MASTER IN MINUTES: HEALER TIPS

MASTER IN MINUTES: HEALER TIPS INTRO

Welcome to our Master in Minutes course for healers! Being a healer can be pretty rough these days.

Whether it's endless CC, unstoppable damage, or your occasional DPS in Solo Shuffle who just uh, will frankly play like idiots. The list of problems just really goes on and on and on.

We developed this course to make you feel just as confident as the best players do. People like Seedoo for instance, and we put together some tips that include the latest tech for climbing as a healer, solving every single problem one by one.

No matter what your rating is, we got you covered and are here to help you climb!

PROACTIVE CD TRADING (IMPORTANT)

The Dragonflight meta is fast, especially in solo shuffle. This means you need to make some slight adjustments to how you trade cooldowns.

Back in the good old days, it wasn't that big of a deal if someone was dropping low. In some cases, you could edge your defensives until the last possible moment to keep them alive.

Can you do this in Dragonflight though? No, and definitely not in solo shuffle.

Instead, you need to get in the habit of proactively trading your defensives. This means using very specific cooldowns before major damage spikes happen.

Here for instance, our Shaman uses Earthen Wall Totem before the enemy Rogue even opened. This may seem reckless, but look at what the Warlock is doing.

Casting Tyrant. This means damage is coming very soon.

So instead of waiting for that to happen and trying to recover, the proactive Earthen Wall is able to block some of the early momentum from the enemy team even while our Shaman gets put into CC.

Every millisecond you spend not using a cooldown means you'll be put further and further behind, which is a massive problem in solo shuffle since you can't rely on your partners using their own defensives.

When you combine that with the fact that dampening makes recovery feel impossible, you should never hesitate before using defensives before major damage occurs. Are you in a solo shuffle as a disk priest and you get stunned by a Hunter at the start of the game?

You know what traps you have? No, you're not.

So think about it. is coming soon and before it does, you probably want to chuck out a pain suppression on your partner before they take too much damage. If you don't do this, there's a chance you'll be stuck in CC for too long and you'll have to burn a trinket and life swap in the first interaction of the game.

One of your main goals as a healer in Dragonflight is to avoid falling behind, which starts by being more snappy with your cooldown traits. If you start using CDs more aggressively, you can avoid tons of headaches.

DISPELLING AND WHY IT IS SUPER IMPORTANT

What is the number one way you can contribute to kills? Is it to pump out huge damage or land clutch CC?

No, it's to make sure your partners can do those things for you, which they can't do if they're stuck in crowd control. Increasing the amount of defensive dispels you do every game is one of the best adjustments you can make in your gameplay.

Some classes, like mages and warlocks, have so many ways to stop damage on your team, whether it's polymorphs, fears, novas, coils, dragon's breath, or stuns. All of these things prevent your DPS from staying on target.

This is a big deal, since your partners are your safety net. As long as they're active, they can interrupt CC casts, heal enemy players, or just continue pressure that can possibly convert to a kill.

Every second they spend in CC is a second they can't do any of those things. Being quick with your dispels is like an instant boost to your team's DPS.

Now, of course, it can be hard to notice when your partners are in CC, especially in solo shuffle when they aren't screaming on voice for a dispel. This is why we highly recommend playing with big debuffs.

It'll make any dispellable CC more visible on your raid frames, which makes it much easier to land the fastest dispels possible.

DO THIS WHILE GETTING TRAINED

Your life is already hard enough as a healer, and getting trained makes it so much worse. Here's the problem.

Whenever you get attacked, your mind starts thinking of safe places to run. And what place is safer than a pillar?

Right? Wrong.

You see, whenever you're getting attacked, it's easy to forget that you have partners who can help you. You might be the one under pressure, but they are the ones who can help you out the most with peels or counter pressure, which will be a lot harder for them to do if you're running laps around a pillar.

Let's pretend you're playing with a caster DPS, and you have some melee gunning you down. If you're just running laps mindlessly around pillars or out of line of sight, that means your partners won't be able to land any casts.

This is a frustrating situation for them, and a nightmare for you. That's why whenever you're getting attacked, you need to consider the position of your partners, especially if you're playing with a ranged DPS.

Be sure to kite in a way that you can get them to stay in the same position as you are. If you're playing with a melee, the rules are a bit more relaxed.

As long as you give your melee a way to connect onto the targets attacking you, then you've done most of the work. In any case, always kite in a way that lets your partners help you.

POSITIONING IN SOLO SHUFFLE (STAY BACK)

You wanna know the secret trick for positioning in Solo Shuffle? It's staying as far as humanly possible away from everything.

Let's break it down. Unless you play a Voker or Fist Weaver Monk, you really don't wanna find yourself pushed into the enemy team.

This is easier said than done though, as we all know that your partners will sometimes completely ignore your positioning and waddle out of your line of sight. But in general, staying back is crucial since it allows you to avoid CC and damage, especially if you have the luxury of being near a pillar.

And when we say stay back, this includes being far away from your partners too. This may seem a bit counterintuitive, but distancing yourself from your partners means you're less likely to take any splash damage or AOE CC that's meant for your teammates.

And if the enemy team wants to swap to you, being far away from your partners means that it'll make it harder for them to do so, since they'll have to cross a longer distance. You've probably heard the term, triangle, and triangle positioning by now.

And in Solo Shuffle, one point of the triangle should be the enemy team, and the other point should be your partners. That way, there'll always be some breathing room.

If you find yourself constantly in the middle of the fight, you're probably doing something wrong.

WHEN TO PUSH IN FOR CC AND DAMAGE

As a healer, you are the unsung hero of PvP. You're the humble champion who must carry your team to victory through massive damage and enemy CDs.

So why are you making life even harder for yourself by trying to push in and CC? Your plate's already full as a healer.

You shouldn't complicate things by making your life even harder. There are good times to push in for CC, but these moments get dwarfed by how many bad times there are.

This is one of the most common traps in solo shuffle. You're sweating bullets, keeping your team alive while they fail to ever get CC rolling on the healer, so you say, screw it, and you try and take matters into your own hands, only to instantly lose moments after.

So how can you tell when it's safe to push in? You need to evaluate the game state first.

If the enemy team has most of their defensive cooldowns ready, then there might be a chance that your CC doesn't actually do anything productive. The question you need to ask yourself is, will my CC have a high chance to burn a major CD or even end the game?

If the answer to that question is yes, then the next thing you should check for are DRs on the enemy team. This is easily done through Gladius.

There's no point in pushing in until DRs have completely faded, unless you're 100% confident that your DR and CC will convert to a kill. Next, you need to check for midfield threats.

This is a very common question. This is a very common question.

This is a very common question. This is a very common question.

This is a very common question. This is a very common question.

This is a very common question. This is a very common question.

This mostly means caster DPS who have CC ready for you, especially mages and warlocks, since they can easily zone you out of CC on their own, unless you have stops ready, like Shadow Word Death, Nullifying Shroud, or even Grounding Totem. Then there is a chance your CC push could easily backfire.

The exception to this is when you're fully DRed on CC. If you use an add-on like Diminish, you can see your own character is on DRs, and if that's the case, then it can be safer to push in.

Finally, you should also consider your team's cooldown budget. If you're low on CDs or are quickly falling behind, then pushing in for CC can just make things infinitely worse and fast, especially if you're completely off every CC DR.

We aren't giving you all these warnings for no reason. Pushing into the enemy team to make a game-winning play is tricky in solo shuffle, and more often than not, it's better to play it safe.

If you're playing solo, you can play it safe.

PRE-HEALING (DO THIS)

PvPers love saying pre. Maybe you've heard pre-kick or pre-kite, but now we need to introduce pre-healing.

This means using your heals before health bars go down. And we know what you're thinking.

Wait, what's the point of that? Isn't that just over-healing?

Sometimes this leads to over-healing, sure, but that's missing the point. Dragonflight Arena is pretty fast, which makes it extra important to keep health bars as close to 100% as possible.

Let's make one thing clear. We're not saying you should stand there bombing heals into a target at full HP like you're a bot.

Instead, what we mean is being a bit more aggressive with your healing rotation, trying to time your heals to land as damage starts coming in. Sometimes this leads to over-healing, but other times it has a positive effect on the rest of your healing output.

For instance, as a priest, you can buff your shields with Penance. This means using Penance on a target who's already high on HP will allow you to instantly give them a big shield, which we can use to keep their HP high, even through heavy damage.

And after you shield, your next heal will even be buffed, which allows you to keep up with tempo. The same concept applies to HOTs.

As a resto druid, you wouldn't want to wait until someone is attacked to start applying your Lifebloom and Rejuvenations, since that means over three seconds worth of global cooldowns.

With some DPS doing over 40,000 DPS in Arena, that means you're already behind by over 120,000 healing in the time it takes you to apply all of your major HOTs. If you find yourself constantly playing catch up in Arena, it's probably because you aren't pre-healing enough.

Damage is bound to happen, so in order to make your life easier, try being more aggressive with how you heal.

LEARNING OFFENSIVE CDS

By now you probably heard someone say that PvP is scripted. Maybe it was a streamer offering advice to their chat, or the player in your solo shuffle lobby raging that nobody used CDs.

But what does this actually mean? In simple terms, it means PvP is predictable.

For as much seemingly random stuff that goes on every game, there are events that happen in regular intervals. Following the script just means knowing when these events happen and responding appropriately.

As a healer, you need to be aware of the offensive cooldowns for every class. This may sound like a lot of work, but it's actually not that bad once you know what to look for.

There are 25 DPS specs in the game, and they all have one or two big offensive cooldowns, which means up to 50 abilities worth memorizing. Again, this seems like a lot, but it gets easier over time.

Some are buffs like mage cooldowns, icy veins, combustion, and arcane surge are all buffs that appear on enemy players. Others are debuffs like death mark for assassination rogues or warbreaker for arms warriors.

Every single CD can be tracked in two different ways with add-ons. First up, there's Omnibar, which displays the remaining cooldown of enemy abilities, including their offensives.

By knowing when an ability is ready, you can predict when a big wave of damage is coming and be ready with a way to deal with it. Next up is Weak Auras, which will give you visual and audio alerts any time a major cooldown has been used.

It's like an alarm clock for big damage. When Weak Auras is going off, you should anticipate massive damage spikes.

Of course, not all cooldowns are created equal. Some demand big defensive responses, others, they're smaller.

With enough experience, you'll be able to feel the strength of offensive cooldowns as they happen.

TRADING THE RIGHT CD

How do you know the right cooldown to trade? This is a difficult question, and sometimes the answer really isn't clear at all.

To make it easier, let's cover the four different defensive cooldown types, reactive, proactive, tempo, and last resort. First, we have reactive cooldowns, which are used to react to enemy cooldowns or massive damage spikes.

Think of something like Ironbark, which provides percentage-based damage reduction. This will directly counter any damage increases, like avenging Wrath against red paladins.

Sometimes AoE defensives fit this category too, like Power Ward Barrier or even Earthen Wall Totem. Imagine a warrior pops Spear of Bastion.

You know heavy AoE damage is incoming, and anyone caught inside of it won't be able to move. In this case, Barrier is an obvious response since it's guaranteed to get its full value, especially if multiple people are caught inside of it.

In the same way, you can also use the Spear. Within the reactive cooldown category, we have some recovery CDs, like Rewind, for instance.

This ability will only get value after major damage spikes occur. The same is true for Nature's Swiftness.

You would never press this before damage happens, but instead after someone's HP bar has quickly plummeted. The goal of any reactive cooldown is to stabilize HP after a major enemy cooldown has been pressed.

But then there's proactive cooldowns, which is a bit more complicated since these are best used before massive damage happens. These are usually smaller cooldowns designed to increase the bulkiness of your partners.

Dream Projection is a great example. This doesn't provide massive damage reduction, but instead gives a massive hot to everyone it hits, making them tankier when it's active.

Nullifying Shroud is another example of a proactive cooldown. It's a good example of a proactive cooldown.

It's always gonna get its maximum value when it's used before crowd control lands. This means using it when you're off DRs and the enemy team has CC ready for you.

You would almost never want to press this directly after a CC chain lands, since you might get little to no value from its immunity while you're still on DR. Another example of a proactive cooldown trade would be Yulan for Mistweaver Monks.

This provides a moderate healing increase, but it's not strong enough to be used for a CC chain. It's not strong enough to directly counter heavy damage from a major offensive cooldown.

Because of this, it's best used before any major damage happens to help flatten out HP spikes. Now, the next type of cooldown is even more complicated.

We've called it tempo trading. This involves using very specific cooldowns with the goal of maintaining offensive tempo with your team.

This merges reactive and proactive trading into one, since it can accomplish both at the same time. This merges reactive and proactive trading into one, since it can accomplish both at the same time.

Tree form is a perfect example, since its duration lasts so long, and it's a massive boost to healing done. Instead of trading this cooldown one to one into major offensives, it can instead be used to keep momentum rolling for your team, even through massive damage waves.

Finally, we have last resort healing cooldowns, which include things like Bubble for Holy Paladins, Spirit Link Totem for Resto Shamans, or even Life Cocoon for Mistweaver Monks.

As the name suggests, these are last resort healing cooldowns, which include things like Bubble for Holy Paladins, Spirit Link Totem for Mistweaver Monks, and the last resort healing cooldowns, since they're the biggest investments, designed to make sure a kill does not happen. designed to make sure a kill does not happen.

These should primarily be used in high pressure situations, These should primarily be used in high pressure situations, where normal healing measures are not enough to keep someone alive. where normal healing measures are not enough to keep someone alive.

Every single defensive cooldown you have is going to fall into one of these categories. You have to consider whether or not a cooldown is best used as damage is happening, or before it happens.

TRACK YOUR TEAMMATES DEFENSIVES

If you want to up your game and arena, start tracking your teammates' defensives. This can be done with OmniCD, which displays party cooldowns next to their frames.

You can customize which abilities are displayed. As a healer, the most important ones are your teammates' major defensives.

You could track CC and interrupts too, but that's slightly more advanced. Anyway, by knowing what cooldowns your teammates have available, you can make more intelligent decisions on how to use your own CDs.

For instance, say you notice your Demon Hunter just pressed Blur into a melee cleave. This means you probably don't need to use any additional CDs and won't have to worry about their HP until Blur is over.

In the later stages of the game, if you notice they're out of defensives, you know instantly that they're vulnerable, which means you are likely going to do something drastic in order to save them. This might seem a bit overwhelming at first, and we get it.

You already have so much information you need to track. But since these cooldowns are displayed next to health bars, you can periodically glance over to see your team's remaining cooldown budget.

And one of the best times to glance at OmniCD is when you're stuck in CC. You can't do anything else, so might as well keep track of your team's cooldowns.

PRE-POSITION TO AVOID PROBLEMS

As a healer, you need to understand the three biggest threats that you face in Arena. Crowd control, interrupts, and damage.

Fortunately, all three of these things can be handled by pre-positioning your character. Let's start with the harsh reality here.

It's impossible to avoid 100% of CC. Sometimes you just need to accept the fact that some classes have guaranteed crowd control on healers.

What's more important to recognize is the moments where you actually can avoid CC. Here, for instance, the enemy monk has just popped Tiger's Lust and is sprinting directly towards our Holy Priest.

With end caps still on cooldown, this should indicate a leg sweep is incoming. Unfortunately, our priest is caught on global and is unable to AoE fear to prevent this.

But now we run into another problem. We're now in perfect line of sight for the enemy mage to land a polymorph.

And without Shadow Word Death, we really can't avoid this. So what's the takeaway here?

It's to always assume more CC is coming and try to pre-position in a way to make it easier to avoid. Pillars are the most consistent way to achieve this.

Whenever possible, you should use line of sight as your primary means to avoid CC. Here, for instance, our shaman knows that PolyDR is about to fade, meaning they're now susceptible to CC.

So once PolyDR falls off, our shaman knows to start hugging the pillar to make it much more difficult for the enemy mage to land casted CC. He does this by using enemy nameplates to track the position of the mage, to know how he needs to readjust his positioning.

Enemy nameplates are one of the most useful pieces of your UI to monitor as a healer, since they make it easier to track enemy positioning, which then makes it easier to track movement, which results in understanding the intentions of your opponents.

If a nameplate is moving towards you, that means they're wanting to either CC or swap, which means you should start repositioning to make both of these things less likely to happen. Finally, you should use nameplates to pre-position in order to avoid interrupts.

Before casting any major spell, check first to see if you're in line of sight of anyone who has a ranged interrupt. Sometimes it is possible to position yourself in a way where you're out of their line of sight, but still able to cast on your teammates.