Healer LFG

Anatomy of a Boss : Traditional Healing Roles

This will be the first in a series of articles I plan to write about 10 and 25 man raid bosses from a complete healing perspective. I will assume you already know the basics of the fight and are simply looking to improve your healing set up or are unsure of how to set up your healers and are looking for some ideas. If you have something different that works for you, then by all means don’t fix what isn’t broken!

I have been doing healing assignments for my guild since Blackwing Lair, so what I suggest does work, for us. It may not work 100% for you based on raid set up and individual players. However, I hope they will be a helpful general guideline for those who may be stuck.

I figured the best place to start was at the beginning and talk about the different healing classes’ strengths and weaknesses and the roles they normally play.

Druids

Strengths

• Spike Damage Mitigation through Heal Over Time Spells (Lifebloom!)
• Burst Healing for extreme damage through Swiftmend and Nature’s Swiftness
• Extreme mana efficiency when performing their intended roll: HoTs

Medium Strengths

• Raid Healing through HoTs
• Direct Healing (Healing Touch)

How to Best use your Druid(s) : The best use for your druid during boss encounters is on your Main Tank or on the Off Tank taking the most spike damage and when possible on both! A Druid can keep Lifebloom stacked on as many as 4 targets at once, although the maximum I recommend for a boss encounter is 3, due to the many unpredictable things that can happen to make the 4th stack unreliable. Lifebloom ticks every second, making it the fastest heal in the game. When your tank takes that 10k crushing 2-3 ticks of Lifebloom will have already gone off before that first Flash of Light, your single target healers will learn to love Lifebloom and miss it when its not there.

When in a pinch : Your Druid can raid heal. Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Swiftmend and Regrowth are all very effective for support raid healing. I use the word support because when your raid is taking mass damage your Druid(s) will need help. If the damage is minimum they should be fine though. While this is not the most effective use of your Druid, when in a tough spot they can come through and help out. Don’t forget that in most cases your Druid can keep Lifebloom on your MT and still help heal the raid! Don’t limit them when you don’t need to.

Your Druid can also cast Direct Heals on your a tank when in a tight spot. Healing Touch is a mana efficient big heal that gets the job done with HoTs to support it.

Priests

Strengths

• Spike Damage Mitigation through Prayer of Mending, Power Word: Shield, Renew and Pain Suppression.
• Efficient Single Target Healing through Greater Heal and its various ranks.
• Raid Healing through Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing, Shield and having a quick Flash Heal for emergencies.

Weaknesses

• While Priests have all the tools available to them to perform any healing roll, not all their abilities are efficient and may need a shadow priest for more grueling assignments.

How to Best use your Priest(s) : Priests are your utility healer. They can do everything and do it well. Be careful of having your priest raid heal extensively with Circle of Healing until properly geared, until then they make a great support raid healer. Priests are amazing for when your raid is taking random single target damage, Rage Winter Chill is a good example. Priests are also great tank healers. You can feel confident putting a good priest on any assignment as long as you give them the support they need for tougher ones, a shadow priest.

Shaman

Strengths

• Raid Healing! Chain Heal!

Weaknesses

• Single Target Healing
• No regen from spirit means they are best paired with a Shadow Priest on extreme AoE damage encounters.

How to Best use your Shaman : Raid healing. Nothing can beat Chain Heal for keeping your raid up. They can also use Lesser Healing Wave when someone takes an unexpected burst. They can effectively help on the tank by chain healing on the tank and getting the melee while another takes care of the ranged. If you have your shaman doing anything else, please stop! They were meant for this role.

Don’t unless absolutely necessary : Have your Shaman casting direct heals on your tank. While they can perform this role with Healing Wave when absolutely necessary, they are much more valuable healing your raid.

Paladin

Strengths

• The biggest most mana efficient Single Target Heals.
• Mana efficient Flash of Light and Blessing of Protection for raid healing or burst damage.
• Ability to “Bubble” and keep the heals going when any other healer would have to stop and save themselves.

Weaknesses

• While its very hard to run a paladin out of mana, when they are out, they don’t get much back due to not getting regen from spirit. They also often don’t have the mp5 shaman do, due to stacking some spell crit. So while a paladin doesn’t need a shadow priest (doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give them one whenever possible!), a well timed group swap on the rare occasion their mana gets low is a good idea.

How to Best use your Paladin : Single target healing. Give them a target taking consistent damage and they can keep them up a long time. Paladins are your tank healers, they are the best at this role.

When in a pinch : Paladins can raid heal. They are good at it too. In my opinion priests are a little better due to having some utility spells, but paladins are perfectly acceptable raid healers.

When Making Assignments

Its always best when you can to put your healers at their strengths. However, there are always those days when you are short on any given class and another has to fill in. Communicate with each other and give each other the tools you need to succeed: shadow priest, totems, innervates etc. when put in an unfamiliar or difficult role. If you are having a hard time with an assignment, let someone know! My biggest frustration is on a new encounter we wipe continually and I get no feedback until 2 hours later about an assignment just being too difficult for 1 healer. There is no shame in admitting you need help and those who do the assignments are learning the encounter as well and can only make their best guess as to how much healing is needed where.

I hope this was helpful for raid leaders or anyone new to healing assignments. More to come in this series!