goes to look to see what's attacking you, he knows not to look for something actually next to you. It can be hard for a tank to find your attacker in the heat of battle when you say "on me" and he looks at you but nothing is there.

Recently I've even started giving a warning when I'm about to cast a powerful healing spell. I click to cast my highest ranking heal, and in the 3 seconds it takes to cast I say "big heal" to the party. This helps the tank to be prepared if I break his agro.

"But wait!" you say. "What happened to the fifth heal spell on your bar? You only described four!" I'm glad you asked. My fifth spell is a Shammy only spell, but I'm sure other healing classes have something similar in concept. This spell is called Chain Heal. My rank 2 chain heal does just under 500 healing points to the party member I have targeted. It then jumps to another nearby party member and does about 50% less healing than the previous. It then jumps a third and final time to another party member and does about 50% less healing again. The spell will not jump to a party member who's health is full, nor will it jump if a party member is too far away. Finally, it will jump to hunter pets and warlock summons. With this spell, you can only choose the first person that will get the cast. After that it is random. As such, it is important to choose the person you cast it on wisely. I typically start with the tank since he is the one who should be taking the most damage, and let it roll from there. Remember, chain heal does not do a lot of healing! It is absolutely designed for the topping off method described above. If you try to use it to heal a party that is hurting badly, you will often find that the rate at which they are taking damage far outstrips the rate at which your chain heal can be cast.

When your party is out of combat, don't top up other party members. You'll need your mana in a moment when you get back to business. Out of combat folks can use their own food supply, etc to top themselves up.

When you drink, alert the party that you are doing so by saying "drinking." If someone runs off and starts a fight while you are drinking, then they have forgotten rule numero uno. "If you start a fight while the healer is drinking, no healing for j00!" =P The point is, don't jump up and waste your drink. Let it run it's course.

I should also say a word about working with a backup healer. A good backup healer will keep an eye on everyone and the state of your mana even while fighting, but regardless you should always communicate clearly and early. If my party is in the heat of battle, and it is clear to me that I won't have enough mana to keep up the heals on my own, I say "HELP HEAL" so that the backup has a clear indication that it's time for him to switch jobs. This is a system that Wags and I worked out together, and has been very effective for us. Let your party know to watch for that signal from you in the beginning. When your mana is almost gone, be sure to say "OOM" or "/oom" so all the combatants know that they need to rely on their own potion supply.

Finally, asses the likely outcome. If there is only one mob left to kill and it is almost dead, then jump into the fray and swing away. The faster you bring the mob down, the better off everyone is. If there are a few mobs left, but everyone is in fairly decent shape, back off and try to sit down. Anything you can do to get your mana back up without wasting precious emergency resources. There are even times when I can get far enough away to sit and drink while others are fighting. If party members are dying and it looks like things might go sour, you need to get away from the fight and any other mobs around. If you can get far enough away that after everyone else dies the mobs go back to their positions rather than chasing you, count yourself very lucky. This almost never happens. Instead, head for an area where there are no mobs and that is far away from the position your pursuers are going to return to once you are dead. Shammys can self resurrect once an hour. If you self-res and agro a mob right away, the whole project is a wash. When you self-res, you will be stuck with resurrection sickness for 10 minutes and it renders you as useful as a popsicle stick. No matter, right now your job is to get your party resurrected in a fashion that does not get you adds. Stand well clear of everything around you and get to casting. Never assume that self-resurrecting is the best thing to do. It may be the case that you are still near the entrance of the instance, and mobs have not had time to repop behind you. If you can make it back to your current position without much hassle by doing a corpse-run, then save your self-res ability for a time when you really need it.

An alternative to self-res is to have your party warlock apply a Soulstone (SS) to you. This is a much better option than self-res because you come back to life with a lot more mana and health, you don't consume an Ankh (the reagent required for self-res) and you don't get res sickness from it. The down side is it only lasts half an hour, and Warlocks can only apply one every half an hour. Choose the recipient of the SS wisely. Consider the following: When Wags (a shammy in The Fabled spec'd for damage and armor) and I are in an instance party together, I am the primary healer and Wags is the backup. The best recipient of the SS in this case is Wags, not me. The reason is that if Wags is forced to resurrect near a mob and gets agro, he has a much better chance of surviving the encounter than I. As soon as he is finished fighting, I am the first player to be resurrected so I can help res all the remaining party members. The shammy who is the recipient of the SS should turn all of his Ankhs over to another trusted player for safe keeping. The reason is that if I go down with an SS and Ankhs in my inventory, the Ankh takes precedence over the SS when I resurrect. There is no mechanism in the game for selecting one over the other.

One final note. Never do a dungeon crawl with a Druid as your one and only healer. Druids have some fantastic in-combat healing spells, some say better than a Shaman even, but their resurrect is limited to once every half hour. If your party wipes and all you have is a Druid, only one person can be brought back to life. A Druid can quite competently play the primary healer while a shammy is a combatant, but you will need the shammy's resurrects when thing go south.