Healer (role)
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A healer is a character whose primary purpose or class role is to heal and protect their allies. Priests, druids, paladins, shamans and monks, and evokers can all serve as healers. Healers are perhaps the most wanted for a dungeon or a raid.
While all party members must work together to succeed, healers have the direct responsibility of keeping every other member of the party alive. Healers must anticipate incoming damage, prioritize the healing of multiple targets, and make split-second decisions using an array of healing options.
Being a healer
- Healing: Keeping your allies alive, sometimes seemingly against their intentions.[1]
Being a healer means keeping a close eye on the health of multiple targets. Often, losing focus for even a moment can lead to the death of a player. In PvE the healer's attentions are frequently focused on the tank, but there is normally unavoidable party damage that impacts the DPS as demands the healers attention as well. It's possible that failing numerous fight mechanics can cause the tables to quickly turn, requiring the healer to keep focused at all times, ready to switch targets and keep their allies from the brink of death.
Unlike other roles, the prime challenge of a healer does not lie in just quick bursts of action, but also efficiency and longevity. Most well-geared healers are capable of healing targets through the heaviest of onslaughts, but doing so without rapidly depleting their limited mana reserves requires forethought, anticipation and a thorough knowledge of their skills and cooldowns. Healers who simply use their fastest and most powerful heals will quickly find themselves out of mana and out of options, powerless to aid themselves or their allies. Healers must therefore strike a fine balance between speed and efficiency, often risking the lives of their charges in order to ensure their mana will last the fight.
In the heat of battle, healers also have the unenviable responsibility of triage, making split-second decisions as to who will live, and who must die. It is often not possible to save every target, and there are times when even the best healer must allow one of their charges to perish, in order to save the others. In this sense, healers are those that stand between each player and their imminent death; and while they can bend the forces of fate a little to their favor, when there is nothing more that can be done, it is they who must decide who is to live, and who is to die.
For this reason and many others, the role of healer can be stressful and unappreciated, where if the healer is doing their job right, no-one will even notice they are doing it. However, experienced players know the difference between their own mistakes and those of their party, and anyone who has served in the role knows the satisfaction of supporting their party through tough encounters.
What healers should know
- If there is no other healer in your group, like in dungeons then your death will likely result in the death of the rest of anyone else relying on your healing. Healers are useful in the case of a near-wipe as they are capable of resurrecting party members so long as they themselves survive.
- When forced to choose between targets, the general order of priorities when healing a group should be:
- Sacrificing a single member in order to allow the group to survive the encounter is better than allowing the group to wipe trying to prevent a single target from dying.
- The main job of the healer is preventing as many deaths as possible, especially in a mode like Mythic+ where you are penalized for a death by
[Challenger's Burden]. - If you cannot keep the tank alive, immediately focus upon protecting the remaining party members. When the tank dies, the enemies will immediately attack the next highest priority target - which may be you. Watch who the mobs target and immediately protect them from attack - as DPS (or healers) rather than tanks, they will not be able to take as much damage without dying, and so will usually require more healing in order to keep them alive.
- You should generally be at range from enemies. Standing back avoids many AoE effects and gives you a better view of the situation. It allows the tank to easily see what's causing you to be in danger, and standing at range means enemies are less likely to decide to attack you.
- If you're aware of a mechanic or enemy attack that frequently causes your party members to die, communicate and coordinate. Use party chat, raid warnings (/rw Dodge the fire!) and slash commands (/helpme) to immediately request assistance.
- When you need healing, taking advantage of abilities such as
[Lifebind] can be used to heal yourself at the same time as your allies. - When you are running low on mana, feel free to request that the group wait for you to drink in order to fill your mana before the next pull.
- In instances, your group will likely be pulling much faster then your regular mana regeneration can keep up with. You will want to keep enough drinks with you that you will not run out even if forced to drink between most pulls, and don’t forget that a mage in your group can provide you with more water. If you do run out of drinks, ask group members if they have any to spare.
- Remember line of sight and casting range can be limiting factors on heals, especially if teammates are constantly moving in chaotic battles, or are engaging combat in a large boss room. Allies can run out of the range of your heals in the middle of casting. Keep an eye on where everyone is and be ready to reposition the moment there are line-of-sight issues. If an ally is taking damage and you can't figure out where they are, remember the minimap will show nearby allies on it so looking for a dot of an ally not near the rest of the group can help you to find a wayward teammate in trouble.
- Know the mana efficiency, rate of healing, and cast time of your heals. Healers have multiple heals available to them and at first it can be difficult to know which to use. While learning the role of all your heals, you may want to use mana efficiency relative to your other heals as a rule of thumb for deciding which heal to use. Most healers have a single-target, slow heal that provides good mana-to-healing efficiency and often serves as a mana-effecient option. Due to the slower cast of this primary heal, other less-efficient heals will then be used when you simply do not have time to cast your slower heal. At higher levels, the amount of healing you can do in a given amount of time can also become an issue if your target is constantly taking large amounts of damage.
- Remember instant cast heals such as
[Renew] can be used while running. This can allow you to provide healing while fleeing opponents or following your group in an instance. It also is potentially powerful in PvP, being a great way to heal while fleeing enemy players or keeping a fast moving flag carrier alive in Warsong Gulch. - If you do attract unwanted attention from mobs, do not run away from your party in order to escape the mob. Once your have alerted party members that you are under attack, and used any threat mitigation abilities available (see above), move toward your tank, allowing him to attack the mob and regain aggro. Running away can prevent others from helping you, and rarely prevents melee mobs from damaging you.
- When you are with fairly new players, it may help to use slash commands. For instance, there's /oom (out of mana) and /helpme. Especially use /oom when there is an off-healer that may not be paying attention to your mana bar because he is busy with DPS.
- Healers have improved debuff cleansing abilities, so will be expected to do most of the cleansing. Spotting debuffs, deciding which debuffs are worth cleansing and who to cleanse first is part of your role as a healer.
- Try to learn the approximate health of your allies and keep watch for overhealing. If your primary heal is consistently overhealing a particular individual you will probably want to use a cheaper heal to avoid paying the mana cost for wasted healing potential. In these cases it might be better to use a smaller or more efficient heal.
What healers want others to know
- If you are playing a DPS specialization on a class that has a healing specialization you can throw out healing to assist in times your damage isn't needed. This is useful if your main healer is killed, runs out of mana, or is otherwise occupied. You won't be as efficient, but you could save the group in a pinch. Physical DPS specs of healing classes - retribution paladins, enhancement shamans and feral druids - have small mana pools so will only be able to heal for a very short time.
- The healer isn't the only one who can cleanse debuffs, you can help by at least cleansing yourself of the ones you can. Also bear in mind that no class can cleanse all debuff types, and you may be able to cleanse a type your healer can't. If you see the healer has been silenced, polymorphed or crowd controlled in any way, see if you can cleanse it.
Healing in PvP
While much of the above applies to both PvE and PvP, there are many differences between the two types of play, and healing is no exception. Many PvE concepts do not apply in PvP, such as pulling and the role of the tank, while others are still present but in quite different forms. Additionally, the many different forms of PvP, such as arena, rated battlegrounds, non-rated battlegrounds and world PvP, each require a different approach from the healer. Players should remember to consider the many talent choices available with some options that seem useless in PvE proving invaluable in PvP.
Both in PvE and PvP, the healer's job is the same: to keep their team alive. However, while in PvE there is usually a single target for the enemies' attacks - the tank - in PvP this is rarely the case.
Perhaps the biggest difference between PvE and PvP healing is that in PvP, the healer themselves is very often the prime target of the enemy's attacks. While a boss is easily taunted by a skilled tank, in PvP players will often seek to defeat the healer first, making it easier to then down the rest of their team. This can shift the healer from standing safely on the sidelines to suddenly finding themselves pulled into the thick of battle, expending every defensive cooldown at their disposal simply in order to stay alive. Alternatively, healers may find themselves being sidelined entirely, with a skillfully arranged sequence of interrupts, silences and crowd control abilities locking them out of combat, preventing them from healing their allies when they need it most.
In combat with any experienced opponents, it is rare that a healer will be left to freely assist their allies. In practiced combat, healers tend to either be singled out by every enemy on the field, or effectively shut down with crowd control, negating the value of their presence. PvP healing therefore tends to require a far greater degree of self-preservation and evasive maneuvers, and a fine balance between helping one's allies and helping oneself. This alone makes healing in PvP a very different experience to healing in PvE, and can prove starkly different to healers accustomed to the relative safety of a dragon's lair.
The degree of assistance a healer can expect also depends on the type of PvP. In more organized forms, the healer can expect a fair amount of help from their teammates, who should be well aware of their vital importance to the team and should be more than willing to help the healer whenever their survival is at risk. In more casual PvP such as non-rated battlegrounds, healers will often be left to fend for themselves, which can make surviving the attentions of a group of opponents a daunting if not impossible task. While players should, for their own benefit, always take care of their healers regardless of the form of play, in practice healers will have to develop some survival skills of their own if they are to make it in casual PvP.
As well as attacks on the healer themselves, PvP presents a far more challenging and unpredictable challenge regarding the behavior of opponents. Healers must still do their best to anticipate incoming damage, but are faced with a formidable array of possible behaviors, tactics and coordinated set-pieces from opponents who are often playing through pre-arranged maneuvers and are capable of changing tactics on the fly to counteract the opposing team.
The targets of attacks are also far harder to predict in PvP. Attacks can come simultaneously on several different targets, and shift at a moment's notice to focus on a single target. Less organized forms of PvP usually present a more chaotic experience, with attacks being more evenly dispersed. In organized forms of PvP such as arena, a high level of coordination is often displayed, with coordinated attacks, synchronized use of powerful cooldowns, and chain crowd control effects to lock certain players out of combat entirely for extended periods of time.
While arena presents relatively fixed variables - an equal number of players on each side, a relatively small area, the opportunity for a balanced team composition and some arranged tactics - other forms of PvP can be far more unpredictable. Healing in battlegrounds can frequently present varying numbers on each side, with additional members entering and leaving the fray. Healers can at times find themselves massively outnumbered, with little hope of escape, never mind victory; at others they may find themselves with little work to do, their enemies easily defeated.
One advantage of most PvP is that death is a far less critical factor. With the exception of arena, PvP generally involves a large number of deaths on both sides, with players frequently resurrecting and rejoining the fray, and healers are not expected to keep everyone alive. However, part of the reason for this is the extremely challenging nature of healing in PvP.
Class identities
Please add any available information to this section.
Restoration Druid
- Main article: Druid#Restoration
- Healer using a large number of HoTs (Heals over Time).
Holy Paladin
- Main article: Paladin#Holy
- Uses
[Holy Shock] and 
[Beacon of Light] to use many instant cast spells to top-up their group.
Priest
- Main article: Priest#Holy
- Holy specialization: Group Healer via sheer variety of healing spells, such as [Renew],
[Prayer of Healing], 
[Prayer of Mending] and 
[Circle of Healing]. - Discipline specialization: Damage mitigator.
Restoration Shaman
- Main article: Shaman#Restoration
Mistweaver Monk
- Main article: Monk#Specializations
Preservation Evoker
- Main article: Evoker#Specializations
Healing without a healer
Please add any available information to this section.
Class
These classes may heal in one way or another.
- Druid: While in shapeshift forms (other than Tree of Life (druid ability)) cannot use any of their healing spells;
[Bear Form] druids can heal themselves with 
[Frenzied Regeneration]. - Hunter: Can heal their own pet.
- Warlock: Can heal their own pet, and themselves by different methods;
[Healthstone] provides a potion-like ability. - Warrior: Through
[Victory Rush] and/or the tier 3 talents 
[Second Wind], 
[Enraged Regeneration] and 
[Impending Victory].
Race
- Draenei have the racial ability
[Gift of the Naaru] which can be used to heal themselves and others, giving non-healing draenei classes a healing spell, however the spell is on a three-minute cooldown and thus not very useful by itself as a primary healing spell. - Trolls have the racial ability
[Regeneration] which increases their health regeneration bonus by 10% and allows 10% of normal health regen during combat. - Zandalari trolls have the racial abillity Regeneratin'.
Profession
- Cooking can allow the user to make food that heals out of combat.
- Alchemists can make healing potions, like
[Greater Healing Potion], that can provide healing when needed.