Just one more update from my side. I will not level healer until at earliest after timewalking is over. I cant deal with ammount of lvl 11 fury warrior twinks queing as tanks and then pulling entire dungeon or until the first boss and killing the whole group besides them with “healer??” appearing in chat. I will repurpose my tanks for healers. So Monk leading the charge and going to experiment with druid and pally.
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You are asking for a lot of stuff from a healer class ! 
Unfortunatelly both of those statements are contradictory.
A “hard healer” is a proactive healer. And to use it properly you need to predict damage before it happens. But proactive healers tend to be the most performant ones when healing a group that knows what they are doing.
A reactive healer tends to be easier to learn and pilot. So its ideal to learn the basics of healing or to heal a “less skilled group”. Unfortunatelly, when things get a bit hard you perform worse.
I propose that you start with a reactive healer. To get the basics of healing in general. Once you got those under controll, be open to re-rolling to a healer that best fits your style of play, or, your partie’s style of play.
In your case specifically, I would roll MW monk.
For 2 reasons:
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Transistioning from DPS to Healer is easier if you heal by doing damage. It feels more “natural” for DDs that never healed. Plus the utility a MW monk has is identical to that of a tank (kicks, swirlies, ect…)…
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MW monk is not the only one that heals by doing DPS. DPriest is the other healer that does it. But MW has a more reactive healing profile than a DPriest which is purely proactive.
And that is why I recomend MW monk.
Having played all healers to around 3.1k in various M+ seasons, HC raided and PVP’ed to 2.2k I would say priest.
Only because of your initial criteria:
You get both the reactionary healer in hpriest and the proactive healer in disc priest… You get the “classic” healing style of “Friend hurt, I heal” and the “Do damage to heal” playstyle like fistweaver…
All in all even though they may not always be nr. 1 or at times struggle, I do find that at least one of the two specs do perform well at a decent level. This will probably feel a bit “easier” to just switch between the two depending on season etc.
Lol your in for a treat my friend, that is only a tip of an iceberg what comes to pvp. I can relate so easily. Idk, I would advice do what you want and dont let other people dictate you how you play your game, you pay for it. If play healer, chat disabled in blitz and shuffles or bgs in general is best in my opinion. They start typing instead playing and they can be at fault themselves. Theres no worth to even register something like that can just play chat disabled. If lose it made no difference anyway if had chat on or not, some teams are bound to lose whatever you would do.
You get smart dps come disrupt you or some uhdk gripping you 40y across map and you have team that doesnt see any of it or disrupt enemy healers or even hit same targets in general and they just do random things, then begin typing something when the lose is inevitable. “heal me???”, you just have to decide if you want read spam like that and the game gets alot better 
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Yeah. That one question can die in a fire 
If you can, I’d suggest playing with some friends to get a feel for it. Even just a tank friend will make the experience already much better.
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Dps standing in fire or not doing anything otherwise either, “heals???” 
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I kinda lived for that when I was leveling my shaman. Just overlapped Healing Tide, Ascension and Spirit Link and hoped for the best 
Tho it can become very dangerous when you are a fresh lvl 80 with no gear and your regular heals do 0,2-0,5% of people’s hp …
I wanted to suggest a priest because your are effectively leveling two healers at once but I thought that learning two healers at once might be a bit much.
But if you don’t mind that learning curve and collecting two sets of gear then Holy seems to be really good in Normal and Heroic Raids. Disc is really good in M+ and PvP.
I’ve played them a bit in DF. Druid didn’t impress me much (but that’s probably because I sucked) and Hpal is easily the most confusing spec I have ever played.
Honestly the jack of all trades healer is still priest in 2024. You have Holy and Disc, both offering very different playstyles, which I think for someone like you who want to stick to one character is a massive plus. Don’t be afraid of “hard specs”, your brain is just as good as the person’s next to you.
The only downside of priest is that both specs go for different stats, but if you want to learn the other spec it doesn’t matter, ilvl is still king you can just do lower keys/lower raid difficulty/and for pvp your solo rating is tied to your spec anyway.
And most important, go for a playstyle you enjoy or you feel like you could enjoy by watching videos explaining playstyle, or even better trying it out yourself if you have a level 70.
But I suppose you came here for advice so my advice is priest. The 2 specs make it the ultimate “I only play 1 healer” class.
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Only healer still with 2 healing specs, it is only logical one of them would have higher chance being good
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Timewalking dungeons are optional .i have not even touched one of them while levelling up my healers and i am levelling up all healers at same time . Just do normal dragonflight dungeons and then tww normal dungeons while levelling up
if people get a heavy dot e.g. 4 stack bleed in first pull of mists and they dont preas something i just let them die 
pwople have to learn some way. if they write “healer???” i write back “def cd???”
if they start to flame i just leave kek
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im gonna advise you to use addons/weakauras , i know its gonna take time to adapt , but the game devs already said that they are making encounters based on addons , so there is that i suppose , do you want to be a good healer and not stress too much ? download dbm for dungeons , there is a voice announcer that tells you if aoe is gonna happen but like 2 seconds before it happens ,which is at least enough to be prepared , there is also an announcer for defensive usage that tells you , what cds are being popped “defensives only” , so this will help you adapt slowly on encounters and not pop a crazy cds while people having defensives up , it would save your runs.
But don’t get me wrong you still need practice , some bosses are very aoe heavy , like back to back aoe damage like the first boss on stonevault , or third boss of threads per example , you need to manage your aoe healing rotation. if you want a chill healers , just play mistweaver monk or resto shaman.
dbm and weakauras (just import current season dungeon pack) is mostly enough.
This has little to do with being a healer, it is mandatory as any role.
of course if you want to see more you also want omnicd to track cds and kicks of your group and make some custom weakauras to help yourself.
game is hardly playable without those basics.
decent name plates are also quute mandatory but that goes beyond the healer role anyways.
I wouldn’t stress about these addons. I don’t use WAs and the last time I used DBM was in BfA, the default setting played an airhorn sound every 30 seconds for 30 mins straight during a M+ run, that ish made me hate my life.
I threw it in the trash and haven’t felt the need to use it since. NPCs do the same thing every time. If you do M+ levels one by one (and time every run), by the time the mechanics begin to matter, you will have run the dungeon at least seven times, you shouldn’t have much issues orienting yourself there.
Many dangerous abilities have a cast time and/or are announced by boss’ dialog. I don’t think there is a need for an addon that will announce it to you for a second time, you’re just increasing your mental load with duplicate information.
Correct.
But you can still make a macro that combines one mouseover ability and if not over a portrait, an offensive ability.
Yeah this can be very usefull.
But it think it is a trap mouseover macroes fire on anything non unitframes, unless it is something like interrupt, purge or stun.
Imagine you are nicely trying to dps your current target but because of your mouse somewhere on the field mouseovers a player you start doing whatever bound stuff…
To me it is the addon Clique for the win.
Cheers. for the tips. I appreciate the advice. Tough I do have most of these addons/wa from my tanking, just gotta tweak them a bit to fit healer role.
Addons and weak auras makes your life easier as a healer by tons , sometimes your focus on solo heals or dodging then you forget that there is an aoe coming , not everyone have the same brain capability to focus 100% , addons and weak auras help you avoid this , it helped me so many times as a healer where i was either interupting a cast then a big aoe happens , so i have a 2/3 second gap to react , addons and weak auras are used by so many above average players. remember that encounters are so bloated with mechanics , no matter the packs , so its still a crazy tool to use for your advantage.
I liked bigwigz for that it didnt have airhorn or scream the notorious dbm “RUN AWAY LITTLE GIRL” when there is fire, bigwigz just show timer and sound says once blip 
Im totally inept fast clicking actions. For me its either hotkeys/mouse buttons or its a gtfo. Just can’t.
As for the macro: on shaman i have on hotkey that will buff HoT if mouse over a Player portrait, otherwise it will cast the fire-dot on targeted enemy.
Another example is cast heal on mous over otherwise cast lightning on target. Its pretty nifty and reduces the need for additional hotkey slots.