Starting out was hell, since I leveled as a holy priest. At one point I decided to try out shadow for leveling, but I just couldn’t get the hang of it though and switched back to holy. Although I leveled slowly and died a million times, I do really enjoy being a healer.

Half the time I finish a dungeon and I honestly can’t remember what went on, I just kind of follow everyone around keeping my eye on people’s health or running around in circles when no one needs healing. But it’s nice to be the one keeping everyone alive.

Also, the rotations bother me. I like having to react, not having to make sure that I hit Scourge Strike after a Blood Strike or I lose a CD or something. To me, that’s not nearly as fun. I can predict exactly how I’ll hit my DK’s buttons, but even if I’m healing a single target, the healing and fight will always be different and unique. I love that.
.-= Professor Beej´s last blog ..Saw VI – Sixth Time’s a Charm? =-.

Reaction Time:
For DPS you don’t have to react much. Just stick to your rotation and you might have to react to something procing or to getting agro. But if your reaction time is lower then all that means is the boss dies a little longer than usual. That can cause a wipe but I’ve been in heroics where dps was only like 1000 on 2 of them and all it did was make me have to worry about my mana a bit more.

For a healer even going to la la land for a instant could mean someone dies. I’ve seen the tank die because I hesitated for .1 sec (thats how much my Flash Heal cast bar had left when he died) and we wiped. If adds come I have to quickly top off the tank while figuring out who’s about to take it right in the face and decide if I can even save him (remember if I try to heal and fail then the mob looks at the guy that gave him that extra 2000 health) then do it or “amputate” the DPS and try to save the group.

Judgment:
Every good healer knows exactly how long his every heal he has takes to cast and can impeculously judge how long a person has to live. We also have everything planned out at least 3 heals in advance at any given moment but also change that plan almost as much as we execute it. It’s like chess meets juggling and finding that perfect healing rotation in .1 seconds then flawlessly executing it(anything less than flawless and it’s a wipe) is the rush every healer lives for.
DPS only has to google ” rotation” and bam there’s their perfect dps maxing rotation that will only ever change 1 or 2 times per instance and usually only change in a very predictable easily pre-determinable way. Other than CC or agro reduction abilities this will rarely change and requires little judgemnt or reaction time plus failing usually doesn’t mean a wipe it just means you have to get rezzed (yes I DPS shadow so I do know what it’s really like)

Anticipation:
PVE mobs all react the same on a predetermined basis. This means that DPS really only has to watch the threat meter and their DBM raid warnings and they’ll know exactly when and how the mob will do something. Their enemy is very static and rarely will suprise them.
For a healer your “enemy” includes your party and how they react. IE you have to know that your warrior will shield wall if adds get pulled so you can buy him time to pull them off the squishies by healing your ass off. You also have to know if he won’t (and pay attn to if it’s on cooldown) so you know you have to sacrifice the first poor squishy that caught their eye to save the group.
My point on this is when i dps shadow there are times where I didn’t even know we had a mage in the group unless he popped a table because I didn’t care what the other dps were or if they were any good or how geared they were. It just didn’t matter my rotation would be the same and I could do my own thing.
The first thing I do when healing a group is look at what they are, what spec they are, and how much health each one has so I know what agro managment and survivability they have. I also pay alot of attention to what they do and how they manage things like agro (knowing a mage will Ice Block his adds to the tank can mean the diff between a wipe and an easy kill) and how well they take a beating.

Finally gear:
Gear makes a DPS in the sense that if they won’t be able to pull 7k dps in greens no matter how good they are. A good priest in greens is > a crappy one in T9.5 being played by his little brother. This means I can heal “above my level” if I’m good and if i get called a noob it’s probably because a. that blame the healer syndrome, b. I messed up realllly bad and not just because I haven’t spent as much time in front of my computer as the lock that put all his spells in a /castsequence and pressed the same button over and over again but has +3000 damage from gear.

My 2 cents.

I’ve always been an advocate of playing each aspect – Tank, DPS, Heal, so you understand what they do. As a guild officer, I feel knowing how it all comes together is important. In support of that I plan to level my Paladin next to see how the holy side flies.