Healing Sunday, When Things Go Well

Whenever I'm learning new fights and with a group of people I've found that I often run out of mana shortly before everyone dies. Running out of mana tends to be a big indicator for me that the fight is not going well. This often occurs because learning new fights means that people are taking damage from boss abilities that they should avoid. Having to heal through that additional damage means that I'm healing more than I should, and as a result my mana bar dwindles in the process.

This reminds me of my groups first attempts on the Lich King. I would constantly run out of mana before the first transition phase, and it was evident why when we wiped shortly thereafter. It took a lot of attempts before I became comfortable enough with my healing and the fight mechanics to slow things down and realize that I don't need to go all out. Slowing the pace of the fight down in my head means that I'm using my less expensive heals more often, and I'm not worrying as much when people are taking a lot of damage because I know that I have other healers to help me keep up.

Slowing the fight down makes me more efficient, and as the group gets better at dealing with boss abilities I can afford to be more efficient because they aren't taking as much damage. The two go hand in hand. With practice and becoming familiar with a fight the group takes less damage and the healing strain isn't as intense. This became more evident to me when my group recently downed the Ascendant Council from Bastion of Twilight. We would consistently die in the third phase, and when we did my mana was consistently running low. When we killed the boss, however, everything just seemed to click. My mana was around 30% when the boss died, and the group executed the fight better than any of our other attempts. These two outcomes did not happen by coincidence.

The group's performance has the biggest influence on your healing decisions, and those decisions impact your mana efficiency. If you ever find that you're running out of mana and just can't keep up with the healing don't be too harsh on yourself. Sure your gear, spec, and enchants are important, but if you're group is taking unnecessary damage it doesn't always matter how much mana regen or spell power you have. There are times when you can't keep people alive. But, if you're making sound healing decisions and your group is working well, then everything is going to be okay.

Healing Sunday, Learning to Heal as a Discipline Priest

Recently I have started trying to heal as Discipline on my priest. For a long time I would exclusively heal as Holy, but since I haven't been doing so hot with Shadow as my off spec, I decided to give Discipline a shot. I've always been intrigued by Discipline and how the spec utilizes absorption heals more than any other healer. The idea of using a bubble to heal by preventing damage is an interesting one.

So I tried it out. I changed my spec. I picked up Evangelism, Archangel, and Atonement, and into my first heroic I went. One thing that stayed the same as Holy is using Prayer of Mending on cooldown. This spell is a great go to, especially with the glyph for it. Another similarity that I noticed is the pace of healing is about the same. I didn't feel as though I was using more or fewer spells to keep up, and overall the effectiveness for both is about the same.

One big difference between the two is the ability to heal with Smite and Holy Fire. I think that the synergy between Evangelism, Archangel, and Atonement is very cohesive, and, while Chakra has improved greatly over the course of this expansion, I wish that Holy had something as fluid.

The absorption from Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis is another big difference between the two specs. If someone is on the verge of death and I'm unable to cast a heal in time, I can use PW:S to save them. It essentially gives them an additional 30,000 health. Divine Aegis felt very similar to Holy's mastery heal, Echo of Light. If I heal and generate the heal over time from Echo of Light, then I can wait until the HoT has ticked before I heal again. Similarly, when the shield procs from one of my critical heals, I can wait until it is absorbed before I heal again. In both cases I can let the spells do the healing for me.

All in all, I'm happy with my decision to try Discipline healing, and finding that I enjoy it as much as I do gives another reason to love my priest even more. So what do you think? Have you tried out a spec that you ended up loving?

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.