PSA - Don't **** Off the HealerFollow

Survival tips, or how to keep your healers from tearing out more of their hair than they already have...

1. Food is no longer just for mana-users. If a mage drops a table, get some food..and then, wait for it, use it. With the larger health pools of everyone and the reduced healing output, a healer will either take a long time to get everyone healed back up, or run themselves out of mana to do it quickly. And then they have to drink. But if everyone just sits down and eats the free mage food, the group is back up and running much faster.

2. Bandages still exist! Healer mana is at a premium this expansion, so those few seconds you take to top yourself off will make a healer love you. This goes double for life-tapping warlocks.

3. Please, for the love of Elune and/or the Earthmother, don't stand in bad crap. However, most healers now have GOOD crap that will be on the ground...this is crap that you definitely want to stand in. Shamans have Healing Rain, Druids have Efflorescence, and I believe there's a Priest one as well. Your healers spent mana on this good crap, so stand in it! Same goes for Lightwells...use them, they're good now! Another note, Paladins have a cone heal that works for people standing in front of them...use this positioning to your advantage.

4. Pay attention to line of sight...if you run around a corner, don't expect heals. Same goes with pillars, stairs, doorways, etc. Sometimes you have to move out of LoS, but that's what potions and bandages are for.

5. Tanks...be sure your healer has mana and is in range before pulling. Not much we can do when you pull a group while we're still in the last room drinking.

6. If you ***** up, admit it...don't blame the healer. Dying because you stood in the fire is your own damn fault.

7. Crowd Control is a good thing...the less damage a tank takes, the better. Tanks, it will benefit you to take a look at the different CCs each class has, which specs can use them, and what types of mobs they work on. Getting pissy at the mage because they didn't sheep that undead will make you look stupid. Because you are.


In case you couldn't tell, I've been pugging heroics...I'm sure there will be more here soon.

If I see dps just standing in stuff I let them die.

If they are dipping to taking 1-2 tics of aoe but honestly trying to avoid it and it's just difficult for them I will go all out to keep them alive. But standing in AOE for 3-5 seconds and dying I won't even waste a heal. The response I am getting from most dps is "ack, I am such an idiot won't happen again" and for the most part it doesn't.

As a rule of thumb I would say don't worry about bandages. If you are a paladin, shaman, druid and can pop off heals when you have Holy Power, Maelstrom etc then that will probably makes things a lot smoother.

Biggest thing you should worry about is damage avoidance. Cataclysm healing is designed on the idea that 1 tick of aoe is doable, 2 ticks is making it hard and 3+ is going to start overwhelming and making healers go OOM. Don't plan on a healer healing you through it, disengage, get out and top yourself off with a healthen go back when its safe. There are no enrage timers on 5 man content.

I've encountered tanks while healing or DPSing that will not move mobs/bosses from bad ground stuff, forcing melee DPS to either attack from the front or take damage. Those tanks should be shot.

I noticed I was having a harder time seeing bad things on the ground, like the green looking storm on the ground from the last boss in lost city. Luckily I was in a guild group and on vent so they told me to get out. I think I fixed that problem though because for the "Kor'kron Drop" quest in Twilight Highlands I could not for the life of me see any red X on the ground until I looked the quest up on wowhead and they told me to turn on "Projected Textures."

So refreshing. So makes me happy.

I found that the dense bandages do significantly more HpS than my self healing as ret. It doesn't destroy my mana pool as well letting me get get straight back into dpsing. Though i do use Holy Radiance a lot in heroics especially as prot for the bonus aoe threat.

Edited, Dec 20th 2010 1:52am by ArtemisEnteri

You forgot something:

Even if you aren't a tank: Use your defensive cooldowns if there's unavoidable damage coming your way.

Thanks for posting this. I tried pugging as a paladin healer and I ended up dropping group because they wouldn't huddle up for heals. Healing is difficult again, and every little bit helps.

Tanking Paladins, particularly when threat has been established need to self heal with WOG. My SoR is criting for 22k. Once you have ONE of those - you should be good on 90% of stuff. After that, I'm using WoG to help the heals.


Paly tanks should probably get healbot. I keep it up, and tiny on my RIGHT side of the screen. It is the most simple and most user friendly healing add-on. (Being a non-healer ~ this makes it very tank friendly)

I have a few keybindings for WoG, Hand of Protection, Lay of Hands, as well as a few others. I've been /w by a DPS or healer who noticed the HoP animation (it's a little crown-looking symbol above the player) and they were totally surprised by a tank who could... get this - protect the party.

Back in Wrath this wasn't really needed outside of raids, but I no longer have snap-on agro and the minor CD of burning a HoP on a trash pull is worth the healers mana.


Also, Locks with the Life-Tap thing - stop. Just stop it. It pissed me off on my Disc Priest and it's worse now. We aren't here to supplement your mana. Either eat the mage food or buy some drinks.

Speaking from a lock's POV, I'll try and warn the heals early on, and let them know I've brought bandages for just this reason. It's not nearly as bad as hellfire though. When I'm healing and I see a lock using that repeatedly... ugh, it causes grumpiness.

I had a Hunter in my group today who was a prime example of the Wrath laziness. He was designated a target to Freezing Trap, the exact words used were "Hunter CC the star." Any player knows what CC means to a Hunter. So the pull begins, I see a shiny blue arrow flying into the mobs feet, and then the ground turns white as his frost trap activates. Okay, no biggie, you can hit the wrong trap by accident. Next pull the tank tells him to use the right trap this time. Again he uses Frost trap. He was specifically told which trap to use this time and he replied "What's the difference"

Obviously someone who has never used an Ice Trap before in his life.

I carry bandages and pots, and I tell healers up front that if we're not fighting, don't waste mp healing me. I offer healthstones before every fight, and if we are fighting, I do an occasional life-tap if my mp falls below 50%, but I try to space them out so my regen can handle it.

Pretty sure when WotLK came out, everybody forgot them.