My thoughts on healing.
I play a resto druid as my main. I’ve always wanted to heal. When I levelled up, I did so as balance (once I understood talent trees).
When I hit 70, I just respecced and put EVERYTHING into the resto tree.
I didn’t understand talent choice, putting 11 of my points into balance, nothing.
I had no resto druids to guide me. I never raided at 70. I did a couple of heroics, then Wrath hit. I had a bit if a rubbish relationship, and so I barely played and was slow to hit 80 – NYE in fact, exactly a year after I started playing WoW.
I got thrown into raiding straight away. I had no idea about talent choices, rotations, add-ons, nothing. I got asked into a Naxx10, and then a Naxx25, and quickly became a regular raider. I attended every raid, and I had help with a more sensible respec from a lovely ‘lock friend of mine who knew a little bit about everything.
There was one other healing druid, but not a hardcore raider, and he didn’t really know anything more than I did. I learnt by myself, by reading things on the internet and by trying to learn stuff. I tried to build up a cohesive healing team in my guild, I held meetings, put out questionnaires so we could learn more about the different strengths and weaknesses. I started using recount and fell into the typical trap of the unknowledgeable healer and strived to make the top of the meters.
People didn’t die. I got good at healing Naxxramas, I got my 4 set T7.5 bonus. I started absorbing WWS stats, compiling reports and finding myself at the top, or near the top, of effective healing every raid. I even took a brief foray into WoWCardioRaid, although it confuses me horrendously.
And then real life happened. I stopped raiding, and moved guilds. I started raiding again a few weeks after, moving into Ulduar for the first time. And my healing was…pitiful. I was being absolutely pwned br priests and paladins every week.
And there were two other raiding druid healers but to be perfectly honest I genuinely have no recollection of their healing. I think, if I can remember, they were roughly on a par with myself, maybe slightly better.
And now. I am, once again, the only regular healing druid in my guild. I try my hardest (although I think I could probably always try harder), and I am continuously being absolutely OWNED in effective healing by the paladins in particular, but also the priests, but my overhealing is thousands above everybody elses.
I am constantly humbled by what I see as my own poor performance, and I constantly feel like my healing is simply just not good enough. I am raiding with a very competitive friend, who pushes meters constantly. I try and abide by the old mantra of healing meters meaning nothing between different classes but I cannot help but feel angry at what I see as my own poor performance in comparison to others. And I just don’t know what to do about it.
I am stuck, in that there is nobody I can go to for advice about this as I don’t know any druids on our server and all these blogging druids are so above my echelon that I am just stranded. I feel like I need a revamp, but then I think – what else could I do? I gem, I enchant. My gear is not the best but it is certainly good. I am very much stuck at the moment, but in the position where all I can do is keep practising and keep working on self-improvement.
I think my advice to any other healing druids – or in fact anybody starting out healing – would be try and find someone to ask. Try and find someone who you can talk to and ask advice from.
I’ve been raiding since January 2009 and I still spend every day worrying I’m not doing things right.
Elsenx
Resto Druid Elsen of Terenas EU 
Nyo said,
October 29, 2009 @ 3:07 pm
The concept that overhealing is relevant is kind of an outdated one. The game has become simpler now and there are those who would complain and say that its lost its hard-core edge but much like threat which is largely irrelevant now so is overhealing.
Overhealing only matters if you run out of mana then at that stage it is a certain amount of wasted healing but mana regen is rather out of control at the moment so at the end of the day all that matters is your effective healing and that you have mana left at the end.
But once again if we examine effective healing as a measurement of performance we find that lacking, a useful tool perhaps but little more.
Healing more than dps is also about when your heals land, it wont tell you if you made that critical heal that kept the tank up, if you are benifiting from usefull but not critical raid wide topping up of individuals and just generally if you managed to spike your healing when it was really needed. Ultimatly effective healing is a Raid leader tool, a suggestion, an indicator and little more.
I wouldnt not get too uptight over these 2 issues (especially the overhealing one)
Jaedia said,
October 30, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
You’re a resto druid, therefore the amount of HOTs you have to use will force you to the top of the overhealing meters. I seriously wouldn’t pay masses of attention to them, but if you want to keep on your toes, do the odd heroic once in a while, and I mean, a pug, not Zal :p just to remind yourself that yes, I am a good healer.