5 “Go-To” Resources for WoW Healers

This article is Day 2 of 31 Days to Building a Better Blog.

Because you’re reading this, chances are fairly good you play a healer class in WoW, or know a healer who could use some guidance. We all know there are scores of WoW blogs (hundreds, even), and of those, a high number are written by folks who play healers. So how does one narrow the list if you’re trying to some research in a limited time?

Simple: You visit Kestrel’s Aerie, and choose from the following list:

1. World of Matticus: A one-stop shop for healers of all classes, Matt has rounded up some of the best and brightest blogging healers (or healing bloggers) you’ll find—one for each healing class. Not only will you find loads of healing guidance, but there is plenty of information for guild leadership as well, whether you’re a healing lead, guild officer, or Guild Leader.
2. PlusHeal Forums: Many of the members here are bloggers, but many, many more are not. On the Priest forums, at least, there are a couple of outstanding theorycrafters in Zusterke and Benificence (who should be a blogger, in my not-so-humble opinion). There are forums here for each class, plus a PTR forum and a guild leadership forum. The beauty of PlusHeal is, you can ask your question(s) and be notified by email as soon as answers start appearing.
3. Twisted Nether Wiki’s Big List of Blogs: What I like to call the “BLOB,” this list has hundreds of blogs broken down by class and spec. There is even a “Healer” category, but fair warning: Only a relatively few blogs have been added to that category so far.¹ Instead, I suggest you search under the specific healing class/spec in which you’re interested.
4. LootRank: My favorite site to determine what items are upgrades, and what aren’t. It takes a wee bit of work to set up, but I prefer assigning my own preferences to stat values, rather than trust someone else’s judgment of what’s best for my gear and my style. Wowhead’s Item Comparison page will also help with this, but it takes a lot more work, in my opinion, to set up.
5. TankSpot: Wait…what? You read correctly, but specifically, I’m referring to TankSpot’s Raid Movie Guides. They are the most well-done of all the boss fight videos I’ve seen, and are not “just for tanks.”

I originally thought to make this a list of 10; however, after the first five, every other item I thought to add was redundant to something already listed. For one thing, I only listed one blog; however, there are at least a half-dozen blogs specializing in each of the healing specialties, that present more information with a narrower focus than World of Matticus. And some of those blogs, I go to before I look at WoM. (For examples, check my 5-Star Blogs, under Blogroll and More in the right sidebar.)

There are other sites out there as well—Elitist Jerks comes to mind—that provide considerable information from theorycrafting to practical application, just as there are plenty of other sites with boss-fight movies and item comparators. The five sites I listed are merely a starting point for you to build your own library of resources.

Finally, for those of you who do have such a library, what are some of the “must-reads” you use? I’d love to see some alternatives in the Comments, just in case there are some that are new to me.