I got an excellent question from a fellow blogger, and I thought my answer might be useful on a broader scale.

I wanted to ask a favor.  If you had the time, would you mind perusing my blog and maybe offering a few critiques along the lines of what I could improve or change to make someone (someones? so Hanners doesn’t hurt me) such as yourself would consider linking to me?

If so, it’d be very much appreciated!

And as always, keep up the awesomeness!

_Misa
http://somemuchneededdiscipline.wordpress.com/

Let me begin by saying that I am the worst person I know with regards to keeping up my blogroll. I can barely keep up with my feed reader.

New blogs appear, old blogs slowly collapse and fade away, and I absolutely do not devote enough time to try and keep up with it all.

In other words, I probably am not going to independantly find your blog, even if it’s the most fabulous, hilarious, entertaining, useful blog in the blogosphere.

That means you, oh-blogger-who-wishes-to-be-on-my-sidebar, need to do some work.

Step 1

Comment. Most of us bloggers are pretty terrible about responding to comments, but I absolutely guarantee we read each and every one. And we recognize the names of frequent commenters. ESPECIALLY those who comment intelligently on the subject at hand.

Saying “Wow, nice post!” and then posting a link to your own blog is trolling. It does not count. (I am prepared to count the number of such comments in response to this blog entry and cackle – feel free to use this as an opportunity to pimp yourselves with blatant hilarity in the comments, please).

Believe me, we remember you when you come back and comment. And really, why do you care if you’re in the blogroll of a blog that you don’t read?

In this specific case, I’ve known Misa for a while, as they’ve been a frequent (and ofttimes hilarious) commenter on my site.

Step 2

Link to other blogs (like me).

A link in your sidebar is a great start – it’s a polite nudge. Many bloggers do get notifications when someone links to them, although some blogs get so many that it becomes impossible to keep up with the list (thanks to the magic of RSS, which tells me I’ve been linked to every single time most blogs that have Ego in their sidebar update, I am one of them.)

But when Ego was smaller, I would follow up on every single link to my blog. I still try to – especially when that link is in the body of a post, but it’s become a lot harder to tell the difference between a sidebar link and a post link.

In this case, Misa did have me linked, but the notification got buried in a ton of other links, and I did not see it.

Step 2.5

Write a blog entry in which you link to one of the other blog’s posts. Note, a specific post – don’t link to the base blog site. Link to the post itself.

Misa did a recent post in which my respec to discipline was noted, with a direct link to my blog post about the switch.

Not only did I get another buried link notification, I do have trackbacks turned on for my posts, so I got an EMAIL notification saying that specific post had been linked to.

Trackbacks are rare enough that I follow up on each and every one of them, especially since a lot of times they are rebuttals or further discussion on the subject. And if I was interested enough in the subject to write about it, you can bet I’m interested enough to hear what other people have to say on it!

The trackback got me (and a lot of my viewers) over to Misa’s site that day, and spurred me to add the link to my feed reader.

Not my sidebar. Why? Because, quite frankly, I’m terrified by the links on my sidebar and try to pretend they don’t exist.

Step 3

If all else fails, and the blog you want a link on is still valiantly ignoring your fabulousness and not adding you to their sidebar, send an email.

The one above is a perfect example of a politely worded request for a link. (heck, it wasn’t even that, so much as a request to know how they could earn a link.)

Well, let me tell you, that shamed me right up. In Misa’s case, I’d even added to my feed reader without adding to my blogroll, and if I’m interested enough to have you on the reader, you’re definitely worth putting on my sidebar.

Naturally, I added Misa’s link.

Step 4

There is no step four. If you’ve done all of the above and they still don’t link you, there is no polite way for you to request a link.

Most bloggers will follow your link from Step 1 – when you’re commenting.

It takes a special breed of bull-headedness to require you go all the way to step 3 and submit an email, but what can I say? I’m a special breed of draenei.

You can probably also use tools like Twitter to catch a blogger’s attention, but since my twitter account is so unused that the dustbunnies have declared all out war on the cobwebs, I’m probably not a very good person to ask about that.

Concerning CoH Spam

First of all, if Hannelore doesn’t want her access to MY blog removed, she will refrain from further defamation of my healing character.

*sniffs primly*

However, the damage has been done, so I shall address the issue.

There is only one fight where I have found CoH spam to be a valid tactic. (note I said SPAM, not use. CoH use is different than CoH spam)

During Malygos, Phase 1, the raid is periodically lifted into the air and every player takes obscene damage, in addition to falling damage when the lift is released. While spinning in the air, only instant cast heals may be used and my very talented co-healer is a shaman. She would normally clean up raid damage without even thinking about it, but the insta-cast requirement removes almost all of her possible spells.

CoH spam in this situation allows me to pad the raid so that she can finish the healing job once we land with a well-placed Brain Heal or two.

I do NOT advocate CoH spam as a healing tactic in general, and as soon as the CoH nerf is in place, I will pepper the raid with HoTs in addition to using CoH for this particular fight.

*glares at Hannelore warningly* Nor do I appreciate misplaced gossip on my blog, young lady.

Mail Call – Is There A Disc Priest in the House?

A very very interesting email came in today, but sadly, I am not equipped to answer intelligently as I am not a Disc priest and haven’t done the theorycrafting on that spec. Can anyone help this frazzled Raid Leader Guy deal with one of his healers? Is there a problem at all? Is my initial horror at the description based solely on my Holy spec, or are the rest of you going to have nightmares tonight as well?

I created a guild.  We wanted a small number of focused raiders to get through content.  Completely not concentrating on geared characters, but good people who are willing to learn.

Fast forward to a relatively healthy guild in Nax.  We have a healer that loved our ideas, and transferred servers to come play with us.  Looking at his performance in a few situations, he relies on the use of Penance.  He casts it more than any other healing spell, and actually overheals by almost 60% while using it.  He was healing our main tank, and in one WWS I saw used this spell more than Gheal, and as a result had a very low effective heal number.  He was also using prayer of healing alot, which I can’t get my head around why.  He was healing our main tank.  ><  He also cast renew only 1 time during a boss fight that lasted quite a long time.

I leveled a holy priest 1-60, and raided holy pre-BC.  I have a very small amount of experience with healers.
 

The reason I am emailing you is – what spells do the healy priests use these days in a raid?  Is Penance among them?  Why or why not?  Thanks!
 

Thanks,

confused guild leader guy

Anyone? Beuller?

Non-Wow Related

Anyone who’s just here for the Wow talk can skip the rest of this post.

I have a second public blog located at http://tamimoore.com (oh yes, the Ego has a name).

Please note, this other blog is NOT a Warcraft blog. For the most part, it will be about my writing, seasoned lightly with a few posts about my art and my life. Hop on over if you’re interested, and no hard feelings if you’re not.

(Note from Ego : guest post from one of our commenters, Shatter, helping me squeak out some more time to finish my NaNoWriMo novel before the end of the week! If he had a blog, I’d link it for you.)

As a long time proponent of the fact that Blizzard doesn’t care about its lore or its RPers, I’ve been forced to admit that Wrath of the Lich King seems like a game made just for those two types of people – loremongers and roleplayers. With all of the raiding content being cleared in three days, it’s clear that they didn’t aspire to create a game that was so difficult the people that wanted to learn about their lore would be incapable of seeing the final pieces to the puzzle, and with the fact we can’t fly until 77 well, you have to assume that they want you to take your time and soak in all the brilliance that is the story of this expansion.

Initially, as a pessimist, I was worried about this expansion. The zombie event was fun to me but they pulled it early because of whining and that made me fear Blizzard wouldn’t go full-tilt again, or they’d water down aspects of the expansion to keep people from returning to Mode QQ. Much to my relief, though, this game provides for me what TBC did not at all and Classic only did at one point of the game – excitement. It’s like for the first time we’re actually trapped inside of a war; a series of battles that range from zone to zone and lead up to the raid instances in a way that just embarrasses TBC. Who is the only person we saw build a story to their fight in TBC? Panthaleon. OoOoO, that was so inten… zzz… oh, sorry. Yeah, so intense.

You know that feeling you got when you walked into Ashlam Valorfist’s camp in Classic? Yeah, that same excitement that you’re done with the precursors and now about to really get into the game? Well, they made ALL of Wrath feel that way. From start to finish you’re IN it and your character isn’t just collecting 5 stones for someone to make a… thing that takes 5 stones. You’re helping the war effort and knocking Arthas down a peg or twelve.

Wrath of the Lich King has brought back the RPG feel to WoW, in my opinion. We land on the shores of Northrend and we’re already in the middle of a fight be you Horde or Alliance (I’ve played Alliance more, but the Fjord for Horde was under attack by the North Fleet). More importantly than that though, Blizzard is doing what I wanted them to do and forwarding the stories of the WoW-created characters into WotLK (and ending some. Alas, Abbendis, you were my first Blaumeux). I won’t spoil anything but quite a few characters that we knew from the past resurface in different places, and that alone is the kind of throwback you need for any epic story to truly be epic – heroes from all over coming together to make a final drive against an evil that has plagued the land for quite some time. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a Naaru stationed in Northrend, but I suppose Blizzard wanted to leave a lot of that for Outland (even though as far as I can tell, the threat there is finished. Illidan dead, Magtheridon dead, Kael’thas stopped, and the Gronn brought under control).

Beyond the fact we get an actual cinematic in the game (which is awesome), there are some quests that make me feel like I’m playing Secret of Mana or some other SNES classic. Hell, the music in Sholazar Basin + the creatures you find there are beyond nostalgic to me. I have a feeling that Blizzard saw the errors that came with TBC and rectified them in an amazing way. I haven’t felt out of the loop at any point in the game, and as Team Shaman burns through more content we’re pulled deeper into the story and lore that exists. Granted, I think Mistryza will pull out my heart and crush it if I mention Alexstraza one more time, but it’s not every day that you get to see the Dragon Queen standing around in mageweave, outside… in a coooold area. – I mean, yeah! It’s just very detailed and the amount of lore characters we are introduced to with Wrath is enough to make me feel like this could be WC4.

And that’s the truly amazing part (thanks to phasing), the story is MOVING forward! In TBC we had probably two story shifts… Kael’thas’ betrayal and Kael’thas death. In Wrath, as you complete content the areas change and you’re rewarded with knowing your addition to the game will have a lasting effect on your character.

Dalaran in and of itself, from the epic music that plays to the fact they set it up like an actual city is by far one of the most alluring things I have seen in this game, and while I cannot say that I don’t wish I could fly, at the same time I know it adds more to the city feel if everyone has to walk around instead of zipping about. Shattrath was just a bad time, bad bad time, and I’m glad that they didn’t remake the Exodar’s lack of navigability. It’s a nice change of pace, definitely.

Then of course, there are the Death Knights. As someone that has loved Scourge lore since forever it’s amazing that I didn’t level a DK first, but I wanted to wait so I could enjoy all the lore that came with it. I will say that the little bit I did play was fun, and having done some of Naxx long ago the people you see in the quest lines make them even better. I was hoping they’d throw in a story for the three Horsemen that weren’t Mograine, but you can only take so much from something I suppose. A book would be nice on them.

So, anyway, I suppose what is important in the end is that Blizzard has given the RPers a reason to stop saying “Blizz doesn’t care about us!” If you play this expansion and you don’t feel Blizzard thought about you, then you should just quit the game and try something else. The hope that this game presents is amazing, especially since they’ve even incorporated things have been asking for (Hello, Vehicles? What’s cooler than riding on the shoulder of a Titan’s weapon while slaughtering scourge, frost wyrms, and all kinds of baddies?), and makes you wonder what future expansions will hold. Guild housing? Cross factional communication? I admit, after Wrath I feel that I may just stick around and find out.

How does it go?

*Bweeeem* *Fwooosh*
Achievement Accomplished!

You have reached level 60!
Fast and Furious! (Epic mount)
Stalkers from the Blog!

I was accosted, this weekend. Not once, but TWICE, by people that recognized me from my writings. Adrexis, Nasmin, you crazy people. And no, if anyone else decides to harass me, you will not get a callout. These two just surprised me so much they have to get recognition for making me basically spaz out. It’s rare to throw me off my game that much, but this has never happened before, so I had no idea how to respond to the whispers.

Adrexis caught me in Undercity, trying to figure out what I was going to do with a bunch of quest items from – oh, about the time I started writing here. It’s pretty bad when you upgrade your gear and go “Oh, hi, I’m replacing this belt from Maraudon.” Palmface. So, yes, I was flustered. And then, out in Brill, Nasmin is poking at the mailbox when I run by, half asleep and being poked with people asking me to come heal for them in SM or something. I wasn’t even looking for a group! I was just checking the prices of the dead horses, and then it was crash – into the inn for sleeptimes. Nasmin was very polite, though, even if she DID think I was Vonya in disguise.

Hrmph. I would like to point out that there is no WAY that space goat could fit in these pants. …they look like they were sprayed on, anyway.

MOVING ON.

I did get the Big Girl Pony, finally. Purple Warhorse is MINE! I’m so happy. It’s … purple. And – yeah, I suppose describing it any further just lends itself to way too many innuendos. We’ll stick with ‘Epic Dead Horse’, then. Glee!! Put a serious dent in the guild coffer, though. I may have to do something about that, now that I’m actually in Outlands.

I was doing some quests for the orcs out there, who had me go and kill a bunch of orcs (confused much?), and I was very excited to see the upgrades for my pants and robe. I got the pants upgrade first, so I didn’t really see what they looked like. Doesn’t matter! I have a ROBE! And then I get a very nice, very svelte vest to wear. And then I realize what I was wearing under my robe will be quite visible to all the world.

I had heard legends of this effect, but I thought it was just alliance mages, or troll trollops that had this issue. No. One of the first pants upgrades you get, once you’re through the Dark Portal and are battling for your survival against the Burning Legion and the terrors they’ve created in Helfire Penninsula, are whore pants. Panties and thigh-high stockings.
REALLY!?

All I need is a blasted bikini and I could look like a paladin. I switched from shadow to deep discipline and I wear THIS!?

Unacceptable!

I did a quick check, found a decent upgrade could be found right next door in that castle with all the other nice orcs in it. I finally gathered up four compatriots from the lowest dregs, and off we went. Let’s just say that the shaman spent more time telling everyone else what to do than he did putting down totems. Since he was very adamant that the prot paladin was the tank, and the prot warrior should be helping him, and that the hunter should dps, and I needed to heal – I made sure that the two protection fellows got priority on heals. If he decided to pull agro most of the time, and then happened to die, well at least it wasn’t a wipe, because our tanks lived. Oddly, he kept popping back up after dying, so I can only assume he did that self-resurrection thing that shamans do right in the middle of a fight. Very odd tactics for someone who was meleeing. Without totems. Shamans are the ones that put down totems, right? It’s been a while since I’ve seen them used properly.

As it was, I got my pants, killed the Ramparts bosses and got another achievement (you can get those things from sneezing, apparently), and now have to keep an eye out for gems to make my pants super special.

In other news, I’m sure you’re all very excited to know that I’ve hired a troll rogue to do my dirty work back on Azeroth. He is an engineer, and has grand plans to someday build a motorcycle. I also use him to keep tabs on how the pugging situation is while I’m off on another planet. From what he says about his forays into Razorfen Krawl and Razorfen Downs, and even the SM Library, it’s not much different from a rogue perspective. Being able to hide while the rest of the group implodes, though, seems to have its perks. He giggles a lot when relating the stories to me. Maybe I’ll share some of his adventures, sometime. No, I have no idea what his real name is. He’s a rogue, they tend to not be very outgoing with stuff like that. But he goes by Thomas.

Yeah. Thomas the Troll.

I laughed, he didn’t. So I don’t know.

Yay dead horsey!

*cough* Sorry.

So you had questions. I guess I can answer a couple.  There weren’t any GREAT ones, but these will suffice.  It’s my first time requiring anything of you, so I suppose some hesitation should be expected.  The free ride is over, though.  I expect higher quality from people who have been absorbing my goodness for this long.

Weta asks: I need help killing a dwarf who is so inept that he wound up accidentally summoning an Elemental Lord that blew the snot out of his kingdom and has now enslaved his people.
–Rather than simply say something cynical like “Wait for him to try another brilliant plan, he’ll take himself out for you”, I suppose I could point you in some direction.  Wowwiki, really, may be your best bet.  It has all the details on what gear you can steal from the old munchkin’s battered body, and gives a few suggestions for tactics on how to get to him and how to make sure his body is sufficiently battered.  Wowhead and thottbot are there, too, but they’re more focused on making sure the old man is naked of all his loot, rather than how to get him to hold still long enough.  Weirdos.

Vendric wants to know: How come life is unfair and the fights are so easy/hard in the battlegrounds?
–Life is tough, you silly boomkin.  For one thing, you are a Prime Target.  Imagine being the guy out there that can transform into an Ogre.  YOU WILL BE SHOT AT.  I imagine if you remain ‘just another tauren’ (or something), then you can launch a few more volleys before anyone figures you out.  Starfire and Moonfire are good, too, because they don’t see where the pain’s coming from.  As for what’s being done to equalize the battlegroups?  Are you serious?  My people joined the Horde mostly because we were both desperate.  We allied with DEAD PEOPLE because we are so bad off.  There is no equalisation, we are Horde, we must overrun them with sheer numbers and stubborness and the elitist belief that only kids play Alliance.  Glory to the Sin’dorei!  …I may have lost track.  What was the question?

Weta says: Nevermind, I killed him without your help, now I want to know why I should be friendly with my own faction!
–Bah! *fistshake*

Axethrower asks: Hanners where aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrre yoooooooou?
–Uh, I think we’re done here.  BETTER QUESTIONS THIS TIME.  *hides from stalkers*

Mail Call!

Whatever I was gonna write about can wait, because the mail I got not only poses a great question, but also requires audience participation!

That’s YOU guys!

(more…)

Okay, I know this is copping out again, I haven’t even built up a backlog of emails yet or anything. But I can’t think of anything priestly to write about – probably because I haven’t had much time to actually log into the game lately. Seriously, I think I did dailies on my hunter…once…since last Saturday. Remind me again why I thought taking two intensive night classes was a good idea?

Anyrate, I’m lucky enough to have gotten a good email that I think you guys can help out on answering.

I have a question, one you might find silly but one i’m having trouble with.

Currently, with the gear I have, and buffs, totems and potions, I can attain 2038 to healing bonus. My problem is, I don’t see the benefit of a lot of my spells … they seem to be healing as well as they did at 1800 to healing. I’m now starting to turn to battleground gear and arena gear however, with each additional piece i’m trading healing bonus for stamina and int.

Is there a cap off point to the bonus healing? In other words is there a point where bonus healing becomes moot after a certain point?

Your tanks’ gear has probably increased as well – I’ll bet your mana efficiency is better now than if you were to regear back down to your old levels.

However, I can definitely see what you’re saying – it’s really difficult to measure healing efficiency. Why should you choose +heal over some other stat-heavy piece of gear? At what point does it level out, and you can start eyeballing other stats a bit more closely, because you’re not frantic to get your heal up?

As far as I know, there’s not an answer. You get the +heal because healing is what you do – obviously that’s a primary stat for a healer. Increasing your +heal stat is for the harder-hitting content, where each heal needs to be that much bigger.

There is no ceiling – no number where priests can say “okay, I have enough now”. The best we can do is point out our major stats and make sure each one is high. You can’t stack +heal at the detriment of your stamina or you’ll be cannon fodder. You can’t ignore +heal completely, or you’ll reach a point where you’re not able to keep your tank alive.

As a matter of fact, now that I think about it, I’ve been in situations where I’ve outgeared the tank, and it’s obvious. My max-rank gheal is too much – in order to avoid drastic overheal, I have to let their health go down to an alarming level. I downranked my heal there so I didn’t efficiency my tank to death, but it does mean that there’s a noticeable difference if you go back to old content and less-geared tanks with your shiny new purples. (For those interested, it was a mid-Kara geared Pally tank in Heroic Shattered Halls, as opposed to the ready-for-SSC-geared warrior I usually heal. Same player, different toon. Yes, it’s EgoTank, and yes, he has a mid-kara geared-or-better version of every tank available in the game, and a few dpsers besides. The man borders on the divine – he’s definitely not human.)

If your heals “feel” like they’re doing the same as always – if you’re healing at about the same rate, running out of mana at about the same rate, and in general feeling as though you’re not moving forward despite gear upgrades – and yet the content you are tackling and the gear of your tank is increasing – then you’re actually improving at the perfect rate (gear-wise. We shall assume that skill level remains unchanged).

But a calculateable and measurable number where you can say “Okay, no more +heal now” – I don’t think that exists.

Certainly not in the sense that a hunter can say “Okay, no more +hit now”.

Another series of emails sitting in my inbox that need good responses. Names omitted to protect the curious – they can “out” themselves if they wish. =]

(more…)

An interesting and well thought out question from an Egotistical Reader – it’s one with a straightforward answer, but has a lot of layers.

The perfect question, in my mind, since I can ramble about the answer even though it’s easy.

Just a quickie.

I was wondering if flash heal 1 is an option to consider when not stressed healing but know there may be spike damage. With good healing gear and an appropriate build my understanding is as follows.

1) With the 5 second rule, most of my mana regen will be from build and equipment, MP5 and spirit regen while casting.
2) Dosent matter what rank used the equipment heal bonus is 100%, not taht rank one you get 10% while rank 10 you get 100%.
3) My renew is ticking away where it can
4) Frizbee is on cooldown.
5) Ive got bonus healing from gear of over 1500
6) Im not needing to be stopcasting Greatheal, or think i dont.

So i have a wee space of a second or so. Do I twiddle my thumbs, inspect my nails.

An option im considering is popping flash heal one out there on someone who can benefit from a HP top-up.

For not a lot of mana im going to heal them a nats bum plus my healing bonus, so 1500+ and a bit for someone well healing geared, for the same nats bum of mana. What are your views on this, is it worth trying or have i missed the obvious and am setting myself up for a fall?

An exampe of where i think it might be worth trying is curator if im healing the dps bods, renew and frizbee would be my mainstay and often the remaining likely healing needed will be small so if i have a gap would flash heal 1 be a go?

Thanks in advance
Bonesoul

Answer :

Grab your chalk and go stand up next to the chalkboard, and write this down 100 times.

Flash Heal should only be used if the target needs a heal RIGHTNOW.
Flash Heal should only be used if the target needs a heal RIGHTNOW.
Flash Heal should only be used if the target needs a heal RIGHTNOW.

Flash heal is a small, expensive, quick heal.

If you are a Raid Healer and you are healing in a situation where many people take a large amount of damage – where you have five people sitting at half health, and another shot could kill them – then flash heal. Whether or not you downrank your flash heal is your call – I’ll discuss downranking in just a moment.

If you are dealing with a more leisurely situation, where people need heals, but not necessarily RIGHT THIS SECOND (OMG), then use Greater Heal.

My normal Raid Healing spell is a downranked Greater Heal. Sure, it takes a little bit longer to cast, but it’s much more mana efficient than a flash heal would be.

Remember the rules of the Five Second Rule – you only fall into the five second rule AFTER you spend mana.

If you’re chain casting a flash heal, then you’re always in the Five Second Rule.

The extra time it takes to cast a Greater Heal as opposed to the Flash Heal doesn’t matter in this situation – you are still outside the FSR during your cast. Add to that the fact that you probably just topped off your target – they aren’t likely to need another heal for a while, and so you have more time to spend outside the FSR until you need to cast again.

You spent less mana per point of healing, and are casting less often.

You don’t want to overheal hideously, of course – that’s where downranking comes in. A downranked greater heal will have the same cast time, but will heal for less and cost less mana. You have tailored that heal for your target (the not-insanely-stamina’d-non-tanks) and saved mana while doing it.

In a perfect world, you would only heal as much as you have to, and spend as little mana doing it as you need to.

If someone only needs the amount of healing given by a Rank 1 Flash Heal, then I’m probably not healing them. They can wait till they need a real heal. It irritates me, leaving them with a sliver of health missing (like having a loose tooth that you keep twiddling with even though you know you should leave it alone) but if it takes two downranked Flash Heals to bring them up, then a downranked greater heal would have done the job in less time with less mana spent.

Also, I think there’s a misconception in the letter – number two. The bonus that a spell gets from +heal is not always 100%, nor is it always the same percentage regardless of which rank is used.

According to Lux Et Umbra, both of those assumptions are incorrect. If you look at the “coefficient” section of the guide, it shows you what percentage of your +heal gets applied to the highest rank of each spell. Beyond that, the “stats” section shows you the two ways that Blizzard penalizes healers for downranking. Unfortunately, the second way seems to be cut off or incomplete, but the gist of it is definitely that there ARE penalties for downranking past a certain point. They are not insurmountable penalties, and not nearly as severe as they could be, but you definitely don’t get 100% of your +heal added to every spell. And even if you know that your Flash Heal only gets 42.9% of your plus healing, not every rank of Flash Heal is going to get that much. Feel free to read the guide if you’re interested in more mathly things. I’ll do generalities with cheerfulness and moderate skill – I leave the number crunching for the experts.

So, why did I like this question so much, despite the fact that I totally picked it apart and then set fire to the pieces?

Because it was a SMART question. If downranking is good, why not downrank this? Why not downrank always? It’s a logical assumption, and it’s certainly not an uncommon one. It’s difficult to measure and compare healing, and people have to ask smart questions to come up with clever new ways to be a good healer.

I ramble a lot, so here are my points when it comes to the use of flash heal and downranking :

1) Flash Heal is inefficient enough that you should only use it if you are patching up the raid from frequent AOE damage and you’ll start losing people if they don’t get heals as quickly as possible.

2) I personally do not have a downranked Flash Heal. The way I figure it, if the situation is dire enough for someone to need a Flash Heal, then they need as much heal as I can cram into that cast time. This is my personal choice, and I’ve yet to find logic that convinced me otherwise.

3) For normal patchy healing, I will use a downranked Greater Heal.

4) For Tank healing, I almost always use fully ranked Greater Heal.

5) If my tank is not geared as well as I am, I will downrank my primary heal for him. I do this because otherwise I’ll be overhealing like mad, it will take longer for him to need the entirety of the heal I can cast, meaning spike damage will be much more disastrous, and I can save mana doing it.

6) Mana Efficiency is one of my favorite buzzwords, but it means less than nothing if you are sacrificing the lives of your raiders to accomplish it. “Hey guys, I finished this fight with a full mana bar!” is a SHAMEFUL thing to say if you’ve got a pack of dead raiders littering the ground around your feet.

Now, aaaaaaallllll of that being said, the original email was more asking about the viability of using a downranked Flash Heal to pick up random bits of the raid when things weren’t hectic, just as a “hey, they could use a bit of a top off” situation. Most of that wasn’t really targeted at the emailer – it was just random soapboxing.

Although the emailed situation is not quite the dire situation of someone using Flash Heal exclusively to raid heal, the reasons for not doing that match the reasons for not doing this.

If I’m worried about soon-to-be-incoming damage, and someone doesn’t need a full heal, I’ll toss a Renew out there. The renew patches the damage they’ve taken, and will help smooth out the damage that they are about to receive. Best of all, it does it while I’m not looking, so if someone else needs a big heal, I know that StabbityDeath the rogue will be fine because he’s got my HoT on him.

Despite the threat of one of my more numerologically-nuanced fellow priest bloggers whipping out a calculator and providing colorful graphs to prove just how wrong I am…I do not think that it’s a good idea to use a rank 1 Flash Heal to clean up minimal raid damage. The mana inefficiency is bad, that is time you could spend in the FSR, Flash Heal should be kept behind an “In Case of Emergency, Break Glass” wall, and downranking is used more to boost the efficiency of your HEALS than to boost the efficiency of your MANA (the latter being a handy side effect of the former).

So, to answer your question, in my opinion, you should either leave them alone, use a downranked greater heal, or renew, depending on the situation. =]

You get bonus points for your knowledge of renew, frisbee, and FSR. <3

Also, don’t forget to send your mana pet in during Evocation on Curator, you cannot SPEND the mana returned quickly enough.

Also the second, you shouldn’t need to cancel heal if you’re assigned to cleaning up raid damage – it’s a tactic used more on those assigned to tank healing of some sort.

And I’ll return to my Raid Healing series when you people stop sending in such good emails.

Seriously. Not my fault at all. This is all. Your. Fault.

Not feeling very good today, so I shall continue with my firmly established laziness of giving Ego MailDumps instead of long, thought-out posts.

=]

I have a quick question for you re: holy priestage, and you have probably had the answer ready since reading the subject line, but there we go.

Quite simply, aside from the obvious aesthetic and sheer bouncy-fun bonus points (á la Arcane Explosion), does Holy Nova really have much going for it? It sounded good at the time, when I got to it in the tree, but now i’m wondering if I’d be a fair bit better off reassigning that talent point. And rather than sift through sites and sites trying to get a simple (and non-flamey) answer, i’d email someone whose writing and priestliness have both impressed me thus far, ever since I started my priest and my girlfriend linked me your blog. There, obligatory flattery over as well

Sorry if you are uber busy, and thanks for your time, and for your wondrous bloggyness. Oh – and what’s the gentle snowflakes reference?

Cheers,
-Jon

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I’ve been getting some really nice emails lately, that have been sort of wasting away in my inbox.

But tomorrow I have a dentist appointment, and my first class this semester dropped a doozy of a hardware requirement on me, so I need a gimme post for tomorrow. This counts as Thursday’s post, since I probably won’t be able to post it.

Gonna drop both emails here, you guys are the most knowledgeable and talkative group of commenters a blog could ever hope for, so maybe you’ll have the answers I couldn’t find. =]

Two great questions ahead, folks. Strap on your seatbelts.

I have two more lined up and rotting in my inbox that I may post on Friday out of a sense of guilt for not actually doing a post this week.

<.<

>.>

Depends on how intensive my Ruby on Rails homework is. =]

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