Now your UI is setup in a way that you are happy with, or at least it seems that way for now, and you’re ready to get to the real meat of this series. Good for you. I’m going to warn you, though, don’t be surprised if you end up changing your UI again after this post!

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Style One: The Clicker

The most basic way to heal is by clicking the spell you want to cast and then clicking on the intended target (or clicking on the target and then clicking the spell). Although this style works, my opinion is that this is the most inefficient method of healing available to any player. Some common side effects include:

• Feeling rushed to get heals on everyone.
• Feeling like a horrible healer because DPS is constantly dying as a result of not catching a heal quite fast enough.
• A sudden urge to drink. Heavily. And often.

The clicking style of healing is not necessarily a bad way to heal. Instead of giving up, or thinking there is no way one can possibly become a better healer, let’s look at one simple to make this playstyle work much more efficiently, and without trying to turn a clicker into another style player:

Use Clique (Curse Gaming Link). This addon really is a wonderful tool. I even use it for buffs so that I don’t have to keybind/macro Mark of the Wild, Gift of the Wild, or Thorns.

Clique allows the user to open the spellbook and, using any combination of buttons+clicks of the mouse, assign a spell to be cast when said combination is pressed. What’s that? Adding a button press changes the style of play and makes you uncomfortable? Yes, it does slightly. However, this is something that is very easy to grow accustomed to, and having one or two spells (Lifebloom and Rejuvenation would be my minimum recommendation) in a quickly and easily castable manner will make healing much, much easier.

Style Two: The Masochist

This is the person who never touches the mouse. The person who scoffs at the idea that there is any reason whatsoever to ever, ever move one’s hands away from the keyboard. These people can be very effective healers, although in my opinion they still are not the most efficient. Some common side effects of this style are:

• A need to drink. Seriously, learn to go have fun.
• Severe callouses on the fingertips.
• An inflated ego.

There really is not much to suggest for this playstyle. If you really just want to use the keyboard that much by all means do so. It makes things harder by requiring more keypresses to get the job done than needed, but you are should be a relatively efficient healer (although slower than my healing style, I guarantee it!)

Hopefully you are at least using macros to make your life a little easier, and if not here is an example to get you started:

/cast [modifier:ctrl] Rejuvenation; [modifier;shift] Regrowth; Lifebloom

This macro will cast Lifebloom when pressed, Regrowth when shift is held down and pressed, and Rejuvenation when control is held down and pressed. (Note that I’m not the best with macros, so if this is wrong let me know!)

Style Three: The Hybrid

The hybrid healer typically uses some combination of the keyboard and mouse, and covers many, many variations. There is no way I can truly cover them all, and so instead this section will focus on my style of healing.

I am a “mouseover” healer. I use macros/keybindings for my spells, and I use the mouse to “select” the recipient of my spells. When combined with something like Grid (hence my strong recommendation that it should be a part of anyone’s UI in the first installment of this series) makes for very efficient and quick healing.

An example of a macro I use:

#showtooltip Lifebloom
/cast [help][target=mouseover,help,nodead][target=player] Lifebloom

This macro casts Lifebloom on the target I have selected (if friendly) with the highest priority. If I do not have a player selected it casts Lifebloom on the friendly target I am hovering over with the mouse, and finally on myself if neither of the prior requirements are met. I use this priority simply because I find I make more mistakes having the mouse accidentally over someone instead of accidentally having someone targeted.

#showtooltip Rejuvenation
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/use 14
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()
/cast [help][target=mouseover,help,nodead][target=player] Rejuvenation

This macro takes things a step further. I rarely ever use my trinkets manually. Although not necessarily ideal, I find that this macro is the best approach for me personally. Basically, everytime my trinket is on coooldown and I cast a Rejuvenation my trinket is used also. The extra couple of lines simply keep the annoying “You cannot use that item yet” text from appearing when I cast a Rejuvenation while the trinket is still on cooldown.

Some common side effects of this style of healing seem to include:

• Praise from others.
• Time to go afk during fights (briefly of course… that Lifebloom stack still needs to stay up).
• Plenty of time to read boss strats or blog posts while in combat.
• Mobile healing (otherwise known as jumping around like a fool and healing anyway).

Obviously I’m biased toward the “Hybrid” style of healing. In all honesty any of these styles will work fine, they just require some different techniques. The “Clicker” will probably feel more comfortable using some combination of Regrowth, Rejuvenation, Healing Touch, Swiftmend (and maybe Nourish). The “Masochist” will… well… to be honest I have no idea what this person would do. I’m sure it would be a challenge to them to be able to do it all. Regardless, if you want to cause yourself more anxiety and stress than necessary feel free, I’ll stick to my hybrid ways!

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These are all very generalized overviews. I’m happy to go into more detail if someone would like, just let me know. Until then look forward to the third segment of this series: The Healing Rulebook