Healer mechanics/methods?

[Jaycub]

I want to try to play healer again, but do it right this time. So I have a few questions for the veterans healers here.

>How do you dealing with targeting?
Clicking on players themselves is an exercise in frustration, clicking the UI (and the former) has a significant time delay when seconds matter. So are you guys using the hotkeys for select party member 1-6 and memorizing the order in the party window? Is there any mods that make this easier? Does anyone get any use out of select nearest and cycle friendly players? For offensive spells it seems easy enough to just set up a /assist macro for pugging and a /assist [main assist player] macro for premades.

>Cleansing?
So enemy UI and buffhead setup proper will show debuffs and healing deuffs you would want to remove, but as far as I know there is no way of knowing what you are going to cleanse unless you have a clean target selected and watch what debuffs roll in, so for instance a WL pounce into unprotected armor debuff would of course warrant a cleanse, but how exactly am I supposed to know when to cleanse when I come upon a target with many debuffs on them and I have no idea what's the oldest. Is there a mod for this?

>Ability Usage / Triage
I think I understand this well enough, but if anyone has any tips here that would be welcome. Such as use wounds buffs/bubbles/morale heals when the target is heal debuffed and in danger, when to stop healing someone when they are doing stupid stuff and are going to die no matter what so you can work on keeping the rest up, when to HoT when to direct heal etc... Just anything that might not seem easy to grasp for people new to healing.

Other than this I am just a bit overwhelmed at the APM being about twice as much as tank/dps hurting my wrist, as there is literally zero downtime on a healer since you always can be pre hotting, re positioning and keeping track of your entire team and anyone posing a threat to you, dealing damage even etc... There is no way BG/IB are the hardest to play, this is way worse at least for me.

[Penril]

Doesn't Squared and Enemy have a "use ability on click" so you can click on the UI and immediately use a skill? and you can also use Alt/Ctrl/Shift for more spells. That could compensate for the delay you mentioned I guess. Other than that, I suck at healers so no further comments.

[Jbz]

I want to try to play healer again, but do it right this time. So I have a few questions for the veterans healers here.

>How do you dealing with targeting?
Clicking on players themselves is an exercise in frustration, clicking the UI (and the former) has a significant time delay when seconds matter. So are you guys using the hotkeys for select party member 1-6 and memorizing the order in the party window? Is there any mods that make this easier? Does anyone get any use out of select nearest and cycle friendly players? For offensive spells it seems easy enough to just set up a /assist macro for pugging and a /assist [main assist player] macro for premades.

>Cleansing?
So enemy UI and buffhead setup proper will show debuffs and healing deuffs you would want to remove, but as far as I know there is no way of knowing what you are going to cleanse unless you have a clean target selected and watch what debuffs roll in, so for instance a WL pounce into unprotected armor debuff would of course warrant a cleanse, but how exactly am I supposed to know when to cleanse when I come upon a target with many debuffs on them and I have no idea what's the oldest. Is there a mod for this?

>Ability Usage / Triage
I think I understand this well enough, but if anyone has any tips here that would be welcome. Such as use wounds buffs/bubbles/morale heals when the target is heal debuffed and in danger, when to stop healing someone when they are doing stupid stuff and are going to die no matter what so you can work on keeping the rest up, when to HoT when to direct heal etc... Just anything that might not seem easy to grasp for people new to healing.

Other than this I am just a bit overwhelmed at the APM being about twice as much as tank/dps hurting my wrist, as there is literally zero downtime on a healer since you always can be pre hotting, re positioning and keeping track of your entire team and anyone posing a threat to you, dealing damage even etc... There is no way BG/IB are the hardest to play, this is way worse at least for me.

You're either melee or ranged.

[Sulorie]

I heal via UI, because I see no purpose of group player shortcuts, when the group setup is changing all the time. Linking what I see visually to a certain button to press this button and then pressing the skill seems too time consuming to me.

What I do is keeping the healgrid as compact as possible to minimized mouse movement. Default Enemy group or warband frames are too large in size (I don't mean the UI scale) and cluttered with too much information. Keep it simple, be more efficient.

[Jaycub]

Doesn't Squared and Enemy have a "use ability on click" so you can click on the UI and immediately use a skill? and you can also use Alt/Ctrl/Shift for more spells. That could compensate for the delay you mentioned I guess. Other than that, I suck at healers so no further comments.

I think it does, it could be used for out of party maybe have it use an insta cast that would help a bit. I'll try it later thanks.

As for combo keys ya I was thinking of using ctrl 1-6 for party members, as I already use shift and alt 1-12 for abilities and Q R C F. I'm just worried about the memorizing party list part as I'm pretty bad at it, was hoping there would be a better way.

[Sulorie]

For out of party healing in rvr, you can use the "Targets" addon. Hover your mouse over other players and they are gathered in a heal grid, where you can target them with a mouse click.

[Jaycub]

I heal via UI, because I see no purpose of group player shortcuts, when the group setup is changing all the time. Linking what I see visually to a certain button to press this button and then pressing the skill seems too time consuming to me.

What I do is keeping the healgrid as compact as possible to minimized mouse movement. Default Enemy group or warband frames are too large in size (I don't mean the UI scale) and cluttered with too much information. Keep it simple, be more efficient.

I was thinking of doing this, if you mean moving the UI to a more centered position on the screen so you don't have to look away so to speak to find people. Anyone care to post a screen of their UI setup?

>For out of party healing in rvr, you can use the "Targets" addon. Hover your mouse over other players and they are gathered in a heal grid, where you can target them with a mouse click.

That sounds pretty good I'll give it a look

[roadkillrobin]

Im targeting with Squared UI on friendly players. And Keybind to target myself.
The delay doesn't really mather as when you get good you can predict trough oponents movement aswell as debuff indicators who is gonna take damage. I look much mcore at the suroundings and enemies then i do looking at the heal grid. Often I just use it to find the name of the player i need to target.

Cleansing is very, very overated. Only do it if there's 1 or 2 cleanseble debuffs on the target. Otherwise its a waste of GCD and when a target is cluttered with debuffs they need heals more then anything. Try to peal them off as they land or don't bother with it at all as they stack up reaaaly fast.

Abillity use is also alot about prediction. Sure you got some reactive skills with longer CD's but in general. Reaply hots if over 90% HP. Burst heal when they take heavy damage. Keep burst healing if they get on low HP even if HoTs run out.

[Dabbart]

I want to try to play healer again, but do it right this time. So I have a few questions for the veterans healers here.

>How do you dealing with targeting?
Clicking on players themselves is an exercise in frustration, clicking the UI (and the former) has a significant time delay when seconds matter. So are you guys using the hotkeys for select party member 1-6 and memorizing the order in the party window? Is there any mods that make this easier? Does anyone get any use out of select nearest and cycle friendly players? For offensive spells it seems easy enough to just set up a /assist macro for pugging and a /assist [main assist player] macro for premades.

I used Enemy UI for click targetting mostly. Enemy resorts the so tanks/DPS/healers are together, so it can make hot-keying a little difficult. You can disable this, but I find it very helpful to know the top few are tanks, middle DPS, and bottom are healers. It helps to prioritize casting/targetting mid combat for me anyways..., This also helps with knowing who is Out of range or LoS before you target them.

Depends on the Healer though. AM/Sham can change the target of their life-leech mid-cast, but with juggling mechanic you often have to switch to a target in LoS for a healing stack, then switch back to the person out of LoS to take the Life tap...

You can also put an Enemy tag on your Allies and set the Tag so that you can target them when you click on it to give you a little more clickable space in Combat. But at the end of the day, it's just an epic game of Whack-a-mole.

>Cleansing?
So enemy UI and buffhead setup proper will show debuffs and healing deuffs you would want to remove, but as far as I know there is no way of knowing what you are going to cleanse unless you have a clean target selected and watch what debuffs roll in, so for instance a WL pounce into unprotected armor debuff would of course warrant a cleanse, but how exactly am I supposed to know when to cleanse when I come upon a target with many debuffs on them and I have no idea what's the oldest. Is there a mod for this?

Buffhead sorts the Debuffs/Buffs by "age". So the first one on the list will be the one removed. You'd have to organize Buffhead for each healer for types of debuffs removable. In my experience, I tie my Cleanse to my main HoT so I can use it on CD. Anyone worth their salt will put a cover on the important debuffs, but with a pair of healers you can often get to the "important" ones...

I once tried to be hardcore about my Cleanse usage, saving it for DPS and squishies, but unless you are taking a CD tactic to be able to spam it, just do your best to interrupt a BW/Sorc rotation, and use cleanse as often as possible. My theory anyways. But then again, this was a Habit I picked up from playing WP on live for years(and on RoR). So potentially depending on Group, you'd want to time/coordinate your cleanses for better usage...

>Ability Usage / Triage
I think I understand this well enough, but if anyone has any tips here that would be welcome. Such as use wounds buffs/bubbles/morale heals when the target is heal debuffed and in danger, when to stop healing someone when they are doing stupid stuff and are going to die no matter what so you can work on keeping the rest up, when to HoT when to direct heal etc... Just anything that might not seem easy to grasp for people new to healing.

Depends on the Healer. My AM(and little time I played Sham) was to stack HoTs/Absorp on anyone charging in. I want to sit with 5 healing stacks as often as possible, simply so I can spam my life-tap when it is needed. I almost always saved my "Oh ****!" abilities as I called them for 1 or 2 party members. Most specifically, the target I "knew" the enemy would go for the most(IE Zaxxond, Stinky, Rift, etc).

The key for Life-tapping is to know which target you want to Detaunt, and Life-tapping off someone else.... My Z/RP had it easier, since it was mostly down to positional CT spells and flash heal while moving, and you have access to far more survival tools. The WP/DoK is pretty self explanatory. Save your AP heals for RF issues, and spam your grp HoT and Cleanse.

I'd rather sit for a second or 2 and rezz someone than waste a CT on someone about to die. As a PUG anyways. In grp, there are so many momentary survival abilities, that I would push to try and keep them up. A nearly dead opponent will pull the entire enemy grp onto them, and if you CAN keep em up, it is A, a kick in the Morale Nuts, and B, effectively "wasted" DPS from your enemy. Meanwhile your team hopefully isn't...

Same goes as a Healer. I used to Charge my Z in, knowing that I could survive a solid 6-7GcDs w/o guard, and with some strategy can get the enemy to over extend to chase me down, while my Team smashed them... It worked quite a lot, but is build dependant... AoE punt can be very OP.

Other than this I am just a bit overwhelmed at the APM being about twice as much as tank/dps hurting my wrist, as there is literally zero downtime on a healer since you always can be pre hotting, re positioning and keeping track of your entire team and anyone posing a threat to you, dealing damage even etc... There is no way BG/IB are the hardest to play, this is way worse at least for me.

Yes. It can be extreme. I suggest tying a lot of abilities to your Mouse(alt+M1/2 shift+, ctrl+ etc) and don't tie a key past 5 on your keyboard(I go 1-4, QERT, and I have 4 mouse bottons I tie. So, stretching my fingers on less than 1/3 of my keyboard I can assign 36 keys(I don't use Ctrl, since it just feels weird).

Use NB. Don't rely on it for long strings, but tie 2 abilities to one button helps a lot. IE, Tie your Cleanse/HoT to one, tie your on movement heal and stationary heal to 1(Conditional of "on movement" + or - to switch) tie flee and AP pots to some key, etc. I've found that more than 3 abilities can cause it too bug out quite often. Very rarely have an issue with 2 abilities on 1.

At the end of the day it's down to Practice. Whenever I played a MDPS I would get a little overwhelmed and find my target selection was ****, since I flat out wasn't used to playing in the heart of a swirling melee. Your hand-eye will get better, and you'll start to see the enemies/attacks coming and it'll get easier.

Last bit of advice, USE THE ENEMY TAGS! on allies AND on enemies. You can set it to me Permanent. So that whenever they are in range, all you have to do is hover over them and the mark reappears. Set different colors for your grp(tank/dps/healer) and enemies. You can set the size of the mark and even a click cast on it... Helps to stop the enemy from flanking you, as well as being a great reminder of whom is where on in the battle...

Gl!

Edit: also, I always had my Grp UI just to the Left of my character. Minimize the distance your mouse has to travel. I used VinyUI on RoR. it was the closest I could find to what I used on Live.

Edit2: This is for 6man/small scale... I feel sure that a lot of my tips are worthless in mass WB/zerg fighting...

[Jbz]

Nice info Dabbart, please get online and carry me. :, (