Will I have troubles to learn and play healing role in retail as a new player or should I focus on some other role?
I was healer in Classic and had really fun time playing the role, but I heard that healing is much harder and more stresfull in retail.
I dont like melee DPS and tanking the only things I played was range DPS and Healing (mostly).
Made a druid but idea was to pick the hybrid class so I can be able to cover more roles. Was considering shaman but don’t loke Shaman race options from Alloance side (lore wise speaking).
If you have healed in Classic, you are not really a “new” player, and should be able to take on healing in Retail.
I am no expert, since I don’t heal, but from reading what healers say, I gather that M+ dungeons are where the stress comes in, where there are A LOT of gimmicks in the fight that healers need to be able to cover, and they are run on a timer, and healers are often expected to contribute to DPS as well, especially at higher levels.
So a lot depends on where you expect to spend your time, raids or M+, and what level you expect to play at. Playing in low M+ and normal raiding is different from running M+ 15s all the time and HC raiding, and that is very different from pushing high keys and Mythic raiding.
So if you are not pushing for the 1% levels, it may not be as bad as you fear.
A key point will be to get in with a guild so that your runs will be stressless. Guilds will welcome regular reliable healers.
So I would say that if healing is what you enjoy, there is a path to it in Retail. It will largely depend on finding a solid group, though.
I HIGHLY recommend the Community Scared of Dungeons, a lovely group of people on Alliance, who regularly run M+. Join Community and the code is OeBkVKTLZ2
Not healing main, but sometimes play hpala when i am desperately needed to.
Retail healers are expected to do both dps and healing. Do you enjoy targeting mobs and do mouseover heals on party frame?
How many targets do you enjoy to track/work with?
Pace of the game is faster? M+ dungeons are on timer, do you like to heal tanks doing big pulls? Wont it stress you out?
Plus paying attention to encounter addons which show timers on incoming damage to deal with it ( like druids hots before big aoe dmg to immediately heal people back to safe hp levels )
To me its too much effort to main that role when other two demand way less of me
That’s fair, but if someone actively ENJOYS healing, I think it’s reasonable to say that they should be able to find a comfortable niche in it, espcially if they can find a regular group of people.
Inho i enjoy classic healing, its chillest job on the market. Better to start retail as another role imho, cause new retail healer can be traumatic experience for all parties involved.
youll need addons and understanding teammates. They wont mind if you mess up, probably.
If you pug, you wont get much sympathy and nor should you.
Personally, when i start a new healer i tend to try out-gear the place first … just so gear can outmatch any shortcomings i have and then i progress as i learn the more tricky things.
For example, ive recently turned my dps pally in to a healer pally and im 220 without doing any mythic content. I started with a +0, did a few and it was fine. Did a couple of +3-+5 and that was okayish. I learned my capacity (i dont use any addons so it was very tricky in some bits) and all of that was pugged. If i had friends doing the mythics, id have gotten advice and such from guildies and tightened things up and probably progressed further if i wanted to.
somewhat similar idea, youll get a couple of ‘heal whilst doing damage’ things but thats more disco than sp. Personally, i find em incredibly boring to play.
My advice is to try all hybrid retail classes. Very fast leveling and you can try, experiment and find out on practice what you enjoy most.
Since leveling is fast its not even close to the monumental decision such as classic class choices.
So hybrid classes like druid, paladin and shaman are still the best options?
I like the Shaman style (at least on the paper) but I don’t find any race (Alliance side) lore-wise good enough for it (not good as trolls or orcs) and ai started from Alli side mostly because two of my friends already playing reatail and wanted to join then so we can be able to play together, otherwise I would go horde for sure
Maybe you could try your suspect classes and races up to level 20?
Level; 20 takes only a couple of hours, and while it doesn’t play like a max level character, there is enough of the class abilities there at level 20 (except maybe in a couple of specs’ cases) that you can get a sense of what the class/race combo will feel like.
Nah level hybrids as dps. when you “attune” to retail pace and addons you can try healing.
That way you save your braincells and might actually stay in retail instead of ragequiting first m+.
Cause healing in retail is basically like playing with leroy tank, 3 hunters with pets on active, which pull ahead of our leroy pal, but you have better mana regen/bigger mana pool.
One thing to remember is that all healers have different healing styles.
Are you comfortable with being 10+ seconds ahead of everything and everyone else? Then Disc priest would be the choice.
Are you comfortable with allowing healing to happen over time and trusting that they do their work, aided by some direct healing? Then druid would be the choice.
Do you want a healer that can react quickly to the unexpected and that functions quite traditionally? Then Holy priest sounds right.
From my own experience, healing is fun, really fun and I have enjoyed all healers through the years except Paladin (can’t for the life of me figure it out how it works o.0).
Try what Gráinne said. Level them up to 20-30 ish, through dungeon leveling and see how comfortable you are with each healing style. Arrange you action bars and abilities and keybinds BEFORE you start and take it from there.
Aesthetically, I think that three of the five choices for ally (Dwarfs, DI Dwarfs and Draenei) fits the best while Kul Tirans are just weird looking and Pandaren is not for everyone (despite fitting quite well in terms of lore and looks)
While in Classic you can get away with wanding and casting a Greater Heal every 6 or 7 seconds and a HoT, you’ll be expected to dps in your downtime which can collide with healing, mostly because of the key timer.
Also, no mana problems anymore (as in, running dry after a min, and mana pots aren’t that valuable either, we have a high baseline mp5 here).
You also have a ton of utility as pretty much any healer either baseline, or talented, so use that movement speed boost/anti-tankbuster/mass dispel etc. as needed. There are quite a few opportunities to use such spells.
If talking about utility, a class’ clear strengths are mostly diminished here and brought in line for balance. Say, pallies won’t be that OP because of powerful anti-UD spells and you won’t find as many shammy totems as in classic.
Only difference on retail is defensives need to be used by the healer and rest of the group in progression else healer will not keep up if people eat damage 24 7
