Comments on: Healing your first instance (or Heroic!)

By: Nahyomi

Nahyomi — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:47:27 +0000

My holy priest was able to heal the lower heroics (not ToC or the ICC 5s), with a tank in similar gear to hers, using all items that are available prior to heroics, with one exception. I crafted the Moonshroud set (gloves and robe), got blues of iLevel 187, and then picked up a set of 200 epic shoulders from our guild bank. I had a 138 trinket and 175 bracers (both blue).

I was not focused on stats so much as getting items with a good spread of stats (int, spirit, sp, haste, and mp5, in no particular order).

It was NOT easy, especially with a tank who actually required healing, but it was doable. I also healed ToC and FoS normal in that gear. I cannot emphasize strongly enough how much it mattered that the entire group was people I knew. Usually, four newly minted level 80 alts and one DPS who was overgeared (because he doesn’t “do” alts). Wipes and miscues were part of what we were there to learn to avoid, and it was nice to do it without getting the “L2P healer!!!1!” response that PUGs might have given us.

It was also nice that I have an overgeared healer and the tank has an overgeared tank, too. When we found a fight or instance that was confoudning us, we’d do it with one of the two OP and one learning, then swap and do it again. This let each of us practice on our lower geared character before we tried to do with both of us a bit on the undergeared side.

As a holy priest, I find the instances with poison the hardest if there is no poison cleanser in the party — in that situation, avoid Gundrak and DTK until your gear is a bit better.

By: Anna

Anna — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:35:05 +0000

@Benregn – Caveat – I am not a Holy Priest, I am a Disc Priest. I have not healed as Holy yet in WotLK. That said, I was able to successfully heal tanks with appropriate gear levels and non-braindead DPS with around 1300 unbuffed SP (this is for NORMAL instances, not heroics). I can’t speak to haste/crit/spirit/regen numbers, because I am a Disc Priest, and as such, stack spellpower and generally ignore the rest of it!

My suggestion would be to check the Auction House or have a few pieces of level 78-80 gear crafted for you (find a tailor friend!), check what you can get for various reputation levels, since a good bit of the Honored gear is level 78 and quite good, and give it a whirl somewhere like Gundrak or Halls of Stone or CoT:Stratholme. If you’re successful there, pick up some of the normal 80’s (not ToC or ICC though). If you can get some friends to go with you, all the better, as they’ll help you out!

By: Benregn

Benregn — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:02:06 +0000

What kind of stats should you be aiming at for a fresh level 80 Holy Priest for healing in HC’s?

By: Melryn

Melryn — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 07:32:33 +0000

I think you do a fine job at healing on all your healers thank you very kindly.

By: el ranchero

el ranchero — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:59:48 +0000

“Ideally, your first few healing jobs should be for balanced groups, rather than you, a tank, and 4 rogues (for example).”

Ah, I see your problem. Either you were relying on an evasion tank or you were trying to 6-man Ulduar!

I have a 79 resto shaman, and he’s my first high-level healer. Though there’s certainly nothing wrong with riding Wow bareback, when I asked about getting started healing, my guildies were pretty much all in agreement that a healing unitframe and click-casting addon (say, Healbot or X-Perl/Vuhdo/Grid + Clique) is extremely helpful in giving newbie healers a modicum of competence, at least enough to survive heroics and some raids. I got Healbot, and it really does make a difference.