CHAPTER 3: WINNING AS A HEALER IN SOLO SHUFFLE

7 EASY STEPS TO WINNING AS A HEALER IN SOLO SHUFFLE INTRO

Do you feel stuck in MMR hell as a healer? Well, you're not alone.

But I guarantee that if you can follow 7 easy steps in every solo shuffle, then you will gain rating. But why am I so confident?

I've done the 2400 grind not once, but twice so far this season. And just like you, there have definitely been times where I felt like I wasn't making progress, dealing with frustrating 3 win lobbies for 0 rating, and partners who rage for no reason.

Trust me, I know the healer struggle. For me, the secret was finding consistency, and I have been using the exact same strategy in every lobby and on every single healer I play.

And now it's time to share what worked for me, because I believe it can work for you too. Together we will cover solo shuffle from start to finish, and while doing so we will point out key mistakes that might be preventing you from climbing.

So let's get ready to level up together with the ultimate guide to healing solo shuffle.

STEP 1: PRE-GAME

First, we need to start at the ground level, making sure you've adjusted some important addon settings that you might be ignoring. There are only a handful of addons you truly need as a healer.

Weak auras for spell alerts and procs, big debuffs for buff and debuff tracking, Omni bar to track enemy cooldowns and interrupts, Omni CD to track your group's cooldowns, and if you aren't playing with it already, we highly recommend installing buff overlay.

This makes it easy to see when your partners have defensives active, which helps minimize the risk of overlapping defensives, which can be a game losing mistake and is something we will cover later on in this video. Anyway, you will want to go into big debuffs and make sure this box is checked.

Doing so will increase the number of buffs displayed on the default raid frames, which is enormously helpful if you are a healer with hots. You will also want to make sure Omni CD is configured correctly, ensuring that you are tracking trinkets and then major cooldowns for every class.

We recommend a minimal approach here, prioritizing defensive cooldowns above everything else. For extra control, we recommend using the buff overlay, which is a very useful tool to use when you are tracking your team's positioning.

For extra credit, we highly suggest using a nameplate addon with the sole purpose of tracking friendly nameplates in solo shuffle. Here we've configured threat plates to display class icons above friendly targets only, which is incredibly useful in solo shuffle for tracking your team's positioning.

Can you play without these addons? Of course, but doing so is going to put you at a massive disadvantage.

And to be clear, there is such a thing as playing with too many addons. While complicated, custom UIs might work for some players, they can actually be harmful for you.

Which is why we recommend sticking to the basics, and then adding or even removing addons later on. But for now, we've now checked off step one for healing in solo shuffle.

And from this point on in this video, every remaining step will flow together. So let's get started.

So let's get started.

STEP 2: STARTING ROOM

Now it's time to actually enter Arena, where we will have to do some planning in the starting room. Our goal here is to visualize the upcoming matchup, thinking about what CC and CDs the enemy team will have for us, and more importantly, thinking about who they will target.

If you're unsure about this last part, you can simply look at first blood stats on WoW Arena logs, or watch our latest video on the best targets to attack in Solo Shuffle.

In the starting room, you need to map out the early stages of the game, creating a flow chart for what cooldowns the enemy team will pop in the early game and how you will respond. On top of this, think about what CC the enemy team has for you and how you might avoid it.

For example, if you see a DK on the enemy team paired with other bursty DPS, you should anticipate a big AoE opener, which means in the early game your goal is to avoid getting gripped in.

In order to do this, you will either need to pillar while peeking to heal, or play max range from your partners to delay the death grip for as long as possible.

On the flip side, if you see a CC based DPS like Hunter, Mage, or Rogue, then you should instead anticipate a potential CC chain in the opener, in which you will also want to play on an early trade. This is the typical division you see in Solo Shuffle.

Either the enemy Lombi will blast with AoE damage in the early game, or will harass you with CC chains, which both have the potential to put you behind.

STEP 3: GATES OPEN

In either case, predicting who will be taking the majority of damage will carry on to our next step, which is the moment where the gates actually open. And here our goal is to get ahead on healing globals before any damage happens.

This step is crucial, and whatever you do, do not skip it. The most common mistake we see healers make in the early game is thinking that because no damage is happening, they don't need to actually heal, only to find themselves scrambling to recover only a few moments later, which is exactly what happened to this druid.

Instead, what they should have done is prioritize spending their most important hots the moment the gates open, before going into stealth. That way when damage starts to actually roll in, they will already be ahead on globals.

And if you think this doesn't apply to your spec, think again. Every healer has some ability that they can press immediately out of the gate to ramp up healing in advance, and you should never wait for damage to happen before you press your maintenance heals.

Every high rated paladin will immediately use Tears Deliverance out of the gate, because doing so they now have a small buffer to deal with any early game micro-damage.

And that's why I'm saying that the most important thing to do is to play aggressive, like our druid does here by pushing into the enemy team to land CC, but as you can see they immediately get caught in the open and are forced to make multiple cooldown trades.

Because the early game is so volatile, playing aggressive early is an unnecessary risk when you're up against an entire arsenal of CC, DRs, and enemy cooldowns. This is why players like Cidu will simply hang back in the early stages of the game, since the benefits of pushing in are small or even non-existent.

Now you might have seen advice from players who say that being aggressive as a healer is the key to carrying bad DPS. And while there might be some truth to that, especially in the range up to rival, you still have to prioritize healing above anything else.

And in fact there are good times to be aggressive, but they occur much later in the game. Which is something we will discuss later.

But before we do, every time the gates open you need to do two things. Number 1 is to ramp your healing, getting your maintenance out of the way in order to stay ahead.

And number two, stay back. Save the calculated aggressive plays for the mid and late game.

STEP 4: FIRST CLASH

By doing both of these things once the gates open, you set yourself up for the most important stage of the game, the initial clash, where our goal is simple, survive. While every matchup is unique, you can count on the early game having the highest damage peaks for both teams.

Like this moment here against Dev Evoker and Unholy DK, where there is 470,000 combined DPS. Not even the best healers in the world can power through almost half a million DPS with heals alone.

This is why in order to survive the opening clash, not only should you have ramped your heals out of the gates, but now you need to think about immediately pressing one or more cooldowns.

This is where weak auras will get the most of its value, since it will signal to you that the clash has started once you see enemy cooldowns light up on your screen. It means you should now instantly have a cooldown ready, which should have already been planned in the starting room.

If you play a momentum based healer like Disc Priest or Resto Shaman, this might be the most important decision you make. Since being greedy in the opener can put you massively buffed.

This will make you spend more cooldowns than needed to recover. To prevent this, get in the habit of trading out major cooldowns early.

Doing so will not only give you the best chance at surviving the opener, but also means you will have a second set of cooldowns ready for the mid to late game. There is also a very high chance you will be taking damage in the opener too, especially if you are playing against any of the following melee specs.

In lobbies with these classes, you should also be ready to trade your own personal defensive quickly if needed. There is even a possibility that a few range specs will target you as well.

And this is why you typically don't want to be pushed in early, since you are exposed to swaps during the enemy team's early cooldown windows. But whatever you do, you definitely should avoid greeting your cooldowns early, even if that means accidentally overlapping with some of your partner's defensives.

But there is an important distinction to be made. For smaller, more efficient cooldowns like Dark Pact, Blur, or Bark Skin, overlapping is completely fine, and sometimes even needed to survive the massive damage waves of the early game.

Instead, the cooldowns you want to avoid overlapping with include major defensives. Such as Ice Block, Bubble, or Dispersion.

Because these are much stronger, longer cooldown defensives, they are best treated as a last resort. And as it turns out, the best way to prevent you and your partners from overlapping these defensives is for you to press first.

Since by doing so, you minimize the chance they drop critically low. Which is where most DPS will trade their biggest defensive.

So no matter what, you can count on the opener being the most critical part of every game. And you will get the most bang for your buck by not being greedy, but instead being consistent with aggressive and efficient attacks.

So no matter what, you can count on the opener being the most critical part of every game. And you will get the most bang for your buck by not being greedy, but instead being consistent with aggressive and efficient attacks.

And you will get the most bang for your buck by not being greedy, but instead being consistent with aggressive and efficient attacks.

STEP 5: RECOVERY PHASE

Once the opener is over, we enter into the recovery phase, where now our goal is to stabilize and regain momentum. During this time, we need to get health bars back up to full, especially since now we are on a potential timer against upcoming CC chains, like a future trap from a hunter.

So before any long CC is able to land, we need to recover. And here, we need to understand a crucial concept.

That because of Dampening, the value of healing will only go down over time. This is why in the early to mid game, we are more incentivized to use healing cooldowns.

Even though these cooldowns will be worse later on, it's still vital we press them early. Because in the late game, our heals won't be enough anyways, meaning our second set of healing cooldowns are the only thing that will prop up our HPS.

A big mistake we see is players sitting on their healing cooldowns, even holding onto them for the same amount of time as the cooldown. Here, in a 1 minute period, our resto shaman refuses to use NS, which you might think is a smart play.

But in reality, it could be adding unnecessary stress and causing them to work harder than they need to in order to recover. This is why we need to be more proactive in our healing cooldowns.

And we need to be more proactive in our healing cooldowns. This is why we need to be more proactive in our healing cooldowns.

And we need to be more proactive in our healing cooldowns. And we need to be more proactive in our healing cooldowns.

This is why you will see almost every high rated resto druid press tree form instantly during the opener. Since it not only helps them survive the initial clash, but due to the duration of tree, means they will have a much easier time stabilizing HP going into the mid game.

We can see something similar with high rated disc priests, who typically use rapture very early on. Not only will these abilities help you stabilize from the biggest pressure point in the match, but you will be needing them later on when your base healing kit is being nerfed by dampening.

And as an added bonus, rapture will even help reset the cooldown of pain suppression. So once again, there is no need to be greedy.

STEP 6: MID GAME

At this point you might be wondering if it's time to play super aggressive, but still the answer is no. Instead we need to deal with the mid game first, where now our goal is to control momentum.

The mid game is anywhere from 1-2 minutes into each round. At this stage damage will be lower overall, but you still want to ensure your partners are able to have enough uptime to continue exerting pressure on the enemy team, and there are a few ways to do this.

The first is to actively dispel your partners out of CC. This is especially important if you are playing with melee DPS into double casters, since the more crowd control they sit, the harder it will be for your melee to have the uptime needed to control momentum.

Dispelling casters out of CC is also important, and in any case we will get the most value dispelling full, long duration crowd control rather than smaller micro CCs. The second way you can help your team is by peeling for them, if you have the means to do so.

Resto Shamans are possibly one of the best healers for doing this, and with the combination of roots, nocks, and even static field totems, you not only make it easier for your team to get the most out of your team, but also make it easier for your team to get the most out of your team. partners to play the game, but you also reduce the damage they take, making your healing life easier.

We promise doing both of these actively will be more beneficial than any form of aggression you can do on your own. The final step during the mid game is to periodically take stock of the enemy team's upcoming CC by monitoring Omnibar.

Look for things like Intimidation, Hammer of Justice, or Psychic Scream. Keep a mental note on which of these abilities might be ready again, so you can plan to get CC'd in advance.

By doing so, you open up the possibility of making a preemptive cooldown trade.

If you're playing with a CC, you can also use the ability to use the ability to use the ability to use the ability to use the ability to use the ability to If you insist on making an aggressive play, like running across the map to Cyclone or Fear, then you need to make some considerations.

For one, check DRs on the enemy healer first with a quick glance at Gladius. Then check to see if it's safe to cross the map by checking enemy positioning.

And as extra credit, keep track of your own DRs. If you're already on CC DR, and it is safe to cross the map to land CC, then now you have reached the conditions to play aggressive.

But never under any circumstance neglect your heals during this time.

STEP 7: LATE GAME

If you've followed every step so far, then you'll be rewarded for reaching the final stage of every solo shuffle. So now, let's wrap things up with the late game and the final rules to follow.

The late game represents 2 minutes into the game or more, where dampening is approaching 40%, and everyone's cooldowns are slowly coming back. At this point in the game, the value of raw healing is shrinking, while mitigation becomes more important.

But since we popped our major cooldowns in the opener, we should be ready for the final wave of enemy damage, and now our goal is to use our second set of CDs to close out the game.

At this point we definitely cannot afford to be greedy, so the moment there is any increased pressure from enemy cooldowns, we need to respond instantly.

And while that's happening, we need to be avoiding damage ourselves, aiming to minimize the damage we take, since we cannot afford to recover more than 1 HP bar while dampening is stacked.

We should also continue to reduce the damage our team takes by CCing off targets, because remember at this point mitigation is more valuable than healing. And as a refresher, we will now need to be extra diligent keeping our DPS dispelled, since they have the real power to end the game for us with their raw damage.

Once all of this is said and done, and if you find another safe and guaranteed way to do so, you can also push for CC on the enemy healer to try and close out the game. But definitely be extra cautious in doing so, because this will be the most risky decision you will have to make.

And if you've done everything up to this point, then you definitely deserve that solo shuffle win. Before we wrap up, we recently made a video based on real arena data, showing that increasing healing is one of the best things you can do to climb rating.

Universally, healers see the biggest rating gains from being better at healing. Everything we covered today depends on you doing the HPS needed to deal with the insane damage we're seeing in Dragonflight.