I love healing. Once you have the correct mentality, the healing part is easy. You just have to train your brain to focus on the big picture, where your team is standing, the state of everyone's health, when to refresh the buffs (as dps, you should already understand this part), and factor in an understanding of the mechanics so you can anticipate the higher damage moments.

Having high spell power and a decent crit is still important, but now your own resource sustainability and regeneration rate become critical - you always want at least a little bit of juice left for emergency healing.

You can actually work on this mentality as a dps. It's a good thing to understand in any role.

Just a warning, some less than stellar players do like to blame the healer for their own mistakes. This hasn't happened to me often, but it has happened. So it's important you understand where your responsibilities end, so you don't take blame for things that are not your fault. It helps to have a friendly group you run with regularly to help calibrate that.

(For example, our tank died on the last boss of vCoH1 last night. I thought it was my fault, since he's usually very stable and only really needs Rapid Regeneration ticking on him for most boss fights. He admitted after the fight that he had chosen a bad spot to stand and took two 33k hits in quick succession - nothing I could have done. You need at least one person willing to admit their own mistakes so you truly understand what you can and can't prevent. Defense against the blameshifters.)

Healing is both the easiest and hardest role in the game. Unlike DPS or tank which can get away with the same moves for all dungeons or groups a healer has to switch based on the group you are in or the mechanics. For Example Just spamming heals is okay for groups with low survivability but if your team can survive well then using pure buffs or adding to damage every now and then is a good thing. Also some mechanics may make it next to impossible to stick togeather or some that hit the whole group regardless of formation sometimes combined so healers will have to adapt to that as well. Also if someone stands in stupid it is THERE fault when they die.


Finally the best advice is just ask your group for advice if you feel iffy about something if you ask I am sure your teammates will give it to you and may tell you what they need or don't need.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Really helpful stuff here, I'm gonna send my templar out into Tamriel with a new outlook on life. Any suggestions on easy to get gear? I'm 9 trait crafter but I don't currently have any dlc's atm.