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recruiting-healers
title: Recruiting Healers description: Why every guild is short on healers, what healers actually look for in a guild, and how to become the guild they choose. date: 2026-09-01 readingTime: 6 min
Look at the "Most Wanted" panel on the Guilds Forever homepage on any given day and healers are at the top. Every guild is short. The reason is not that healers are rare. It is that healers have options, and most guilds give them no reason to choose one over another.
Why healers leave
Ask a healer why they left their last guild and you rarely hear "the raids were too hard". You hear:
- "Nobody assigned anything, so I healed whoever was lowest and got blamed when the tank died."
- "The DPS stood in things and it was somehow my job."
- "We had six healers on the roster and needed ten, so I could never miss a night."
- "The loot council gave the healing trinket to a DPS because he had been there longer."
None of these are about difficulty. They are about respect, organisation and load. A guild that fixes them recruits healers easily, because word gets around.
What a healer reads on your guild page
When a healer looks at your listing, they are checking specific things, in roughly this order:
- How many healers you need. "Need 4 healers" reads as "we have six and you will be raiding every single night with no cover". Be honest about the number, but also say what the target is: "Recruiting two healers to reach a core of eleven" is reassuring.
- Whether there is a healing lead. Mention them by name in the listing. A named healing lead means assignments, cooldown rotations and someone who will notice a good night as well as a bad one.
- Your loot policy on healer items. State it. "Healing items go to healers first, main-spec, before any off-spec consideration" is worth ten paragraphs of culture.
- Attendance versus bench. Healers want to know they can miss a night without the raid collapsing. A healer bench of two is a recruiting advantage, not a cost.
Write the listing for them
Most recruitment listings are written from the guild's perspective: what the guild has achieved, what it expects. Add one paragraph written from the healer's perspective. For example:
"Healers: you will have a healing lead who posts assignments before every pull, a healer channel in Discord where DPS cannot talk, a bench deep enough that you can take a night off, and first call on healing gear. We currently have eight core healers and we are recruiting to eleven."
That paragraph will out-recruit any amount of "friendly community".
Recruit healers where they are
Healers with completed profiles on the player board are usually looking for exactly the organisation described above. Sort by role, filter by your region and ruleset, then read the goals field. A healer who writes "looking for a guild that treats healers as people rather than mana bars" has told you what to say in your message.
Message them personally. Mention your healing lead by name. Mention your bench. Ask about their schedule before you ask about their logs.
Grow your own
The most reliable long-term supply of healers is players you already have who are willing to switch. Every roster has a Shadow Priest who healed in a previous life, a Druid with a healing set in the bank, a Paladin who would rather heal than be a third-string tank.
Make switching attractive: guarantee a raid spot, fund the gear from the bank, pair them with your healing lead for two weeks. A converted healer who already likes the guild retains far better than a recruited one who does not know it yet.
Keep the ones you have
Recruiting healers is expensive. Losing them is worse. The habits that keep a healing team:
- Assignments every pull, even on farm.
- A healer-only channel where they can coordinate without noise.
- Public recognition for saves, not just complaints about deaths.
- Loot that goes to healers when it should, visibly.
- A rotation so nobody heals five nights a week during progression.
Do these and the healers on your roster will recruit the rest for you. That is the only healer recruitment strategy that has ever really worked.
Ready to put it into practice?