Just curious, macro your healer or manage with clickbars

[ockhamsrazor]

Since I started boxing I've always setup grid and used repeater regions, or most recently click bars, to manually heal just like I would if I was playing the healer solo in a group.

This is probably because I have always played a healer as my main char (EQ1, EQ2, DOC, WOW). When I started 5 boxing I just macro'd everything but healing - because I was most comfortable healing. Now I'm wondering if I'm being less efficient than I could/should be.

I'm not a great multi-tasker, so in instances I find I tend to focus on the grid for healing and rarely pay enough attention to what is happening to my tank or dps chars. Many MANY times I've wiped because my chars are facing the wrong direction, or my tank isn't even in range of whatever mob(s) I'm fighting. With re-running instances, and typically overgearing them, I manage to clear things anyway. But I can't help feel that...frankly I suck and my approach could be really improved :-)

Also, in interest of full disclosure and complete honestly, I don't know much about my tank and dps chars.

I find the talent specs on elitist jerks.
When gear drops I see how much +green text it shows vs -red. If it looks like a lot, I swap it. - never knowing if I'm maximizing the wrong stats.
I don't enchant/gem/glyph because I always feel like I'll be wasting my money when I replace the gear later
I grab the castsequence macros from this wonderful resource called dualboxing.com :-) I rarely pay much attention to what they acutally do, I just copy them in and see that they work :-) Many many many thanks for people like Ualaa and Mercurio who allow casual players like me to play this game without becoming an expert on boxing and macros!
So what advice would you give to me? Should I macro tank healing like I do for dps and start focusing on my tank when I'm in a fight? Or just resign myself to my limitations (poor multitasking) and be happy that I can clear things at all :-)

BTW, I always seem to get a team up to the current level cap and then I drift to a new team because heroics kick my butt through and through.

[Khatovar]

I, too, always played the healer in MMOs, but I find my healer is the toon I pay the LEAST attention to. She's got a DPS+heal rotation and I use mouseovers to heal when she needs to. She's pretty much autopilot while I manage procs from my tank+ DPS, CC, positioning.

[ockhamsrazor]

What does you healer macros look like? Do you just massively overheal for the most part, escpecially now that we can't use the empty commas? It is just Heal,Heal,Heal,Heal basically?

I'm wondering what Holy priest's would look like in that case.

[katsurahama]

I was using macro healing until a few days ago.

I micromanage the tank and just let the 3dps go through macro rotations. Click healing has made it much easier to do instances. I end up using less mana. Its far more efficient and effective. Also, I have way less overhealing now. Probably good things to get used to since Cata instances are supposed to be so much more difficult on healer mana.

I've always played healers, too. A different approach, which can be seen in a paladin+4dk arena video on here, is to lead with your healer and just macro everyone else.

I lead with a druid healer on a team I'm leveling just because its something different to try. The tank is a DK in that group and they're pretty easy to macro - probably second to paladins.

Anyway, my suggestion is to either lead with the healer or move to click healing. You could also lead with the healer and use a click healing type setup to use your tank and/or dps to get stuff off your healer lead in emergencies. (intervene, that paladin taunt, some warrior shout, that one and only druid emergency taunt, etc. - i forget all the ability names since i lead with the tank and never use them).

Sorry for the rambling reply. I keep alt-tabbing to check on the WoW updater... :D

[Ualaa]

I usually go with a Repeater Region.
And then pick the six heals that are most useful for me (Alt Left/Right, Ctrl Left/Right, Shift Left/Right clicks).

I also have buttons for some spells, but those are either target independent, hit the whole group or are a cooldown ability.

I usually have two assist heal macros for each team; something like:
#show Renew
<Insert Assist>
/cast [help][help,@targettarget][help,@targettargettarget] Renew

[ockhamsrazor]

So I guess most poeople use click healing like I do, I just need to become a better multi-tasker I guess.

I get so focused on healing I forget everything else - just like I always did soloing my healers :-)

[JackBurton]

I use a combination of click heals and macro heals. Im currently leaning heavily on macro heals. mainly

/cast [target=targetstarget] Heal

I can spam that all day and almost never run out of mana.

but i can ratchet it up with second button. What one of my current to do things it to integrate Mapped Key Virtualization for different scenarios.

I have 3 main healing buttons

Primary
Secondary
Emergency

Sceneario 1 - All Manual

Primary - Does nothing
Secondary - Does nothing
Emergency - Does nothing

Sceneario 2 - 2 Mobs or Good Crowd Control

Primary - Heal
Secondary - Greater Heal
Emergency - Power Word: Shield

Sceneario 3 - AoE dmg (No CC or AoE Farming)

Primary - Power Word: Shield:(round robbin)
Secondary - Renew: Shield:(round robbin)
Emergency - Prayer of Healing

Sceneario 4 - Boss Heals

Primary - Greater Heal
Secondary - Flash Heal
Emergency - Prayer of Healing

My current plans for Virtualization here (http://isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=989)

[ockhamsrazor]

I don't think I was being clear becaue I used generic terms like macro vs click healing. What I meant to say was...

Does anyone just setup a healing spam macro, like Mercurio's two step dps macros, and spam it as part of their dps spam? I saw he had a macro for it that looked like he kept pray of mending constantly casting.

In other words do people successfuly ignore healing and spam it, at the cost of massive overhealing of course.

I always assumed a healer couldn't keep the party alive, let alone enough mana, without micro managing the healing like I do now.

[Dorffo]

In other words do people successfuly ignore healing and spam it, at the cost of massive overhealing of course.

I just spam heals from my resto sham, eat the overheals and drink a bit more often than I need to. Team is currently iLvl340 average and can clear all normals and Heroic SFK, BRC, Deadmines and Vortex Pinnacle.

[ockhamsrazor]

Do you alternate group heals with single target tank heals or what?

Like: castsequence Fast Tank Heal, Slow Tank Heal, Group Heal, Fast Tank Heal, Slow Tank Heal

[balderrdash]

On my shaman I have a riptide, riptide, . . . earthshield that's spammed with the dps macro. It hardly touches mana and I click heal for the real fights on top of it. I've got a nice Vudu bar with color coded warnings that helps me have time to watch other things. As far as facing the wrong direction or being out of range, I've got my team up with giant cast bars so I can always see what they are doing (or not doing) and adjust.

[kate]

It depends on how my team is set up. If I'm playing a team where multiple characters have heals, I'll usually use repeaters and clicks. If only one character is healing, I use macros.

For my "multiple healer" teams basically I don't have a dedicated healer - I just have the click region for each character, and when a character is being hurt I left click (my single-target heals are bound to that), whoever is available to cast will cast a heal, and so on. If it's AoE damage, I right click (this has everyone use their AoE heal or multiple-target heal) and it's good to go.

For my single-healer setup, I usually just have 2 macros: tank heal and then aoe heal.

Right now I'm rolling in a group that has a ton of passive healing (Word of Glory, Healing Stream totems, Earth Shield and Smite healing) and it's pretty amazing.

[Dorffo]

I have two dps keys that both send the same command to DPS but send different sequences to the healer and then a "oh shit" button that has all healing toons heal the tank + healer toon pops cooldowns and heals tank:

trash dps/heal:
tank > tank spam
dps > dps spam
healer > Shield/Hot every 15 seconds or so (unleash weapon in the cast sequence)

boss dps/heal:
tank > tank spam
dps > dps spam
healer > shield/hot/heal/heal/heal/heal/HoT/heal/heal

OS:
tank > defensive cooldowns/ tank spam
dps > heal tank w/ fast heal
healer > fast heal, cooldowns + big heal

additionally I have click healing setup for when it's needed but I don't find myself using it nearly as much as i would if I were driving with the healer.