---
title: 'Healer Fundamentals For Mythic Plus! Healing Basics For New Healers!'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=ERS9gP0Qzdk'
video_id: 'ERS9gP0Qzdk'
date: 2026-06-16
duration_sec: 0
---

# Healer Fundamentals For Mythic Plus! Healing Basics For New Healers!

> Source: [Healer Fundamentals For Mythic Plus! Healing Basics For New Healers!](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ERS9gP0Qzdk)

## Summary

This video by Bowser the Healer covers eight key points for new and returning healers in World of Warcraft Mythic Plus dungeons. It focuses on fundamentals like analyzing deaths, understanding lethality, using crowd control as a healing tool, and managing cooldowns. The guide also emphasizes the importance of healer damage and adapting to the chaotic nature of pugging.

### Key Points

- **Analyzing Deaths with Details** [1:21] — Use the Details addon to check the death log and see how quickly a player died. If they died instantly (e.g., in 2.1 seconds), it's likely a mechanic failure on their part, not yours.
- **Lethality and Triage** [2:26] — Lethality refers to how close a player is to dying. A player at 1/3 health with multiple enemy casts is on lethal. Triage involves deciding who to save and who might die.
- **Crowd Control as a Healing Cooldown** [3:53] — Crowd control (e.g., Psychic Scream, Leg Sweep) can be used to stop enemy casts, preventing damage entirely. This is often easier than healing through the damage.
- **Healer Flow in a Pull** [6:28] — A typical pull starts with preparation spells, then damage, then reactive healing, then prepared healing for upcoming mechanics. Between pulls, do damage, restore mana, and reapply essential spells.
- **Cooldown Management** [9:09] — Use cooldowns as needed when learning, then start saving them for harder encounters. Work on both high-end (blasting) and low-end (resourceful) healing.
- **Essential Add-ons: Details and Plater** [11:23] — Details and Plater are the two most recommended addons. Plater shows which mob is targeting which player, helping you anticipate damage.
- **Importance of Healer Damage** [14:05] — Healer damage contributes 3-7% of a dungeon's total damage, potentially saving 2-4 minutes on the timer. Learn your damage buttons and find free time to use them.
- **Adapting to Pugging** [15:45] — Pugging lacks coordination, making it more chaotic. Healers must be prepared for players not using defensives or failing mechanics. Use tools like Details to analyze your performance and avoid blaming yourself or others.

## Transcript

This video is for the new healers and
this video is for the healers that want
to refresh themselves on some of their
fundamentals. My name is Bowser the
healer and I got about eight points here
from little things like add-ons to big
things like how to manage cooldowns and
how the eb and flow of healing works in
a typical combat. Now I just want to be
clear. I'm mostly talking mythic plus
but a lot of this will just
automatically apply to raids. So, if you
are looking for more raid focused
advice, you'll get something out of
this, but I come from the perspective of
somebody who pugs a lot of mythic plus.
So, let's get right into it. The first
major point I want to talk about with
healing is death, which I know sounds
really silly, and as silly as it sounds,
I do actually mean this one quite
seriously, but watch the clip right now.
Could I have saved this warlock? And
feel free to watch it again if you'd
like, but the answer is no. They died to
an avoidable attack, a circle that goes
on the ground from Cinder Brew toss.
Their objective was to just walk a few
feet out of it and they'd be fine. Now
look, they died instantly. Yeah, maybe I
could have hit Guardian Spirit if I knew
they were going to get hit hit, but
realistically, this is the player
responsibility. I'm not in charge of
this person's death. That's sort of in
their own hands. But also, it's not too
big of a deal, right? It's the start of
a dungeon they were clearly blasting.
It's not really a problem. But for a new
player, it can be really hard to tell if
that was a problem. My recommendation is
to use the add-on details, which is
usually for checking how much damage
you're doing. But you can use it to
check your healing, damage taken, or my
favorite, deaths. Check the death log to
see how quickly somebody died. Was it
something you could have prevented? Was
it something obvious? Or did they die in
like 2.1 seconds instantly, right? You
can't really save someone from dying
instantly. A lot of the times that
probably means a mechanic was failed,
they stood in something, you name it.
You'll know when somebody doesn't use
their cooldowns. And as you get really
good at using details, you can actually
check healing meters and damage meters
to look at auras to see how much a tank
had on uptime for one of their
mitigation tools. That's more advanced
down the line, but just learning how to
look at the stuff and starting to
understand the spells that are hitting
people will help demystify some of the
damage coming through. When some DPS
goes, healer, where were my heals? And
you see they took their whole life bar
in a third of a second, well then that's
that's a skill issue. You don't have to
worry about that one. They're just going
to be a little mad about it and they'll
get over it. But now, let's talk about
damage, specifically damage done to
players. Let's talk about lethality. I
like to look at health bars when they're
on lethal. So, let's say there's a spell
coming out and it does a third of
someone's life bar. Okay, that's cool.
What if there's three enemies targeting
one player? Okay, that's a little
dangerous. If all three of those spells
hit, they're probably going to die. Even
if they don't die, the next thing that
hits them probably will. That's called
lethal or they are on lethal. When
they're sitting at 1/3 health and two of
those spells are being cast on them,
right? That is a lethal situation. I
like to think about triage, the act of
figuring out who you can save and who's
got to die. I like to think about
lethality and how close someone is to
lethality for figuring out who needs to
be healed or how much healing I actually
need to use. You might have some
coolowns you can use to save someone's
life. But if they took 80% of their
health bar, but they're fine and there's
no other damage coming in, you don't got
to panic heal them. You can just heal
them with your more efficient spells and
get the job done. When you get better at
healing, and we're about to talk about
cooldowns, but when you get better at
this, knowing where your cooldowns go
typically goes handinhand with
lethality. Where are there bad lethality
lineups where there's unavoidable damage
or hard to stop damage while players are
taking like consistent damage from other
sources, right? Maybe a boss fight, like
a major mechanic or something like that.
That's where you're going to start
going, "Oh, this will put players on
lethal. Oh, maybe I should commit a cool
down or a setup or ramp or whatever it
is that they need to
do." The next one is fairly simple, but
it's crowd control is healing. So, I
want you to think about this. Those
three enemies are targeting one of your
allies and you know it's going to kill
them. Okay, you could try to save their
life with an external defensive. You
could use a cheat death or something
else that your kit has to save their
life. Or you could stop them from going
off, hitting something like your psychic
scream, your leg sweep, your tail swipe,
whatever it is that you need to use to
stop cast from going off. A lot of the
times this will reset the cast, allowing
those mobs to pick new targets. It's
much easier to heal three people taking
stagger damage than it is to heal one
person who's about to die
instantaneously. Which is why I want you
to use your crowd control and your
interrupts as a healing cooldown. Use it
to save people's lives. Sure, you might
have multiple tools and you can afford
to expend one to make the DPS life a
little bit easier. Yeah, absolutely. But
when the going gets rough, don't ever
forget that you have these crowd control
moves that can stop problems. Also, for
those of you blessed with a kick,
there's going to be a lot of priest
footage here. Priest doesn't have a kick
unless you're shadow. Here's the thing.
A kick or also known as an interrupt
skill specifically turn off a school of
magic when they successfully connect.
So, when you see those colorful cast
bars that you can actually kick, when
you hit that, it turns off the school of
magic. So, they can't cast for a little
bit from that school of magic. This
typically means that the mob will walk
in. Using your interrupts to help
organize mobs is, I think, a really good
thing to do at the start of a pull, but
then the next time your kick is up, you
might want to consider using it just to
save lives. Hold it to literally just
prevent more problems from happening.
Thank me later. For the newer player
watching this video, before I talk about
the flow of a healer, kind of what a
typical pull is going to look like, I do
want to note something. If you want to
practice any of this, go into a delve.
tank brand plus you is enough damage and
healing to make it through any delve in
not a long amount of time. I mean it
like it won't be too incredibly long and
if you're contributing damage you will
also notice that the delve kind of falls
over. You do need to do damage as a
healer. So this is a great place to
practice both the healing and damage
aspects. Bran, however, doesn't heal
very much. This means you're going to
really feel the impact of your heal on a
tank and your heals on yourself. It's
going to give you an idea of like how
much they actually do and what they feel
like to use. If you have a combo or an
interaction you get to use, you're going
to see the fruits of your labor in front
of you. Sometimes it can be a little
hard with people having self-healing and
automatic defensive talents. You might
not necessarily know what you're doing
in a dungeon at first, so I think it's
good to get your feet wet in a delve
just to truly feel it. But let's talk
about that healer flow. How does a
typical poll go? Well, the start of a
poll is always going to be preparation
spells. Anything you got to do. I know
as a preservation evoker, I hit hover. I
throw temporal anomaly. Holy priest is
going to maybe renew some people for the
healing boost and put their prayer of
mending on cooldown. Maybe a discipline
priest wants to get atonements out. You
know the vibes. Everyone does something
different here. Then it's time to do
damage. Healer damage isn't crazy, but
it's also usually typically front-loaded
and not too hard to do. The best time to
do it is when the tank has gathered mobs
and everyone gets to just blast all the
cylinders for a moment. Get whatever
your damage is out and then it's time to
heal when things happen. Reacting to
healing is the first thing I want to
talk about. As long as there's no other
planned instance of healing coming up,
just react. When someone gets chunked,
go heal them. If you're expect
anticipating people to take damage, you
can quickly prep before they get hit and
then you can go and heal them. But let's
say there's a mechanic coming up or
there's, you know, a boss fight and it's
about to hit really hard and you got to
get ready. That's prepared healing. This
sort of overwrites any triage you have
to do and that yeah, you might need to
save someone's life, but if everyone's
going to die, you kind of need to focus
on everyone and not the one person,
unless that one person's the tank, but
then you might all still die in that
scenario. Preparation is so important
when the polls get harder. They're not
going to necessarily be hard at first.
So, when you're first going through the
dungeons, you might need to go like,
"Ooh, we all took a lot of damage there.
I bet in a higher key that would hurt
really, really bad." Cuz it probably
does. Then afterwards, when the going
gets kind of quiet and you're back to
doing damage, yeah, do damage yourself,
right? Patch anyone up you need to and
hit any of your important spells. Some
of your important on cooldown spells,
you're not actually pressing when you
need to do serious amounts of healing.
So, you might find that your prayer of
mending has been ready to be pressed for
a few moments, but you were in the
middle of saving lives. Now, it's time
it's calm. Hit your essential spells
again, and then get back to doing
damage, restoring your mana, or whatever
it is you absolutely need to do until
there's something to react to. Every
single poll works like this. Some are
going to start maybe a little heavy at
first, so maybe you don't got a lot of
time to do damage. And then,
furthermore, there are some polls where
you have these extreme downtimes where
there is nothing to do and you are just
blasting damage. And that happens every
once in a while. It's not a big deal,
but you're going to see this flow happen
all the time. So, be prepared to react.
Figure out where you'd want to plan in a
more difficult, more challenging
environment, and you're good to go.
Beginners, I mean it. This does come
very naturally. So, just start noticing
as you go through boss fights, where are
those problematic points you're like,
"Ooh, how do I deal with that later?"
Yeah, write that stuff down, mark that
stuff, remember it. It'll come back.
It'll be very useful the next time you
approach it. Now, let's talk about
cooldowns. This is a really interesting
section because if you've ever seen a
damage dealer, they have cooldowns, too.
And how they typically work is they send
their cooldowns as often as possible.
You see, DPS basically always have a
target to hit. So, if they're going to
get 80 to 90% uptime on most of their
cooldowns, they'll just send it. They'll
only save it for special occasions.
Healers, on the other hand, play a very
different video game. You don't always
have something to heal. And if you did,
this game would be painfully, painfully
difficult for healers. So, it's
important to know how much healing you
have and how much you actually need to
use. The problem with telling you about
your cooldowns is that they're useful.
They work differently for every healer,
but where you use them is also very
different. I'm going to talk about this
more in one of the later segments, but
realistically, when you pug, you use
your cooldowns very differently than you
do in a good coordinated group. When
you're playing in a good group, they're
kicking things, they're crowdontrolling
things while they're using defensives.
You might not have to do as much
healing. When you're in a pug and it's a
little more chaotic, you might have to
do a lot more healing. So, my
recommendation is use the cooldowns as
you feel like they're needed until you
find a spot where you should probably
save it for a harder, more difficult
encounter, like a higher level dungeon.
Use them to know how they work and then
start saving them as you don't need
them. The bigger suggestion really is to
work on your low end and high-end
healing. Learn how to work with your
cooldowns when you're blasting and
getting as much healing as possible. And
then work on your low end when you don't
have as many tools. What can you do and
how can you play efficiently when you're
lacking cooldowns? And as a quick aside,
if you have like a 30-second cooldown or
less, there's a chance that you can send
it off rip most of the time. When I talk
cool downs, I'm really talking about the
1, 1 and 1/2, 2, and even 3 and 4 minute
cool downs. The big ones, the smaller
ones might be a part of your typical
general rotation. So don't be worried
about using those. It'll probably be a
part of your kit and how your class
operates. For instance, for preservation
evoker, you have some 30 and 20 second
cool downs that are part of your natural
rotation. You're going to use them
pretty often and you're going to be
like, "Wo, that's a 30-second move. Do I
need it?" And yeah, sometimes you do
wonder if you need it, but you're going
to be using it a lot. So don't like
don't fear those lower cooldowns.
Now, I want to talk about things like
plater in details, but I want to talk
details for a moment because this is one
that's going to save your buns whenever
you get to raiding, and it's just as
important in dungeons. Healing per
second isn't a very important stat. So,
healing per second tells us a few
things. It tells us how much healing we
can pump out when we're blasting in all
cylinders, and it tells us relatively
how much healing we had to do in a
fight. Remember, damage dealers always
have something to hit. Healers, no, not
really. They don't always have to heal.
This means that HPS doesn't tell you how
good or bad you were doing. If somebody
came up to me and was like, "Oh my god,
Bowser, look at my healing parse in a
Cinder Brew metery." I would ask them if
they need help. I'd ask them if they're
hurt. Like, are they okay? Do they need
like a hug? Because that means that
there was more damage going on, more
people taking damage, more people
getting hurt. The healer has to work
harder. And that's not necessarily a
good thing because in a good world you
only have to do essential healing and
then you can just go and do damage.
That's never how this goes. But I think
it's important to remember that.
Especially in raid. Sometimes people
will be like, "Wow, this healer really
isn't performing very well." But the
answer is you're comparing them to a a
parser, somebody who's trying to get
good raid healing parses, which means
sometimes it's only one or two people
actually trying to heal in a raid, both
trying to parse to the best of their
abilities. And while that is fun, it's
like high score chasing. It is cool.
It's not necessarily saying that you're
a bad player cuz you didn't hit those
numbers. They hit those numbers playing
a very dangerous game. So, just keep
that in mind whenever you're thinking
about it. Now, onto the other kind of
bars, Plater. I mentioned Plater. I
don't like talking about add-ons too
much for healers, but details and Plater
are the two I really recommend. And the
reason is Blizzard still hasn't
implemented a feature to the default
name plates. They really want default
name plates to tell you who is being
cast on. With Plater, a lot of profiles
you can import will tell you who is
attacking who. This is how you know that
that one person in your party is getting
attacked by three different mobs, and
they'll instantly explode if those casts
get off. This information might be hard
to parse when you're new, but as a
veteran of the game, you're going to
need to see that information. It will
help you save lives. Now, technically,
the mobs do literally look at the target
that they're casting on, but you know
how this game goes. Sometimes you're all
in a nice little bubble, a sphere of
players, and you're not going to know
who the hell someone's targeting. So,
it's very important to have something
like Plater. But, I really do hope that
Blizzard adds this feature into the
game, as a lot of people like the base
Blizzard name plates aesthetic, and I
don't blame them. It'd be nice if this
feature could be a part of the default
UI, but that's important. If you do want
any of my interface stuff, by the way, I
have an interface video that I release
like every season or two. I'm probably
due for updating it, but all my info is
in there if you'd like it. I always have
to make a section about healer damage,
and people always get frustrated with
me. But too bad. I'm I can't be too nice
about this one. As you get better at the
game, you're going to need to do damage.
Now, for a new player, don't be too
worried about it. Learn what your damage
buttons are. Learn how to do your
damage, and it'll just come naturally
over time. I mean it. Healer damage is
very front-loaded and easy to do. You
can just kind of press all your buttons,
get it all out there, and then get back
to healing pretty quickly and pretty
often, actually. If a healer is doing 5
to 7% of a dungeon's damage, or heck,
even 3% of the dungeon's damage, if you
asked any DPS player, "Hey, would you
bring an extra 3 to 7% damage every
single time you ran a key?" They'd tell
you, "Yeah, every single time." You
really do affect things. And more
importantly, there can be calculated for
how much time save you do. Now, this is
a little complicated, so I might make a
whole video on this. It might just be a
fun little side video, but you really do
take multiple minutes off a timer,
somewhere in the range of two, three,
and even four minutes sometimes just
because you contributed damage. If you
ask yourself or ask any like top player
how many runs have come down to the last
couple of seconds, right? All of those
runs could have been in the wheelhouse
of how much damage the healer was able
to do. So, always keep that in mind.
Your damage is important, but if you're
learning, again, learn how your damage
works. Don't overthink it. You will find
the free time to do some damage and get
some kind of contribution in. Anything
helps. Anything always
helps. And for my final point of the
video, and arguably maybe one of the
most important, pugging in World of
Warcraft is an entirely different game
than playing coordinated. In a
coordinated group, especially in Mythic
Plus, you're going to be able to, you
know, get your crowd controls off in
exactly the order you want. You can all
interrupt things and call what you're
going to interrupt. You can use your
cooldowns. Well, a good coordinated
group makes a really hard key look
trivial to the spectator. It's an
awesome sight to see. And if you've
watched any top players, you've probably
seen the kind of stuff that they can do.
When you're pugging, you lose all of
that. There's no coordination. There's
minimal coordination. If anything,
people might not use their defensive
smart. They might not know the dungeon
as well as you. There's so many missing
gaps of information. I still recommend
pugging. I do it all the time. I think
it makes you a really, really sharp
healer. And I think that's pretty
important. But on the contrary, when
you're pugging, just remember that
players can be mean. Players can be
exceedingly nice. You might get a really
good group and then followed by a really
bad group. I don't want you to just
immediately blame yourself or
immediately blame others. Use the tools
we talked about today, like checking
details and looking through your logs
and understanding what you could have
done better. Even when you're new, you
might not understand everything, but if
you notice there was a button you never
pressed the entire dungeon or you didn't
get any value out of something, figure
out where it might go and re-evaluate. I
think I can make a whole video though
talking about just how different this
game is pugging than playing with like
other people and kind of what that
experience is like. But let me know in
the comments if you want to see that.
That's going to do it for this one,
though. I hope the healing video helped.
Sorry for the slow content. I've been
just a bit busy, but with any luck, I
should be getting more videos out. I'm
going to try to make a few more
beginners guides on other healers that
I've been really enjoying. And uh I have
this whole tank arc that you're all
going to have to experience. So, I hope
you're excited about that one. Take
care, everyone. I'll see you soon.