Advice to New (Druid) Healers

So, what happens to a bear when said bear begins running heroics and raids with two spectacular Prot warriors and a bunch of DPS? Yep. Said bear is stripped of all fur and mashed down until it fits inside a giant hollow log costume and you end up with a tree. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even try to roll on feral gear anymore, I just take it if there’s not a Cat or rogue lying around.

Hello, my name is Mitawa and I… am a tree.

Apparently a rather good one. I’m not really sure how, but I’m apparently the go-to guy for new healers now. I wipe the meters with people better geared than me, and it’s a very strange feeling.

Now, I’ve found that once people get into the swing of healing they do allright, but the largest obstacle in the way is they just don’t know where to start. Therefore, I’m going to break it down into the five biggest things that new trees (or recommissioned bears) ought to know so they can feel confident enough to type, “Healer LFG hVH!”

Healing as a Tank

So, I’ve started actually using my Paw-Paw Bear other spec. It seems that no matter what the status of the “tank shortage” is on other servers, Earthen Ring isn’t part of it. No, what I see most is “LF2M [instance], heals and DPS.” This is a pretty nice thing for Estu and I because it means we can get in on just about anything that’s going down, but it also means that I only get to be a bear while doing dailies… It puts me in a unique position. I hadn’t healed much before this, I think I did one Zul’Farrak run healing at level 50 with healing gear thrown onto my feral build… and In Kara whenever we did Nightbane, invariably the healers would drop one by one and I’d get out of Cat form and give the tank all the mana I had. This is different though, this main healing thing. And today’s post will be some of my observations on learning to heal from the perspective of someone whose first instinct is to be the biggest target of the bunch.