First Aid

What changed in Forever

Healing potions moved here. Every source agrees that the plain healing potions are now First Aid recipes:

Anyone can drink them. They share a 2-minute cooldown, and the higher ones need a character level (Icy Veins). Alchemy keeps only its "Discolored" healing potions, which heal more but hurt you afterwards (ForeverDB).

Cures for poison, disease and bleeds (Wowhead, Icy Veins):

• Anti-venoms (poisons): the only cure you can use in combat, which makes them valuable where poisons are common. A new Potent Anti-Venom joins the line at 215.
• Poultices (diseases): Simple, Clever, Superior and Powerful, from skill 90.
• Tourniquets (bleeds): Woolen, Leather and Surgical, from skill 120.

Poultices and tourniquets work only out of combat. Each cure removes effects up to a set level: the Simple Poultice handles diseases up to level 25 and the Woolen Tourniquet bleeds up to level 30 (ForeverDB). All the cures share a 1-minute cooldown.

Bandages work as before. You channel them on yourself or an ally, and the target then can't take another for a minute. Crafting and using can need different skill: Heavy Runecloth Bandage takes 290 to make but 225 to use (Icy Veins). The Field Medicine Legacy perk shortens the Recently Bandaged debuff outside dungeons, raids and battlegrounds.

Levelling, in brief

This is where the guides disagree most: bandages or potions.

The other guides split the difference:

• Wowhead: bandages are usually the cheapest way.
• wow-professions.com: either bandages or Minor Healing Potions to 75, then bandages. Its untested 225–300 plan slots in Superior and Major Healing Potions.
• wowtbc.gg, priced from Auction House scans: mixes potions, Simple Poultices (about 90–125) and bandages.

wow-professions.com adds that First Aid kept every skill range from Classic. Mageweave Cloth was almost unobtainable in the beta, so it stayed on Heavy Silk Bandages to 225.

Ranks:

• Apprentice and Journeyman: from trainers.
• Expert: from the book Expert First Aid – Under Wraps, sold by Deneb Walker in Stromgarde Keep, Arathi (Alliance) or Balai Lok'Wein in Brackenwall Village, Dustwallow Marsh (Horde). The same vendors sell the Heavy Silk and Mageweave bandage manuals, and all three can be traded.
• Artisan: from the quest Triage, which needs level 35 and skill 225. It's given by Doctor Gustaf VanHowzen in Theramore (Alliance) or Doctor Gregory Victor in Hammerfall (Horde). You save 15 patients with the doctor's bandages. wow-professions.com advises handing it in the moment you finish, before more patients die and the quest fails.

What it's worth

• Healing potions: Icy Veins notes that anyone can drink them, so they suit players buying consumables on the Auction House, especially while levelling.
• Tailoring demand: Wowhead's Tailoring guide mentions that some new cloth recipes use health or mana potions, and suggests First Aid as a source.
• Your own survival: bandages provide healing between fights at the cost of cloth and a safe channel.