Draft Mode Healer
What is a healer?
A healer is a common RPG role, essential for group activities such as PvP, Dungeons and Raids.
The role of a healer is, you guessed it, to heal their allies and keep them alive.
The primary target of a healer in dungeons and raids will be the tanks, as this will be the frontline for your group. If the tank dies, it's very likely your group will die and have to regroup.
In PvP a healer will be essential to ensure victory over the enemies as they keep their allies alive longer than the enemy's players.
Starting out
If you checked out the draft mode guide, you'll know that you start out with 4 abilities.
So let's go over what good starting abilities are for healers.
Life Tap
This ability will sacrifice some of your health and turn it into mana instead. This ability combined with a Heal over Time (commonly called a "HoT") will make you able to sustain your mana and reduce the amount of time you spend drinking between fights substantially.
Definitely a good pick at level 1.
Stoneskin Totem
Stoneskin totem will provide all nearby allies with a significant amount of extra armor. Armor will reduce damage taken from attacks, so this is definitely useful for a healer to drop down so you have to heal your tank less. Again, this is a way to reduce the amount mana you consume (because you have to heal less) and it makes life easier for you, because you will need to heal less regularly. Essentially giving you some time to breathe.
Renew
One of the two heal over times you can roll at level 1. This being the Priest variant. Renew is great in combination with Life Tap, and is useful to top up your allies and providing a constant source of healing on your primary target (usually the tank).
Rejuvenation
One of the two heal over times you can roll at level 1. This being the Restoration Druid variant. Rejuvenation provides the same utility as renew does at early levels.
But since Restoration Druids are more focused on healing over time, far more so than priests or shamans are, it is far easier to build on the druid tree if you prefer heals over time.
Healing Touch
Healing Touch is the standard Druid heal. It has a decent cast time, provides a nice heal and can be upgraded quite nicely through talents, and has a lot of synergy with the heal over time spells druid can put out.
Healing Wave
Healing touch is the only Restoration Shaman ability you can roll at level 1 that can actually heal. Just like Healing Touch it has a decent cast time and provides a good heal. But its focus is not on providing synergy with heals over time. It's synergy is more focused on other shaman abilities such as Earthen Shield and Riptide. As such, i only suggest taking Healing Wave if you have a sealed card for Earthen Shield or are dead set on playing a Shaman focused healer.
Holy Light
Healing touch is the standard Paladin heal. It has a decent cast time, provides a nice heal and can be upgraded quite nicely through talents. Unlike the other healing specializations available, a Holy Paladin is most suited for healing PvP. They have many talents that reduce their own damage taken and cast times as well as instant cast heals and the ability at the highest levels to continue healing for a short period after death.
Fade
An often overlooked ability, but nonetheless a vital one for a succesful healer. As this ability does is temporarily remove all your threat. I'll explain more on threat below as it's a vital mechanic to know if you aspire to be a succesful healer.
Other abilities of note
There are several buffs worth taking as a healer to fill out your starting kit. These abilities are: Mark Of The Wild - a buff that gives the target armor and at later ranks basic stats. Devotion Aura - a group wide aura that provides armor Arcane Intellect - Good for holy healers, as they will be able to convert intelligence into healing power Frost Armor - A self buff that gives you armor and slows attackers. Only take this if you are certain you will be focused on PvP healing. Blessing of Wisdom - Provides mana regeneration in the form of a buff. Power Word: Fortitude - Grants extra stamina. Useful for buffing your tank. Smite - A damaging ability, useful if you want to be able to also quest on your own. Demon Skin - A self buff that gives you some extra armor and makes heals on you more potent. Good for PvP.
Threat Mechanic
What is threat? Well in the simplest terms, when you heal someone who's engaged in combat with an enemy (non-player) character, you accumulate what is known as Threat. Threat determines what the enemy will attack. Generally a tank is designed to generate as much threat as possible so that they are able to maintain the attention of the enemy and have their attacks focused on him. This allows the damage dealers to actually deal damage and you as the healer to heal.
Regardless, there will be times where the tank loses aggro. This could be because he pulled a group of monsters but didn't deal damage to all of them. Or it could be because of a mechanic the enemy has that causes them to reset their threat meter to 0.
When this happens, you will need to communicate to the tank that you have gained threat. Usually this is conveyed by calling out that you have "Aggro".
Abilities such as fade are also vital for this, as it gives the tank breathing room to regain control of the threat meter.
Suggested Combinations for healers
Note that all these builds can be complimented however you want and are merely suggestions.
For healing over time focused builds:
Prioritize: Rejuvenation, Life Tap and Healing Touch.
For a PvP focused build start:
Holy Light, Frost Armor or Demon Skin, Smite
For Massive Heal focused builds:
Renew, Holy Light, Fade