World of Warcraft: Wotlk/3.2+ - Healing in a Raid Situation

In raid groups in World of Warcraft, it is necessary to have a well-balanced party; Complete with people to take the damage, people to do the damage, and people to heal the damage done. These are known as tanks, healers, and damage per second (dps).

This article is all about the perspective of the healer, and how they can do their best. As a healer of all of the newest WoTLK raids, I will let you in on what makes healing the easiest possible for me.

Addons. I would say that an addon is at the core of any good healer. It's extremely difficult to heal without any addons at all, especially while in a raid group that's any bigger than your typical five-man group. Unit frame addons allow you to view the entire raid group in one convenient module. I use Grid and Healbot (depending on situation, but typically grid) for unit frame management. Grid is extremely customizable, and works awesome for any raider, but especially benefits a healer. With the addition of the Clique addon, one can assign abilities to clicking assignments that can allow the healer to heal any given party member just by clicking their unit frame health bar, which of course is all customizable within the grid and clique settings. Both grid and clique are available for (free) download at curse.com. Healbot is another very simple unit frame addon used specifically for healing. While it's very easy to set up, see buffs, and start using it in a raid situation, I tend to stride away from this addon just for the pure fact that it likes to bug frequently, and the range check feature never works properly. There are other class-specific healing addons that are great for individual classes of healers, and these are all available for download at curse.com, under each individual class menu. One thing to take note on, is that most unit frame addons allow you to see raid debuffs, this is extremely convenient for knowing who to heal and when. It's also helpful for healers and mages/druids etc. who need to know when to dispell a curse, poison, disease, magic debuff. Healbot comes with a built-in raid debuff option, and grid comes with the cleansing debuffs built-in, but with the addition of the grid raid debuff addon, becomes extremely useful. Again, these addons are named as noted in the article and are available at curse.com.

Rotation. Believe it or not, in general, a healer should have some sort of "rotation". Basically, once you've been healing for a long time on any given class, you'll know which heals you should be using and when. If you're a paladin healer, you'll know when it's appropriate to beacon of light a given target, when you're a shaman you'll know when to chain heal and drop a cleansing totem, and when you're a druid you'll know when to use wild regrowth on the group you're in. You can find a more in-depth description of healing for any given class on the website elitistjerks.com, a wonderful website for getting to know your class or the game as a whole from the people who do it best. I only play a resto shaman, so I can't help much with any of the other classes.

Knowing the Situation. Like I previously stated, you're not always going to manage healing every single raid perfectly, there is a lot of pressure on the healers, and you're not always prepared for the raid to take damage when it does, or for the tank to take such a heavy amount of damage so fast. With experience, you will learn so well as to be already casting a heal before the damage even hits. As with anything, great players learn with experience.

Gear. Obviously, gear plays a crucial role in the power of a healer. I can't guarantee that all of these are accurate, however, typical players gear the following. Paladins: Some stack Int and Mp5, others pure int. Some go for crit. SP isn't as much of a neccesity due to huge heals by default. Priests: Spell Power, Spirit, and mp5 are awesome for these guys. Also, gear will vary with spec and situation. Druids: Druids can gear primarily for spell power and spirit; They get spell power from spirit, and they get mp5 from spirit.
Shamans: On my resto shaman I stack Spell power, and I'm working on more mp5 gear.
Please note that as with anything WoW-related, there are many different ways to handle everything. This article is nothing more than a guide of somewhere to get started with your healing. Please post any comments/questions and I'll do my best to get back with you.