A continuation of the Raid Healing Roles series. Previously, I introduced the idea that healing in a raid is different than healing in a regular instance. I also discussed some of the core philosophies of a Tank Healer and Raid Healer, as well as some tips for filling those roles as a priest.

Backup Tank Healer
The “Backup Tank Healer” is often necessary in 25 man raids, but is also a requirement in some Kara fights - Phase 2 of the Prince fight, for example, when the damage is so spiky you could hang your coat on it.

The idea behind the role of backup healer is that you are the insurance for the main tank healer. If two healers are assigned to the same target, one of you HAS to be the primary healer and the other HAS to be the secondary healer. If both of you think you’re the primary healer, then you’ll both be letting all of your heals land, you’ll both be overhealing, and you’ll both run out of mana when the fight ramps up to high gear.

The primary healer should heal normally. They should assume that they are the only healer that the tank has. They should NOT assume that someone else is healing the tank, even though they know they aren’t the only healer. Why is this?

Because the whole reason for having a backup healer is that the incoming damage is too great and too spiky for a single healer to handle it. If the primary healer gets lax and allows the tank to fall too low because “someone else may get the heal” then the tank is going to die.

If you are the primary tank healer, then you have to act as though you are the ONLY healer. The backup healer is there because there will be times when you will not be able to handle all of the incoming damage. They are there to BACK YOU UP. Not to do your job for you. If they were supposed to keep up a steady stream of heals, they wouldn’t be backup healers, they’d be primary healers.

In an ideal situation with a primary and secondary tank healer (say a paladin primary and a priest secondary), the fight would look something like this :

Tank engages and begins to take damage. Raid engages but will either be healed by another raid healer (and thus they are NOT the secondary healer’s job) or they won’t be taking significant damage (example being Prince Phase 2).

Primary healer heals as though they are the only healer, doing their paladin thing.

The priest tosses a frisbee and a renew on the main tank, then begins cancel-casting greater heal. Watching their VisualHeal addon closely (more on this in a moment), the secondary healer will allow their heal to complete at any time when more than 55% of their heal will go towards healing the main tank. If the main healer already has a heal cooking, it is the SECONDARY healer who will cancel their heal and allow the primary healer to complete theirs.

When the renew fades, cast another and toss another frisbee.

Rinse and repeat.

In some cases, the main healer may run short on mana. In that case, it’s easy for them to call out “swap healers on tank” and the two of you will swap roles. The person who was the secondary healer will take over the role of primary healer, and vice versa. This, obviously, has to be something that you’ve discussed with the other healers ahead of time so that they know what is expected of them.

The entire purpose of the secondary healer is to make the life of the primary healer easier and to keep the tank out of dangerous health levels. The secondary healer will not rock the healing meters, the secondary healer will probably have a lot of overheal, and the secondary healer will not get the glory.

But without the secondary healer, the tank would have died. When I am the primary healer, I feel a great upwelling of love and affection for my secondary healers for the hard work that they do and the times they save the tank’s (and my own) bacon.

You’ll notice the secondary tank healer was very focused on the tank in that scenario. If they are off healing the raid when the tank takes a crushing blow to the face, then they are not doing their job as a secondary healer. And since we all know that crushing blows cannot be predicted, that dictates a fairly focused healing strategy.

With time and familiarity with the fights, everyone can relax a little and be looser with their heals. Some fights (Gruul, for example) do not allow flexibility in healing roles. If you glance to the side to heal the tank you are not assigned to, your tank will die. Not all fights are that way, but you, as any kind of healer at all, need to learn which fights ARE, and modify your healing style accordingly.

Tips N Tricks
Some strategies for the secondary or backup tank healer :

• Renew. HoTs are made of win, folks. They smooth out incoming damage and are cast-and-forget heals. Yes, it’s appeared on every single role strategy I’ve done. It appears on all of them because it is just that awesome. Especially now that this puppy stacks from multiple priests, it’s a very powerful tool to assist your primary raid healer.
• Frisbee. (Prayer of Mending). Cast and forget it - as it bounces around the raid, it’ll (probably) help more than just the tank. You may be dealing with a primary healer who would prefer you not cast frisbee since they cannot anticipate the incoming heal, but most people will welcome it.
• Cancel-healing. You need to be ready to heal or cancel at any moment Become a master of canceling your casts and knowing when to let them slide through. The benefit to being halfway through a heal when your tank tanks an unexpected barrage of hits is immeasurable.
• Addons : VisualHeal. I am NOT one of those people who likes having a ton of addons. I install the ones that are required for raiding, and unless I absolutely need additional ones, I do not use them. My hunter uses the default Blizz UI, and my healer only uses a custom UI because I can control the size of the health bars of my raiders. That being said, I will preach the benefits of VisualHeal to anyone who will listen. VisualHeal HAS to be installed by every single healer in the raid. Every one. (I’ve even had tanks and dpsers install it so they know when they have a heal incoming…it’s not just for healers anymore). If all healers have it installed, then you can see when other people are healing your target. You can see how much their heal is expected to land for. Turn to heal the rogue in Aran’s fight? Oh! The other healer has him covered, I can swap to the warlock. Cancel-healing on the tank? Oh, looks like my heal will still get used even if the other healer’s heal lands completely. Healing a new hunter? Oh, looks like the heal I was going to use was far too small, I’d better stop and swap to a more powerful one quickly. I LOVE THIS ADDON. It’s insanely useful to any healer, but as a backup healer, it is the most wonderful tool in your arsenal.

There are a lot of details about the VisualHeal addon that I did not cover here. I -will- have an entry just on the addon…hopefully soonish rather than laterish. It does have some foibles, hiccups, and quirks that you need to know about, but even without knowing all the details, I’d highly recommend it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 27th, 2007 and is filed under Healers, ~ Vonya. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.