Some players don't understand the burden of being a healer. Sometimes you can't keep everyone up and so you have to make a choice, and you gotta live with that choice for the rest of your life.

I'm glad to see someone putting out these kinds of fundamentals videos. They are hard to come by anymore.

Its very true that most people have only or will only play dps forever. A healer who ends up dpsing down the road does a really good job of respecting their defensives and interuppting as opposed to face rolling the keyboard and complaining

I learned never bother saving the demon hunter

great video, awesome choice of images to match what you were saying.

Long time healer here. A few things: 1) Vanilla Wow used to have bandages (personal, interruptible, crafted self-heal; Used to be crafted with a skill named "First Aid" that was like cooking). In Vanilla, the highest level bandages were locked behind a level 40 quest named "Triage" that demonstrated EXACTLY what you are talking about here. I wish it were still around, just to showcase what healers have to do. 2) I am absolutely shocked that you mentioned the one thing that NO ONE mentions -- reaction time. DPS players run on a rotation that they memorize, and tanks kind of run on a priority system based on incoming attacks and health, but no one ever mentions healer reaction times. Healers have to evaluate things from moment to moment and make split-second decisions on who to heal and how to heal them. DPS and tanks love to yell at healers saying, "I didn't get heals for 2 seconds!" without ever stopping to consider that maybe you were healing someone else. One rule of thumb I've created and stuck by is to "Finish your heal" (with some exceptions). Unless you or your tank is about to go down, finish your heal on the dps that you started on, even if someone else takes damage in the interim. Too many times have I lost the dps I was working on by panicking and swapping targets mid heal. If the new dps that just took that big hit take another in a short time span, they will have died before you could finish a new cast on them anyways. Finishing your cast almost guarantees that you'll get at least one to survive. If you swap mid-cast, you're liable to lose both dps. 3) Forced movement abilities such as Rescue and Lifegrip need to be considered as "soft" cooldowns, in addition to snap hero moments and trolling. If you run out of defensive CDs or big healing spells to use on a tank who is at 25% health (because they pulled too much, someone didn't interrupt, or accidentally ate too many tank busters), Rescue or Lifegrip them as far away from their current targets as you can, assuming you can do so safely. Smart tanks and tanks that are familiar with you will take the hint and begin kiting. This will give you enough time to try and recover CDs, or pump out extra heals as they try and get some distance. Substantial healing usually takes in excess of 3 seconds outside of cooldowns; Lifegrip and Rescue work ~0.5 seconds if you're using mouseover abilities. Even if the tank starts to immediately run back, you still have enough time to throw out root/snare abilities while you're waiting for short CD abilities to come back up. I've used this strategy both on priest and evoker. I usually have a pocket tank who understands immediately, but I have had pug tanks who figured it out. And if they don't. . . . . well, at least you tried.

My biggest issue as evoker is Blizzard's front facing design and the team not understanding they cant stand 200m apart the whole dungeon. We have no way to heal a fully spread out team consistently. They need to make dream breath 360 around you and longer range like druid and priest aoe healing.

another great video my mans!

Great video. This is helpful. PUG healing is almost getting the best of me. I'm still hanging in there though. Videos like this helps very much! Thank you!

pugs often stress me out. first time in 15 years of wow playing a healer because I really enjoy how evoker plays with such a diverse and fun toolkit in terms of healing. but most groups i ran with have at least one or even two guys that literally stand in every possible mechanic and just expect to be healed through. defensive usage is also something you just never see and sometimes even tanks run into tyrannical bosses in battle stance and zero mitigation to get clapped for 300k hits. I gained a whole new respect for healers by playing one. and pugs really really hurt my soul more than ever. interrupts, too! jesus christ people never interrupt anything. i specced into interrupt on preservation to at least kick some mechanics (40 sec cd sadly) and often end up first or second on overall interrupts. proving grounds needs an overhaul with more focus on interrupts and a harder requirement for people to queue. its not even like theyre only kicking random spells. they dont kick anything at all!

Omg thank u for this! I stopped healing for mythic because I kept loosing someone, and there are time we wipe. I am still trying to get the flow of Evoker healing together and in my reactive memory better (use to Druid and Priest healing), so I felt defeated. But this video definitely helps me. I have high expectations of myself, and want no deaths… but that’s not reality anymore. Lol

All truth :) I would like to give this 1,000,000 likes and it still would not be enough for this very helpful video! Can you or do you have a video on class defensives so we can understand them better as healers. I found also that there are certain dps classes or even the way you notice how people play that I can tell who could tank/kite the boss if the tank goes down unexpectedly. A video about the defensives and triage the dps--I've seen mages and rogues (and of course dps paladins) finish fights where the tank went down before we had all these battle rezes which were unbelievable to witness.

great stuff Bowser, but this is also why I decided to level a Tank second and not a healer lol. But eventually I will be leveling my Paladin so this is good info and I'll be coming back to it!

Healing in PUGS as a Main Healer, have a Tank with a Brain

i feel like every dps player should learn how to heal at one point to see the healers prespective and maybe then they would play smarter and not step into every avoidable flame pool and also respect their healers a lot more.

I agree to safe yourself before the tank but i usually heal the tank before myself because i can trust myself to not make mistakes while i don't know what the randoms will do. This is not a general rule but i feel like i don't need healing when im still with a safe amount of hp for the situation im in.

For me, disc priest, it goes: me>tank>batle rez player>highest dps>dps who kicks and uses CC to stop important casts> mofo who takes avoidable damage

Triage is the most important word in any battle

Amazing

Thanks for the video! Do you have a profile for your party frames?

Its interesting you use Temporal Anomaly where I've not seen anyone else suggesting this talent. There are better options that have more synergy with our build that you could choose from. That said, I obsoletely love using Temporal...

So hard to heal so far lol did a 12 but im new to retail and i think ima stick to 12s for a bit

Very helpful video. I follow a slightly different priority list and would be interested to see what you think: 1. Expected damage 2. Tank 3. Me (Healer) 4. DPS The reason for prioritizing the tank over me in this case is that the comp I run with does not have a brez outside of our tank, a prot paladin. My logic is that if they die, the pull is over and we wipe almost assuredly, but if I die they can generally handle themselves long enough to get me back up and salvage the pull. I do generally follow the same priority list you had in the video when running with different comps/people though. Is the brez factor important enough to change the priority in your mind, or would you still continue to prioritize yourself in this scenario?

This is why I'm glad, as a Holy Priest, Guardian Spirit is on a 1 minute CD if the target doesn't die. Sometimes... You just don't know if they're going to stand in mechanics so GS cast away!

Often times in pugs dps don’t ever use defensive/HealthPots and it drives me insane

i always put the markers for the tank and myself, cuz i cant keep the rush, what the tanks do sometimes ... So the tank should know, when he will get heal from me.. for that time the tank must do his best to keep himself alive However i think most of tanks only see the mobs in the monitor :D

What is the addon showing the other players' CDs? I had it during SL but now can't figure out what it was... Love your vids, and thanks for the content!

That priority list is an oversimplification it is comp, pull, and defensive dependent.

Great video ! im new to evoker healer this exp , and i have one question , how can fast save someone ? with living echo+living flame ? or is a better way to get someone hp from 20% to 80/90% fast ?

addition: 5. Warlocks

how can i get this pictures from my hots in the health bars from my teammates ?

How can you tell what defensive the players still have available?

8:37 37 Deaths before 3rd Boss? Outsch. xD

If the key is high enough the DPS will be punished for not kicking as they will get one shot :D

I wish every DD would play Heal at least once or before trying to push keys. A lot of people just underestimate what a pain healing can be if stuff is not countered, player not using self defense on certain abilities etc. Most people do not really care about most stuff and love blaming the heal while its mostly their fault if (unexpected) damage kills people or the whole group. Most people I love are low DPS that do no dmg but run 15+ keys because they got carried by other DPS before to 2k+ rating. But not realizing that their low damage and missing skill can easy kill the key so hard. This was especially bad this season start because you could get gear 385+ (almost +10 key league) before M+ was even out. Not to forget how horrible most of the new dungeons are in the end. Man I miss the clean shadowlands dungeons so hard. S1 and the season affixe was so much better back that time.

How can I find the party CD tracker that's by the frames?

anyone know the addon that tells him to move or jump or whatever? I'm a returning player from the old days (04-06) and have a hard time with some of the mechanics. I looked for an addon that does that, but IDK there's soooo much stuff. Thanks in advance!

who would've thought that the key to be a good healer is to keep people alive.

Can i ask what addon you are using to click on people to heal them? Or do you not do that and it just looks like it?

I had a Demon Hunter in a +12 Nokhud take 9 million AVOIDABLE damage.. I did 28 million healing total for the whole dungeon.. For everyone lol

Triage healing was always the basis of healing since vanilla. I’ve always managed my healing to the old school rule of, tank first, healer second, dps according to damage out put. Since they screwed up disc, I have missed absorption healing, but over all it’s not rocket science. I find dot healing is my foundation depending on the class I play, then burst single target healing as layers. That mage/lock/hunter that is just wanting to be top of the dps meter pulling huge aggro numbers will always be my sacrificial lamb. I’m always kind to warn my pug party that they are entering into an old school healing contract with me, and Cleary inform them that if they pull it, they tank it but in the order of triage, tank healer dps.

Every healer use some kind of Triage logic, but it is useless if some of the players are out of range, that is why the healer range always 40 yard or more.

Could u share ur talent tree?

Have fun saving tanks who chain pulls without a defensive. Insta 1 shot - "Why you not healing me?" xD

Pugs are that bad so my guy had to make a guide lol

7:42 minutes and video hasnt even started , that is to say its a useless timewaste

This is a long winded way of saying don't heal the hunter standing in bad 🤣 ... even if he is your best friend.

As a healer you should be healing youself last. You have more control over what extea damage you take. You have defensives you know you can press, especially as evoker you have a personal rewind spell to heal 100% of damage over 8 sec. The prio should always be tank, then expected damage (unless all dps die to expected damage then its aoe or use a cd). And you should always be expecting people to mess up and keep a shield on them on CD, use your cds almost as soon as they come off, itll help dps to push more and you can dps more. Its the biggest mistake people make trying to hold a cd for a great use usual makes deaths.