Playing a healer, how do you deal with it?

[Doom123]

As the title states, I am having a hard time sitting down and playing my healer.

And I figured out that it is not because you heal, not because you don't go around killing, it is because if how you interact with the game. When I'm on my Magus/Marauder my eyes are always on the middle of the screen, having full situational awareness at all times and engaging fully with what is going on.

When I'm on my Zealot however, my eyes are constantly darting from the group screen to the middle of it. I spend 80% of my time staring at the party screen and the peoples names, and only 20% of the time actually looking at the fight. I'm RR 69 on my Zealot currently, I'm often getting positive feedback from my parties in RvR that I heal good. But then I feel just drained and like I didn't have fun for the most of the time I do play the Zealot.

Is this just the inescapable reality of a healer? Are there any addons that assist with having a better experience (I'm currently only using the Enemy addon)?

I just want to spend more time actually playing the game rather than playing wack-a-mole with the party screen, filling up a bar over and over.

Any advise/tips on how to make playing healers a less tiresome experience?

[Nameless]

Much or less that it is, some ppl like that playstyle, some dont. If you dont enjoy it play something that you do.
Enemy addon is must have imo for healers, but you need some fine tunning to make your life easier and to have more time to monitor something else beside health bars

[Aethilmar]

This is why some folks like lifetap healing over traditional healing. It is a lot harder and generally has worse healing results but you do have to pay attention to both your team and what is happening around you so it is more engaging.

[BluIzLucky]

As the title states, I am having a hard time sitting down and playing my healer.

Maybe a standing desk will help? Badumtiss

To me that's pretty much what healers do, look at health bars. 80% is probably too high, but 50% sure, you still need to look out for positions, flow and engagements.
And Zealot as a healer also has the most tools (m1, WoI, stagger, AoE silence, AoE heal debuff, AoE absorbs) all of which can have very high impact.
Have you m1 on MA's target and then staggered one healer and silenced the other to secure the kill?
Have you trapped a group or warband against a wall with Winds of Insanity while they get deleted?
Have you seen a warband melt after you M4 them?
Have you WoI on healer backline follow by double AoE silence?

You could try hybrid with "heal triage" addon, then I suppose you wouldn't need to look at health bars at all. RoR.builders - Zealot

But maybe healing just isn't for you?

[Xameleon]

Brilliant. That is exactly my thoughts while playing destro healers. Your gameplay as a healer narrows down to finding PERFECT position. And oh boy it's not even close in terms of difficulty between factions.

I have lvl40 RP, WP, AM, Shaman, DoK. The only healer of non-level-40 is Zealot and it's basically the same as RP but more fun (winds of insanity, talon). My AM is RR83, RP RR80, DoK RR80. I have quite an experience playing as a healer. And MAN! You could not believe how much easier and boring it is to play healer on destro side. The only time you die is when you **** up you positioning SO BADLY you totally deserve death. Even then, sometimes you can escape from unbelievable situations being in a middle of order blob and just running away with flee.

The reason being unbalanced amount of AoE crowd control between factions. More importantly - Covenant of Celerity and AoE mara KD. Mara/choppa pull are there as well, but they are not as soul crushing as Covenant of Celerity.

You need to be 1000% more aware of you surroundings as an order healer. Once caught in a 100ft applicable !passive! slow from AoE fluff ability (that being CoC proc) - you present yourself vulnerable to more direct CC or being caught by melee.

What I may suggest to you is to play AM order side. The reworked mechanics are engaging and rewarding, many useful tools in a kit, strong both single and AoE healing, pretty needed in 6v6 or WB play, has an excellent DPS spec. You will need to keep an eye on mechanic, healthbars AND much more importantly - your positioning. Since you will be playing order, all it takes is 1 little mistake.

You may play shaman as a mirror class for AM. But I warn you, Shaman is infinitely more tanky thanks to the Goblin Tactics (speed boost, auto detaunt), and more importantly - you don't need to be cautious of you surroundings at the same degree as while playing order healer. It might be unfair for order healer, but it's much more engaging gameplay IMO.

For better of this game, CoC slow component should be removed and order should have access to AoE knock of some sort. Then destro healer life will not be as boring as it is right now.

[Demonito]

☆.。.:・°☆.。.:・°Wind of Insanity°・:.。.☆°・:.。.☆



Nice youtube tutorial

Enemy : Configure it to show all your different Heals over Time + Use click cast

woh reticle

For a better view of where your targets are

healhoverassist

Real cool to target someone outside of your warband

[Coocooclock]

As the title states, I am having a hard time sitting down and playing my healer.

And I figured out that it is not because you heal, not because you don't go around killing, it is because if how you interact with the game. When I'm on my Magus/Marauder my eyes are always on the middle of the screen, having full situational awareness at all times and engaging fully with what is going on.

When I'm on my Zealot however, my eyes are constantly darting from the group screen to the middle of it. I spend 80% of my time staring at the party screen and the peoples names, and only 20% of the time actually looking at the fight. I'm RR 69 on my Zealot currently, I'm often getting positive feedback from my parties in RvR that I heal good. But then I feel just drained and like I didn't have fun for the most of the time I do play the Zealot.

Is this just the inescapable reality of a healer? Are there any addons that assist with having a better experience (I'm currently only using the Enemy addon)?

I just want to spend more time actually playing the game rather than playing wack-a-mole with the party screen, filling up a bar over and over.

Any advise/tips on how to make playing healers a less tiresome experience?

Seems like to me that you are doing everything correctly. Well i don't know if it is correctly but what you describe is basically the same thing ive been doing for years. And it works pretty well i would think. Probably win about half of my sc's all in all. So i can't complain

[Fey]

If Shaman is so easy to play, why would you warn someone against playing one? It's the most played class in the game. Play it, who cares? And no serious shaman healer runs both those tactics, particularly now that Run Away! has an icd. You might survive, but your heals will be ass.

Staring at your group UI has always been an issue for healers. There are some ways to make it fun though. Stagger/silence on zealot is very compelling gameplay. Out of party healing is also pretty engaging as you have to actively click on those players to heal them. Honestly you kind of have to train yourself to look up from your UI from time to time and assess the situation on the field.

Spamming HoTs and flash heal is mind-numbingly boring, but that's your bread and butter. Everyone would rather just play a dps, but the world needs ditch diggers too.

[anstalt]

Sadly, staring at health bars is a necessary part of being a healer - you need to know who to heal, and health bars tell you who needs it.

I do find this game much more engaging than most for healing, precisely because you do need to pay attention to the fight, you need to move around a lot, and the primary/secondary targetting stuff.

There are some things you can do to make life easier if you're struggling a bit:

1) Rearrange your UI - you can and probably already have messed about with the UI, but there's nothing stopping you moving the groups healthbars more central to reduce eye stress. You can configure enemy to shrink sizes, arrange groups etc.

2) Alternatives to enemy - i don't know what it's called, but theres a UI mod that puts the healthbars into squares, so all 24 warband members are stacked in a nice block. You can then put this block of healthbars in a convenient spot. Takes up a lot less space, can be placed next to your action bars.

3) Wartriage - this mod gives you a new skill / macro for your toolbar that targets the person who needs healing the most. Can be tweaked for percentages and priorities, but basically u get this setup correctly and then just press one button followed by healing skills. This will allow you to focus more on the fight and less on health bars.

4) Be "selfish" and only focus on your group - you can shove the healthbars of the other 3 groups over to one side, and move your own group to a more comfortable area of the ui. Ignore everyone else and just heal ur own grp.



Personally, I stick with the standard Enemy setup for health bars and just make sure it tracks my HoTs. I have to look at health bars both for tanking (who to switch guard to) and healing so im pretty used to it by now. If you get things spaced correctly on your UI, you can focus on the fight and your periferal vision will pick up dropping health bars.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly - you don't have to play a healer! Its great you tried it, and stuck it out til rr69, but if you aren't enjoying it you don't have to play it! Play something u like more. Perhaps give it a rest, play a different class, and come back to it later.