So you're interested in being a healer? Being a healer can be both challenging and rewarding. No group can complete new content without a competent healer, and there are several simple things each healer can focus on in order to improve the chances for a group's success.
Many healers hit 85, queue for heroics, and find they have some serious mana and/or healing problems. This comes primarily from any of the following: improper talents, wrong gemming/enchanting/gearing, and spell usage. I'm not planning to cover the talent trees here, but I will cover how to gear and make better use of your spells.
Tip #1: Spirit isn't always better.
Many healers seem to think Spirit is better than Intellect. This couldn't be farther from the truth. As a healer Intellect is the most important stat BY FAR! Not only does it make your mana pool larger, it makes all of your heals bigger (Intellect gives spell power), and healers also regenerate mana based on the size of their mana pool because of spells such as Shadowfiend, Divine Plea, Innervate, Telluric Currents, Replenishment, etc.
This being said Spirit is the second most important stat for healers. Without Spirit, we would not regenerate enough mana to last through fights. Every piece of your gear should have Spirit on it, preferably the way it came, but reforging a few pieces to Spirit is acceptable too, as long as your regen allows for it.
I'd even go as far as to say both your trinkets should have Intellect on them if at all possible. Personally I prefer to use the Tsunami Deck and Core of Ripeness (or if you can't afford the Darkmoon Card, try out the 346 trinket from Heroic Stonecore), but at the minimum 1 trinket should always have Intellect.
Proper gemming:
Match any sockets with a +Intellect socket bonus using the following guidelines. If a bonus is something other than Intellect, feel free to use Brilliant Inferno Ruby in the socket at your own discretion.
Meta gem: Ember Shadowspirit: Int+2% of your mana pool. Yes, I know there is a spirit/critical healing effect meta...but using it means you lose the chance of more Intellect, which is not a good thing.
Red: Brilliant Inferno Ruby
Blue: Purified Demonseye
Yellow: Disc Priests: Artful Ember Topaz
Holy Priests: Artful or Reckless Ember Topaz
Pally: Reckless or Potent Ember Topaz
Shaman: Potent Ember Topaz
Druid: Reckless Ember Topaz (although if you aren't near a haste breakpoint*, Artful is probably better)
*see Elitist Jerks page on Resto Druid for a list of the haste breakpoints
Tip #2: Faster isn't always better.
Flash Heal, Flash of Light, Healing Surge, Regrowth....95% of the time it is not worth using these spells. Health pools have been inflated so much that you can usually get a larger, slower heal off before your target would die....and if not, they were probably standing in something bad and deserve to die anyway. This isn't always the case, but sometimes it's good to help a dps learn that fire is bad! Just be sure to have these spells ready for the 5% of the time when you truly do need to use them!
Tip #3: Know all your cooldowns and how to use them.
We have spells for a reason and should know how to use every one in our book, as well as have potions available in case we need bigger heals (Volcanic Potion) or need more mana (Concentration or Mythical Mana Potion). We have cooldowns to catch up on healing, mitigate damage, get more mana, and other class-related cooldowns. I'd like to start a second write up specifically on these cooldowns and how they can be used in order to give them the credit they deserve, so I will not be going into detail on these here.
Tip #4: Overhealing is wasted mana.
Our job is simply to keep people from dying! If 50% of our spells go to overhealing, we use double the mana we needed to use. Monitoring your overhealing using Recount, Skada, or World of Logs, will give you mana you didn't know you had! In a perfect world there would be no overhealing, but there will always be a bit more from AoE heals and on tanks.
Tip #5: Know how much your spells cost.
When I first started healing, I never really thought about how much each spell I cast cost me. I just used whatever looked like it did the best for the job. I didn't realize that some spells do a TON more healing than others for similar amounts of mana. Below is a table I made from some of the priest heals I used from a recent raid:
Holy Priests:
Healing Per Mana (HPM)
Prayer of Healing (5 targets) 7.38
Circle of Healing (5 targets) 9.39
Prayer of Mending (5 targets) 20
Renew 7.62
Greater Heal 5.28
Flash Heal 2.99
Heal 3.98
Binding Heal 5.04
The larger the HPM, the more healing that spell does. A spell with a HPM of 20 will do four times the healing for the same amount of mana that a spell with a HPM of 5 will do! Prioritizing high efficiency spells will make your mana last longer!
Below are sample tables for other healing classes based on the average amount of healing each spell did in some of the TF raids we logged in Firelands (Special thanks to Gavin, Ben, and Vern for your awesome data!!!). The HPM of these spells will change slightly as your gear changes, but the priority of which ones are more efficent than others will stay around the same.
Shamans:
Please note that Unleash Elements can have a major impact on the amount of healing a spell does, and this was not taken into account in the table below.
Healing Per Mana (HPM)
Earth Shield (9 charges) 9.9
Healing Wave 4.4
Chain Heal (4 targets) 8.06
Greater Healing Wave 4.34
Healing Surge 3.28
Riptide (8 ticks) 7.56
Healing Rain (6 targets) 9.12
Druids:
Healing Per Mana (HPM)
Wild Growth (6 targets, 8 ticks) 13.79
Rejuv (5 ticks) 3.4
Lifebloom (per stack, 11 ticks) 10.76
Regrowth (3 ticks) 1.25
Nourish 6.21
Healing Touch 5.48
Pallies:
Please note that Holy Shock is used to generate Holy Power, which gives tons of free healing via Light of Dawn and Word of Glory, so it is a lot more important for mana conservation than it appears below. Also, please note that these amounts of healing are ignoring the amount of healing done through Beacon of Light.
Healing Per Mana (HPM)
Holy Light 3.02
Divine Light 2.74
Holy Radiance (6 targets, 12 ticks) 4.19
Flash of Light 2.77
Holy Shock* 4.17
Disc Priests:
Disc priests have the most complex mana efficiency of any class because there are so many variables with Grace, Mastery, Crits/Divine Aegis. It is extremely difficult to make an accurate table to truly reflect how much absorbs and healing are obtained, and for this I apologize. Any of you wanting to know more about disc priest healing, there are many skilled disc priests in the guild who I'm sure would love to share some of their secrets with you!
Tip #6: As Aliena would say...Good luck and Have Fun!
With these tips and tricks you'll be off to a great start. When I started healing I really wish someone would have shared this information with me. I've been sharing most of this write-up with some guildies for a few months now, so I felt it would be potentially helpful to compile these thoughts to help others out. Of course it never hurts to find other healers in game and copy what they are doing or researching a little on the internet!
Tiffany
P.s. Any healing tips you've found that you'd like to share with the guild, please feel free to add them! I am far from all-knowing, so the more you guys share, the better this guide will be! When it comes to healing, we can learn something from everyone, no matter how large or small!
P.s.s. Please post any useful sites you've found for healing on this forum, so everyone will be able to benefit!
Many healers hit 85, queue for heroics, and find they have some serious mana and/or healing problems. This comes primarily from any of the following: improper talents, wrong gemming/enchanting/gearing, and spell usage. I'm not planning to cover the talent trees here, but I will cover how to gear and make better use of your spells.
Tip #1: Spirit isn't always better.
Many healers seem to think Spirit is better than Intellect. This couldn't be farther from the truth. As a healer Intellect is the most important stat BY FAR! Not only does it make your mana pool larger, it makes all of your heals bigger (Intellect gives spell power), and healers also regenerate mana based on the size of their mana pool because of spells such as Shadowfiend, Divine Plea, Innervate, Telluric Currents, Replenishment, etc.
This being said Spirit is the second most important stat for healers. Without Spirit, we would not regenerate enough mana to last through fights. Every piece of your gear should have Spirit on it, preferably the way it came, but reforging a few pieces to Spirit is acceptable too, as long as your regen allows for it.
I'd even go as far as to say both your trinkets should have Intellect on them if at all possible. Personally I prefer to use the Tsunami Deck and Core of Ripeness (or if you can't afford the Darkmoon Card, try out the 346 trinket from Heroic Stonecore), but at the minimum 1 trinket should always have Intellect.
Proper gemming:
Match any sockets with a +Intellect socket bonus using the following guidelines. If a bonus is something other than Intellect, feel free to use Brilliant Inferno Ruby in the socket at your own discretion.
Meta gem: Ember Shadowspirit: Int+2% of your mana pool. Yes, I know there is a spirit/critical healing effect meta...but using it means you lose the chance of more Intellect, which is not a good thing.
Red: Brilliant Inferno Ruby
Blue: Purified Demonseye
Yellow: Disc Priests: Artful Ember Topaz
Holy Priests: Artful or Reckless Ember Topaz
Pally: Reckless or Potent Ember Topaz
Shaman: Potent Ember Topaz
Druid: Reckless Ember Topaz (although if you aren't near a haste breakpoint*, Artful is probably better)
*see Elitist Jerks page on Resto Druid for a list of the haste breakpoints
Tip #2: Faster isn't always better.
Flash Heal, Flash of Light, Healing Surge, Regrowth....95% of the time it is not worth using these spells. Health pools have been inflated so much that you can usually get a larger, slower heal off before your target would die....and if not, they were probably standing in something bad and deserve to die anyway. This isn't always the case, but sometimes it's good to help a dps learn that fire is bad! Just be sure to have these spells ready for the 5% of the time when you truly do need to use them!
Tip #3: Know all your cooldowns and how to use them.
We have spells for a reason and should know how to use every one in our book, as well as have potions available in case we need bigger heals (Volcanic Potion) or need more mana (Concentration or Mythical Mana Potion). We have cooldowns to catch up on healing, mitigate damage, get more mana, and other class-related cooldowns. I'd like to start a second write up specifically on these cooldowns and how they can be used in order to give them the credit they deserve, so I will not be going into detail on these here.
Tip #4: Overhealing is wasted mana.
Our job is simply to keep people from dying! If 50% of our spells go to overhealing, we use double the mana we needed to use. Monitoring your overhealing using Recount, Skada, or World of Logs, will give you mana you didn't know you had! In a perfect world there would be no overhealing, but there will always be a bit more from AoE heals and on tanks.
Tip #5: Know how much your spells cost.
When I first started healing, I never really thought about how much each spell I cast cost me. I just used whatever looked like it did the best for the job. I didn't realize that some spells do a TON more healing than others for similar amounts of mana. Below is a table I made from some of the priest heals I used from a recent raid:
Holy Priests:
Healing Per Mana (HPM)
Prayer of Healing (5 targets) 7.38
Circle of Healing (5 targets) 9.39
Prayer of Mending (5 targets) 20
Renew 7.62
Greater Heal 5.28
Flash Heal 2.99
Heal 3.98
Binding Heal 5.04
The larger the HPM, the more healing that spell does. A spell with a HPM of 20 will do four times the healing for the same amount of mana that a spell with a HPM of 5 will do! Prioritizing high efficiency spells will make your mana last longer!
Below are sample tables for other healing classes based on the average amount of healing each spell did in some of the TF raids we logged in Firelands (Special thanks to Gavin, Ben, and Vern for your awesome data!!!). The HPM of these spells will change slightly as your gear changes, but the priority of which ones are more efficent than others will stay around the same.
Shamans:
Please note that Unleash Elements can have a major impact on the amount of healing a spell does, and this was not taken into account in the table below.
Healing Per Mana (HPM)
Earth Shield (9 charges) 9.9
Healing Wave 4.4
Chain Heal (4 targets) 8.06
Greater Healing Wave 4.34
Healing Surge 3.28
Riptide (8 ticks) 7.56
Healing Rain (6 targets) 9.12
Druids:
Healing Per Mana (HPM)
Wild Growth (6 targets, 8 ticks) 13.79
Rejuv (5 ticks) 3.4
Lifebloom (per stack, 11 ticks) 10.76
Regrowth (3 ticks) 1.25
Nourish 6.21
Healing Touch 5.48
Pallies:
Please note that Holy Shock is used to generate Holy Power, which gives tons of free healing via Light of Dawn and Word of Glory, so it is a lot more important for mana conservation than it appears below. Also, please note that these amounts of healing are ignoring the amount of healing done through Beacon of Light.
Healing Per Mana (HPM)
Holy Light 3.02
Divine Light 2.74
Holy Radiance (6 targets, 12 ticks) 4.19
Flash of Light 2.77
Holy Shock* 4.17
Disc Priests:
Disc priests have the most complex mana efficiency of any class because there are so many variables with Grace, Mastery, Crits/Divine Aegis. It is extremely difficult to make an accurate table to truly reflect how much absorbs and healing are obtained, and for this I apologize. Any of you wanting to know more about disc priest healing, there are many skilled disc priests in the guild who I'm sure would love to share some of their secrets with you!
Tip #6: As Aliena would say...Good luck and Have Fun!
With these tips and tricks you'll be off to a great start. When I started healing I really wish someone would have shared this information with me. I've been sharing most of this write-up with some guildies for a few months now, so I felt it would be potentially helpful to compile these thoughts to help others out. Of course it never hurts to find other healers in game and copy what they are doing or researching a little on the internet!
Tiffany
P.s. Any healing tips you've found that you'd like to share with the guild, please feel free to add them! I am far from all-knowing, so the more you guys share, the better this guide will be! When it comes to healing, we can learn something from everyone, no matter how large or small!
P.s.s. Please post any useful sites you've found for healing on this forum, so everyone will be able to benefit!
. Practice will make them better and you more effective and your mana efficiency will come with it 
.
I feel like I improved almost overnight by reading through this guide and another section on MMO Champions for holy pallies. Someone from the guild shared