Is healing always so stressful in MM?

Community General Discussion
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Hello all,

I’ve been leveling a Shaman and healing in dungeons from lvls 20-90 and then switched to Elemental to level and occasionally heal when needed. In these levels I found healing as a Resto quite satisfying, I could do respectable DPS in the meantime and rarely felt overwhelmed.

However I wanted to try M0 as healer because I did a Shaman to heal in the first place, and here I go SoB at ± 435 ilvl with 2 Resto azerite gears, and holy crap was it stressful. I felt like I had to constantly save people on the verge of death with my “emergency heal” that is Healing Surge that heals 10% and on the last boss we just died all the time for reasons unknown to me, we just took massive amounts of damage and I couldn’t keep up with all my spells.

So I’m not going to blame anything else than myself for this failure as I’m no expert healer, and I still don’t quite understand the mechanics of Viq’Goth beyond “kill tentacles”, but is healing always so tedious ? Surgeons in trauma operations probably feel like I did in this dungeon.

I’d really like to be able to play a healer class but I’m disheartened by the sudden jump in difficulty of healing in Resto while it was a breeze earlier. Also feel like my toolkit is too complicated for me with these 20 totems I barely have bar space for. Should I try a simpler class to learn heal with ? I mainly do M+ and PvP, never raids. Would love to play a Priest, anyone have insight about this class ?

Thanks and sorry for the wall of text but I like to be precise !

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Resto Shaman is really stressful when your team is not doing things as they should (but this really goes for every healer, people playing badly will make your life stressful). Plus Shaman really doesn’t have the necessary toolkit for M+ that a Paladin, Druid or Monk can bring as they are mainly raid healers and need a specific Essence/Azerite build to be alright for it. Also keep in mind that by now with corruptions and all people overgear M0 by large margins so they expect healers to just do more work for them (they stand in crap, tank pulls 4-5 mob packs, etc).

Holy priest is also a raid healer who suffers a lot in M+, possibly even more so than Shaman, while Disc is more complicated to play due to the damage/heal style they play.

So in conclusion if you want an easier healer good for M+ and PvP your options are Paladin, Monk and Druid. Last time I leveled as Resto Druid it was a pain, they really shine at end game and to make proper use of their toolkit is challenging at first.
Paladin is not too difficult and has quite a bit of utility that is very good for M+. Especially if you are in the long term for this than Paladin is a safe choice, they are geared for small group content and Blizzard will always make sure that they are close to top as Raid healers as well (if you ever consider that later on).

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I main outlaw rogue but recently started healing as resto Druid, I can empathise with your experience, M+ seems to rely on people basically having memorised mechanics. If people take damage that is avoidable ( for want of a better description ) you can see way too much damage coming in way too fast to deal with. I even spent a recent run chain healing the tank constantly as despite decent ilvl he appeared to be wearing tissue paper. If I dared to dps in a fight I’d instantly be in a hole. Some fights I needed to move around and those were basically impossible due to the incoming damage. At one point the tank told me to move more, which left me speechless as I was using everything just to keep him up…

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My experience of priest/druid/monk healers is that they all felt weak when first stepping into M+. All their heals seemed to hit for pittance vs tank hp.

The good news is they do scale well with gear and after a while you start jamming health into everyone with some left over. Resto shamans can be godly when geared up a bit and in the hands of an experienced player :slight_smile: General advice is to be sure you’re using all your tools; Riptide should be on CD all the time, Healing Rain should be raining, and don’t be afraid to bust out Spirit Link.

However, if your group is regularly ‘on the verge of death’, it sounds like they are failing interrupts and/or standing in stuff they’re meant to move out of. There’s not much that that is unavoidable and should be taking players very low very fast.

If you’re pugging, consider running with a guild or community instead; people you get to know will generally result in a much smoother experience. If in doubt, consider joining Scared of Dungeons where we’re pretty good at getting people over the hump of a new class/role/anxiety and into the content they want to do :smiley:

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If you can join a good guild or community you can learn at your own pace with other understanding people.

Pugging is a nightmare while learning as healer.

Don’t be put off - if your heart is set on it then keep at it!

Here are my macros I use on my shammy - feel free to use them. They will harm an enemy you have targeted or heal an aly you have mouseovered or targeted.

If you have nothing targeted you will be healed. I find them great for saving action bar space.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,help][help] Riptide; [@mouseover,harm][harm] Flame Shock; Riptide

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,help][help] healing wave; [@mouseover,harm][harm] lava burst; healing wave

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,help][help] healing surge; [@mouseover,harm][harm] lightning bolt; healing surge

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,help][help] chain heal; [@mouseover,harm][harm] chain lightning; chain heal

#showtooltip
/run if GetSpellCooldown(“HEALING RAIN”) == 0 then SendChatMessage(“COME CLOSE FOR HEALING RAIN!”,“say”) end
/use HEALING RAIN

(This will say in caps in say COME CLOSE FOR HEALING RAIN! It will also cast healing rain).

#showtooltip
/use [@mouseover,help,nodead][help,nodead][@player] Purify Spirit

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For the last boss, did u dispell the debuff? Cause if not then its alot of damage to heal through. Also my experience is that it can at times be harder to heal low keys then higher, cause ppl fail alot more on mechanics and also think its trivial and might overpull and pull packs that shouldnt be pulled together without some sort of interrupt rotation.

Welcome as shammy healer, its a fun class :hugs: just keep practicing and getting to know your toolkit.

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It’s my fave healer - love the animations and sounds and the theme is great.

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Oh, yeah, this can be a major thing for new healers! Your dispel button is far more mana and time efficient than any of your heals and you should usually put it on top priority. All of my healers have their dispel on the same key for instinctive reactions :slight_smile:

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Btw, dispelling that debuff can send ppl flying away, so its a double edged sword :laughing: but hopefully they’ll learn not to stack with it after flying a few times :woman_shrugging:t3:

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You aint good healer if you not using that for trolling :wink:

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I like to send them flying into the ocean :smiling_imp:

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i would only heal if the party consisted of my best bros
for pugs i am not taking this worst job ever

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Healing tends to be more stressful on M0 / lower keys than on high keys later I have the feeling. I can’t heal a +9 where everyone zergs and stands in voids - but I can heal a +12 where everybody at least try to play it right

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While shamans are glorious raid healers with a huge toolkit, they are not the best when people are bypassing mechanics and zugzug M+.

Considering you played M+0…Id say its the dps+tank that gone full zugzug instead blaming you.

Hpriest is probably by far the easiest healing class to play by far but you wont have the shaman toolkit. 1 key king. WIll drive you a long way in raiding but you wont be able to do really high keys with it.

Now MW monk in M+ is a glorious healer when people are ignoring mechanics,as long as you wont go oom you will be able to top them with 1-2 spells with a crit/mastery build. Not with a rising mist build.

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I personally only enjoy healing and it’s not stressful at all.

There are a few reasons you are struggling, one you probably did not dispel the dot on the last boss with tentacles.

Lower mythic is harder to heal because people don’t dodge mechanics. I actually do less hps and spend a lot more time dpsing in a 15 than doing lower ones like 9 or 10 with friends because they just take that much damage.

Also the discrepancy between your heals and healthpools. At 435 ilvl people should be 350-400k hp but your heals are low scaling due to poor azerite and likely essences. Meanwhile at 460/470 you probably have a lot more crit and versatility as well as atleast 3/4k more intellect, as well as stronger azerite so your heal numbers will scale much higher than hp, since people at that bracket will be anywhere between 400k-530k.

Just keep getting gear, better at dungeons and moving up playing with better players and you’ll see your healing to be much smoother. To be fair in some weeks I’m more concerned on when’s the best time to use utility due to some affixes and tank stress over healing the party.

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lol what. I started playing glimmer paladin recently, I have no idea why I even tried to play holy priest so adamantly as my healer. Now I’m playing glimmer and it’s really easy compared to holy priest. At least for the content I’ve done so far. Stupid high burst healing when you got glimmer on 5 people and pop CDs compared to my priest.

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Thanks all for the replies and kind words ! I’ll try to reply in order:

Hitsuji: thanks for the recommandation, I don’t know Monk at all because the class aesthetic never really talked to me so I’ll give it a try. I already own two Paladins and I tried healing and I’m not sure the gameplay fits me, having to be constantly close and all that. I’ll try again someday though because Ret bores me so it’ll be a nice reason to play my Paladin.

Alewín: it’s reassuring to read that Resto is not a bad spec ! I recall facing a team in arena with a Resto that took forever to kill it was impressive. Thing is by the time I cast Healing Rain I’m afraid half the team will die -still talking about my SoB run, maybe it was just a team that didn’t know the mechanics too after all :stuck_out_tongue:

Ãnna: thanks for the macros, I tried forever configuring mouseovers once but they don’t work with the Grid add-on like I want them too, they work on the character but not the portrait :confused: But I should ask once in the macros sections about that.

Sinaaki: yeah I dispelled it but is it normal that we were like 3 having the debuff (the circle thing) ? 'Cause yeah I dispelled it once but then it’s on CD and meanwhile the others are just dying helplessly despite my buckets of water thrown at them. Really a frustrating experience haha ! I have an indicator in Grid to know instantly who’s got a debuff I can debuff so no problem, just not when 3 people got it at once.

Khans: I don’t know how this debuff happens, I should probably just read the guide a bit more for this boss, I don’t know if that’s normal to have it on 3 people at once or if we just messed up. Not gonna lie when playing DPS at this boss I just blitz the tentacles and hope for the best and it worked so far haha !

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I main Hpriest Rondawhite-stormscale.
I have several gold logs by spamming 1 key my friend lol Actually not just easy to play, but entirely braindead xD

Its a bit weak in M+ though if you mean this, you need 3x promise of deliverance and 3xPermeating Glow otherwise its entirely trash :stuck_out_tongue:

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Paladin has two builds and in Mythics you need to be in melee range anyway. Might want to check on Glimmer build if that fits well with what you are looking for. I do see what you mean with Monk, it is not for everyone.

Healing rain has a use but very rarely if your team stacks and you have Deluge talent.
If you are struggling you want to try running with Undulation (it is a must really), Deluge or Echo, Earthen wall totem or maybe the Reinc totem, Graceful spirit is a hard must, Cloudburst or Flash flood but I feel Cloudburst is better currently and finally High Tide.
From azerite you need 3x Turn the tide to ease on yourself, from Essences you need Vitality Conduit (eternal palace raid essence) and the heal beam at the very least to help smoothen out our hardest weakness.

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It does get easier the more you do it - but pugging is always going to make it 10x harder than it needs to be. And you will most likely get the blame for everything/blame yourself.

But don’t give up! Practice and keep the faith :slight_smile: