I've been reading on this forum for over a year now, but this is my first post. I've gleaned a lot from the discussion that I've read and now have run into a road-block of my own that hopefully you all can give some insight into.

First let me give some background. I came from a medium progressed guild pre-BC, we had downed Fankriss and were working on Huhuran in November before attrition basically tore the guild apart, and we stopped raiding. The guild soon disbanded since we weren't raiding, and the officer group attempted to reform and re-build from the ground up. Most of the healers (barring myself, one holy priest and one priest rerolled paladin) either quit the game or found homes in the top dog guilds on the server, opting to raid for 3 more weeks rather than rebuild.

The guild is now currently progressing in Karazhan, we've run into a few snags but have cleared up to the Curator on 2 occasions. The problem is, we need the 3 healers that had previous raid experience in the raid to be able to accomplish this. All of our new healers that we have picked up since rebuilding simply don't know how to heal. I have tried to coach them as far as anticipating incoming damage and timing their heals correctly and not spamming when its not needed, but all this seems to be to no avail.

Is there a way to better prepare these healers for a raid environment? Will it just take them time for it to sink in that they need to be more conscious of their actions in these more advanced encounters? Or should I just tell them to re-roll damage classes because there's no hope for them? I appreciate all input anyone can give, and look forward to your responses.

Team-play perhaps... if all your experienced raid healers are used to each other... they may fall into a technique of knowing that one of the others will look after <x> while they manage <z> etc... which is never a great environment with new people in small groups..

How do they perform in 5mans, heroics, PvP?

I must say our best healers generally tended to be the PvP ones we had join us, quick thinking, adaption etc are very useful traits in most places, and PvP is a great way to 'train it'.

Perhaps look into why things go wrong when they are there, what are they doing/not doing?
Running oom too fast? no good reflexes? always dieing? and also classes may help... ^^

Time and patience are my only guesses. I was pretty terrible for my first 3 months or so of raiding- the time and experience with the controls and coordination of effort can either come naturally (and it does to many) or it can take effort and learning (as it did for me). Regardless, unless they're willing to put in the time and effort to understand what you're asking of them and why that's different then what they're doing- it's like trying to teach them a foreign language. (aka some people have no interest in working hard to do what comes to others naturally)

If they lack the interest in learning how to heal on the level you need them to heal at- rerolling is one viable option for them. They'll probably never be steller dps either, but lackluster dps seems to be more forgiven.

You could have some of them rerolling paladins, since you can usually manage with flahs of light spam on most fights as a paladin ^^.

More seriously tho, there's no magic formula to make people learn how to play their class. You can make them improve a bit, by making them watch videos, explaining basic concepts and such, but bad healers, or players for that matter, have little chance to improve in a relatively small amount of time. If they didn't improve after only a few instance runs at level cap, and that's only assuming they weren't playing a healing class before BC, they won't improve fast. There's also people who reach their own "limit" faster than others, and then they can't really improve anymore. I know, and I'm sure I'm not alone, people that just simply suck, or are barely average at their role, even tho they've been playing since release, or even before.
In a game like WoW, which has so many people playing, and which is a first mmorpg for many, you're bound to find individuals that simply can't fit in a raiding environement, even tho they have time, because they lack skills they should have learned in the past(not only from mmorpgs, but from games in general).

I've played every side of WoW, PvP, raiding, as a healer, a dps or a tank, I'd say the "hardest" is main tanking, not because it requires more skill but because you have more weight on your shoulders since a personal mistake means a total wipe everytime. Healing is not terribly hard, but it requires a different mindset than the rest of the classes, where you have to be proactive and aware of the "rythm" of the fight to perform efficiently, while most other classes are reactive, or just plain dumb(dps rotations 4TW ^^).

Solo training them in certain heroics could help them get better, or PvP, but PvP is harsher than raiding when healing imo, because you have to be aware of everything around to be able to use your non healing abilities between heals(AE fears, grounding totem etc). But you need to monitor what they're doing to point out mistakes as soon as they're made, which isn't always easy, and they might not like it if you bitch at them too much, which leads to mitigated results.

My best advice, while not very friendly, would be to replace them with new people if they're not willing to improve.

Just reiterating what most people said above, you can't really teach someone to play well. I mean, it just makes sense. You either get it or you don't. Sure, some things will come through experience and everyone will (hopefully) become more skilled in time, but there's not really much you can do to teach someone what to do. You can try holding their hand and babysitting them to keep them alive on encounters but you can't really teach them to prioritize who needs to be healed, predict incoming damage, manage different ranks of spells, have quick reaction time, etc. Those are all things that you naturally are able/aren't able to do. When I used to play my druid, I had a couple other druids who would always ask me "What are some tips about healing as well as you do?" or "Why do you seem to be such a powerful healer compared to the rest of us?" and to be honest, I never really did anything special. I knew my class. I knew the mechanics of every fight inside and out. I knew how to manage my mana. I had very quick reaction times. I am a very intelligent and focused individual and it just all kind of came natural. In my experience, I've never really seen a mediocre player ever be anything more than a mediocre player and I've never really seen a bad player become semi decent, with really only one exception and that was a tank who upgraded his PC from a total piece of junk to a top of the line system. You can really apply any of this to every class. You can't really teach someone how to max out their damage capability, its honestly something so simple to do. You can't teach a healer how to heal, its something they either need to learn on their own or they aren't going to get it.

I think AQ was the first big step for healers, it taught you to manage mana (Emps) and to actually move around and watching positioning while healing (Emps, c'thun, etc). I've generally noticed a trend since then that healers we recruiting who never experienced late AQ tend to lack these skills.

In general, though, I've always liked the axiom that DPS is a science, and healing is an art. By which I mean, DPS needs to have planned their gear very well, and figured out perfect damage cycles, and such. Of course healers plan gear too, but DPS gear is more important generally (partially because of the power of, say, mana potions), and on-the-spot decisionmaking for a healer can literally mean wipe or not wipe very often. Missing one shot rotation is typically less detrimental.

So healing generally takes time to learn, because it is often about feel more than numbers.

Thats not really true, if you mentor them properly, give the basic tips and tricks your class can do, try and look into what they are doing wrong or not doing and mention it to them kindly with helpfull suggestions..

I believe once I really looked into my class indepth and understood every little thing I could (as a Rogue), my performance shot up and the others noticed... some started asking me advice on general things... talent specs.. gear... and eventually we (the Rogue class) ended up with a relationship where I felt like a 'father' figure to them, they may of just been lazy or perhaps not so good at researching/theory as me, but my goal was to help make my class the best it could be, and in the end we were an amazingly good 'team' within the guild. Whenever I found useful little tricks out on certain bosses, things that made my DPS higher than normal, I shared it with them and it helped everyone and the guild overall.

You need them to be willing to learn, they have to want to be good, and you need someone willing to be there and provide the knowledge and support they need.

However if they dont want to be good, get rid of them in all cases.

Eh, I'd argue it really is possible to teach, but often the teaching itself is the problem. Most players I've ever been in the position of needing to "teach" reacted fairly violently to the suggestion that they needed to do X,Y, or Z. Part of which I really think is/was related to teh fact that at the time they made it into guild many took the tag as confirmation of their greatness (I made it into the top raiding guild on server, I'm badass!) when it was more a confirmation of their potential. I remember several recruitment discussions in officer chat that came down to- He/She is simply not as good as our current people- but they've also never been at this level of play before either. They're showing notable improvement in their trial period and I think in a few weeks/months they'll be top game. Tag them and lets hope we're right. Sometimes we were and they turned out simply amazing- sometimes we weren't.

It's rarely the people who are open to suggestion who need to be taught though. The people who come to you and say "My overhealing % is higher than 'd like and I'm noticing my targets aren't staying alive as much as that person. What can I do to improve?" Those people are usually either the best or getting there because they are looking to better themselves.

It's the people who show up and, at the slightest amount of criticism- even if it's a glaring chasm of an issue- either deny there's a problem, or excuse it as not their fault. There's not much else to say unless you need to aggressively approach the problem, and once it turns from a friendly chat into a lecture or threats (fix it or your out of the raid/guild) it's usually more a case of minimizing collateral damage (when they gquit over you being mean or unfair and try to take their friends or start rumor mongering about how the officers are going to cut OTHER people... it's like leaving a viper in the cradle.) than fixing the problem.

If they're willing to be taught, they can be taught and most will learn well although it may take time. If they're teenagers rebelling against mommy telling them how to play or totally uninterested in mechanics- that's another problem. =/

Not every gamer was born with a silver NES controller in their hands and has been gaming since they were 5. Those of us late on the scene can be taught, but it's slower. =P

A year and a half ago I'd have gotten into a good guild because my husband is a strong player and I came as part of the package price. My major gaming experience was an obsession with console side scrollers (Mario3!)and pen and paper rpgs. I picked my gear because it looked pretty and I thought agility was pretty good for a mage- after all when I aoe'd and everything came to kill me I wanted to dodge!

Now I'm fairly sure I'm a strong enough player to stand on my own merit. =P It's easy to see the gems though- they're the ones who know they're godawful and want to improve.

edit: That was really freaky, but I thank whatever mod attempted to clean it up. I think my mouse was shorting out when I clicked post o.o

Eh, WoW was my first MMORPG (barring Eastern-developed turds like Maple Story... yes, go ahead and laugh, why don't you) and when I rolled druid and got into an MC at lv58 I expected to DPS, because that's what all my lovely greens were cobbled together for statwise.

It was a running joke in officer chat (I found out much later) that I was absolutely the worst person to be put in a healer spot, and it was like punishment if you got put in my party. I'm the kind of guy, however, who likes to figure out things on my own... maybe that's due to my ego or something, but I guess you could say I'm one of those self-taught people and I got promoted to becoming an officer midway into AQ40.

To me, good healing is all about two things; Knowing the fight, in terms of what kind of damage to expect in the next 5 seconds or so, and knowing yourself, in terms of getting a second-nature feel of the class, (how much each different heal can put out, the casting time lengths, how long your mana can hold out, burst healing, clutch healing vs sustained healing capabilities, etc) and knowing your gear level.

Nothing is more valuable than a healer who knows what he's capable/not of vs a particular fight. That kind of knowledge plus good communication skills with the rest of the healers and/or the raid leader for feedback on the strategies involve will greatly reduce the learning curve of many fights.

There's nothing shittier than going in attempt after attempt where mistakes aren't pinpointed and fixed... and that tends to happen a lot more when people don't know their class and gear. This seems to apply to healers more than anyone.

The basics that need to be learnt by good healers (it surprises me how many aren't aware) are habits like cast-cancelling, understanding the five second rule, understanding the utility of each type of heal... PW:S vs flash vs greater vs renew, (back when PW:S saved Firemaw/Twin Emps/etc tanks) rather than just mindlessly spamming 1 button whenever someone's HP goes down below 50%

Edit: how did my post end up starting with "Eh" as well? zomg herd instinct!

Dumb, condescending thread title. How about teaching tanks to tank? Teaching dps to dps? Teaching players to play?


The only lesson here is that you can't push a rope. If you have people who want to be good healers, they'll learn.


The most I can say is that healing is the quintessential team effort. Playing DPS you pretty much only need to focus on what you're doing. As a healer, your actions (heals) are meaningless unless coordinated with all of the other healers. So you as GL can try to encourage communication among the healers at least.

How is it a dumb and/or condescending thread title? People don't just magically understand how to tank/heal/dps well. If they're not learning it on their own, you have to try and help them improve. This may come as a shock, but there was a time you did not know how to read. It had to be taught to you.