Note: There are some revisions in this post since the first incarnation based on feedback from people.

Years ago I wrote a healing guide. Indeed it's been long enough that I can't even remember if it was a general healer's guide or a resto druid guide in specific. In this writing I'll attempt to revisit the points I wrote in that guide, apply them to current raiding environment and flesh them out a bit. Understand that the advice in here should be taken as something to try rather than definite hard facts. What works for me might not be what works for your raid. If you are looking for hard facts about gearing and spell choices you'll probably want to go through Elitist Jerks forum threads (for your class). Most of what's written here is in relation to raid healing and bears but little impact on tank healing. There might be repetition.


1) Sticky targeting: pick your targets and stick with them.

I'm not saying that cross-healing is bad. I'm saying that if you are healing a target and they clearly need healing you will generally want to stick with them even if they aren't the optimal target for your healing role. You've got two options: either you stick with your targets or you hope someone else will pick them up after you stop. If you leave such a target be ready to return with haste.

Most of the time you want to be able to distinguish between healing your own targets and cross-healing. If you are just healing randomly, then the odds are everyone else is also healing randomly. Healing clashes will ensue. You will probably need to communicate with your raid members to have some degree of territory assignments, even if you are mostly improvising.


2) Don't heal the first guy to take the damage nor the last guy.

A surprising number of people will subconsciously heal through people in the order they took damage (also applies to decursing). If too many people are taking damage to keep track of the "order" then you'll start to notice people healing the last guy to take damage (or just generally healing the people with lowest HP). Generally speaking you'll want to avoid healing targets based on *when* they took damage (a much better pattern is how to heal based on how urgently they need healing, but event this isn't always what you want to do).


3) Heal from bottom to top, not from top to bottom.

More people heal from top to bottom and left to right (alphabetically by group as they are listed in Grid) than pretty much any other healing order. To avoid healing same targets, try healing from from bottom to top or right to left. Or alternatively try to avoid healing in any particular order, instead picking each target separately.


4) Heal based on class.

You will want to heal based on class. Some classes got a lot better emergency abilities than others. Ideally you'd heal based on who has least savers available to them (and least HP/resistances) but in practice absorbing all related information is next to impossible. I'll claim that it's generally better to just heal based on simple class/group rules. A few suggestions for high-priority healing:
- Enhancement shamans
- DPS warriors
- Mages (Iceblock can be very strong for some encounters, though)
- Healers (low'ish HP, no judgement of light healing)


Some high-priority healing targets.


5) Heal based on group.

- Try if it's worth prioritizing group 4 (and 3) when there are no strict healing assignments.
- Prioritize groups which aren't fully ranged nor melee with spells suitable for such things
- Prioritize groups which *are* known to be in same location (typically melee groups) with heals suitable for such things.


6) Make conscious decisions regarding tank healing (especially with heal-over-time spells).

If your HOTs can help tank healers drop the occasional direct heal on raid, then throwing hots on tanks is probably a good thing. If your hots can occasionally help save tanks from death them dropping HOTs on them is probably also good. If your HOTs don't accomplish either of these things then don't drop them on tanks.


7) Heal yourself first.

You never know if someone else has cooldowns which can save them event at low health but if you neglect yourself at low health you are basically throwing the ball to other healers. Priests will force themselves to use binding heal.

Additionally: it is very often a good choice to use items (potions, stones) or cooldowns to save yourself while keeping up the heals on others.


8) Heal based on who needs to live

Some deaths can easier be fixed with a combat res than others. It's often a good idea to heal based on who needs to live rather than who stands greatest risk of dying. I could state this another way: heal those who need to be healed rather than those who need heals.


9) Be aware of PW:S

This is probably the single most important non-encounter specific thing to avoid overhealing: don't throw hots on targets with PW:S up (this is true almost regardless of their current HP status). On the flip side do throw hots on people with Weakened Soul. If your raid frames aren't showing you these effects then fix your raid frames.


10) Don't mask problems

I can't believe I originally forgot to say this: try healing the guy who tends to die a lot, but never do this in such a fashion that will mask the problem. Minimally you should mention to other healers that you'll be keeping an eye on the unlucky fellow. Preferably when there's a good reason for someone to be in high danger then they will receive special attention as a part of the strategy or strategy will be altered such that they are no longer in danger. If there's no good reason for them to be in special danger then perhaps there's a bad reason.

Put another way: it's probably better to solve the problems at root rather than try and be the silent hero.

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A few additional considerations:

Just because you have faster heals doesn't mean sniping is good. Whether you land a heal 0.2 seconds before or after someone else doesn't impact the amount of wasted healing at all. Healing clashes are pretty much never a good thing regardless of who lands theirs first.

When doing healing assignments avoid situations which can lead to snowball effects. For example don't assign one person to heal all healers, because if that one person dies then there's a high risk the healers will follow suit (followed by rest of the raid). Giving each healer responsibility for themselves will typically reduce the collateral damage until the unfortunate healer can be resurrected.

If you wish to ask questions about or comment on things mentioned here, please post in this thread (I'll not answer in PM about this stuff).

Hi,thanks for your tips & advices. I would like to ask u a few questions.

1) Some resto druids use meta "Insightful Earthsiege Diamond" (+21 Intellect and Chance to restore mana on spellcast),others use "Ember Skyflare Diamond" (+25 Spell Power and +2% Intellect). So,what meta is better and why?

2) 3 major glifs for restor druids in my opinion are: Glyph of Wild Growth,Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation,Glyph of Swiftmend. My question is - on which ICC bosses Glyph of Nourish is better than Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation? What do you think about Glyph of Rejuvenation? Can it be useful?

3) As i can suppose you are healing raid together with Xaar.Can u give some suggestions in order better to heal raid with the 2nd resto druid,is it helpful to see his hots,or not?

4)What is your hps on Blood queen 25 man heroic?

Let me preface this by saying that the intent of above guide was to encourage people to think on *why* they do certain things rather than provide specific advice. With that in mind I think I can answer your questions.



Do you feel like you need more mana? If yes then use Insightful Earthsiege Diamond. Insightful basically has more item budget than Ember but ember does provide spell power which is pretty much our only throughput stat past haste soft cap.



I use Glyph of Rejuvenation over Swiftmend but this is more a matter of habit than anything else. I think glyph of Nourish is something you should mostly look at for 10-mans (and Valithria in 25-man).



You will absolutely want to see swiftmendable hots. I'd also suggest setting your UI up to see at least renew & wg from other healers. Generally speaking you don't want to throw hots on target which already has plenty of them.



10% buff -> pretty much around 25k with 50% of that being overhealing.

i'm looking for some advice on healing composition.

My thoughts off the top of my head are:
1 Disc Priest
2 Resto Druids
2 Holy Pallies
1/2 Resto Shammy

Holy Priests - I never see them top charts with throughput. They dont have the mitigation that Disc brings. They are supposed to be AoE heals, but I dont ever see holy priests even close to druids/shamans for throughput. What do they bring specifically that is going to help us in hard modes?

Bear with me this is long winded... :)

It must be the Holy Priests you heal with. It should be hard for a Shaman to top them on AE heavy fights. Shamans are great on fights where the AE dmg is light and spread out due to Chain Heal and their Smart Heal proc (the one that heals the lowest person on crit) and they can hold a tank up for a bit (Riptide > Tidal Waves proc > hasted Healing Wave > RT Chain Heal), but a Holy priest should dominate when many people are taking damage.

Generally speaking, Holy Priests are great at burst damage AoE healing (while Druids are great at steady and consistent AoE healing). So any fight where bunches of people get hit a Holy Priest should be able to burst heal them up quickly (PoM bounces > CoH > hasted PoH > SoL proc - all of that happens in the blink of an eye). Any fight that many people get hit hard and go low HP, a Holy Priest should be able to get them up faster than anyone.

Between the smart heal of CoH and hasted PoH, they can pump out massive healing in seconds (as opposed to Druids massive healing over many seconds). While they are doing that, PoM and Renew (both powerful and underestimated, PoM hits for 7-11k and Renew ticks for 3k+, ~20k overall) are healing people simultaneously. Renew is up there with a Druid HoT. They also have another targetable cooldown in Guardian Spirit that will save lives. Another Prayer of Mending (Holy PoM is very powerful too) is always good, it's one of the best healing spells in the game. You'll also have another Hymn of Hope and Divine Hymn.

Holy Priests are bursty because they are all about instant cast spells. Instant cast Flash Heal isn't bad (Surge of Light proc) even though it's a little weak, it's instant and it procs very often. Empowered Renew is a 2nd instant heal that goes off when Renew lands, CoH is instant, PoM is instant, and PoH get's hasted. When played right, they can pump out a lot quickly.

You don't need to raid stack for any hard modes except LK. My guild is 11/12 Heroic ICC and sometimes we have 3 Holy Priests in the raid at a time. It looks like you haven't ran into any good Holy Priests yet is all.

In short, they are Bursty AE healers (bring many low people up quickly) with nice cooldowns (GS, Hymns, not much different than a Disc Priest though), versatility (PoM/Renew heals while they heal other people). But if you can't find a good one, don't sweat it. If you CAN find a great Holy Priest, I would bring him instead of a 2nd Resto Druid any day, I think Paragon would agree. I think Holy Priest/Resto Druid supplement each other perfectly.

hi Anaram ty for the nice guide ;), i was wondering if u can link your grid configuration? it would be very useful to see other's player buff and hots..:)

What a great collection of off-the-wall thoughts! I hope you don't mind that I've linked your guide in the Playing Style section of my character management article on TankSpot:

http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?57429-At-the-Top-of-Your-Game

Thanks again for these thoughts; you guys truly are awesome.

There's nothing particularly special about my Grid configuration. I display lifebloom stacks, rejuvenation (my own and in general), regrowth (my own and in general) and my own wild growth. Additionally I display rough information about the overall hot situation of a target.

If there's one thing to be said about grid configuration though: you don't need to keep the frames as small as they are by default. Just make them slightly bigger if you want (and if they start taking up lots of space, make them grow horizontally instead of vertically which will probably help if you have your grid at the bottom of the screen as many people do). Removing additional borders might make grid look a bit more friendly and take up less space, depending on what you like.

I couldn't find a proper "in action" screenshot but here's something from my alt (it's essentially the same setup as my druid anyway).

Hey I have a few questions if you have the time to answer them
First you said you do 25k HPS on BQ heroic 25, are you using rapid rejuv for this and rejuvination?
Second I have a really hard time knowing which fights i should be using rapid rejuv on and if not what glyphs should I be using.

Thanks for your time.

Currently I use rapid reju for pretty much all fights but I think it's largely a matter of preference. I use rapid rejuvenation because it leaves more open rejuvenation targets (but conversely does leave less swiftmendable targets). I'd recommend RR for wing end bosses but and beyond that just go with what feel best.