Hi Kevin, great questions.

Seeing the battle as a whole is definitely one of those things that take you to the next level of play. Being able to adapt to what the opposing team does is another.

This article will be dealing with beginners looking to move to an intermediate stage. The questions you're asking seem to be geared towards a higher level of play, but that's okay.

For positioning as a healer, it depends what kind of healer you are a lot of times. Nagrand is a good example -- as a druid or shaman you might be able to freely move between the pillars with travel form or ghost wolf. Priests will have a fair amount of mobility as well with shielding and hots at the right time. As a holy paladin, you might be more bound to your spot when combat arises.

That's not to say you can't move and adjust as needed. Most healers will tell you that it depends on the flow of the battle. If you're a priest and you need to get a fear off to win the game, you need to move within range of the enemy healer or dps in order to do that.

Sometimes you'll need to stay next to a pillar in order to avoid mana burns or crowd control so your team doesn't die. These kinds of things are best learned with a lot of experience within the arena, but I'll try to give some starter sets of tips next week with our strategy article.

Stale-mate situations are usually because your team's and the opposing team's dps "fault." They can usually do something different to try to get a kill, a stalemate is rarely a healer's "fault." I use "fault" in quotes because you shouldn't be blaming anyone for a loss -- but the responsibility of that particular aspect of play falls on them.

For instance, if you were to not heal at all, the lack of heals (but not survivability) the responsibility for your team's growing defensive play and probably eventual loss would fall on you.

Your DPS needs to break to monotony by trying a different strategy in most (but not all) stalemate situations.

Hopefully this reply was helpful, but I can see how it wouldn't be, haha.

Question for you: Would you prefer MS paint drawings of arenas and where to stand positionally in certain situations, or do you think describing is good enough?