Druid for mage

Jive has a mage friend asking how healing differs from DPS

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Hey there. Snap, I played frost all through MC-T5! I'm a warlock now with priest and druid alts who tend to get called into BT for Gertie + Council.

The main difference between DPS and healing is that when healing, your output is capped. There's only so much healing to do, but you have to do it FAST.

On a basic level, healing is reactive. Raid-regrowth tends to be like this, eXtreem whack-a-mole. This mode is not about high heal-per-second (HPS), it's about people not dying RIGHT NOW.

As you get more experienced you'll be able to watch the field more and predict who'll take damage. This is how those paladins get anywhere raidhealing - they're casting before damage even happens. You don't have to be psychic to heal, but it helps :D

Druids have an extra little thing you may have heard of, called HOTs. These are a lot more like a standard DPS cycle, especially if you have experience keeping up DOTs or debuffs. It depends on your assignment, but usually you want to have between one tank lifebloomed, up to full hots on two tanks. HOTs give awesome HPS+HPM and cushion spikes but have to be put up ahead of time.

Great druid healing comes from being able to flow between reactive OMG healing and stabilising the fight through the insane HPS of HOTs.

Ideally you also need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your other healers. That's a whole extra subject though :)

This is all for 25-man raiding. Frankly, for 5-man, there's a much simpler plan. 1) Get 1600 +heal, 2) roll lifeblooms on 4 people, 3) cackle wildly.