Something that's helped me alot is actually doing higher keys, there is a break point at 16 where the overall healing requirement actually decreases, and only healing checks increase because most avoidable mechanics are 1 shots, so it's no longer "why didn't you heal me!?" It's silence since a dps knows they messed up if there on the floor

From a resto druid healing 20+ keys, most of the healer anxiety comes from bad DPS and tanks that don't avoid damage or mechanics.

A big thing for me was staying well within my limits during Season 1 while learning my new healing spec (Holy Priest), optimizing my key bindings and gaining muscle memory. I crept up slowly, doing +2s, then 3s, then 5s and felt content with that for the first week. Then 6s and 7s for a couple weeks, then as my gear and muscle memory improved I pushed into 11s and 12s. After 5 or 6 weeks, 13s were easy and 14s depended on the group's skill, not mine. After getting KSM a couple weeks later I had 95% perfect muscle memory for all of my keybinds / abilities, and much more situational awareness which would trigger that muscle memory automatically. In Season 2 I started straight away at +9 and now I feel perfectly comfortable I can carry a bunch of idiots as high as +13. I can heal as high as +19, but only if the other players know the mechanics and know how to play their classes / specs as well. Now I have the confidence that as long as I stay within my gear limits, a bricked key is never going to be my fault unless I have a really bad night. So long story short: get your interface and keybinds locked-down solidified after a few weeks, and then just build muscle memory while in your comfort zone; progress slowly while your gear improves and pretty soon you'll be in THE ZONE and question why you ever played any other class. 😊 I LOVE healing on Holy Priest. Just not on Afflicted weeks. 🤣😜

It is really good to understand the combat and specific mechanics in dungeons. Some lethal mechanics, especially on trash, can be stopped by interrupting or stunning. That's why some runs feel like the easiest keys we've ever done, whereas others are mission impossible. It really benefits healers to learn those things. I sometimes watch tank videos because most of them explain or deal with those situations. A well-timed stun or fear can save you a big cd, save your mana, and allow you to squeeze in more dps. The second advice is: learn how tanks work. Tracking their defensives can help you so much understanding when it's time to hit your 'oh sh*t' button. And that leads me to the most tricky thing in m+ - DPS players and defensive skills. The main difference between a good and bad m+ dps enjoyer is if they can time their defensive whilst doing their rotation. Tracking those to see who is your trusted ally in a group that you don't have to babysit can save you a lot of energy and nerves. Do not hesitate to politely convey the message to your teammates that the next fight would be a perfect time to use their defensive if they haven't used it yet. Most of the time this actually works.

Really appreciate these videos. I am super casual and can only get in keys one day a week so learning 8 mew dungeons is a little stressful if I try to get right back to the same level as I was at in s1. So I just kicked back and tried experimenting with different builds and made big changes in my ui while being patient and kind with myself and the fun returned.

That was incredibly helpful for me. My hands just got done sweating a boss fight on my HPAL after playing prevoker all week. Did not feel good! I appreciate the thoughtful guidance provided.

Awesome vid! That first point is so important. You are not perfect and even the best of the best mess up at times. Give yourself some slack and don't fixate on each and every death. All you can do is learn from what you can improve.

Great vid, you got a lot of good points! What really helped me understand that some deaths weren't my fault as a healer was using CD trackers like OmniCD. This will let you be more aware of your tank CDs, and it also lets you know that some dude died while not properly popping a defensive skill, so not your fault. I used to also get flamed by tanks or dps who think that they can do whatever, and it's the healer's responsibility to save them, in situations that we can heal the life pool, but we can't fix another's bad positioning. This actually stops being a thing on higher M+ keys and if someone dies blaming the healer I can honestly say that they actually don't know what they're talking about, specially when dying with defensive CDs available.

i have played many healers and the best i like now is the Holy pala. The spot healing is nice and realy strong.

Please, more of these uploads. You are really good at it!

WARM UP KEYS! I do this every time I run keys and try to run the dungeon Im gonna prog on a lower level but use it as practice and treat it like it is the higher key.

The warm up key, I used it that when i started healing last night, first trip into healing this expansion, so i ran the 5 heroic weekly runs to get used to healing. then stepped up to a low key and then to the key level I had done as dps. Helps alot!

Another tip: Make note of scenarios that you struggle with and go watch your favorite healing streamer and see how they deal with that scenario. This has helped me a lot. As a Holy Paladin myself I watch Elesmere, alot who is probably the best Holy Paladin in the game, constantly looking for something I don't know. I watch all the difficult parts of that dungeon and make notes on how he handled it. Look for a good stream who streams his abilities using that to figure out how to handle scenarios.

2. You can set to observer so it prints to your chat window but does not announce to anyone, if you don't want to "be that guy"

Question, what player/party frames addon do you use, and is it a weak aura that shows the buffs inside the player party frames? I use shadowed unit frames and can't figure put how to get it to show inside frames and it is pretty small on the outside of frame

As a healer main I never even realized that I never had healing anxiety, surprisingly enough suffering form extreme anxiety in almost everything else in life. When it clicks it clicks, kinda meant to be a healer I guess. I do get a lot of tank anxiety tho.

The thing about keys is that there's a point where keys actually get easier the higher you go, this is counter intuitive to a lot of people but the reason this happens is because the higher the key the greater chance the people in the group know what to do. I actually found healing 11-15 keys harder than 16-18 keys simply because people know the mechanics better in the higher keys so less random damage is going out and less random deaths. This starts to fall off after about 18 though and things get harder again because ilvl is capped so your dmg and healing stays the same but dungeons get harder and just knowing the mechanics is a given at that point. Healers need to stop blaming themselves when someone dies, most of the time it's not your fault and when it is your fault you will know it because you messed up your rotation or you got oneshot by standing in something. There's also some great benefits to playing a healer as well, you can get into groups quickly so if a key fails just try again, unlike dps you don't have to wait a long time to get invited to the keys. Practice with pugs and if you mess up who cares it's a pug group just join the next group and try again.

im already looking forward to the MDI pulls where they will need half of my hps to pull four times the mobs we do on a +10 higher key then mine are :D

Bros. For every new player to healing, there’s an experienced tank or dps or two that knows how to make your job easier while you figure it out. We gotchu 😘

This is a great video! I 100% avoid healing in mythic because I don't want to ruin the key for someone and healing heroic when so much of it is high level players just near soloing it is not exactly good practice. I should bite the bullet and just start with 0's and 1's lol

healing in and of itself is not terrible. Heal anxiety is far more of a low/mid key thing than a upper key thing (most the time). . . something growl has proven many times over, by bringing pug healers from 15's into 20+'s. or 11's into 17's. However, healing low keys is a nightmare. Anyone who is interested in healing at a moderate level can very quickly stop healing because of keys in the 7-15 range. Where dps take a metric ton of unnecessary damage, interrupts are frequently missed, and tanks chain pull packs that really shouldn't be chained pulled without prior knowledge of what to cc/interrupt. It's very common for me to need more hps (outside specific area's, like heal check tyran bosses) in a low key than a higher one. . . I've healed 5's that take as much as a 14, purely because of how much is avoided/ignored. . . Bosses are often done in lower keys in a way that is extremely heal intensive. . . Like they allow the healer to carry them instead of actually doing the fight. That's extremely problematic if you want someone to actually take healing seriously. Since someone who may not know the way a fight should be done, or packs should be pulled. Will see that damage intake, expect it to be much higher later (sometimes yes, sometimes no), and just fall apart. Understandably so. However, if you can make it past the lower keys. . . anything under a 20 becomes pretty reasonable. Though a couple exceptions this tier, like neltharus on a tyrannical week. Nearly all of those bosses are heal checks, more specifically AoE heal checks.

Doing high keys with good players helps alot to understand how much of the hussle u experience in lower keys is due to the lack of defensive cooldowns by the dps players and their positional awareness... good players know when to help out. When to stop dps in order to avoid sertan mechanics and how to time their dps cooldowns... and that it's not always the healers fault when u whipe^^... also the tanks that behave like its a 25+ in a +10 key... lul... best example was Azure vault.. tanks pulling 3 grps without anyone doing stuns or defensives... insta whipes and people leaving, then blaiming the heals.. amazing :D gaming should be fun and thats how i approach it... if its not fun, it's not worth the hussle

i heard Zmok say something once on his stream about this. something along the lines of if its going bad, just leave the key. dont worry too much about performance because everyone has bad keys/days. most good players dont care too much about it because thats just how it is, it happens. and most bad players dont care because most of the time they dont know what is going on. then there is the in betweeners, and those toxic players make it pretty easy to leave a group.

Is it weird that I’m so emotionally fucked up that the reason I enjoy healing is because of the healer anxiety 🤣 dps and tanking is to boring, I need the rush of anxiety to feel enjoyment from the game. Although I do beat myself up pretty good about failed keys/deaths

unless you can make that death announcement thing from step 2 only visible to you, PLEASE don't do that in your keys. Random pugs will 100% think you are flaming them. I have seen this happen with the weakaura/addon Elitism Helper, when people have that in my pugs it significantly reduces the likelihood of that key being timed because people get mad. People in this game have fragile egos, you'll have the most success in pugs by playing around that. It's absolutely ok to look at death logs yourself and say oh ok that wasn't my fault.

I'm just saying. Resto Druid A tier. Pretty much the meta is pretty close 4 outta 6

2:45 never do this lol. Only a shitty healer that can't heal anything will use this.

My own anxiety stems from not healing ever since Augmentation came out and completely kicked me out as preservation. I can't even join lower keys to practice, there's barely any damage taken, and with my high ilvl+legendary+high rio people will expect me to be a god. I did some +16s last week and holy crap did I struggle and it only worsened my fear. Wish I could be the way I was in the prepatch, spamming keys like there was no tomorrow and getting pissed when declined.