Healer Guide | What I Wish I'd Known When I First Started

Raid healer guide featuring things I wish I’d known about healing when I first started.
Ramping, timing your cooldowns, damaging the boss, always be casting something, and using healer cooldowns for specific damage.
Don’t miss the clip of the first time I ever healed back in 2014. It features one of my first UIs, and very old camera/audio quality. It’s great! No, not really, but it's entertaining. I now have four resto druids, but my main is Sunrift on Sargeras.
Let me know in the comments what your favorite spec and role is to play.
Twitter: / itslayria
A friend and I were featured on the Whispers of War podcast! Have a listen and learn more about our Piece of Cake raid community: www.podbean.com/ew/pb-7m3sq-e...
#raidhealer #healerguide

[@andrewshandle]

I've been healing on and off since Vanilla, and one thing that has remained constant is the person who runs out of range or stands in the fire is always the one who complains the loudest about not being healed. ;)

[@LayriaYT]

Haha very true! If I'm in a guild group, I have a habit of calling out someone's name once in a while if they're out of range. That usually gets their attention!

[@careyblake4522]

As everyone always yells QUIT STANDING IN STUFF" 😂

[@suzieanderson2262]

Even if you've been playing for years as a healer, sometimes it helps going back and relearning the basics and unlearning the bad habits. Thanks for posting this video, very informative and loved it. Keep up the great work!

[@LayriaYT]

Thank you! And yes it definitely helps to go back and relearn or practice some things, especially with Shadowlands and a new raid coming very soon!

[@TommyOhmalley]

Defiantly. I found the best way to do that is by leveling your class again

[@ryanchristenson1059]

Your 2014 ui looks cleaner than most pvp’ers

[@LayriaYT]

Haha thank you!

[@LordCartmanGaming]

Most important tip besides not focusing too much on overall HPS is teamwork. See who your co healers are and plan how you approach a boss. I hated every raid where resto shamans or holy or even disc priests would spam their group heal like chain heal or whatever priests had back in MoP, topping players quickly rather than letting my hots heal them up. So my healing went into overheal, HPS were lower than the rest, they were OOM very fast and blamed me. It was until I asked them to play a resto druid that they understood how my healing comes slow but consistent and that their group heals are more of a thing for consistent heavy damage, not topping of the group after one damage spike, where healing rain, priest heal circle and my hots usually are enough to slowly bring everyone back up to 100%

[@flourtortilla4276]

you know ive been struggling trying to convince myself i want to play healer but this video actually helped me make the switch. Thanks

[@walid7820]

This making me laugh , hahahaha

[@LayriaYT]

I'm so happy to hear that! I hope you've been enjoying playing healer :)

[@ramezshkifi]

Keep it up, as healer I've never found any pro guides any good I relied on written guides and spell reading and the ramping advice is the best given to any healer at start.

[@LayriaYT]

Thank you! And I agree, I've always searched around combing through resources out there trying to find the best information. One of my major goals is to offer videos about topics that I would want to know about. I want to be able to relay information in video form and save people some time!

[@is6031]

This video and this channel are so underrated. I'm glad I found this. I've decided to try healing for the first time in shadowlands. After being a tank for 3 expansions. Thank you! You got a new sub

[@LayriaYT]

Thank you so much and good luck! I think you’ll love healing. There’s a little predictability to it, especially in a raid, but it can also be a bit unpredictable depending on the damage players take. I think tanks and heals are the most engaging roles!

[@arleendo]

As someone who just got into Wow in SL, I have to say your videos are very informative and helpful. I rolled a resto Druid and I’m currently healing heroic dungeons, making some progress really quickly. I must say healing is very fun and challenging, mainly because you can get your group out of hard situations like when someone takes unnecessary damage. This is specially true for LFD and I think it contributes to your skill as a healer. Keep up the good videos! Thanks

[@LayriaYT]

Thank you--I'm so happy the videos have been helpful! Healing definitely gets easier the more you do it and kind of see different scenarios like you mentioned. You might end up with a dungeon group that takes excessive damage, or you might end up with a group that avoids everything and takes almost no damage. Either way it's always fun!

[@Tellathus]

Just coming back to WoW for DF and this was exactly what i needed :) thanks for the video :)

[@NA-cl6vj]

Healing is awesome really. ESPECIALLY in a game like WoW. Used to main warlock, the moment I tried resto druid back in cataclysm I was sold.

[@trevor2177]

Planning on swapping from my beloved dk to priest for shadowlands, figured I'd try to heal while I'm at it. This video as well as you ui videos have been a huge help.

[@LayriaYT]

Good luck with the class and role swap - I think you’ll love priest healing! I’m so happy these videos have been helpful :)

[@Iceburg2355]

The nostalgic feels I get of seeing fire mage back to being top damage. Lol It's been a min😩

[@phife9]

Coming back to wow after healing in ffxiv for a while and this helped me get an idea of how I can integrate what I learned there into my mentality in getting back into the wow groove. Thanks!

[@LayriaYT]

I'm so happy you're playing WoW again! It usually takes me a few minutes to get used to my characters again when I swap from one game to the other, but it goes away quickly. Let me know if you have any questions about WoW healing!

[@dreadfury2485]

Gotta admit, these last several videos show an absolutely massive leap in quality! I may not heal now, and I’ll probably never end up doing so come SL, but these sorts of videos are extremely informative and useful no matter what!

[@LayriaYT]

Thank you so much! You have no idea how much your support means

[@keloylec9162]

This helps so much! Thank You!!

[@LayriaYT]

Yay! I’m so happy it could help :D

[@randall9667]

Hey I just decided to switch from shadow to discipline and this guide really helped me out. Thank you so much!

[@LayriaYT]

I’m so happy it was helpful! I hope you enjoy disc priest :)

[@UnholyGsus]

Also a resto druid main, however a holy priest is way easier in my opinion to manage heals. Restoration druid is just way more fun and takes more understanding.

[@JR-ir5on]

This video convinced me once and for all that I never want to be a healer. I'd rather have actual fun while gaming.

[@LayriaYT]

I hope you find a class and role that you enjoy playing in WoW!

[@sunb5738]

Thanks for this vid! I main Veng DH so I tank and sometimes dps but I've been lvling a priest and I was a bit scared but I'll def try healing now!

[@LayriaYT]

I'm so happy the video was helpful! Priest is a great class to learn how to heal. I recommend trying holy first :)

[@glennthehelper4524]

What healer class has high burst aoe and dot heals. So something that can just keep popping heal overtime aoes. I'd also like to be able to shield my allies or mitigate damage somehow from them at least a little. But my main priority is to make sure there's a heal overtime going around on everyone so I don't have to be constantly worrying about others and I can just use a simple loadout and pop moves when I need too. I'm a very caring person and I want more than anything for others to feel encouraged, positive and comfortable and I'll do anything I can to help others with that. Helping, and giving to others is what I enjoy the most. But it would also be nice to find a healer that fits my playstyle so I can better help others. The only reason why I want to get strong in video and find a class that fits my playstyle is so I can help and project others in any way I can. So I'd appreciate any help.

[@LayriaYT]

Resto druid has some nice burst heals! Holy priest has also been really strong this tier. and you might also enjoy holy paladin! Holy paladins don't have shields, but they do have damage reduction abilities that are incredibly helpful for a raid. WoW has two types of healers: proactive and reactive, and usually proactive healers (like disc priest) use shields and reactive healers have more throughput healing. I hope this helps!

[@smorgan9891]

I am by no means in Mythic raiding range, but I’ve been healing since Vanilla and have always felt silly/self-conscious abt getting bored and throwing some dmg at a boss when I’ve got nothing better to do. Good to know I was inadvertently doing something right!

[@LayriaYT]

Yes, healer damage is always a great thing :D Whenever my raid group gets close to killing a new boss (last few percent) my heals usually drop because I focus all my damage into the boss and think "what if it's a 0.1% wipe?!"

[@mantii-5680]

Recently came back to WoW as resto druid (from being feral druid long time ago) and wow this video taught me a shit ton, also relaised how bad i am at healing

[@LayriaYT]

Welcome back to WoW! I’m happy to hear you chose resto druid :) healing is all about practice and just doing it over and over again. You’ll get the hang of it!

[@rydo304]

"Now I can get rid of resto..." Funny how that worked out ;)

[@LayriaYT]

Haha right?! That’s one of the best parts, especially since I now have four resto druids!

[@sAriesFFF]

I've always been a hunter but have tried my hand at healing to give hubby a chance to be dps for a change as he was always healing and I'm actually having way more fun. Playing around with a Disc Priest and a Mistweaver Monk at the moment leveling.

[@LayriaYT]

Oooh that sounds like a fun switch! The first class I ever played was a hunter. Disc priest is probably going to be my "main alt," but I know what you mean about monk. Monks have so many awesome abilities like roll and transcendence. Definitely not an easy choice to pick between the two!

[@arka267]

Nice content! :)

[@LayriaYT]

Thank you so much! :)

[@mohlol2456]

Nice video :). I have a little question, i get the thing about ramping, especially with healers like resto druids but how to do deal with unexpected dmg since they should be healing preemptively ? When you do know bosses mecanics yet for example

[@LayriaYT]

This is such a great question! For resto druids, you should always have a few hots out on players since there's always a little bit of raid aoe damage during fights. If massive raid wide damage goes out you should just be able to throw out a few more rejuvs and regrowths, and if wild growth is off cooldown I'd use that spell first. If you already have an efflorescence down and you're using the spring blossoms talent then several players should also already have a spring blossoms hot rolling. It's really just making sure that you always have a few hots applied to players, that way if you don't know for sure when the big damage moments are then at least you're prepared a little bit for it! Then you can react to the damage by applying more hots and letting them tick and do the rest of the work to top everyone off.

[@kuriasensei9445]

First time healer here normally dps. So while leveling my healer doing dungeons I have consistently out dps'd our dps in the group it's hilarious how much damage my priest does

[@LayriaYT]

Healer damage can be so good!

[@MrCanadaben]

What is the UI-addon you're using? That looks really nice, and I want that as well :) Sorry if it was said/written somewhere and I missed it :P

[@LayriaYT]

My Wago has all the Elv and Plater profiles and WeakAuras I use! I haven't updated them in a little while, but they should all still work. I might do a UI overhaul once we get closer to Dragonflight :) Wago: wago.io/p/Layria_WoW

[@jaskim5723]

"You want use Tranq at 30 secs for whatever reason" Looks at Sun King.

[@LayriaYT]

LOL this is too true

[@alsudairy.k5647]

hey thanks for the video. wanted to ask whats your transmog at the start of the video?

[@LayriaYT]

It’s the challenge mode set from Mists of Pandaria! It’s not available anymore but there’s a lookalike set from the Legion class hall. It’s the same style just has different colors!

[@randybobandy7613]

I've been healing on druid since wotlk and I didnt know wrath doesn't cost mana. Thank you

[@LayriaYT]

It’s really great! It also gives you something to do when there’s nothing to heal :)

[@zakimira69]

i get deep anxiety about doing tanking/healing. you vid has helped me wanna try but i dunno if im mythic material but least i may be raid finder? XD

[@jabohonu]

does the Tauren racial "brawn" (Critical strike bonus damage and healing increased by 2%.) Increases the amount healed by the critical procs from my "Mending Bandage" and the critical heal procs to my pet with "Mend pet" ??

[@ShadowofLegacy]

How do we get your UI setup? It's beautiful. Do you have a video on that?

[@LayriaYT]

My ElvUI profile is on Wago! I updated it right before Dragonflight launched, so I'll upload it very soon! wago.io/p/Layria_WoW

[@Quickshifty]

Hey Layria! Fellow Disc Priest healer here. :) I recently found out your channel and already found out a lot of helpful videos for which I'm grateful. Could you be so kind to let me know what addon you're using in the video while you're with the Disc Priest? I've tried both VuhDo and Grid2 and I like to play with either but the setup you have on then is pretty nice. Thanks in advance!

[@LayriaYT]

Yay! I'm actually leveling my priest later this evening :D The footage with the yellow raid frames (when atonement is applied) is a friend of mine who uses Vuhdo. The part of the video with me playing holy on Wrathion is ElvUI raid frames. I'm personally not a big fan of Vuhdo, but the one thing I do like about it that ElvUI can't do is change the entire color of your raid frames to show who has atonement. When I heal as disc and use ElvUI, I just have an icon in the corner of each raid frame to show who has atonement. If you're interested in trying out the ElvUI profile, I uploaded mine to Wago here: wago.io/IiPbCxFCN

[@Quickshifty]

@@LayriaYT , yeah I'm also using VuhDo for the full-frame colors related to setting up certain buffs. Thank you for sharing the ElvUI profile. I'll try it out. Keep up the good work and hope you're enjoying SL! Cheers!

[@berkanaysan2448]

Amazing video

[@LayriaYT]

Thank you! Personally, I'd choose troll resto druid because of the berserking racial ability. It gives you 12% haste for 10 seconds. I believe tauren has a stun ability and some nature damage resistance. But honestly, play whichever you like the most aesthetically--extra haste for a very small amount of time won't make or break a fight :)

[@berkanaysan2448]

@@LayriaYT Thanks a lot for your reply. I will be thinking till prepatch. Currently i have zandalar but probably i will be rolling into a troll for raiding in SL. Thanks one more time, such a lovely job you are doing here :)

[@walid7820]

I like the videos , for me theres not a healer better than other , the player make the big diffrence always, so enjoy playing and skill come with time and faults

[@pidahkadabra]

Hy 😊 Can you tell me what addon/weakaura colors your raid frames for atonement at 1:04? 😊

[@LayriaYT]

Hiii! I asked Reead (who let me use that particular clip for the video) and he said: "I use Grid2 for unitframes. I have the color set to a pale yellow for the Atonement buff tracker, then I assign Atonement to the color tab under the Health bar indicator." He mentioned it's hard to explain if someone isn't familiar with Grid2, but this should point you in the right direction if you want to set it up like his.

[@andreealucianu2050]

which healer u recommend for beginner to start with? i am thinking maybe resto druid?

[@LayriaYT]

As much as I love resto druid, I recommend holy priest if you're a beginner healer. Holy priest is super straight forward, there isn't a lot of proactive healing/ramping that needs to be done before damage hits like there is for resto druid. Most of the major holy priest spells are not heal over time, so you cast an ability and it heals for x amount. However, I would put resto druid as second for beginners :D

[@urganp2798]

Back in my day healers didnt do damage becasue if damage was an issue they would drop a healer and add a dps

[@tien5tri]

Ty for mention healer damage. I hate healers that dont dps when theres no incoming damage. They would just stand there. Healers can contribute at least 2% to boss total health just by keeping their dot up and throwing out some nuke cast. This is especially true with resto sham having lava surges proccs. It drives me crazy 😠

[@LayriaYT]

Yes, exactly! I've seen too many wipes on raid fights where some of the healers didn't contribute much damage. Resto shamans not using lava surge procs is one of my pet peeves. Lava burst costs 50 mana, so not a lot. Healer damage is always a good thing!

[@arkstok]

How do you make your Attonement change the whole color of the health bar on the raid? like at 1:05

[@LayriaYT]

Reead is the player in that clip and who let me use the footage, but I believe he uses an addon called Vuhdo! ElvUI raid frames don't let you change your raid frame colors like this for atonement (at least not yet, I hope they implement this customization soon). If you search for "vuhdo atonement" on wago.io/ there should be some profiles you can import that are customized to show atonement like in this video!

[@arkstok]

@@LayriaYT Thanks for the reply! im actually on the same page as you with vuhdo, way overcomplicated, i imported your Elvui profile and like it quite alot (obviously made some adjustments for me), only thing that is buggin me is that i would like an easier or quicker way to scan who has attonement, do you encounter this problem as well?

[@aviralkumar4506]

great video, hopefully you pick up some traction

[@LayriaYT]

Thank you! That's definitely the goal. But even if my videos just help one person then it's all worth it.

[@jeppesenify]

quick question, isnt wild growth better to use after the dmg is done?

[@LayriaYT]

Ideally, you want to use it right as the damage goes out because the first wild growth hit heals for the most. It’s okay to use after the damage as long as there are at least 5 players who need healing!

[@jeppesenify]

@@LayriaYT thx😊

[@kirinirlf]

My favorite role is healer. I kinda feel like I’ve hit a wall in WoW though. There are so many key binds to get used to.

[@LayriaYT]

There are definitely a lot of keybinds for certain classes (druid is getting up there again). Switching to a 12-button mouse (Razer Naga) helped me because I have 1-12 and then shift 1-12 and recently I've keybinded a couple of alt keys. It quickly becomes muscle memory though!

[@kirinirlf]

@@LayriaYT Yeah, practice makes perfect! I wish I could get a new mouse, but currently that's out of the budget :P So just gotta get used to 0-9 / F1-F12, ALT+, Shift+ you know

[@tobiaspedersen8333]

i am starting out with Disc preist :)

[@LayriaYT]

Disc priest has been so much fun in Shadowlands!

[@Cheesepants1]

What addons do you use for healing?

[@LayriaYT]

The main addons I use for healing are Clique for mouseover healing, Elvui raid frames, and Weakauras to track a few things like efflorescence duration, lifebloom etc. The other addons I use aren't really required for healing, they're just nice to have :)

[@tjestelle4886]

Do we really have cool downs anymore? Revival is a mass aoe vilify. Healing numbers are close between the two. Other healer are similar with their basic heal and their cd.

[@LayriaYT]

Some healer cooldowns are definitely weaker than others. It helps when you know which healer cooldowns can be paired together. Some of my guild's early wipes on phase 1 mythic N'Zoth were spent trying to figure out how we needed to spread out our cooldowns and which ones we needed later in the phase. Similarly, BFA definitely taught me which cooldowns and minor cooldowns like darkness or rallying cry pair well together.

[@greysins190]

where you get that shirt?

[@LayriaYT]

I believe I got it from Jinx a few years ago! It has a silhouette of the iron horde and underneath says "who will stand against us." I tried to find a link for you but I don't think they sell it anymore :(

[@dalton6624]

Best healer is Unholy DK. -Vel

[@LayriaYT]

Haha death strike too op!

[@amrabdelsalam106]

Thx for the lovely video, it was fun to watch with a friend of mine starting on healing role. Also I'm having a hard time choosing between 2 healing classes to be my main at Shadowlands and I was hoping you can help me out with the choice if you don't mind. However if you do mind, please act like I said nothing but how a lovely video it was :D If you can help me out make the choice (since i've seen you playing on beta) please tell me a way I can contact you like in twitch or discord or something via direct msg text so we can discuss this if its ok with you. Thank you in advance and have fun WoWing :D

[@LayriaYT]

Thank you, I'm glad you and your friend enjoyed it! What two healing classes are you trying to decide between?

[@amrabdelsalam106]

@@LayriaYT disc priest and resto Druid, they are both very appealing and enjoyable to play, but resto Druid gives me a better quality of life in M+ while disc gets me hypertensive but in raids I find resto Druid a bit niche compared to disc priest healing wise and usefulness wise. However all that we already know, the reason I’m torn apart between them, my friends will be more like casual players and won’t be that focused into hard raid progress as I intend to do, so most of the time we will be doing M+ together. But as mentioned above I wanna do hardcore raid progress and the guild also needs me as disc

[@amrabdelsalam106]

P.s tbh I’m afraid I won’t be as effective in M+ with disc, not because I can’t or I’m not skilled, because as I mentioned my friends are casual so they can be the type of people that are “standing on fire” or getting unnecessary dmg which can be hectic as a disc priest cuze u basically can’t act well with unanticipated dmg but in this area the Druid can life save people even if unanticipated dmg occurs

[@LayriaYT]

I definitely understand the appeal of disc and rdruid! At times, I swapped to disc in BFA for my guild’s mythic progression. It sounds like you might be leaning more toward disc, and if you’re not looking to push high keys and feel that disc can be difficult to top everyone off in emergency situations you could always go holy! I haven’t tested disc in keys that much on beta, but from what I’ve seen it looks like disc is able to react much better to large group damage a bit more and not fall behind as much as they did in BFA. I always have 1-2 alt healers that I keep mythic ready, and disc will be one of them in Shadowlands. I’ll try to focus more on priest content once SL is out. My suggestion is to have either resto or holy as an alt healer (if you want to have an alt), since it’s sounds like you have two groups you want to play with. You could also just choose one of the healer classes and play that with both groups. But if you decide to have an alt healer it doesn’t need to be as geared or optimized as your main. I play my alt healers when I can and steadily gear them up over time. If your friends are more casual, just casually gear up and play that alt healer if that’s what you’d like to do. For raiding, I always suggest playing the class that you have the most fun. For me that’s resto druid. Disc priests are generally pretty good in mythic raiding, but unless you’re in a guild that’s pushing competitive rankings (top world, etc), healing comp doesn’t really matter that much. Resto druid fills kind of a niche in raids, usually throughput healing, but they definitely have some benefits!

[@ghydeon]

Very interesting you never mention resto shaman

[@BobGnarley.]

:-D

[@adammolyvdas3525]

The thing I wish I had know when I started healing? I will tell you if I ever do it... Which probably means never. :)

[@LayriaYT]

Haha maybe one of these days! :)

[@yurimeta19]

Lol "Use your clearcasting procs on regrowth" *gears in head turning* "...... wait what?"

[@LayriaYT]

Haha I was SO lost the first time I ever played resto. All the spells looked the same to me!

[@crazsyplayer1129]

thanks for the video. now know healing isnt for me

[@LayriaYT]

I'm happy it could help (even if healing isn't for you!).

[@Finalgirl-daydreams]

From vanilla raiding to ulduar i didnt know about mouseover macros....i was a clicker..target person press the heal on my bar..im ashamed. another thing is the importance of screen real estate and not having "grid blindness" look at everything all at once use peripheral vision to see everything beyond the heal frames. Oh and padding the healing meters doesnt help the run at all, instead of standing there padding to make your "numbers look good" do damage. be a team player.

[@LayriaYT]

YES! I'm so happy you mentioned healer damage and being a team player. Raid content is about being on a team, and healers aren't restricted to just healing. Healer damage really does matter, especially on new fights!

[@careyblake4522]

Okay I was hoping to come here to hear what add-ons you used TBH... And the entire video not single mention of any of the adddons you used.👎 For this I will give thumbs down. Because that is the most crucial part. This was painful to listen so long to this and not hear of her add-ons once. I have been out for 2 years and just wanted to know what add-ons you used. If this video was for beginners? Not a single player will understand a word of this, like "ramping" or knowing when to use big CD's. Yoh clearly would have to read up on the raid then and know when each move is used by the boss and at what times. In that aspect you would have a timer on as well then. And as she said "I probably have it logged somewhere😂" woah lady.🤚🤣. When I played Resto druid, I played mostly in PvP and RBG. And my build was alot different than what you used and I played with no add-ons at all and always ranked top 3 hdps. As of raids? I could do 25 sure, but too often as buddy said people stand in stuff or my fellow healers would not be healing as actively with me and it always came to me to either heal that player or let them die. Tanks don't hold aggro well enough is the real problem here and dps don't use their interruptions at the right time and healers don't nullify on tanks enough. I always felt I was the only one nullifying bad stuff of the tanks. Or one tank does amazing and the other is bad. Anyways for some players more experienced, it is a good video, pretty nerdy, like a bit overkill. I half expected you to say at some point "I have 10 characters all fully maxed, with top item levels, I have completed all achievements, I maxed out everything in professions and rank one of the highest in ratings. As you were moving your glasses up and down with every 3rd word. 😁.

[@craigshlabot5719]

learn to play a healer on a real game learning wow healing isnt healing it just allows you to progress, no carrying with fast reaction time, been healer for over 20 years and wow hasnt been a real game since wotlk