I’ve found that with the right configuration, I can keep my eyes on what the group is doing and not miss one single heal.

I use a combination of healbot and mouseover macros. I’m not the best geared healer (priest) by far but I can keep pace with and often times outheal much better geared healers (including other healing classes in raid). Why? Because I can anticipate certain things. Who is going to pull aggro? Who is going to lag a bit and not move in time? Who isn’t standing in the right spot? If someone cloth or are they plate? Can I shield and renew or do I need to cycle up larger heals? It is a matter of knowing the people in your group, knowing the fight and knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the classes in your raids and responding to all these factors.

I’ve had plenty of people try to tell me how to heal. Yet, in the end, I heal my way and do what is comfortable for me… getting the job done.

My guild downed KT for the first time last night, and after the 3rd or 4th wipe, I thought of this post.

Looking for the Frost Blast on screen works so much better (I was mad at myself for not doing this sooner).

Unfortunately, wipe 5 was a direct result of using this method. I started focusing too much on it. Once the adds spawned at around fifty percent and our raid’s OT picked them up it was not possible to see his character because the Guardian of Icecrown model is too big. He got slammed with a Frost Blast and I had no idea.

You were certainly right about this being situational, though in the right situation, it is VERY helpful.

I’d like to point out a variation on the raid frames option, specific to your Kel’Thuzad example: in the vanilla UI, raid frames can show you debuffs on your raid members’ health/mana bars. The ice-block thing he casts looks like a little piece of ice next to your raid member’s frame. I see that just as if it were a poison or curse, target the user in the raid frame, and heal as usual. My mouse remains in a VERY small area and I press buttons to cast spells.

I can’t wait for DBM or any other raid announces to tell me what’s up, and I don’t have to worry about trying to mouse all the way across my screen to find the player. As a bonus, the vanilla UI also can show you who’s in/out of range. I usually don’t have to move much because of this easy visual.

Your points about being pro- rather than re-active are well said, though. Better to see what the boss is up to than wait until after it’s done.

Nims last blog post..WotLK pre-raid gear check: healery types

I believe that one of the hallmarks of the best healers is the ability to combine HUH (Heads-Up Healing) and a raid frame UI. My personal favorite is Grid as mentioned by many of those in comments above. I’ve found that the only drawback to Grid is the almost dizzying number of configuration options. RaidRx from WoW Insider had an awesome post on configuring Grid (I think it was also an Addon Spotlight, but I don’t remember for certain).

My preference is to have Grid toward the center of my viewing space in order to have it close to hand (mouse). This gives the ability to quickly target using either method.

Combining the two methods also helps prevent the “healing blinders” situation and keeps a healer more aware of the surrounding events! That will help you, as a healer, keep *yourself* out of the aforementioned wall of fire as well. You can’t squawk at the DPS to move and then get yourself fricasseed, now can ya?