By PelinalLast updated 2019/01/18 at 7:26 PM View Changelog
Welcome to the Advanced Healing guide, covering major aspects of all healing specs in World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth. In this guide, I will go over the strengths and weaknesses of all the healers, their rough play style and how it all comes together!
This guide is written by Pelinal who has been playing a Holy Paladin in several top-end raiding guilds for over 10 years. He also maintains the Holy Paladin Guide here on Wowhead.
Introduction
Healers primary responsibility is to keep their group or raid alive during combat. Each healer specialization has different strengths and weaknesses that all compliment each other. Healing is a team sport, and as such, each class works together in a raid environment to keep everyone alive. In Mythic+ each class brings different utility and tools to the party making them stand out for different scenarios. This healing guide is created to be a starting point for those who are looking to get into healing, and aren't sure which class is right for you, or if you are a DPS player who wants to try out healing for the first time to have an easier time getting into those mythic+ and raid groups!
Healer Vocabulary
Below I will go over some general vocabulary you may or may not be familiar with, as well just setting some basic terms that will be used throughout the guide.
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 Classes
Below is a rough overview of the classes and what differentiates them. This overview is a simplification in many scenarios but should give you a general idea of each of the classes strengths and weaknesses. For more in-depth information check out each classes corresponding guide as specific talent builds/playstyles can overcome some of these weaknesses.
Holy Priest
Holy Priests are probably the most standard healer, when you think of a healer in any fantasy setting Priest usually makes the top of that list. Holy Priests are very versatile healers and are really beginner friendly and easy to learn. They use several very powerful longer cooldown spells, some of which are reduced by using your "smaller" spells. This creates a play style that has some very satisfying moments in gameplay.
Strengths: Powerful spread out AoE Healing, Several Useful Cooldowns, Good Spot Healing, External Mana for other healers.
Weaknesses: Low Mobility, Low Survivability, Weak Sustained Single
Target healing
Holy Priests are very strong at dealing a lot of spread out raid healing with spells such as Binding Heal. Prayer of Mending and Prayer of Healing. They also can have two very powerful raid cooldowns with Divine Hymn and Holy Word: Salvation. They are capable spot healers with Holy Word: Serenity and Flash Heal.
For more in depth information check out the Holy Priest Guide.
Discipline Priest
Discipline Priests are the most unique healer in World of Warcraft; they put out buffs called Atonement. These make it so that when you deal damage, a portion of that damage is transferred to targets with Atonement. They also are the only healer that regularly uses Absorbs such as Power Word: Shield. This can make them one of the more complicated healers to learn, but if you are a DPS player it will feel more natural as they play closer to a standard DPS. They are a class where careful planning is rewarded heavily, and as such is less reactive than most of the other healers.
Strengths: Extra DPS, Excellent burst healing, Lots of Utility, Very high raid throughput, Great Spot Healing
Weaknesses: Poor Mobility, Weak sustained single target HPS
Discipline Priests are incredibly powerful and valuable, as they bring unique utility that no other healer can bring. They bring free damage to your group or raid, while also providing absorbs through Power Word: Shield. They have very frequent "bursts" of healing through Power Word: Radiance, particularly when combined with Evangelism and Rapture. They bring an excellent raid cooldown with Power Word: Barrier. Shadow Mend is also really powerful at spot healing and saving targets that are in dire need of healing. The downside to the Discipline Priest, however, is that in order to have those really high moments of burst HPS, they have moments where they do very low HPS. Which means in prolonged high damage scenarios they can fall behind.
For more in-depth information check out the Discipline Priest Guide.
Holy Paladin
Holy Paladins are the main "Triage" healer, the core of the class revolves around using Direct Heals that will transfer to targets (usually tanks) through Beacon of Light. They also can contribute some amount of damage (Though less than a Discipline Priest) through several talent options that make you a "Battle Healer" where you weave in damage elements to your core gameplay. They are very durable and bring lots of utility.
Strengths: Excellent Tank Healing, Excellent Spot Healing, Good Utility, Good Survivability
Weaknesses: Weak AoE Healing, Low Mobility, heavy positional requirements
Holy Paladins are exceptionally good at saving targets in need through their base kit of spells. While simultaneously healing the tanks through Beacon of Light. They also have incredible survivability due to wearing Plate armor and a Shield, while also having Divine Shield as an immunity. They have good utility with spells such as Blessing of Sacrifice. Blessing of Protection, Aura Mastery. They struggle in encounters where frequent movement is required.
For more in-depth Information check out the Holy Paladin Guide
Restoration Shaman
Restoration Shamans are great AoE healers that bring lots of utility. They excel at doing lots of sustained raid HPS while stacked. They have decent mobility and survivability.
Strengths: Several Raid Cooldowns, Good Spot Healing, Excellent AoE throughput, Excellent Utility
Weaknesses: Reliant on your group being clumped, No Tank external
Restoration Shamans have access to many raid cooldowns such as Healing Tide Totem and Spirit Link Totem. They also do the bulk of their healing while stacked through Chain Heal and Healing Rain. They are adept at some spot healing through Riptide and Healing Surge. This, however, means they are less potent than other healers in environments where you are required to be spread out. They have access to some unique utility such as Ancestral Protection Totem which can be invaluable for specific encounters.
For more in-depth information check out the Restoration Shaman Guide
Restoration Druid
Restoration Druids are the Primary "HoT" healer, most of their kit is around these spells making them excellent at spread out raid healing. They bring one of the best Raid Cooldowns in the game and have access to the best tank external out there. They have excellent mobility and survivability.
Strengths: Excellent Raid Cooldown, Excellent Tank External, Good sustained raid HPS, Excellent Mobility, Excellent Survivability
Weaknesses: Poor Spot Healing, Weak Single Target HPS
Restoration Druids bring probably the most reliable, and powerful raid cooldown with Tranquility. They have Ironbark which is the most reliable and consistent tank external in the game. Rejuvenation is the main source of a druids throughput in raids, and as such brings a lot of sustained HPS while spread. However, Druids struggle at topping up players who have just taken a large burst of damage or keeping a single target alive for a prolonged period of high damage. They are very durable with Barkskin and Bear Form.
For more in-depth information check out the Restoration Druid Guide
Mistweaver Monk
Mistweaver monks are great at dealing with sustained single target damage, and good raid HPS. They have good spot healing and excellent mobility. They also have the ability similar to paladins where they weave in damage elements to their core healing rotation. The addition of DPS elements is generally referred to as "Fist-weaving".
Strengths: Great sustained single target HPS, Good Raid throughput, High Mobility, High Survivability
Weaknesses: Little Utility, Weak Burst healing
Mistweaver monks are great at doing sustained tank healing, and can spot heal well with spells such as Enveloping Mist. Their mobility comes from Roll and Transcendence. However Revival is one of the weaker raid cooldowns and Life Cocoon being a weaker tank cooldown. They also don't have a great way to top up a group of players after a high damage burst outside of Essence Font.
For more in-depth information check out the Mistweaver Monk Guide
User Interface
As a Healer your User Interface is incredibly important, as a DPS or tank, you focus primarily on your classes rotation, however as a healer you need to focus mostly on the raid's health, and secondly on your core rotation. But you need to be able to track your cooldowns and stagger them as necessary. Ideally, you also are monitoring the tanks' cooldowns and your other healers' cooldowns. As such you should put a great deal of thought into your User Interface, and iterate upon it until you are comfortable. Unfortunately, everyone has different styles and taste, so it is up to you to create your own UI or find one that you like.
You can check out my UI section in the Holy Paladin guide linked Here for some recommendations on specific add-ons. But everyone's UI will be different, and it is up to you to craft your own UI that is tailored for you.
Here are some tips for things to get you started in your UI
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!
Triage healing is the idea of prioritizing targets who are more in danger; this could be because they are lower health, or have a debuff that is going to cause them to take a large amount of burst damage, sometimes called "Priority Healing." Mastering Priority Healing/Triage Healing is the key to success as a healer. In many dangerous moments of dungeons and raids not everyone in your party will be full on health, and as such you need to see who is the most likely to die and keep them alive, knowing that you will have time to heal the rest of your party up when the danger has passed. Finding the balance of keeping people who need the healing the most alive, while not neglecting your core rotational abilities that may not directly heal that one person is a tricky thing, and takes lots of practice to get used to. 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 you, either forcing you to invest more mana when you don't ideally want to, or neglecting AoE heals/Other core rotational abilities to save someone's life at that moment.
If someone dies, you should always try to reflect on what you did, and what you could have done differently to save them. In many cases however the person who died also could have done something to prevent their death, whether it be simply not standing in the fire using one of their personals, or using a Healthstone. As a healer, you will be blamed for things, many times things that you could not control it is an unfortunate aspect of being a healer. So it can be easy to brush off someone as dieing and blame them for their own death, but as my father used to say "It takes two to tango" (Though that was more so about fighting with siblings) you need to remember that everyone is working together for the common good, and playing the blame game solves nothing. Trying to find a solution to what went wrong, and implementing that solution is the key to success. Learning from your mistakes will go a long way, as you can't control other people only yourself. Even if someone else made a mistake and died for it, sometimes there are actions that you can do to save them, even if their death is purely their fault. Try to be aware of those situations, so in future occurrences you can save their life (Though they probably won't thank you for it!).
External Cooldowns
External cooldowns are abilities that increase the healing received, or reduce the damage of a single target for a brief period of time. Below I will list all of the baseline tank externals.
In most forms of organized group content your Tank will call for these at specific times, so try to coordinate with them when is best. If however, you find that you are rarely (if ever) using these abilities, try to communicate that with the tank and see if they want it or not, if they do not try to use these abilities on high priority targets, people who are in danger of dying, or have a nasty debuff. Remember this is a part of your kit, and even though most tanks like to have these available wasting it is... well wasteful, so try to find a balance, you may not be able to use these if a tank is relying on them regularly. But if your tank isn't using all of your groups' external cooldowns you can try to have them call specific ones, which frees up the ability to use these throughout the encounter.
In Mythic+ generally speaking tanks won't need these for specific mechanics, so try to use them to give yourself a bit of breathing room on particularly difficult trash packs, or line it up when you don't have much available and are worried the tank will, or is about to die.
This usage can be tricky, as sometimes tanks will want these available, and they may not even know they need it un till they do. But don't forget about these abilities as they can really save lives.
Raid Cooldowns
Raid cooldowns during an encounter can be tricky. At the surface, it seems relatively simple on where to place your cooldowns, but when you are in a raid you have 4 or more healers in the group, and if everyone uses their cooldown on the first damage event of an encounter, each cooldown will be less effective. Besides effectiveness, wasting all healing cooldowns together may lead you to lack them in a second healing-intensive event. Below I will copy over a section from my Holy Paladin guide that goes over how to plan your cooldowns pre-emptively before an encounter. Although the spells I reference are Paladin specific, the logic can be easily applied to any healer. Each healer and each raid will have different classes, and different cooldowns with different lengths you can still see the kind of logic, and question patterns you need to take into an encounter while raiding to try to get the best use of your cooldowns.
When approaching an encounter initially you need to figure out roughly how long the encounter is going to be; this can be done by looking at logs of guilds with similar item levels to yours, or by looking at kill videos of recent kills. It is important here that you find kills that will be accurate to your experience, looking at the kill time of say Method will be vastly different than yours because they potentially have more DPS, or less gear which can make the fight significantly longer, or shorter depending.
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. Y
Priority Healing vs Throughput
So initially I want to talk about how to approach an encounter, there are a couple of viewpoints to have here, and each encounter can lean more to one or the other.
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.
A great healer is able to recognize when to apply both thought processes, but more than just on an encounter by encounter basis, in each moment. Fight's that have a ton of consistent raid damage will lend themselves more to the XY approach, maximizing your HPS is vital in these encounters. But other encounters additionally may have shallow raid damage, but high single target damage through a debuff. Other encounters may trick you into thinking it is an XY approach but actually require debuff healing (Mythic Argus or Mythic Fetid Devourer are great examples). The key is recognizing which thought process to adapt, and when, is there anyone with a debuff out at this moment that is in danger? Can I try to sneak in an AoE heal and land another heal after to save them? Are both questions you should ask yourself reasonably regularly.
Now each raid group will be different; some people approach encounters in the "Throughput" mindset, others the "Priority" mindset. A balance of both on each roster is ideal, and as such, you should be aware of both, and take note of the other players in your raid. Sometimes you will join a guild, and everyone just wants to keep the priority targets alive, and your raid healing suffers so you fall behind on high damage encounters. But other times everyone can be doing a ton of HPS getting them sick parses, but people are dying to debuffs left, and right and a tank dies every other pull. Recognizing where to focus your efforts is something you should regularly do so that you can kill the boss as quickly as possible.
Padding
Now, this is a common topic among healers, people love to accuse others of padding, and people have different definitions of "Padding" for those unfamiliar, Padding generally refers to the act of doing a negative thing, in the sake of getting more personal HPS to appear better on the healing meters.
The first thing to remember is that healing is a team sport, and as such, the group needs to work together. There is always only X amount of damage going out, and if one person is taking up a bigger slice of that pie that leaves the rest for everyone else, and that is ok. Not every fight will let every healer use their cooldowns at the perfect time on cooldown for maximum HPS; some sacrifices need to be made. So what you need to do is look at specific instances where "padding" may occur. Every encounter is different, but I will highlight some of the more common things I see regularly.
The first relates to cool down timings which I spoke on in an earlier section. But one of the most common things I will see is someone using their cooldowns on the earliest damage event possible to top people up as fast as they can, even if they are not necessarily in danger. Generally, this is done to get your cooldowns charging as soon as possible, so you get more uses overall on an encounter.
For example, look at a fight like Mythrax, when you fall down the platform everyone takes a relatively large amount of fall damage. However, there is no raid damage going out for a good 20 seconds or so. It is common that you will see someone or several people pop their cooldowns as soon as they land to top people up. However, if they were to save their cooldowns, they could place them at a time where more people are in danger of death, as the fall damage isn't really pressing sure you can use cooldowns and get everyone to full health in 5 or so seconds. But you can instead however possibly save those cooldowns for when an orb break+debuff expire. Nobody would die as there is nothing that can possibly kill them in the first moments of the fight. So taking your time and using mana efficient spells to top everyone up may be more effective overall.
Where this gets tricky, however, is maybe if you don't use a cooldown there you have TOO many cooldowns, and as such you end up wasting "something" by overlapping too many cooldowns. In this case it is OK to use cooldowns to heal that fall damage, as cooldowns are incredibly mana efficient, meaning your raid as a whole has more mana going deeper into the fight, and you don't lose coverage by doing that. But this will depend heavily on your raid group size, composition, and difficulty.
Or on a fight like Fetid Devourer, you may see a Discipline priest