The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
On Downranking
by Vonya
Today I tackle a rather controversial issue – Downranking.
What is downranking? Downranking is intentionally using any rank of spell that is not your max rank.
Common wisdom says that downranking is good. All healing classes are encouraged to engage in it, and often people will follow this advice blindly, without doing more than cursory research to find out why.
Why downrank?
Why downrank a spell? The answer is simple – ‘mana efficiency’.
The more healing you output per point of mana spent, the more efficient your heal was. You spent less and got more. Entire corporations revolve around this simple tenant.
It’s true. You will be more mana efficient if you downrank a spell. It costs more mana to do the same amount of healing when using a larger rank of a healing spell.
Although lower ranks of spells are given a penalty – less and less of your +Healing gear will be used by lower ranks of healing spells – it is still mathematically true that it’s “cheaper” to cast lower ranks of spells.
So What’s Ego’s Problem With Downranking?
Mana efficiency is good – it’s better than good, it’s great. It’s an excellent philosophy to keep in mind when casting a spell.
However.
(You knew there was going to be a “but” in there, didn’t you? Of course you did.)
Question : What’s the most mana efficient spell you can cast?
Answer : Don’t cast a spell.
Mobs don’t kill tanks. ‘Mana efficient’ healers kill tanks.
Your job, as a healer, is to keep people alive. Most especially the tank.
That is your central purpose. Whenever any other ideal encroaches upon your ability to perform that task, it absolutely must be ignored. Including mana efficiency.
I know I sometimes have a habit of dramatizing something small in order to make a point. I have watched paladins downrank tanks to death in Zul’Aman. This is a very real problem with every single healing class, and it needs to be addressed.
Downranking is bad when it means you can’t keep your targets alive.
But…But You Said Mana Efficiency Was Good!
Yes, and I meant it.
Mana efficiency is a measurement of healing done per mana spent.
However, as soon as you throw the time coefficient in there, and it plays merry havok with the whole calculation.
Sure, you’ll spend less mana healing your tank of 10,000 points of damage using a downranked heal. But it can take you twice as log to get there using that downranked heal. You have to cast the heal more times to do the same amount of healing.
Incidentally, for healers that rely on spirit-based mana regen or five-second rule dancing for mana regen, downranking also means less time spent not casting.
There’s a reason that dps casters rarely downrank their damage spells. Ask them sometime, go ahead and mention all the mana they could save, and be prepared to hear some uproarious laughter.
If you’re looking at a healing per second done calculation, instead of healing per mana spent, you’ll see that your HIGHEST ranks are your most efficient!
Gasp! Egads! Someone call Elitist Jerks!
Before you start making lolcats pictures with “Mana Efficiency : Yer doin it rong” captions, take a step back.
That still doesn’t mean Downranking is a bad idea.
Lolwut? But didn’t you just say…
Yes, yes.
Yes, downranking is bad. Yes, downranking is good.
Confused yet? Good.
Simmah down nawh and pull up a chair. Momma Ego gonna lay it all out for you.
The Secret
Heal the damage that your target is taking.
Seriously
That’s it. That’s the secret. Go ahead, scroll back up and read it again. I’ll wait.
Heal the damage that your target is taking.
Explanation
Okay, okay. Like I can pass up an opportunity for a long-winded and potentially mentally damaging wall of text.
For example’s sake, let’s assume you only have a single target – your tank.
If your tank is taking relatively small, regular damage, downrank away. In that situation, you can easily predict the amount of incoming damage and react accordingly. Your tank doesn’t need your bigger heals, and your mana efficiency means less downtime in between pulls since you don’t have to drink as often (and your mana potion consumption is also reduced).
However, if your tank is taking serious hits, and may take a swipe that could potentially spike his health down to dangerous levels – DO NOT DOWNRANK.
Your tank is gonna need heals, and fast. When the speed and size of the heal is crucial, downranking is a death sentence to your tank. Sure, you’re spending more mana per heal, but you’re spending that mana on TIME, not just pure healing output. You’re still getting a good return on your investment.
On Vonya (my priest, for those new to the site), I rarely downrank. I like my five second rule dancing, and my tank grew along side me, so that my max rank heal fits his needs pretty squarely. The only time I downrank on her is when a nontank needs a heal, and it doesn’t really matter how fast it gets to them.
On Vongrual (my shaman), I am constantly swapping between a downranked heal and my max-strength heal. If my tank is taking regular damage, I use a downranked spell (I actually have more reasons than the regular pure mana efficiency, but I’ll cover those in a seperate post). If my tank takes a spike of damage, or gets below half health, I will use my max rank heal.
How Far Should I Downrank?
My personal preference is to downrank to a heal that does slightly more than a quarter of the tank’s health pool. That allows me a comfortable margin for error so that I can react to unexpected damage spikes. The tank shouldn’t fall below half health using that strategy, and a comfortable rotation of heals to both the primary and secondary healing targets can be maintained.
Sites will tell you that downranking to Rank 1 is absurdly mana efficient. They aren’t lying – it is. But if you dowrank that far and you can’t keep your target alive, then you’ve downranked too far.
Summary
Heal the damage your target is taking.
If your target is taking less damage, downrank – it’s a great tool in the healer’s arsenal
If your target is taking more damage, do NOT downrank. Mana efficiency isn’t worth a bad-tempered beagle if you let your tank die.
And if you EVER let your tank die because your downranked heals weren’t able to keep up with the damage that was being done, you need to go stand in the corner and write on the chalkboard 500 times :
“I will heal the damage my target is taking, even if it costs me more mana. I will heal the damage my target is taking, even if it costs me more mana. I will heal the damage….”
Losing any healing target to save yourself a few hundred mana is unacceptable.
Please. When someone tells you that you need to downrank your heals, stop and think about your situation. Maybe you do need to downrank - maybe doing that would vastly increase your ability to heal. But if you downrank blindly and don’t recognize situations where you absolutely HAVE to pull out your max rank heal, then I revoke your Ego license until you turn your brain back on and stop blindly swallowing little theorycraft pills before you read the labels.
This Ego post has been brought to you by a two hour airline flight from Chicago to Houston. Ego would like to officially submit a complaint about the lack of free wireless internet in airports. Ego would also like to request more than three swallows of ginger ale while in-flight. I’ll trade my package of pretzels if you’ll give me the other ¾ of that can of soda. I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.
June 17th, 2008
I’m submitting a police report against you for all the nails you’ve brutally beat about the head and neck with this post.
Honestly, excellent post. Every healer should know how much a heal will land for (ballpark, round off to the hundred, and excluding critical hit). When a firm grasp is demonstrated on that concept, then downranking should be entertained as a means of healing the damage done. Mana efficiency is a secondary benefit; in essence a reward for understanding a key class mechanic.
And re: airline drink skimpiness - I always ask for the can, and I’ve yet to be turned down. Partial cans are disposed of after the flight anyway, so you’re not really doing any harm to the airline in the long run. I’ve also yet to be told to pay extra for the full can of soda.
June 17th, 2008
Being that the Anna with typing skills is currently located in Houston, if you’re interested in a full can of ginger ale, I’d be happy to deliver one
Also: RE: Downranking - raiding with my shaman, I almost *never* use max rank chain heal - since most of the time I’m healing periodic raid damage - my preferred spell is rank4, or rank2 if it’s lesser damage. I almost *always* use max rank healing wave, because if I’m using healing wave, it’s an o-shit on a tank or someone that just took a huge spike of healing. And I use max rank lesser healing wave as well, to get as much of my +heal bonus on the shortcast spell as possible.
June 17th, 2008
@Chris
No nails have been harmed in the making of this Ego post.
*winks* And yes, I agree, mostly. I may not know the NUMBER that my heal will land for, but I know the percentage of health it will return to almost any target I cast it on, with and without crits. I certainly encourage people to know the numbers, especially if their UI is set up to show the numbers, but I myself engage in more of an alchemical healing approach.
@Anna
I’m already safely back in the Fabled Land of Cheese, but had I posted this last Thursday, I would totally have taken you up on the offer. =]
And I am tending to agree with you on your healing strat regarding shaman - that downranked heal is so slow that it’s much iffier to use when trying to account for spike damage. There’s much less margin for error if you do the smaller heal and then all the sudden the tank really needs the big heal.
Of course, that’s what NS is for. *grins* More overpowered than a fluffer nutter sammich, but see if you catch ME complaining. =]
And once I get max rank chain heal, I’ll probably constantly downrank one on it, too, unless I find myself losing melee to the dragonhawk boss or Void Reaver or something.
June 17th, 2008
Thanks you so much. I am a retelitivly new priest and new to healing, kinda. I have been in Kara and have run heroics, but I am still learning. I hav been wondering about downranking so some time now, but to tell you the truth, I was terrified of it. Scared I would oops and let the tank die, witch just kills me. So thank you for giving this Priest soemthing to work with for making myself more mana efficent!Evea
June 17th, 2008
When I was reading about downranking, I was wondering why even bother? Especially when my +heal was less than desired and I could barely keep up with the tank.
Now that my +heal is 1800+, all I do is GH rank 1. Every now and then I’ll cast a GH rank 7. I stopped going to AA meetings now because I no longer need to drink that heavily. I dont even sip any more.
Downranking is great when you have 1200+ heal. I started with Rank 2 and to Rank 1 when I got 1600+ heal. My suggestion is downrank according to how much heal you do. I would use the rank that does about 2000 to 3000 as my regular heal. Rank 7 is for ‘Oh! s**t!” situation.
June 17th, 2008
For those that care, the current working theory on the spell coefficient penalty for downranking is that it follows this formula:
Coeffecient penalty=(lvl rank was learned+11)/character level (no penalty if greater than 1)
That is, any ranks you trained at level 59 or later receive the same spell coefficient as your max rank. The only thing that changes is the base heal amount. The more +healing you have, the less significant this base heal amount becomes - especially with something with a high spell coefficient like greater heal.
The coefficient of Greater Heal is 3/3.5= 85.71%. With Empowered Healing, it’s 105.71%.
So with Spiritual Healing, your average non-crit (crits are going to be scalar so we can ignore them) will be:
(baseHeal + 1.0571*(+heal))*1.1
So let’s assume you’ve got 2k +heal, and you have no buffs/debuffs that affect healing effects on you or the target.
Rank 5: (2120.5+1.0571*2000)*1.1=4658
Rank 6: (2275.5+1.0571*2000)*1.1=4829
Rank 7: (2608.5+1.0571*2000)*1.1=5195
Rank 1: (956+((51/70)*(3/3.5)+.2)*2000)*1.1=2425
June 17th, 2008
For raiding, you do have to offset damage taken against the healing you expect them to receive from other healers. I agree with you Ego, your advice just sounds balanced for a heroic/kara audience to my T6 ear. Rightly so, as T6 healers should know when to downrank and when not to already
More through the link, it got wildly offtopic!
(Click mah name. Click it!)
June 17th, 2008
Eldr
This “(Click mah name. Click it!)” gave me a real chuckle
Your post looks like a good read, but healing knowledge is where the Kwanelock falls the shortest, sadly.
June 17th, 2008
“The Secret
Heal the damage that your target is taking.”
AKA - know the encounter.
Good post. Funny thing is, when we say downrank we generally only mean greater heal. At least that is the only spell I ever downrank (except for @#$@$%%$ Brutallus…). I max rank everything else.
June 17th, 2008
Im working on my shadow priest right now, and every so often I do healing duties so I have enough of an understanding of how a direct heal and down ranking play together. Being a shadow priest I don’t have a huge mana pool and I’ve sacrificed some spirt along the way for +dmg. So finding that sweet spot for the heal on the tank is important when your not geared/talented for healing.
The question I do have here is about how does or does it even fit with a druid healer. My druid sits at about +1700 healing when fully buffed out. I’m kinda stuck with the gear I have until my guild gets out of kara or for that fact clears all the optional bosses as well. With resto druids being very hot driven, how well does down ranking work when your raid healing?
June 17th, 2008
I agree with Hildi: know the encounter. That’s all there is to it.
I almost never downrank on a new boss encounter, but if it’s Karazhan? All the time. Maybe it’s because my main is a resto shaman, a very downrank-friendly healing class (Chain Heal rank 4 is stupidly mana efficient).
There’s a reason that dps casters rarely downrank their damage spells. Ask them sometime, go ahead and mention all the mana they could save, and be prepared to hear some uproarious laughter.
I think that’s a bit of an unlucky comparision, as they wouldn’t save any mana. Healers run the risk of overhealing, DPS’ers don’t run the risk of “overdamaging” (if such a word even exists ;)).
June 17th, 2008
@Evea
I’m glad to hear it was so timely. =]
@PriestOfOne
I probably wouldn’t personally downrank that far unless I was in a raid situation with a ton of healers on a single target (in which case a larger heal would probably be mostly overheal anyway). But YMMV, and I’m certainly glad to hear that it works for some! I’ve heard of other healers downranking that far, I just can’t do it myself without constantly being OFSR.
@Esoth
Egads, numbers! SHUNNNN!
*winks* Thanks for adding the actual theorycraft, for those who want actual numbers to follow!
@Eldr
Very good point about the raid healing - if you’ve got multiple incoming heals on the target, you’re mostly overhealing if you don’t drastically downrank.
Also, I second the laughter at the “Click mah link” *grins*
@Kwane
That’s because I keep you intentionally ignorant. =P
@Hildi
True, knowing the encounters makes it easier to know which to use ahead of time. But sometimes the experience of the encounter can change, and it’s good to be able to adjust according to how much damage the target is actually taking, instead of relying on “well, I’ve always healed this with a downranked heal”
Not that I think that’s what you’re saying, I’m just clarifying in case anyone reads it the wrong way. =]
Also, I’ve heard of some people downranking other heals, but you’re right. For me, personally, Greater Heal is the only downrank my priest has.
@Weta
“Finding the sweet spot” = that’s such a perfect way to put it!
On the question of raid healing, I can’t answer for druids, but downranking when you are sharing a target with multiple healers is key to not running out of mana - when you have more than three healers on a target, and all of them are pretty much constantly contributing to heals, your max ranked heal is probably going to be mostly overheal. Downranking allows you to contribute without bleeding mana needlessly.
@Witch Doctor
“They wouldn’t save any mana” - that depends on how you look at it. Damage classes are concerned with DPS - damage per second. Mana efficiency (damage per mana) isn’t really their goal. They don’t downrank because max damage over time is their goal, not mana efficiency. I think that downranked damage spells would cost less mana per point of damage, just like downranked heals do. But rare indeed is the damager who sacrifices dps for dpm.
June 17th, 2008
Re: Downranking as a Druid
Restoration Druids rarely downrank because we almost exclusively rely upon Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, and Swiftmend. It doesn’t make sense to downrank these spells. If the target took so little damage that you might want to use a downranked Regrowth on them, you’d just use a Lifebloom instead. Swiftmend is used for handling spike damage and is based off the Rank of Rejuvenation or Regrowth currently running on your target. Since you wouldn’t be intentionally downranking either of those spells, Swiftmend will never be the subject of a downranked HoT.
Lifebloom has only one rank and, as it’s primarily used for maintaining a steady stream of HPS on one or more tanks — and is further augmented by Rejuvenation and/or Regrowth, depending — you aren’t likely to want to downrank it even when they’ve added new ranks. The same is true of Tranquility, a spell designed to deliver high HPS to your party. If you weren’t in a state of emergency, you probably wouldn’t be using it.
All that being said, a Dreamstate Druid who focuses on Healing Touch as their primary source of healing will often downrank, keeping 2-3 ranks on their hotbars designed to restore predetermined, graduated amounts of health. These types of Druids function more like a Priest or a Paladin than does a Tree of Life-specced Druid. The same is true of a newly-minted Druid first starting to heal Heroics. At lower values of +Healing, HoTs often don’t generate the HPS necessary to keep up with the damage output in a Heroic instance, forcing that Druid to rely upon her Healing Touch to keep up. Downranking under this scenario is recommended since she probably doesn’t have the mana regeneration to sustain spamming max rank Healing Touch.
June 17th, 2008
What’s your favorite physical _way_ to downrank? I feel like my spell bars pretty chock full already. Should I be programming hot keys (like a shift or something) to a commonly used down-ranked version? Or do you use a healing application that makes this all much easier to manage?
June 17th, 2008
There are two instances where I will use downranking (Pally healer).
1. if my healing target has taken such little damage that it’s not worth throwing a full heal on them.
OR
2. if the encounter has completely run me out of mana. Then I’ll use my “free heal”. The one I can spam that costs less than my MP5.
Nibuca
http://chicanery.fibergeek.com/
June 17th, 2008
Actually I play a Warlock and I do switch spells based upon mana spend, HP%, and how many targets are avail. DPS’ers do indeed run the risk of over damaging, but its usually in circumstances when the damage output is not the required task. If you wonder why some players constantly pull aggro at the wrong times, they are the ones who don’t get this point.
Two examples: when your target is almost dead and a full blast would be overkill, and when you are very close to pulling threat. The changing spells or down-ranking is used to avoid overkill, so that later in the same fight or soon after you still have mana. It also allows you switch to another spell sooner of the spell you just cast has a shorter cast time. Threat pulling is obvious, and there are times (particularly in pugs) when a normal max rank spell would cause an aggro pull, but standing there is useless. So wand or downrank is the way to go.
And yes, you can aim to pull threat from a mob toward the end of its life, and I do so regularly; but only when I know I can kill it myself without help, without risk to other players.
June 18th, 2008
Ok I have read all the replies and your post, I still don’t get it. If your target has been damaged so little that your best Gheal is too much by a noticeable amount (I imagine 30%-ish) why not just drop Renew? It costs nothing is instant and you can start cancel casting a Gheal for when the tank really needs it.
I never downrank anything, I am a Hybrid Disc/Holy Spec and I rely heavily on the FSR, so I keep renew ticking constantly and cancel cast my Gheal. If my tank doesn’t need the max rank, then he just doesn’t need a heal. I know you are thinking that “What if there is a lot of spike damage?” Well thats what the Cancel casting is all about, and the Renew is there to smooth it out, also any boss that can drop a geared tank by 10k or more per hit will never have just one healer (not in my guild anyway) so chances are he will have more than 1 hot ticking anyway.
I was in a raid with another priest on the tank and we had 2 Renews working away, we alternated Gheal and never got below 3/4 mana. I can see where saving mana is a good thing, I just don’t see how a downranked spell is more efficient than Renew, or a bandage for that matter if you are not in combat. I never heal out of combat BTW, thats what FA is for =)
June 18th, 2008
I did not down rank spells for a long time, but now that I do I really like it. One of the things I love about being a priest is the variety of healing spells I have. To me down ranking just adds to this. I down rank my G. heal only. I have rank 1, rank 4, and max. Rank 1 I generally use on the raid. Rank 4 is my standard tank heal, with max rank for spikes. Basically on the tank I cast rank 4 till a big spike lands then I switch to max, going back to 4 after that. I have over 2200 +healing after buffs so most of the time I just do not feel the need for a max rank spell.
I also have a resto druid and never down rank anything. I want my HoT ticks as big as possible.
Underdark- I do use renew a lot of the time for small damage, but sometimes I’d prefer to top them off without the wait. I also sometimes use flash heal if I really want the heal fast. I base my heals off of what I want at any given time.
June 18th, 2008
@Phaelia
Thanks so much for the druid perspective!
@Snuffy
I use a Nostromo for my frequently used spells, and I have one key for a “shift” functionality that almost doubles my keyspace. I have the same problem with bar space, but I try and keep things grouped logically so that when I have to click instead of press to get an ability, it’s easy to find.
I really only have one downranked heal at the moment on both my healers, so that’s only a single extra button. I don’t use any healing addons that would do what you’re talking about, but I know many people do. I think a popular one is called Clique, and I’ve heard good things about something called Grid which may or may not help.
Nibuca
Thanks for the pally view! That’s actually was how I’d imagined pallies did it, so it’s good to hear I’m not too far off the pally theorycraft!
Typhoon
There are other reasons that damage casters will downrank as well (some curses, and level one frostbolt to slow and level 1…aoe ice floor sticky thingy spell (hey, I’m not a mage, gimme a break)). It’s not common as a “use this as often as possible” but it is done. =]
Thanks for bringing that up!
@Underdark
For my priest, I pretty much agree with you there, mostly. *winks*
When I am healing a tank and I’m in a 5 or 10 man situation, I do not downrank my heal. As you said, I toss a hot and wait for their health to go down far enough to need the full heal.
If I am healing an undergeared or lower level tank, I will downrank so that they don’t have to be below 50% of their health in order to need a heal (potentially killing them because I’m waiting till they need the heal to cast, and they might die while I cast).
I use a downranked gheal for dpsers, because they don’t need a full max rank gheal.
I do downrank on my shaman, but they don’t rely as heavily on spirit for mana regen, and there’s another reason to downrank on them. But on my priest, I pretty much operate the way you’ve lined out. =]
@Lillend
Yes indeedy! Priests are the Batman of the healing world. =] I love hearing how people use the variety of tools we’ve been given! It’s my favorite part of priest healing, how much reaction and thought goes into which tool to use.
June 18th, 2008
Down ranking spells can be used by pretty much everyone, my druid being a 3 hot specialist may be an exception. What I did to allow for me to do raid healing is setup a macro for each person in the raid that Im responsible for (I haven’t had to work beyond a 10 person raid yet
)
The macro that I use is shift sensitive, so if I click on it I get life bloom, but if the shift key is held down I get my regen. Once I get back to my game machine Ill dig up that macro and send it to Ego or just do a follow up here.
I don’t use any fancy gui upgrades, so I just have what blizzard will gives you. Most people map these to a function key.
Applying this sort of macro to your priest setup may allow you to have your favorite healing target setup for your big heal or a down ranked big heal.
June 18th, 2008
@Snuffy - I use Bongos and setup my buttons however I want. Funny part is, probably use 5 buttons about 90% of the time, but I have like 4 rows of buttons
I really just hate not having something right there for me to use. Vonya mentions Clique, that is what I use for things like dispell, binding heal, and remove disease. Grid is something a lot of healers use. Personally, I hate it, cant stand it. Not before tbc and not since. Others swear by it. Couple other similar mods are sRaidframes (what I use) and PerfectRaid (which I don’t feel has the right options for setting it up for me).
@Underdark - not sure what to say to that. I find in all instances but 1 (and I bitch about that one every chance I get) that I downrank gh. I run around in Sunwell these days, so that a lot of instances Im talking about. If you are using only max rank GH and then only when your target absolutely needs it, then it makes me think you are actually underhealing. For instance, my max rank GH will range from 5800 - 9800(crit) on a non warlock. If I am waiting that long to let the heal go, then (in general), I am waiting far too long. Sure, I might get *that* heal off in time, but if my target has accidental aggro, or is on a heavy hitting, high spiking damage, then then next heal may not be in time. Cancel-casting is a staple, but it is not 100% effective by any means. I’ve seen tanks get gacked because I canceled my heal because ‘he didn’t need it’, an then about a millisecond after that he gets hit by on of those bullet trains going at full speed (or the obligatory parry, parry, crushing blow string).
If I downrank, my heals go off in a more steady manner, creating a more stable encounter (also boosting my target’s confidence). Personally I think priests are more effective this way and more “in the game”.
June 18th, 2008
I use Grid and Click2Cast to cast nearly all my heals. I have shift-left click, shift-middle click, and shift-right click for all 3 ranks of G Heal that I use. I have a 5 button mouse so I can get quite a few heals on my mouse this way, even more if I ever get around to assigning a CTRL button to my nostromo. For now though my 5 buttons on my mouse along with a shift key cover all my heals except Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Mending, and Gift of the Naaru. I do use those 3 too, but they are on my Nostromo instead of my mouse.
June 19th, 2008
I admit sometimes if I run with a crew that doesn’t know how heal they get panicy, I base my heals off of a 6k land and never consider crits. I am also a Discipline Healer (think I mentioned that before..) I am not saying I am 41 points discipline but I have more there than Holy. I use a combination of shields and HoT’s to get the job done for the dps and only Gheal the tank (normally)
Healing is far more than casting a spell. Hildi, you said that I may be under healing, but I usually top the healing meters with around 5% over heal and no deaths. I am not spectacularly geared or anything but timing in my experience has just as much to do with healing as the +heal you throw behind the spell.
You need to time the mobs attacks so you know when the next one is coming, and have your spell land half a second after (if req) it is also important to know how your tank mitigates damage, so you can judge things like shield block (Warrior) and know when that isn’t up yet.
My healing my look frightening to some people but those who trust in the heals usually don’t even think about personal healing unless I have called out that it isn’t coming for some reason, IE. I have been CC’d
Anyhoo not my Blog =) oh and I use Heal Bot mostly with a standard 3 button mouse =)
June 19th, 2008
Nice dig about healing being more than casting a spell! I never realized
Well, if it works for you I guess it’s fine. I was taking more of an endgame viewpoint and that type of healing just won’t work. There is far, far too much spike damage and random ’stuff’ that happens to just be waiting for your one target to reach -6K health to let go of your heal. This may work in 5 mans, and even parts of Kara, but there are so many things past that doing 2-3K aoe damage that by the time you are done waiting, your target is insta dead. Keep in mind, damage is calculated before healing, so a tie goes to the mob. Like I said, you create a much more stable environment by not relying on that deep of a trigger point.
June 19th, 2008
Heres the follow up to the macro I use on my druid, well not exactly it but updating mine to this.
/target TankName
/cast [modifier:shift] Rejuvenation ; [modifier:alt] Regrowth ; Lifebloom
So for the cost of 1 button you can stack 3 different heals in there. So if your focused on a tank you can put 2 or 3 ranks of your big mana efficient heal in there.
The longer you run with the same group of people the better you get at predicting who is going to be taking damage and if that damage is going to continue our just be normal splash damage. To keep my life simple I put the tanks at one side of the line, followed by dps and then healers. I use healbot (gasp/shock/dismay) .. to track my buffs (gotcha) with a nice side effect that you can see who is taking damage.
If I ever switch to dreamstate Ill probably have down ranked healing touch in the macro, but for now as a tree I have full strength hots that are in a nutshell down rank heals.