A few thoughts on how to be an even more sickening healer than you already are:

Use the predictable parts of an inherently unpredictable business

Healers already know that they don’t have a “rotation” in the same way as DPS do. Our job is more reactive and less predictable, which is exactly why many of us like it (adrenaline junkies!). But just as good DPS find ways to react to unexpected situations with minimal disruption to their ideal rotation, so too good healers use what is predictable about particular boss fights, or raiding in general, to give them a cushion against the many unpredictable moments that arise.

Here are two examples of what I mean, one pretty obvious and the other less so:

1. Know the boss mechanics well enough to know when to use healing cooldowns, and then communicate that knowledge. This communication should take place ahead of time (with your fellow healers, so that two of you don’t blow a cooldown on the same high damage phase, or on the same tank or group of DPS) AND during the fight (so that tanks know about an incoming cooldown so they don’t blow one of their own).

By the way, this is a good moment to emphasize that if you make a mistake, like using a cooldown too early or targeting the wrong tank, you should always announce that in Mumble so that everyone else can adjust. THERE WILL BE NO RECRIMINATIONS! I can’t stress that enough. We know that raiding is a Hot Messy business, and infinitely prefer honesty, accountability, and teamwork to machinelike perfection at pushing buttons. Raiding with machines would be less messy, but really boring.

2. Know the approximate length of boss fights well enough to know how often you can use your healing cooldowns.

I know I have the tendency to hoard cooldowns like they’re [insert funny thing here] until things get seriously messy. But that’s silly, since lots of cooldowns are on a two- or three-minute timer and lots of boss fights are five or more minutes long. And saving mana or reducing damage early in the fight (which really amount to the same thing, after all) by using a cooldown early might keep you from going OOM at the end of the fight!

Example: I know I need to have my cooldowns up when Butcher enrages. But that won’t happen for at least two and a half minutes, which means that I can use Power Infusion (two-minute cooldown) early in the fight: that way I have it up to use at the end AND I save some mana early on so I can cast those expensive but life-saving Flash Heals during the enrage.

Obviously the length of boss fights depends a lot on how fast the DPS is, so using this strategy also depends on knowing your raid team well. This is why you should look at the timers on fights after they’re done.

Study the meters—but NOT just to see how much healing you did

Just DPSers should use much more than just raw DPS to analyze how effective they are (things like avoiding needless damage/death, mitigating their own damage with judicious self-heals, using their utility abilities to help the raid), so too there’s more to healing than just Total Healing Done. What else, you ask?

1. Overhealing. All things being equal, overhealing is bad because it wastes mana. But all things AREN’T equal because that would make life too easy. We are well aware that some healing specs inherently overheal more than others. HOT-based classes like resto druids are almost always going to overheal more than disc priests, to take two extreme examples. If your spirit/mana regen is such that your healing is never constrained by being OOM—or by being scared of going OOM—then overhealing matters a lot less, too. But we do still look at it, and so should you.
2. Damage taken/deaths. Dead DPS do no DPS, as they say, and the same is obviously true for healers. One of the hardest parts of healing is nailing the healthbar mini-game while maintaining the situational awareness necessary to move out of the metaphorical fire (or not stand in a landmine on Imperator, as your esteemed author and co-GM did recently!). Knowing the mechanics and your own healing inside and out will help with this situational awareness. So too will practice.
3. Spells used as a percentage of healing done. This is good to analyze every once in a while so that you can assess whether you’re using your full arsenal as effectively as possible, or whether certain spells and talents are getting forgotten. For example: should 47% of my healing on a given fight really be Power Word Shield?? What other tools might I not be using enough if PWS is that prevalent? Or is PWS really just that sickening (so sickening that it had to be nerfed in 6.1…)? There may not be a right or wrong answer to such questions, but you’ll be a smarter healer for asking them!

Don’t be afraid to ask for things!

We want to give you nice things, because you deserve them. But we may not know to give them to you unless you ask!

By this I don’t mean flasks and enchants and suchlike (although we’re nice people who generally help out if we are asked nicely)—but rather changes in behavior or positioning that might not occur to your fellow raiders or raid-leads but will make your life as a healer easier.

So what might you want to ask for? It depends on your spec and the nature of the fight! But I’ve noticed that because of the “save ALL the things” mindset that leads many of us to be healers, we often also neglect to ask for accommodations that would make our jobs easier—and thus our fellow players more alive, and the bosses deader.

Example: when we were learning the Butcher fight in Highmaul, Leatherbear very reasonably switched people into small groups to make clear who was clumping where, who was assigned to leave, etc. This helped them know where to stand, but made my job as a healer harder because one of my major AOE heals, Prayer of Healing, heals the party of its target, which means that so three-person parties are only 60% as efficient as five-person parties. But at first I didn’t ask if the groups could be switched back after the explanation because I was thinking “well, Meliant, healing is your job so just deal with it.”

Then I realized that smart people (like our raiders!) can remember where they’re supposed to stand, and it probably wouldn’t be a big deal to switch back to five-person groups after everyone knew how to position themselves. So I asked if we could do that, and we did it, simple as that! And I was a more effective healer as a result.

Moral is: don’t be afraid to ask! If the change doesn’t seem like a good idea to us, we’ll politely say no, and either explain why then (if it’s quick) or after the raid (if it isn’t).

Leatherbear’s Healing Thoughts

I may tank now, but I used to heal. So I can give thoughts on all the things!

Tank Death

You should have a “EVERYTHING’S GONE TO HELL PLAN. And primarily, this is when the tank dies. You should decide, in advance, who your best emergency pocket tank is. The pally? The druid?

All that matters is that when the tank goes dead, spam heals go on the back-up tank.

The difference between the back up person dying or not depends on this being done in advance–if they don’t already have shields on them and HOTs rolling, they won’t be able to buy that extra thirty seconds of boss killing time.

This always means coordination before fights. When in doubt, spam the druid, then the pally, then the DK, then the rogue.

Mouseover and Macro Your Way to Success!

As a kitty druid, I literally have two buttons that are just assigned to rolling HOTs on the two tanks, and I actually just type the toon names into the macro before each raid starts.

/cast [@mouseover,exists,noharm][target=Beartongue] Rejuvenation

The above macro casts Rejuvenation on Beartongue. I have a second macro for the other tank. Voila! What happens to tanks with hard to spell names with funny characters?

They die.

But given that I’m hitting the same two damn buttons once every twelve or so seconds… it’s a lot easier to have them just sitting on a button that I tap every so often.

Everything that you do regularly and can put on a macro, I say stick there.

TMW and Weakauras

Mandatory for everyone. Eeeeeverrrryonnnnne.

Weakauras is probably easier to use. As an offhealer, it shows me a constant countdown timer of all my HOTs. Perhaps you want it to flash pretty when you have procs.

Or maybe you want it to trigger when the tank has a level of health below a certain percentage AND no incoming heals. Fancy to know, eh?

Your healing mod raidframes can do MUCH of these things, but not all of them, and probably not with the level of animation and IN YOUR FACE VISIBILITY that makes things easier.

Quit Underestimating the Tank’s Survivability

Tanks usually can bring themselves back up to full health at least twice on their own.

But because this is usually, usually, a massive waste, and expensive (pots!) they often won’t do it unless told it’s necessary.

So feel free to tell tanks when they need to take care of themselves. Don’t let DPS or yourself die when the tank has cooldowns.

Challenging Death Priority

Healers have a certain personality trait, a la La Femme Nikita, which is trying to save everyone. Literally everyone. If there’s a 1% chance they can save the entire raid, and a 50% chance they can save 2/3 of the raid and let the remaining third die, they’ll try to save everyone.

This applies similarly to when both tanks are taking heavy damage, or when all the DPS are taking raid damage.

Part of healing in sticky situations is letting less important people die. Are they sucking up heals because they keep standing in fire? Are you blowing cooldowns now that you’ll need later?

Similarly with tanks, the tank’s survivability can actually take a big boost when they’re taking all the damage–depending on the mechanics, it may not be wise to let both tanks get whittled down.

Overhealing the Raid Lead

Another thing I’ve noticed, since I’m the raid lead, is that the raid lead is often overhealed, probably out of an obvious fear that the raid lead dying means attention drawn to the healers.

Raid leads die just like everyone else. They’re also better equipped to continue to make announcements after their own death. So set aside your fealty to the leadership, and if the raid lead would be going down where the non-raid lead would… you probably should let them.