Raid Healing for Starters

I want you to use this post as a guideline, nothing more. If you have any comments or some good tips PLEASE post. The more we help each other the better we will progress.

I am gonna start with some gear, then addons and macros and last but not least how to use all those things together, how to get the most out of those things.

I have been calculating how mp/5 and +healing works and ive come up with different results. I could just post you the numbers but that wouldn’t be very interesting and you might not understand all of it. Therefor i am gonna write what *I* think is best. Many people say that getting mp/5 is better in the beginning. But personally I think that +healing is better, if you know how to use it right.

To see where to get good healing gear check out www.wow-loot.com

Now with full blues from 5-instances you should have around 400-500 +healing.
How do we get full use of all this +healing then?

The whole idea with having a lot of +healing is to be able to drop down the spells a couple of ranks. Now how to find a fitting rank to heal with?
You can try casting different ranks on yourself and see which one is fitting(Tip: a fitting spell should cost low mana, so you can spam it, but also heal a decent amount, around 500-700 is good, for priests flash heal 4 is good and so is healing touch rank 4 for druids)

Now to “How to make a macro step by step”:
First find a fitting rank you wanna use, then cast it on you around 10 times or so and then find the average amount it healed. Let us say that i have casted flash heal rank 4 on myself 10 times, and it healed between 650 and 750, so we say that average is 700.
Now to making the actual macro:

1: open the macro window and press “new”, then find a fitting icon(I myself use the same as the spell, easier to see what spell u are casting). When you have found a fitting icon click it and then name you macro to: “The average it heals”, in this case it is 700.
Now we have an icon and a name for our macro.

2: this step is how to insert the command the macro must do. Blizzard has made a very good option for this.
First we open our spellbook, then we type “/cast” then we find the actual spell we wanna cast. In this case it is Flash heal rank 4, so we “shift-left click” on the spell that we want it to cast(This works just like linking an item in chat)
And automatically it will write Flash Heal(Rank 4).
So our macro should now look like this: /cast Flash Heal(Rank 4) – Now we just move the macro to the hotbars.
Grats, you’ve just learned how to make a macro.

I myself have different ranks of heals. I usually find one fitting that i cast all the time( as flash heal rank 4) then i have the highest rank flash heal, the highest greater heal spell, renew and shield. With only these spells you can pretty much perform miracles.

This is how the macro should look like:

Now that we have fixed that we should be ready for the 2 most important addons:

CT_Raidassist :: http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons-3102-1-ct_raidassist-ct_rabossmods-multi-en-fr-de.html

Decursive ::
http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons-3995-1-decursive-continued.html

CT_Raidassist has many great options. But the ones you should be focusing on is the ‘Group windows’, ‘Player targets’(aka PT Target), and possibly emergency monitor.

Group windows: The default setting of this is having 8 windows(grp 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,. What you can do is you can make so that rogues are in one group, and warriors in another etc. So in another words you can make the windows be sorted by classes. It is just a matter of personal taste and what YOU find easier.
Place all the group windows close to each other so it is easier to see when someone needs a heal or a decurse/dispel(To be able to see the debuffs you must enable them in the CT_Raidassist options, ask me ingame for more info if you don’t already know)

Player Targets: There is a tab called CT_Raid in the social panel. When u right click on a player you can use the option “Set PT #1, #2 etc”. I find this to be a very very handy option. I usually set ut the maintanks there, so if i always can keep an eye of them if they need help( i will explain more about this later on).

Emergency monitor: With this option you see a window, and in that window you see the people who has least HP(the one with lowest hp is placed on the top). You can click on the people direct on the emergency monitor directly, and just chuck them a heal.

Decursive is also a very very handy addon, which is not very complicated to use.
This addon allows you to see debuffs and decurse/dispel them very quick
To see the decursive window type: “/dcrshow” and you will get a window that looks somewhat like this:
[Decursive][P][S][O][X]

And beneath this window all the debuffs you can decurse/dispel will be shown when someone is debuffed.

Now how to dispel someone, there are 2 ways, i prefer option 1

Option 1: You make macro, that “says”: /decursive
Then you move the macro to a hotbar. TIP: Move it to a key you can access very quick, for example: Q, E, T or F. These are all very fast to press, this is very vital because most guilds wipe because decursing is not good enough etc. You cant go around and think “i will do throw some more spells, someone else will decurse..” ALL MUST DECURSE!

Option 2: In option 2 you can press on the people debuffed on the window beneath the decursive bars and it dispels them. But if the whole raid is debuffed, it is easier to just spam 1 button.

Another great option decursive has is the Priority list. You can access the priority list by pressing [P] on the Dcr bar. Here you choose which targets are going to be decursed first. This variates from fight to fight. More info is going to be giving on the raid.

Now the last thing i am going to explain and tip about. But it is not least important, more the most important. Now that we know a bit about how the different ranks works and how the decursing works it is time to step up to the more advanced stuff. I am gonna go over some points that you should think of when you heal.

1: Healing priority – If you are in grp 1 maintank is your prior. No one says that you cannot crossheal if your tank does not need healing( if he is <80% then don’t crossheal, otherwise you can).
Next, the general priority is: Tanks > Healers > Dps.
Now is the time to use your PT Targets, if you see that healers are struggling on keeping a tank up, then chuck a few heal and help them to get in order again.

2: Shields and Heal over Time spells(HoT) – Some people think that they shouldn’t shield a warrior before the fight because he will get less rage. Shield him please. The mob will most likely hit through
it on the first hit and he wills till gain rage. Think of the shield as an free heal and a help to let the tank get into position.

3: Bandages – Even though you can heal it is always good to have a few bandages, if you need like 1000hp or so, just use a bandage to save some mana. This is good in long fights.

4: Overhealing – There is no easy way to prevent overhealing. The best way i have found so far is to stay alert all the time. When you start to cast a a heal on someone and he suddenly is full hp, then just press “esc” or “move to a side” or “jump”, what ever suits you best. Also, choose unite frames where you can see the missing hp of the people you are healing. That way you know what heal you should use, and that is when the heal macro becomes useful.

5: Mortal Strike & other healing debuffs -. When a warrior is debuffed it dosent help much to heal him with flash heals for 500hp.. instead throw a shield on him and start casting a big heal. Some people will cast smaller heals, just to keep him up a bit. But more info will be given later when we raid etc.

Other than that i don’t have any more tips or tricks. Stay alert, have mana pots, dark runes/demonic runes to raids if possible.