Playing with addons

The topic of the week in the blogs I read seems to be addons, or maybe more specifically healing and addons, with a lot of recent posts about this and a lot of opinions and discussions and flaming back and forth in the comments.

I pulled some interesting topics from some of the blogs discussing this because my views on these specific matters were quite different and I felt a rant coming on :-)

"If you are incapable of playing this game without addons, then you are allowing those addons to play the game for you."

I can play this game without any addon at all, and I have done so many times when one or more of them have gone fubared and I cba to try to find which one and fix it. Error messages all over the screen ftl :-(

For many situations or classes this is perfectly viable and I usually don't even notice that all addons are disabled. For other situations and other classes, this is not so.

Healing is one of these not-so situations.

I can heal a 5-man group without any addons at all by clicking on their party frame and press the appropriate keybound spell for the heal I want to use.

Does it take longer? Yes. Will I miss who has that misty-green poison dot ticking down? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Will I waste a lot of time on misclicks on targets? Definitely yes. Will this result in a wipe? Maybe, maybe not. Do I like it? No.

Could I heal a 10-man raid without any addons? Same answers as above, only even more slow and strenous. Could I heal a 25-man? Same again, and with even more emphasis on slow-to the point-of-or-past-too-late and strenous-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown.

So, I am capable of playing this game without addons, but (in this particualr case) I don't like it.

Why don't I like it then? Well, there are two reasons, actually:

1. I hate to lose people on my shift, and I'd be a lot slower without my addons, using only the default UI, and thus I would end up losing a lot more people.

2. My addons actually make me experience the game MORE, not less, and accordingly to not use my addons would make me miss out on a lot of the gameplay.

Let me elaborate.

The addons I use for healing are Healbot and Visual Heal. Despite its name, Healbot is NOT a bot used for healing.

Healbot is a customisable addon that presents information about the people in my party or raid. It shows me the healthbars, the mana bars, who has aggro, and who is out of range for me. It can be set to show a lot of different buffs and debuffs on the player, and it presents this in an easily accessible manner that makes me feel comfortable I won't miss anything crucial.

However, what it can't do, is heal the player for me.

(Ok, out of combat there actually is a one-click kinda thingy called Smartcast. If I want to heal someone out of combat and has SmartCast enabled, Healbot will automatically choose the spell most suited to heal the player to full. But hey, who gives a shit about what happens out of combat, eh?)

The frames of all players are bunched together where I put them, within easy reach for me, the healing spells I use are bound to different key/mousekey combinations, and I feel confident I can pull most of my party or raid through whatever we encounter.

But, and this is important, in combat, it is I who choose whom to heal, it is I who choose which spell to use, not my addon.

Although I have been playing computer and console games for a major part of my life, I am not a twitch gamer and I do react a little slow sometimes. Anything which makes me able to toss out my heals more easily, or able to see and target who has some nasty debuff before he/she kicks the bucket is a great benefit to me.

I mean, its still ME doing the healing, isn't it?

I even have time to watch how the fight is going this way instead of suddenly wondering why is noone needing a heal anymore? just to realise that Oh, the boss is dead.

Sure, I could practice manual targeting and healing with the deafult UI to improve my performance there, but it would never be as fast and easy as it is with my Healbot, I would be too focused on targetting and healing and lose out on a lot of the actual fight.

So, in my opinion, this kind of addon is NOT playing the game for me, it is helping me have more fun.

Call it crutches if you want but if I risk falling on my face when walking I am very happy for a pair of crutches, thank you.


Another interesting topic was "Good healers use addons to heal. But great healers don’t have to rely on them."

Now this could be a quagmire to tread. What makes a healer good? What makes her great?

The truth is, that I don't understand this statement at all.

I don't consider myself a good healer, maybe I would dare to aspire to "adequate" or maybe "good enough", but definitely not "good". I usually get the job done but sometimes I botch things up and people keel over around me.

Anyone able to pull a group through or carry their part in a raid, with or without addons, is good enough. And that is, well, er, good enough. In my opinion.

Read More...

Summary only...

Shaman vs priest healing

So, my shaman Larue dinged 70 recently and have been trying out the Resto way for a little while. I have been healing mostly on my priest and a little dabbling on the side in the druid way of healing while still specced feral. In short, I have healed very little on my shaman, and while there are many similarities to the priestly way of doing it, there are also differences and it takes some getting used to.

A brief spell comparison
(Casts times with talents, mana costs without talents, healing amount without heal bonuses, spells or effects from set bonuses, trinkets and similar not included)

Slow large heal
Priests have Greater Heal, 2,5 secs cast, 825 mana, heals for about 2550, while shamans have a similar ability, Healing Wave, 2.5 secs cast, 720 mana, heals for about 2300.

Faster smaller heal
Flash Heal for priests, 1.5 secs cast, 470 mana, heals for about 1200. Lesser Healing Wave for shamans, 1.5 secs cast, 440 mana, heals for about 1100, so not much difference here either.

HoTs
Priests have Renew, instant cast, 450 mana, ticks for 222 heals every 3 seconds (about 255 with Improved Renew)

A draenei shaman has the racial ability Gift of the Naaru, which has a 1.5 secs cast, costs no mana and heals for (your level * 15 + 35) damage in total over 15 secs, which for a level 70 character means 217 heal every 3 seconds. This spell has a 3 min cd, which makes it marginally useful unless you have some way of remembering that its cd is up and its available for use.

Shamans also have Healing Stream totems, which can be considered a form of HoT as long as the group members stay in range of it (within 30 yards if the shaman has the talent Totemic Mastery). The Healing Stream costs 90 mana to pop and heals 18 damage (23 with Restorative Totems) every 2 seconds for 2 minutes. (Its not as low as it seems, Larue's current heal bonus of 931 makes this totem heal 81 damage every 2 seconds.)However, this totem can't be used at the same time as Mana Spring totem though, they both use the water totem.

Group heals
Priests have Prayer of Healing and (if specced for it) Circle of Healing. PoH has a cast time of 2.5 secs, heals group members within 30 yards of the priest for about 1000 and costs 1070 mana. CoH is instant, heals the target and group members within 15 yards of her (not the casting priest) for about 430 and costs 450 mana.

Shamans have Chain Heal, their white lazer beam heal with a 2.5 secs cast that heals up to three targets for about 900, 450 and 225 respectively (1080, 540 and 275 with Improved Chain heal) for a cost of 540 mana.

On-damage heals
Priests have Prayer of Mending, an instant spell that for 390 mana throws a frisbee to her target. When the target takes damage the frisbee heals her for 800 damage and then jumps to another group member within 20 yards.

Shamans place an instant cast Earth Shield on their target. The shield is instant cast, costs 450 mana and stays on the target with 6 charges that heals for 270 every time the target gets hit.

Oh-shit heals
When that oh-shit moment turns up, a priest pops a Power Word: Shield on the target, quickly followed by a Flash Heal or if time permits, a Greater Heal.

When a shaman needs an emergency heal, she pops Nature's Blessing, followed by presumably a Healing Wave.

Aggro dumps
A priest has Fade, which drops her aggro level for 10 seconds, and by the time Fade fades, someone else usually has worked up enough aggro to keep the mob from going for the priest again.

A shaman has a Tranquil Air totem that she can pop. However, since this affects the entire group within range (30 yards if you have the talent Totemic Mastery) it's usefulness is very limited.

Luckily, since a shaman can wear mail she usually can take a little beating before she goes down, which hopefully gives the tank or other enough time to re-establish aggro. (As a comparison, my freshly dinged shaman in greens and blues has 7200 armor whilme my epicced-out priest has 1500).

Mana preservation and regeneration
Mana regeneration for both priests and shamans at lvl 70 are calculated in the same way. Priests have a talent, Meditation, that allows 30% of this mana regeneration to keep going while they cast. Shamans have a somewhat similar talent, Unrelenting Storm, but this is deep in the Elemental tree and out of reach for a Resto shaman.

Priests have the talent Inner Focus that gives you a free spell cast every three minutes, and also a talent Holy Concentration that may give you another freebie.

A talent in the Discipline tree, Divine Spirit, also gives a buff that improves the priest's Spirit-based mana regeneration, and the Improved version also increases the healing bonus. (This talent requires at least 21 points (23 for the Improved version) so if you choose this one you can't have the Circle of Healing from the Holy tree)

Priests also have a Shadowfiend, a pet on a 5 minute cooldown that gives the priest mana back when the pet deals damage.

Shamans have no talents for mana-free spellcasts but they have a Mana Spring totem, that for a measly 120 mana pops a totem that with Restorative Totems will replenish 2800 mana for the 2 minutes its up.

Resto shamans also get the Mana Tide totem, which has a 5 minute cd like the Shadowfiend and gives mana back to all group members withing range.

Cleansing
Priests can Cure Disease and Abolish Disease (for those nasty mobs that keep contaminating people), they can Dispel Magic and Mass Dispel (extra powahful area dispell)

Shamans can Cure Disease and pop a Disease Cleansing Totem when hanging around unwashed mobs crawling with germs. They can also Purge mobs, but can't dispel magic effects from friends. They can however Cure Poison and use Poison Cleansing Totems.

Fun-ness
I have been healing on my priest for so long now I can probably do it in my sleep (but don't tell my fellow raiders I do this! ;P) and I still enjoy it. There are certainly still things to learn and ways to improve, but overall I am pretty happy with my priest at the moment. I will not bring her to Karazhan anymore because that probably would make me fall asleep, although she still could use some of the drops in there I have been there too many times to find it even remotely fun on my priest. I save the ZA and 25-man runs for Jools, that is where I enjoy playing her the most.

Shaman healins is not yet as instinctive but it's novel and fresh and although there are many similarities it is different enough to be interesting, and I am really looking forward to honing her skills and abilities in normal and heroic 5-mans and it would be great fun to take her to Karazhan.

Read More...

Summary only...

Mana-macros

In light of all the announced coming changes to buffs and debuffs in a raid environment I feel it is a bit unsafe to write more about what to do to keep your mana up when raiding.

Except for one thing - how to save mana by actually using the abilities and trinkets that you have equipped.

My memory is excellent! - only very short! So I rely a lot on macros and addons to help me remember to squeeze those nice on-use abilities out of my gear.

I have the talent Inner Focus from the Discipline tree. This talent gives me a free spell every three minutes.

Now, there are two ways to use this one - either save it for those oh-shit-situations when you need a heal NOW and you have absolutely no mana left, or you use it every time it's up.

I go for the latter alternative, and it helps me stay out of the 5-second rule and thus regenerate more mana, hopefully avoiding those oh-shit situations altogehter.

I have macroed Inner Foocus to my heal spells, like for example Greater Heal.

/cast Inner Focus
/cast [target=mouseover, help] [ ] Greater Heal

Every time I click the macro, it tries to cast Inner Focus. If it's available, good, the blue spiral spell effect flashes and I begin to cast a mana-free Greater Heal. If Inner Focus is on cooldown, I get an error message but I cast a Greater Heal anyways, using mana for it.

The first conditionals, [target=mouseover, help], makes me cast the macroed spell on my mouseover target if it's friendly.

The second conditionals, [ ], is for when I don't have a mouse-over target or I do have one but it's hostile, in which case the macro behaves like a plain /cast Greater Heal, casting it on my current target or myself if I have no selected target and auto-self-cast enabled.

For added clarity, I put #showtooltip Greater Heal at the top of the macro. This shows me the usual spell tooltip when I mouseover the icon.

I also use the stopcasting technique for my Greater Heals, so I have put a /stopcasting before the actual /cast Greater Heal. This means that every time I click the macro I restart the cast.

(Why do I do this? you may ask.

I do this because of the 2,5 seconds cast time for Greater Heal. When you are on tank healing duty and don't want to waste mana and drop a full Gheal on an almost topped-off tank, you interrupt the spell and start casting it again right away.

You also don't want to wait around until the tank gets noticeable damage, because if you don't have a Gheal in the pipe already by then, those 2,5 seconds will feel like an eternity and you might end up with a dead tank.

So, start casting Gheal by clicking the Gheal macro. If the cast is almost at the end and the tank is still at almost full heal, click the macro once again to abort the cast and start it again. If the tank is taking damage, finish the cast and heal him up. Rinse and repeat.)

The macro now looks like this:

#showtooltip Greater Heal
/cast Inner Focus
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover, help] [ ] Greater Heal

But wait! Being a lazy twit efficient healer I have put even more in my macros XD. You are allowed to use 255 characters in every macro so why not make the most of it?

I have three trinkets that I use when healing: Essence of the Martyr, Vial of the Sunwell and Figurine - Seaspray Albatross. All of them have very nice on-use effects - if you remember to use them.

Same here as for the Inner Focus spell, hold on to the trinkets or use them? It's like a bottle of wine, either you save it for that extra special occasion that might never happen and it may even turn rancid and yukky, or you drink it and turn that mundane tuesday evening into a sweet mellow night.

So I put my trinkets in my macro like this:

#showtooltip Greater Heal
/cast Inner Focus
/stopcasting
/use Vial of the Sunwell
/use Essence of the Martyr
/use Figurine - Seaspray Albatross
/cast [target=mouseover, help] [ ] Greater Heal

I get an error message saying Item is not ready yet or You must equip that item to use it, but the spellcast is not hindered.

I have macroed all my heal spells like this now, on the philosophy that it's better with a mellow tuesday afternoon that happens over and over than an extra special saturday night party that might never come ;P

(The /stopcasting is only used in the Gheal macro though, since it's useless in instant spell macros like for Renew, Prayer of Mending and Circle of Healing and I don't want to accidentally interrupt any casts of Flash Heal, Prayer of Healing or Binding Heal.)

Edit: *slaps head* Forgot one vital part of this macro! There's really no use in burning all your spell and trinket cooldowns unless you are in combat, so I have added the conditional [combat] before every spell cast or trinket use.

The macro now looks like this:

#showtooltip Greater Heal
/cast [combat] Inner Focus
/stopcasting
/use [combat] Vial of the Sunwell
/use [combat] Essence of the Martyr
/use [combat] Figurine - Seaspray Albatross
/cast [target=mouseover, help] [ ] Greater Heal

This way I won't pop the cd's just by shooting a frisbee to the tank before he engages a mob, when I am still full of mana.

Read More...

Summary only...

A Feral Druid's Illustrated Primer - healing

***This article is outdated***

Feral (Healing)

Ok, as a feral druid you probably know a lot of what to wear and how to behave when in your cuddly kitty form or your even cuddlier bear form. How about when you are in your cuddly elf form? Or your very cuddly (?) tauren form?

Well, there are actually a lot we can do while not quadrupedal, we can heal, we can nuke 'em down with our pretty sparkly spells, we can use our weapons to bash some mob's head in, we can do our famous NE dance, and we can discuss the pros and cons of different detergents when it comes to their ability to remove bloodstains from leather. Among many, many, many, many,...,many other things...

So your group does not need a furry tank or sneaky cat? What do you do? Say "well, thx a lot for the invite, guess I am out of here then..."?

BEEEP! Wrong answer.

You say "Ok, I heal then", pull out your prepared heal bag and impress everyone by keeping them alive and well through the massive onslaught of nasty mobs of all sizes and flavors.

Easy? No. Possible? Yes.

Btw, I warn you already, I just know this will be a long post, so grab a cup of tea and some cookies, cuddle into your favourite comfy chair and enjoy!

Your talents

Even if you are feral to the bone and can't even remember how you look like in caster shape, chances are you have taken a few points in the Resto tree. If not, consider if you shouldn't make some small alterations in your spec.

First out is Omen of Clarity. This is actually one of the best spells ever for a feral. Since it procs (and it procs often!) on melee damage and nothing else it actually seems tailored for a cat or bear. How often do you melee while healing anyways?

However, Omen of Clarity requires at least 10 more points in the Resto tree. So what else to take in there?

Well, for starters, you have to pick at least 5 points in Improved Mark of the Wild or Furor. 5 points in total in those two opens up the next tier, which contains Naturalist, another spell with a very nice effect for a feral.

In the next tier there is Intensity, which, besides the very nice instant Enrage-rage it gives, also is very good for the healing druid since it allows some of your Spirit-based mana regeneration to continue even while casting.

Actually, I like all five of these talents very much in my feral specc, guess that is why I have taken them all and have a total of 19 points in the Resto tree. Not bad for a feral druid, eh?

To balance things off a little, there is the Nurturing Instinct talent deep in the feral tree, but this is more of a pvp spell since you will rarely try to heal in dungeons or raids dressed in your tank or dps gear. And I guess your healing gear is rather devoid of Strength?

Talking of which...

Your healing gear (stats)

As a feral, you probably haven't had first tjing on any of the healing drops you've encountered in your dungeon runs, but maybe you have gotten lucky and run with some healers that didn't need the stuff that dropped. Or maybe you have bought yourself some rep items, or have collected some quest rewards on the healing side.

I will not dwell on where to get healing gear, but I will spend a little time discussing the stats you want to be looking for on the gear.

When you are healing, regardless of class or specc, you have two goals:
1. heal as much as needed
2. heal as long as needed

You start the fight with a full mana pool. Well, maybe since you are feral and thus dressed in the Real Healers’ hand-me-downs and probably very untalented in the mana-increasing department, it may be more appropriate to call it a mana bathtub.

Anyways, as you start healing you pull the plug on your bathtub, and the sweet blue mana starts going down the drain. When the tub is empty you are out of mana but hopefully your friends will have killed the mobs by then.

In longer fights, however, you might face the shiny bottom of your tub glaring back at you when the mob is only half-dead, and if that happens all your friends will most likely be very dead pretty soon.

Luckily there are some ways of getting more heals out of that tub of yours, and those ways are:

1. Increase the size of your tub
2. Increase your mana regeneration
3. Increase your healing bonus
4. Downrank your healing spells (actually it’s dubious if this qualifies here, but I will leave it and comment on it)

Tub size
The amount of mana you have at your disposal is dependent on how much Intellect you have. Now, while a large tub is pretty neat to have it will run dry eventually if you keep using the mana in it. So, while tub size is important, it is more important to make the mana in it last longer and/or heal for more.


Mana regeneration
What if someone didn’t turn off that bathtub tap, but instead left it dripping? As we all know in this era of energy saving awareness, a water tap left dripping can fill a whole bathtub in a surprisingly short time. Same goes for your mana regen, only in your case, you want that tap to be dripping as much as possible.

There are two stats that will help you pry that tap open, and that is mana/5 and Spirit. Mana/5 will give you the stated mana regeneration at all times, regardless if you are casting or not. Spirit will give you mana back only when you are NOT casting, and after a cast you will have to wait 5 seconds until the Spirit-based mana regen kicks in.



You can get 30% of that Spirit-based mana regen going even when casting if you choose the talent Intensity in the Resto tree. Besides the mana regen bonus it has a nice effect for a Feral too, so it’s not a total waste even if you rarely heal.

A Resto druid will have a whole bunch of other nifty Spirit-based talents and thus a reason to stack the Spirit high, but a Feral won’t, so if you have to choose between mana/5 and Spirit go for the mana/5.

There is one occasion when a lot of Spirit is useful for a Feral as well, and that is when you use your Innervate on yourself. However, since it’s possible to switch weapons in mid-fight you can create a macro that will swap your regular healing weapon for one with more spirit on it for the duration of the Innervate, to maximize the mana regen.

#show Innervate
/equip Serpentcrest Life-Staff
/cast [target=Yourname] Innervate
/equip Shard of the Virtuous

Click the macro once to swap to your Spirit-weapon and to cast Innervate on yourself (or whomever you have named as target), click it twice to swap back to your regular healing weapon. (Now isn't that a nice oxymoron... a healing weapon...)

For more in-depth info on mana management for druids please head over to Resto4life and read Phaelia's excellent article there.

Healing bonus
By choosing gear, gems and enchants that add +healing you will get more healing done for every mana you spend. More healing will keep your friends alive for a little longer, and will ease the strain on you.



The amount of extra healing each spell will get depends on its cast time, its duration, and whether is direct or over time. For example, your Rejuvenation will get 20 % of your heal bonus per tick, each application of your Lifebloom will get about 7 % of your heal bonus per tick and with about 40 % of your heal bonus applied to the final heal, your Healing Touch will get 100 % of your heal bonus.

Downranking
This means to not use the top rank of whichever spell it is you are casting. Lower ranks cost lower mana and thus you have more mana left after the cast. Of course, lower ranks heal for less but this can be offset by stacking a lot of +healing.

The sweet combination of downranking and stacking +healing was utilised by ingenious players back in the old misty pre-TBC days, and it led to them being able to heal almost indefinitely without running out of mana. This was not the way things were supposed to be in Blizz’s opinion, thus nowadays downranking a spell is penalized so that the healing per mana remains about the same regardless of which rank you use.

Downranking can still be useful on occasion though, if for example a rank 9 Healing Touch will be overhealing too much, you might perhaps wanna consider using a rank 6 or 7 instead and save some mana. I am not that big a fan of downranking, since when healing as a Feral without the handy Resto talents, you will probably need your heals as big as you can get them anyways.

Your threat

Your party have pulled a group of mobs and the fighters are busy taking them down. You are busy keeping your friends alive, staying at the back, trying to be inconspicous.

However, when you are healing your buddies the mobs start to dislike you. All of them start to dislike you. More and more. Suddenly one of them decides he's had enough and comes running towards you, intent on smashing your face in.


What do you do? Well, you are a druid, you can always drop into bear to get a little more thick-hided to live through the beating until the tank can come taunt the mob away from you.

But while you are in bear form none of the others in your party will get healed. They may not need to be healed, but then again, they might.

Luckily, there are some cool ways of lowering the amount of threat your heals create.

Make friends with an enchanter in good standing with Honor Hold and persuade her to enchant Subtlety on your back.

Carry around some trinkets that you may switch to if you have problems with your threat generation. Be aware that you can't swap trinkets while in combat, so you must have them equipped at the start of the fight.

Good trinkets for this is Hypnotist's Watch, a quest item from a Hellfire Peninsula quest, or Jewel of Charismatic Mystique, a drop from the 3d boss in Shadow Labyrinths. They are on a 5 minute cooldown so you better not have to use them too often.

While you are on your friends-making tour, find an Alchemist to make you some Shrouding Potions as well. Keep in mind though that these nifty pots share the cooldown with mana and other potions, so using one potion will keep you from using another until the 2 minute cooldown is up.

Your threat (Plan B)

But what if lowering your threat isn't enough? Well, you can always throw up the Barkskin which lowers the damage you take and let's you keep healing uninterrupted even when being beaten on.

And a Herbalist might be good to know as well, since if you are nice to her she might give you some Fel Blossoms, that will shield you, like a priest's shield, for a little while.

These moves might buy the tank enough time to come pick up those nasty mobs again, but if all else fails, do drop into bear and let the others fend for themselves for a while, at least until the mobs stop hitting you. A dead healer is good to no one, and in bear you can take a beting better and heal yourself at the same time if you can kick in your Frenzied Regeneration.

Your picnicbasket

Even if you are a casual druid mostly intent on tanking or dps-ing you may wanna keep a little picnic bag at the bank for those extra special occasions when you dabble in the healing way.

Remember that nice and friendly Alchemist? Now is the time to be even nicer to her.

Mana potions is a staple for any healer, you never know when it may save your lives. Keep a stack or two in your bag.

Elixir of Draenic Wisdom is a Guardian Elixir that will increase your mana pool and (if you have the talent Intensity) your mana regen too.

Bring along some Elixir of Healing Power as well, since it's a Battle Elixir you can use this and the Draenic Wisdom at the same time.

Fishermen and -women skilled in the art of cooking are also a good addition to your friends list, since they might give you some Blackened Sporefish or Golden Fishsticks. Or you can always buy them from the AH.

If you have the talent Intensity (it's the third time I've mentioned this talent in this article, it must be a good one!) the Fishsticks will give you about 7 mana/5 compared to the 8 mana/5 from the Sporefish. So the choice is basically between 44 healing and 20 stamina.

Gems and enchants

Lastly, a thought about enchanting and gemming your healing gear when you are Feral:

Your healing gear will most likely be blues with maybe a few BG or heroic shinies thrown in. Is it justifiable to put expensive enchants and rare gems in blue gear?

In this case, I’d say it is. As Feral, you are not going to be first in line when the sweet epic healing gear drops. You will probably be stuck with your healing gear for a long time until all the dedicated healers have geared up, and if you want to make a significant contribution when needed, you better make the most of the gear you have.

Read More...

Summary only...

How not to start a career in healing

My shadow priest Jools has been slacking a little lately, not been getting around much. On a whim, I decided to go holy!

Jools has actually been shadow only for a short time, from about half of 67 to 70. Before that she was heavily into the discipline tree - luuuv that reflective shield! When doing the very rare boost for some low lvl friend I used to put on the shield and then just run through the mobs - they killed themselves getting their own damage reflected back at them ;P

Also the mana regen in a heavy disc spec was pretty amazing, hardly ever needed to sit down for a drink (this was very nifty since Jools been a little of my grind-bot, grinding rep for those sweet enchanting and jewelcrafting recipes, timbermaws anyone?)

Had a very brief stunt rearranging my talent points in the mid-60's, getting that angel talent for the spirit buff, which buffed the mana regen even more. It was about this time that I agreed to come heal in Auchenai for some pug.

I told them I was disc and not very used to healing and it was ok with them. Maybe not the most efficient group, a few of them got killed some times in the pulls in the first room, and then I got killed too. Woosh, the angel shape hovers above the rest of the valiant fighters and I watch them die.

When running back, one of them kindly asked me "You do know that you can heal in angel form, don't you?" Eeh right, had totally forgotten about that *blush*.

Anyways, we kept going but after I while it was painfully obvious that I was way too unexperienced for taking on healing in a pretty chaotic group. Changing healing targets, getting the right heals off, it was just too much for me to keep up so I told them I was sorry but they were probably better off with another healer. They agreed.

(On a side note, maybe I wasn't that bad because one of the party members have asked me to come heal some more times, but I have respectfully declined. Or maybe he was just desperate :-)

So now I respecced to full holy with a small dabble in discipline. Holy Nova (this spell I have actually had in shadow spec too - hihihi when aoeing those ballroom packs in Kara), the Lightwell and the Circle of Light - instant (instant!) spell that heal the target and his party members for about 450. Not that mana heavy either, and it scales with bonus healing.

Equipped my healing gear and blushed. Blushed for 2 reasons - why does some gear look like its designed for table dancing or other dubious activities? The dev's at Blizz definitely need to go out and get some fresh air occasionally. 2nd reason - about 1100 healing bonus, half of my gear greens of the prophet or of the physician. (Actually have a pair of sweet epic healing gloves, the [Gloves of Saintly Blessings] that my guildies forced upon me on an earlier Kara run when all of the present healers had better.)


Jools in her K-mart healing gear. Note the fishnet sleeves, the daring deep v-cut top, the pants that somehow lack the parts between the knees and the hips and the huge turqoise musceteer boots.

So the raid time came and we all went off to Karazhan to start decimating the number of its denizens. Three healers, me, a resto shaman and one of our shadow priests healing as well.

The rest of the nights raid were pretty well geared, having been there many times and I suddenly understood why some of our healers are complaining when I am tanking with my pretty bear - I had nothing to do! The damn tanks hardly got damaged!

(On a related side note, some of our healers are known to go pull more mobs when this happens just to avoid falling to sleep due to inactivity. I was thinking about doing this but decided against it, I'll pull when I am in bear gear but not when I am in my fragile glass outfit ;P)

Wohoo, 100 hp's lost, let me give you a renew!

Someone in the melee getting damaged - ooo let me try my instant group heal!

Hmm maybe I should throw the tank a frisbee, just on the off chance he gets damaged.

Prayer of healing, now this is a nice one, maybe I should use it pre-emptively just in case some unforeseen aoe damage happens!

The night ended after 4 hours of raiding, Huntsman, Moroes, Maiden, Opera, Aran and the Chess Event all cleared without a wipe, 4 new shinies for Jools shadow outfit but none for her healing.

So why is this not a good way to start your healing career you ask? Well, how am I to learn how to handle aggro management, chaotic multiple pulls and such like when we raid like a well-oiled machine?

Hmm I guess I am never happy unless I have something to whine about ;P

Read More...

Summary only...