I know.
We’re imba.
Sooner or later, though, if you want to have chance of running 10-man raids, you’ll have to learn to get along with at least one other healer in a group. Working with other healers is a ton of fun, especially when you’re running with skilled individuals who do things totally differently but get fantastico results and make your job easier.
Getting along with your healing team is the single most important thing you can do to improve your success rate in raids. Learn to love them, listen to what they have to say, and always throw them a bonus heal.
They might even make you look better, if such a thing is possible! Then you can all retire to Ironforge for a beer amidst the cheers of your raid group for their healing team.
Understanding is the key to success!
Raid Healing Crib Sheet
Disc Priest & Paladin
Spells They Use:
Holy Light. Beacon of Light. Cleanse.
How This Affects You:
Holy Paladins are exclusively tank healers. If you don’t wanna be a tank healer, *footstomp*, tough shit. Unless there’s a shaman lurking around the back and you get to have that off-tank all to your lonesome, you WILL be the raid healer.
This is the trickiest combination of healers.
Neither of you have much in the way of group heal spells (oh, wait, what’s this under a rock? Circle of Whatnow?)- Paladins have none- and by the time your raid DPS’s get to 25% health it may already be too late to save them. And there’s not even another Disc Priests’ Penance bouncing around to help you out. You’re on your own completely, so be prepared to do a metric ass-ton of casting.
Keep Power Word: Shield up on all your targets. Start off with a rotation and then stick to it- “Click- shield, click-shield, click-shield”. If a DPS is taking damage, throw a Renew on them and keep moving. Watch who’s taking the most damage and hit that person with your Penance (sad fact: it may be you). Don’t bother bubbling the Pally, who has plenty of self-healing spells… besides which you’ll quite simply be too busy to bubble them.
Unlike the Marines, you may be leaving a man behind. On the plus side, your healing rotation gets much easier when you have one less person to keep alive!
Bonus Tip: Cast ‘Inner Focus’ before you slam down that last-ditch ‘Circle of Healing’. And pretend we don’t both know that if you’re doing that, it’s already too late.
Disc Priest & Shaman
Spells They Use:
Chain Heal. Healing Wave. Rip Tide.
How This Affects You:
Restoration Shamans are well-rounded raid healers. Congratulations! You’re bubbling the tanks.
It’s important to note that their Healing Stream Totem only heals the people in their party; Chain Heal, however, hits raid-wide. Shamans’ single-target heal spells are their Healing Wave and Rip Tide. Their raidwide heals aren’t as strong as a Druid’s, but they do have more flexibility to top up DPS who are taking more damage than the rest of the raid, which is reassuring if you run with one eye on the raid.
You’ll be perfectly fine just paying attention to your tanks without worrying too much about what’s happening in the raid, though bubbling the Shaman is a gentlemanly gesture which is always appreciated.
Bonus Tip: Stand within 30 yards of their Mana Tide Totem for better mana regeneration, and praise the Gods for giving you a Shammy.
Disc Priest & Disc Priest
Spells They Use:
Power Word: Shield. Penance. Flash Heal.
How This Affects You:
This can be a disaster waiting to happen, but it doesn’t have to be. The biggest issue here is that you’ll both end up trying to shield the same target that’ll screw up your cooldowns on Weakened Soul, or that you’ll place Penance on the same person.
This combination is particularly brutal when one or both of you don’t stick to your healing assignments.
Not sticking to the assignments means that on your frantic rotation through your raid group (let’s say you’re raid healing), you find that another shield is already up on one of your DPS. Now that person is off the scheduled clock- you don’t know how long that shield’s been up, how long it’ll be up, or how long the Weakened Soul will last, so you skip that dude and keep going. But it messes up your momentum, that DPS will invariably go without shielding for a while as you go on to the rest of your rotation, and it messes with your flow, man, your fuckin’ FLOW!
Don’t be that Disc priest.
With any other healer, you’re a saint for throwing a few raid bubbles on hard-hit DPS targets as you wait for your assigned tank’s bubble to wear off. With another Disc healer, you are just making them MAD.
Stick religiously to your assignments if you’re thrown in with another Disco. Keep Penance up on your targets (only your targets! You don’t want to hit the same person the other priest just hit and waste it). If you have the time and mana to assist on some non-assigned heals, you may feel free to dole out some Flash Heals.
Remember, if everyone in the raid just took a few huge hits, another disc priest cannot effectively heal them all at once. This isn’t like playing with a Shammy who has one enormous long Chain Heal she’s just on the verge of finishing; if you see seriously empty bars, you must help out your fellow Disc by Flash Healing the snot out of the second-worst damaged.
It’s the Code of the Discos.
Bonus Tip: Let each other know when you’re about to cast Hymn of Hope. Stand close to each other if possible. Trade off to ensure that the priest who’s casting is shielded, and you both get the most mana out of those two Hymns that you possibly can.
Disc Priest & Holy Priest
Spells They Use:
Prayer of Healing. Prayer of Mending. Circle of Healing.
How This Affects You:
A Holy Priest can perform single-target heals, but hopefully your Holy Priest will relish his role as a raid healer.
Lots of PUGing and LFD, though- especially if he’s overgeared- may have seduced your Holy into some bad habits: namely, using disc spells as quick fixes. This can be legendarily bad if it happens when you run together.
With any luck, your Holy Priest will not try to bubble. If they do, you’re going to have to figure out a way to ask them as politely as possible to stop. This is a recipe for disaster as it will screw up your Weakened Soul cooldown rotation and is a terrible waste of his mana to boot.
Otherwise, Holy priests make excellent raid companions. Do, do bubble them whenever you can; for some reason, I see Holy healers go down before any other healer class, and a fairy loses its wings every time a priest dies.
Bonus Tip: You both have Fade. Use it!
Disc Priest & Druid
Spells They Use:
Healing Touch. Nourish. Rejuvenation. Wild Growth.
How This Affects You:
Druid healers have lots and lots of loooooong HoTs (Heals Over Time). They are, to my mind, on the absolute other end of the healing spectrum from us fast and flashy disc healers. This is definitely a good thing: You perform triage, they keep up steady infusions.
You may find it helpful to keep up a bubble on the one DPS who is taking a ton of damage, simply because the Druid repertoire is very light on single-target heals. Tossing a Flash Heal or Penance on a DPS whose health is falling way behind everyone else’s will get you very far indeed with your tree.
The problem you may have with healing with a druid is mainly personal. It’s incredibly hard for me to see several low health bars and not do anything about it, ohmigod STAN, ohmigod he’s DYING *flash heal! flash heal! flash heal!*. The problem is internal. We aren’t patient, or we wouldn’t be Disc priests.
Trust your druid to keep on top of it. Repress the desire to bubble spam the raid when you’re tank healing (and you will be tank healing, if there’s a druid in the group). If you absolutely must, just avoid looking at any health bars that aren’t assigned to you. Be at one with nature, and compliment your druid’s foliage.
Bonus Tip: Always, always, always keep a bubble up on the druid healer. Yes, I know it’s not your assignment. No, I don’t care.
