Healer starting, with some questions ^^

[Artois]

Hello everyone. Decided to give Vanilla WoW a shot after hearing so many good comments about Nostalrius from Twitch Streamers, so me and a friend are gonna start playing tomorrow.
I had a couple of questions:

1) I've heard that the "best" healer for raiding is Holy Priest. I like the idea, 99% positive I'm gonna roll that, but I'd like to know if there are alternatives.

2)I logged in real quick tonight and I realized I wouldnt see my heal's floating text on anyone beside me, so I downloaded SCT. everything works fine but I noticed that the floating text pops on my char instead of popping on the people I'm healing, any way to fix that?

3) I've heard that its very important for healers to bring mana pots along. I never had to deal with consumables and I was wondering how you get those pots. Are they cheap? easy to farm? I imagine you need Alchemy for those?

4)How should we level up? sticking to quests only? or are 5 mans viable to get xp?


Sorry for the noobie questions looking foward to join this amazing server !

[Viorus]

Yes, you'll want to spec primarily in Holy but don't forget the Disc talents to get improved Power word : Shield AWA Mana regen during combat.

5 mans and quests are a good option. You'll be better off during 5 mans because you aren't very efficient at soloing. You are more efficient at supporting others.

Welcome to WOW, the cheapest way to get mana pots is to make them yourself (herb/alchemy) but if you don't want to, they can be bought for reasonable prices on the AH. The main thing is to bring a supply of mana regen drinks that are usable out of combat. Have twenty in your inventory just in case a mage doesn't come in your group. These can be purchased at any Inn keeper.

[teekeeus]

Mana potions are an incredibly important facet of healing in vanilla wow--for any healer class.

You need to make sure that you're using them effectively, as well. For example, if you're on progression content, and you need every scrap of mana you can get, one technique is to pop a mana potion as early in the fight as you can such that you don't waste any of the mana from the pot. That way, you can drink more than 1 pot per fight!

[Garfunkel]

Before raiding, having 1 or 2 mana pots for an emergency is a good idea for those OH SHIT emergencies that always seem to happen. But if your tank or dps don't wait for you to drink, let them die instead of popping a potion. That teaches them a valuable lesson.

In raids, however, it is essential that you have at least 1 mana pot for each "boss" encounter you expect to tackle plus couple extras in case you wipe and have to try again. The exact number depends on people's gear and skills - Blacklisted now has MC pretty much on farm, so I hardly ever need to pop mana potions as bosses die quickly enough.

But more important than having consumables, is downranking and healing assignments. No amount of potions/runes/tubers will help if you keep wasting mana on overhealing. Get an addon like SmartHeal to begin with as it helps you to grasp the efficiency of downranking and makes it easy to start with, then ditch it by the time you get to raiding as you make your own healing macros based on your needs.

I leveled 1-60 as disc/holy, my build can be found here:
viewtopic.php?f=39&t=1270
as well as my comments from along the way. Might be useful to you.

[varth]

This is from the perspective of someone who raided all content through aq40 as a resto shaman, and on nost as a priest through all current content.

First of all, priests are the best tank healers on horde, but for raid healing shamans destroy us with chain heal, especially after the patch that makes the bounces smart. For 5 mans due to fade priest is way easier due to healing agro management. Both of those classes are in top demand for raids. Paladins are very good healers but also boring because they just spam their quick heal over and over

Mana potions are only very important for the long fights, in current content the only fights that require pots are Rag and domo (I'm not even in 40man gear, I just have full preraid bis). Once BWL comes out this changes drastically, with razorgore (depending what version this server releases), firemaw, chrommaggus depending on colors, and nef all requiring pots to be effective. Getting herbs is hard due to the huge population but still possible if you are persistent. The prices are currently reasonable, but once BWL comes out the prices will go up drastically.

For leveling you should be getting 5/5 improved wands in disc then putting the rest of your points in shadow. I hit level 60 doing that + following joannas guide to leveling in 6 days played which is quick, and I still did a few dungeons. Just stack spirit and kill with 1 mind blast, 1 swp, and wanding. rinse and repeat

[kyubey]

Just stack spirit and kill with 1 mind blast, 1 swp, and wanding. rinse and repeat

That's basically a form of self torture. Leveling a priest right now so can relate.
Would recommend listening to audiobooks while leveling, as it really gets repetitive.

[Evoblade]

Do you have a link to joannas guide?

[Velo]

Would recommend while doing low level dungeons to get used to using different ranks of healing spells to stay efficient

[varth]

http://www.joanasworld.com/azeroth.htm is what I used. If it is too crowded or you are getting killed by high levels too much just find a corner to grind in. I personally did pure grinding from level 33-40 so that I got a mount immediately.

[Evoblade]

http://www.joanasworld.com/azeroth.htm is what I used. If it is too crowded or you are getting killed by high levels too much just find a corner to grind in. I personally did pure grinding from level 33-40 so that I got a mount immediately.

Thanks!

Why pure grinding, better money than questing?