Healing Sunday, My Approach to Healing

Every Sunday I'm going to write about something healing related. It might be about my most recent healing endeavors, an in depth look at a healing class, or ways to help out your healer. Today I think I'll start with my overall healing philosophy. It's what I try to keep in mind whenever I'm healing, and I think that it's helped me feel more confident when I'm healing.

Avoid Overhealing
To me overhealing is any amount of healing that heals for more than my target's health pool. If someone only needs 7,000 health and I heal them for 8,000, then I just overhealed for 1,000. I avoid healing people, so that I reduce my total amount of overhealing done as much as possible.

Balancing Overhealing
So, while I try to avoid overhealing at all costs, that does not mean that avoid keeping people alive. For me, I like to keep a nice balance reducing deaths and reducing wasted mana. This is where making good choices comes into play. I could spend all of my time healing with my smallest and least expensive spell, but I probably would let a lot of people die that way. Instead, I try to choose the right heal for each situation. It's about deciding when to use the Big Heal, the Fast Heal, and the Cheap Heal, and that decision depends on the situation.

I'm Going to Overheal, and That's Ok
No matter how much I try, I am going to overheal. For my paladin healer, I have three abilities that are going to heal whether I want them to or not. For my priest, certain spells are going to critical when I don't expect it, and heal over time spells are going to keep healing whether the target is topped off or not. Those mechanics are apart of healing. They come with the territory, and knowing that helps me make sense of the numbers when I look at my overhealing. The meter might say that 20% of my healing done was overhealing, but I know that more than half of that amount was from abilities that I can't avoid. They are free bonus healing, and I'm not going to complain about that.

Overhealing and You
I have taken this approach to healing because it is what has worked for me, and I find it to be the most fun for my play style. I am not proclaiming my approach to be the only way to heal, nor am I suggesting that if you have a differing approach then you're wrong. This is merely the perspective that I will be coming from when I write about healing, and I thought it best to get that out of the way first.

With that said, what do you think of my approach? More importantly, what do you think of overhealing? Do you avoid it, ignore it? Let me know.