Hello everyone.
This expansion I’ve changed my main spec from protection to holy, and since then, I have some problems. When healing in group content (mythic+ or raids) I feel anxious about people dying on me. I don’t know how much I am supposed to heal so I blame my self for every wipe, even tho I know that when you are a tank (which I was) you can pull too much and wipe. In raids you hold 20 (or more) people alive and your job is much more important (imo) then a dpss one, which causes even more problems for me. I enjoy holy and enjoy it even more now that we got the new animations, but this anxiety makes me want to switch to ret and be happy. Do you guys have any tips and tricks for me to overcome this? Have you been in the same situation? Share your story!
Honestly the best tip anyone can give you is…
Just don’t overthink it.
It’s down to the group to stay alive. That means interrupting, CC, stuns, moving out of stuff on the floor etc. As long as you don’t punch above your weight, for example trying a +10 key at 330 ilevel. There’s nothing to worry about.
You’re gonna wipe 100s of times, sometimes it will be your fault, sometimes others. It’s part of the game, and honestly I’ve wiped 1000s of times since BfA came out lol. Never onced blamed anyone, just get on with it.
Don’t sweat it.
Enough people are aware enough to accept that when they die it wasn’t always the healers fault. Look at the “deaths” tab on skada when people flop and learn from it. What could you have done differently to save it? If the answer is “something” then learn and move on. If it was nothing then accept that and move on.
It’s actually a good lesson about learning what is and isn’t in your control.
Yeah, in the beginning it can be tough.
Thing is, once you get the hang of it you realize how many mistakes they themselves make are blamed on you. I mean, you can make mistakes too of course, but there’s way too much “blame the healer” going on.
It’s hard at the moment with guilds being completely empty, but try to get a guild with friendly, patient people. It’s easier to group with people that know what you can do and that you know of what they can do.
Otherwise you just have to close one eye so you can dream the run is fantastic and fun while healing at the same time.
It comes with the experience. Try to assess everything beforehand like if the tank gets stunned you need to focus or CD them etc… Eventually as a healer you begin to hate everyone.
For your own peace of mind you have to track absolutely everything going on, voidzones, avoidable damage and all that. And use a good addon like Details! to prove that the odd death here and there wasn’t your fault if you get blamed and flamed for it. If it was due to your inexperience be honest about it.
Someone dies standing in fire and blames you? On a completely avoidable ability? DPS got you 10 stacks of bursting? Tank dies because one full health add has 10 bolsters? Tank pulls when you call OOM? You can prove it and tell them to git gud.
As someone who plays for a long time healing classes in the game I could recommend to you a few things :
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Read the guides about your class from icy veins and someone who is good at it, about the way of playing in different situations, the priority of the stats and spell casts, gearing , etc .
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Get a good UI, UI helps with the playing a lot , I use atm ElvUI together with Vuhdo addon for healing ( Grid is good to ) and WeakAuras 2 which help me to track when my spells go off cd.
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If you don’t have experience from before with the healing practice it to get a hang of it in lower difficulties of the content like random battlegrounds, proving grounds, heroic dungeons, LFR and normal raids, low level mythics and once you get comfortable with everything than you can step up in a more difficult content.
I sometimes play healer for fun, especially with healbot. My first healer was back in wod. I learned that you have to maintain Mana pool the hard way (was spamming flash heals on full hp after playing medic in tf2, lol). Got kicked few times for being complete noob, sometimes because of tank being a jerk - rushing before I even loaded dung and was able to pick up quest.
Here are my tips, though they are subjective:
-tank is priority - if DPS died somewhere miles away, or his pet pulled aggro or for whatever other reason, it’s not your fault. Heal DPS in windows between healing tank or some healing or put HoT on him.
-maintain Mana pool - don’t try to over heal, if players lose up slowly, then use slow cheap heals.
-it is mandatory to let healer regain mana. No “i dun care, we rush”! If you’re doing hardcore end game, bring food with you or have a fellow mage give you some. During leveling some friendly people won’t mind taking a break during your passive Regen.
-you could install recount and link your heals, if there are jerks who pull infinitely and then blame you.
As some other people already mentioned the healing in the raids its not only your responsibility , there are other healers there to to help you with a job. In the raids is good if you communicate with the other healers and sometimes set the priorities about who of you will focus more on healing the specific targets and use at what point of time the big healing CD-s.
Mana management is very important especially in higher difficulties of the raids and mythic + dungeons so have that in mind and don’t overheal.
Also I use details addon to track the things like deaths and causes of it ( a lot of the times people die because they fail on mechanics and not because its a healer fault ), healing and damage done.
Edit : There are things I forgot to mention which could be useful to ![:slight_smile:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
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Make a macro to tell to the party that you are low on mana, that’s useful in m+ dungeons and faster than the typing so that your tank is aware of that so that he doesn’t go in the zerg mode and pulls before you are ready. Also drink before the pulls and even sometimes you can at the start of the pulls of some trash packs before the damage gets high and use the potions as much as you can there.
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Have all your important spells binded, I use razer naga for that.
The best way in my honest opinion would be to find a tank you can do dungeons with and just get used to varied pulls. If you can’t find one hit me up 
Tibbity#2707
I used to feel this way too back in wrath when I picked up healing/tanking. But dont worry, after a while you become dead inside and stop caring
If you are new to healing the best thing to settle into it is by doing easier and more casual content. Try out healing in normal and heroic dungeons, go back to Timewalkers (though with some current scaling, you’ll be getting a small challenge!). Get confident with the role and spec you are playing, come to the realisation that although your role is to HELP people survive, it’s down to the players to also actively manage their defensives and self-awareness.
Don’t feel stress that isn’t there for you to feel. 
In raids you work alongside 4-5 other healers depending on content and difficulty. It isn’t your SOLE job to keep a whole raid group alive, but to help moderate and be supportive. Keep the above in mind when healing, yes it’s your role, but those around you have a responsibility to also use diligence in understanding what they should be doing, standing at (or not standing in something they shouldn’t be), and if there is anything they can currently do to stop incoming damage or mitigate it in some way.
You can seriously overthink when you step up the ladder from DPS, and it holds a lot of people back, and you know what? It’s for no reason at all. Anxiety can hold us back from doing things we really would be amazing at, set it aside and take some of these tips in mind and give it a shot.
you can join calm keystones and chill out and practice your healing.
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