Healer (role)

A healer is a character whose primary combat purpose is to heal friendly creatures or give them defensive buffs. Priests, Druids, Paladins, and Shamans can all serve as healers. Healers are perhaps the most wanted for a dungeon or a raid.

What Healers Should Know

 * In an instance, especially if the healer is significantly lower in level than the tank, the healer should know that he should stand far back and not attack so as not to attract aggro. Keep in mind that if there is no other healer in your group, then your death will most likely result in the death of the rest of the group that is relying on your healing.
 * 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. Most group members will understand the importance of a healer’s magic and will wait.
 * 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. If you are fighting in an area with a corner or sharp bend, try to position yourself where you can see both sides of the corner in case you need to heal someone who runs around the corner.  While not as often a problem, allies can also run out of the range of your heals in the middle of casting.  It can be difficult, but if possible, attempt to keep an eye on where everyone is and be ready to reposition yourself the moment you have line-of-sight issues.  If an ally is taking damage and you can't figure out where he is, 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.  With the exception of Paladins that utilize Flash of Light, every healer has a single-target, slower heal that provides good mana-to-healing efficiency and often serves as a primary or preferred heal.  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; but hopefully by this time you will have developed a good sense of your heals' strengths and weaknesses to help prioritize heals.  Remember, the cheapest heal you have may not be your most mana-efficient, nor is the fastest-casting heal necessarily capable of doing the most healing per second.  See the Healing Comparison to learn how your heals compare to each other.
 * 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.
 * Do not forget your multi-target heals. Heals that heal multiple targets or the entire group can potentially be your most mana-efficient heals and can sometimes be the only viable way of healing all those taking damage before someone dies.  However, many multi-target heals also generate large sums of hate which can result in all nearby enemies focusing their attacks on you if used at inappropriate times (this is also true in large PvP situations such as battlegrounds).  Try to avoid group heals at the start of a fight, and be ready to utilize de-aggro abilities after your group heal if you do draw aggro.
 * You will get aggro in instances. Your heals anger all opponents at once which can easily mean that large pulls result in many uncontrolled mobs attacking you.  Know your best means of surviving aggro.
 * Priests are the only healer to have a proper de-aggro ability that affects all enemies, called Fade, which will be a Priest's primary means of dealing with undesired aggro. Keep in mind that once Fade ends, you will regain all of the threat you lost. Power Word: Shield can also be used both to protect yourself from attack and as a means of controlling hate generation (Shield generates half the hate of simply healing - at the expense of lower mana efficiency). Psychic Scream will rarely be a viable means of handling unwanted attention in instances or raids, although it is key for doing so in PvP.  Remember, when desperate, Binding Heal is an efficient heal that allows one to heal oneself and an ally at the same time, with the added bonus of having lower hate associated with it.
 * Druids in Tree of Life Form do not possess any de-aggro ability; however, night elf druids have a similar ability in Shadowmeld. When multiple opponents attack the druid, it is possible to shift into bear form to drastically increase survivability, but doing so keeps the Druid from healing any allies - such as the tank - still being attacked, limiting its usefulness in most middle to upper level instances.  At lower levels shifting into bear form and using defensive abilities to increase your survivability can be viable, but do not attack your opponents or you will generate more aggro.  Abilities such as Entangling Roots and Hibernate could potentially be used to control mobs attacking you; unfortunately, most instances have few beast opponents, and neither may be used in Tree of Life form thus these abilities will often not be available to you.  Barkskin can provide some temporary defense and remove spell interruption in order for the Druid to attempt to continue healing through damage taken.
 * Paladins will find they have less trouble with aggro then their fellow healers, thanks to their heals generating decreased hate. Divine Shield will typically always cause mobs to ignore you, as long as you are not alone in an encounter.  Hand of Salvation can further decrease the chances of drawing unwanted attention while healing, although it needs some time to reach its full effect. Use Hand of Salvation if you have Forbearance, otherwise, Divine Shield is better because it is instant and guaranteed aggro loss.
 * Shaman's primary means of handling unwanted aggro is through Wind Shock, although this will only work on one target at a time. Like the Paladin they have the option of using a shield and possess higher defense than the Priest and Druid, providing them the potential to try healing through damage taken. At level 80, shaman can use Hex to temporarily control one target, thus preventing it from attacking or interfering with healing.
 * 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.
 * Each class has an 'off-healer' spec, which generally is the same as the magic DPS spec. Shadow priests, ret pallies, elemental shamans, and balance druids all get talents which increase their heals enough to make them viable secondary healers.  If you are one of these specs be prepared to switch to a healing role if your main healer is killed, runs out of mana, or is otherwise occupied.  You may not be able to heal for long, but the little healing you can do could save the group in a pinch.  This is possibly most important to Druids, as they can theoretically resurrect a healer that died, off heal while the healer resurrects, and then innervate the primary healer so that they may return to healing-easily saving the entire group from a wipe.
 * 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 heal, though keep in mind that all ranks of the same heal now cost the same amount of mana.
 * Remember your teammate's pets. While pets are far less important then regular group members they do contribute to your group DPS.  If you have both time and mana healing pets can be an effective way to help contribute to the teams DPS (via keeping pets alive that would otherwise die).  This is especially true for tanking pets (Voidwalkers and tenacious style hunter pets such as bears).  A good player can us a tanking pet to off tank an add, but only so long as you are willing to heal the pet.  Some fights, such as boss fights with strong AoE's or attacks that must be avoided by moving away from them, are guaranteed to kill pets quickly due to the pet's not avoiding damage the way a human character will; during these type of fights it's best to allow the pet to die immediately as it will be too mana and time consuming to keep them alive.
 * As you become more experienced as a healer, you will find that, in cases where you are running out of mana or when multiple individuals are taking damage at once, triage is necessary to avoid complete group wipes. Although your primary goal should always be to keep everyone in your group alive, at some point in your healing career you will be in situations where you can not possibly save every individual in your group.  In such a case, it is imperative to know which individuals are essential to the survival of the group.  Remember the tank and yourself will usually take first priority for heals unless you have another individual who can readily take the place of healer or tank should one of you die.  Classes providing CC capabilities are next most important with pure damage classes being of less use in most instances.  Try to also take notice of the amount of available mana a class has since this can have a large effect on their usefulness in a fight.  For instance, a mage with no mana will be doing very little damage, while his low armor and health make him difficult and mana intensive to heal should he be under attack; as such if you are nearly out of mana you may be forced to allow him to die in order to ensure you will have enough left to keep the tank alive.  Keep in mind that decisions such as this are for the direst of situations and you should always strive to keep all party members alive if at all possible.

What Healers Want Others to Know

 * Healers need to take a mana break from time to time. Don't become impatient and run off to another collection of mobs before mana is allowed to regenerate.


 * Also, healers are often forced to prioritize party members to ensure overall survival. If a damage-dealer and a tank both require attention, chances are the tank will be seen to first.  Please try not to take it personally.


 * Save me! At times it may be essential to take one for the team. Your healer and your tank *should* be doing all they can to give you (the DPS) opportunity to unload on a specified target. Sometimes (additional enemies, threat dropping mobs, etc...) may make this difficult. Understand that, while there may be repair costs involved, ending up without a tank or healer (being that there is only one of each in a 5-man, and they are yet more important in a raid setting) is a VERY bad thing. If you have the means to keep one or the other alive by taking the beating... it may be worth it overall. Odds are your Healer will be so grateful you'll make it through the thick and the thin to save the day!


 * Each class has an 'off-healer' spec, which generally is the same as the magic dps spec. Shadow priests, ret pallies, elemental shamans, and balance druids all get talents which increase their heals enough to make them viable secondary healers. If you are one of these specs be prepaired to switch to a healing role if your main healer is killed, runs out of mana, or is otherwise occupied. You may not be able to heal for long, but the little healing you can do could save the group in a pinch. This is possibly most important to Druids, as they can theoretically ressurect a healer that died, off heal while the healer ressurects, and then innervate the primary healer so that they may return to healing-easily saving the entire group from a wipe.

Healing spells
There are actually not 4, but 5 kinds of healers, since priests have the choice between two different skill trees, Discipline and Holy. Naturally, for raids people like to know which healer ist best suited for a particular role; healing the tank(s) or healing the raid. Usually discipline priests and paladins are considered to be more suited for tank healing. A detailed comparision of healing classes is difficult, since spells are unique for each class; however, there are striking similarities between some spells, and all four healing classes share, since patch 4.0.1., a set of very similar core healing spells.

Core healing spells
With Cataclysm, all healing classes share a similar set of core healing spells. One fast, very mana-expensive heal, one slow, but large heal, and one slow, but very mana-efficient heal. Knowing when to cast which spell is important; a healer will surely run out of mana if only the fast healing spell is cast. If only the mana-efficient heal is cast, however, most likely a member of the group or raid will die.

Other healing spells common to all classes
In addition, both priest healing skill trees and all other healing classes have an instant healing spell (or in the case of Penance a channelled one) that has a cooldown. Since these spells have a relatively low mana-cost (lower that the mana-costs of the greater heal of the respective classes), in most cases it will be useful to cast them again as soon as they are ready. Only if the basic healing spell (Heal, Nourish., etc.) will be sufficient, the cooldown should not be wasted.

All possible healer specs also have an aoe healing (or shield) spell. Restoration Druids have a talent, which adds such an effect to their Swiftmend spell.

Not a healing spell as such, but also an essential part of the healer role is the ability to bring back dead comrades.

Healing spells similar between two or three classes
These two priest and druid spells are the classic heal over time (hot) spells; A shaman has a different way of applying hot-effects; Riptide has a hot component (but handles differently, since it has a cooldown and its main effect is a direct heal), and Earthliving Weapon gives the shaman a 20% chance to apply a hot effect with his other healing spells.

Priests and Shamans have a spell that heals the target the next time it takes damage. A priest's Prayer of Mending has a cooldown, and a soon as its target has taken damage, it jumps to the next raid member, up to five times in total. However, often the priest's spell is used similarly to Earth Shield, and recast on the tank as soons as it is ready, whereas the later is always kept on the tank. Druids have a skill that adds a similar effect to their critical heals with some spells.

Holy Priests and Druids have a instant cast smart spell with a cooldown that heals multiple targets. A "smart" heal spell automatically prioritizes the targets with the least amount of absolute health. Usually a holy priest or druid would want to cast this spell as soons as it is ready, if several raidmembers have taken damage and are not to far apart from each other. A paladin's Light of Dawn is similar, but more difficult to use. It doesn't have a cooldown, but requires charges of holy power. In addition, it only heals targets in front of the paladin.

A shaman's Chain Heal is also a smart spell, but it has a casting time and no cooldown, so that it handles more like a priest's Prayer of Healing. Both spells are useful to restore the hp of several raidmembers, if the raid has taken a lot of damage.

Holy priests and Paladins have an instant cast spell, that allows them to save a character who has very low hitpoints and is taking a lot of damage from certain death. This ability has a long cooldown and should only be used as last resort. A druid's rebirth is equally usefull, since it can bring back a character after he has died, although only once per combat. A discipline priest's Pain Suppression is only remotely similar. It should generally not be used on tanks (since it causes them to lose aggro), and it will hardly save a character who is taking heavy damage and is low on hitpoints, since it only reduces damage taken.

A discipline priest's Pain Suppression actually combines the effects of two paladin spells.

A druid's Tree of Life (druid ability) combines the effects of two other spells, too. It increases all healing done like a paladin's Avenging Wrath, and it alters some spells, giving the druid a greater ability to continue healing while moving; in the later respect it is similar to a shaman's Spiritwalker's Grace. Discipline priests also have a temporary buff, which can also be cast on other players.

Druid

 * Lifebloom (stackable hot)

Priest

 * Power Word: Shield (Discipline)
 * Leap of Faith
 * Power Word: Shield (Holy, with Body and Soul)
 * Binding Heal, Desperate Prayer (Holy skill) (self-healing)

Shaman

 * Healing Stream Totem
 * Reincarnation

Paladin

 * Beacon of Light
 * Word of Glory (direct heal, but requires charges of holy power)

Strength of classes

 * Druid
 * Group Healer via large number of HoTs (Heals over Time).Powered up with Restoration Tree's Tree of Life (druid ability).
 * Paladin
 * Tank Healer via Holy Light criticals, possibly both tanks healer via Beacon of Light.
 * Priest
 * In Holy spec: Group Healer via sheer variety of healing spells, such as Renew, Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Mending and still usable Circle of Healing.
 * In Disc spec: Non-tank target-healer/damage mitigator, useful as support on tank and party single-target burst healing/preserving from death. Main disc-priest spells are Power Word: Shield and Penance (powerful burst-heal, channeled for 2sec (without haste and untalented) - 3 charges with interval 0.66 sec between them)
 * Shaman
 * Passive
 * Group Healer via Healing Stream Totem
 * Tank Healer via Earth Shield
 * Active
 * Raid Healer via Chain Heal and Healing Surge
 * Tank Healer via Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave

As a group healer
As apparent from the comparison of healing spells, different classes have a different way of group healing. There are two 'styles' of group healing. Druids keep recasting Wild Growth (as soon as it is ready) and use their hot spells, while shamans keep recasting Chain Heal (which has no cooldown!). A Holy priest's group healing is a combination of both styles: Circle of Healing is cast whenever it is ready, else Prayer of Healing and Renew are used. Prayer of Mending is also cast when ready, since it jumps 5 times, so that it also works as a group heal spell. The reason it is usually cast the tank is, that it only works if the target takes damage, and the tank is usually guaranteed to take damage. Glyph of Prayer of Mending increases the heal on the first target by 60%. A discipline priest's renew spell is slightly weaker, and a discipline priest doesn't have an instant group heal, so that his group healing appears to be more of the second style, relying on Prayer of Healing. On the other hand, a discipline priest has the Power Word: Shield spell, with a 1 second cooldown, so that it can be used for group 'shielding'.

Paladins have the most difficult time as a group healer. They neither have a useful hot spell (like a druid's Rejuvenation), nor an group heal ability that can be casted constantly (like a shaman's Chain Heal). A paladin's Light of Dawn and Beacon of Light can't compensate for this. For these reasons raids will generally avoid to assign a holy paladin as a group healer.

Class
These classes may heal by one way or another.


 * Hunter (can heal their own pet)
 * Rogue (Darkmoon Card: Heroism for self healing and Battlemaster-enchanted weapons to heal party)
 * Warlock (can heal their own pet, and themselves by different methods; Healthstone provides a potion-like ability)
 * Warrior (Darkmoon Card: Heroism for self healing and Battlemaster-enchanted weapons to heal party) and Enraged Regeneration, where the warrior can heal 30% of its overall health.
 * 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.
 * Death Knights All Death Knights can heal themselves by using Death Strike, but only Blood builds specialize in this.

Race

 * All 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.
 * All Trolls have the Racial ability Regeneration which increases their health regeneration bonus by 10% and allows 10% of normal health regen during combat.

Profession

 * The First Aid profession allows a character to make bandages which can be used on themselves and others, however there are cooldowns involved and damage in combat cancels the application of a bandage.
 * Characters who have Herbalism over skill level 75 receive the talent Lifeblood, which they can use to heal themselves only.