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!

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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. =]

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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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An Egotistical Reader wrote in with a very good question, so I thought I’d share it for two reasons :

1) The answer may be helpful to lots of people and
2) The answer may deal with shadow priesting, and I’m still a nublet when it comes to shadow damage.

So! Without further ado…the email.

I play XX (Name ommitted for privacy), a shadow priest on Darkspear. He’s just about to ding 70 (one bar off!) I have only instanced up to Coilfang Resevoir so have no special gear. There’s so much grinding in Outland that I haven’t really had time! But now that I’m about to max out my talent points and have to start thinking more about gear than xp, I’m very confused about the synergy between gear and talent points. If you have the time, I would really appreciate your wisdom and advice please!

The problem, as always, comes down to mana regen. I love spirit tap. For solo grinding nothing beats it. And I want to keep it because even at 70 I have a lot of grinding for rep and tailoring left to do and I am a long way off being ready for heroics and Kara, let alone raids. It seems to me that you have to work very hard just to get your mp5 up to around 50, and that gives very poor returns when compared to spirit tap in solo play.

But cloth damage gear in BC carries very little spirit — it’s all on healer gear (I even wear a pair of healing gloves to keep the stat up). Instead, I have a big pool of +crit which, frankly, I don’t care about (except, ironically, when I heal instances and I get nice returns on PoH crits!) So I’ve gone from mana regen of about 240/tick at 60 to 200/tick at 70.

Logic tells me to drop spirit tap and give up on spirit as a stat entirely and go for mp5. But the majority of mp5 gear I see is healer gear too! I’ve read that some of the best shadow gear out there pre-heroics are the tailored sets — shadow’s embrace + battlecast/spellstrike — but none of those items carry spirit OR mp5! I could dress like a mage or a lock but I’d end up with a huge drinking problem and only my shadowfiend on 3 min cd for mana regen.

Can you see how confused I am?! Is it possible to get balanced gear that includes spirit and +dmg? Should I be thinking about speccing for divine spirit? And if I have to give up on spirit, how can I get close to decent mp5 before the raid sets? Any advice you could give me would be greatly appreciated!

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Egotistical Reader Sephran writes :

Hello. Found your blog through the great and all powerful BRK. So i’m hoping your as good as him.

I’ve joined a new guild as of a few weeks ago. I was finally invited to do 25mans. Its been a blast and I love it every time.

The raid leaders constantly bring up dps meters to find out who has the lowest dps. Then privately talks to that person to try and figure out what went wrong. I really like that system. However.. i’m a Resto Druid.

I have dmg meters as well but those meters also have healing meters.

I know that my hots could never catch up to a pallys massive heals. I’ve taken that as fact after this time. I am always in top 4 usually the top 2 are pallys and 3rd is either a pally or me. When I look at the numbers priests are generally 30-50k underneath me and same with other resto druids.

My questions are as follows

Do priests ever out heal pallys in your experience?
Should priests be doing that bad?
I know healing is all about keeping people alive so how much you heal doesn’t matter a hill of beans.. but is healing meters useful in anyway?

PS: The pallys are a bit better geared then the other healers in our raid. But the druids and priests all have around the same +healing and intellect.

Thx for your time. Hopefully you can help me out

Firstly, thanks for the email, Sephran, I’m no BRK, but I get by. Sounds like you’ve got a good solid guild there, and I commend both the leadership AND the members for being willing to work to better themselves. It takes courage to be on both ends of that.

I will say that I’ve not yet done a 25-man, so the advice and thoughts I’ve got here are based on research and experience in ten-mans. It’s possible you’ll find someone whose healed 25-mans that may give you different advice, but I’ll bet the bulk of what I say will still be true and applicable.

The key to all of these questions lies in talents and healing differences between the two classes. In many cases, comparing the different healing classes is like comparing apples to oranges. Sure, they’re all fruit, but they’re not all apples.

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I’m going to take this opportunity to plug one of my favorite all-around artists, Kyoht. Her general art is amazing, but it’s her World of Warcraft art that spurs this particular entry.

And before you ask, she is not CURRENTLY accepting commissions. Yes, I know, I cried a little too. But she has accepted them in the near past, and when she opens them again, she will notify on her Livejournal. If I get enough interest here, I’ll post again when she makes them available, just to keep you guys informed. The last time they were open, her prices were extremely reasonable and affordable, so don’t go thinking you’d never be able to afford it till she posts again.

Her website - kyoht.com

Her email - hkluterman@gmail.com - Remember, she is not currently open for commissions! So don’t send emails that only ask how much they cost, though feel free to ask her about bellydancing, animal skulls, snakes and turtles, or general art-related stuff. She’s very approachable, and seven flavors of awesome.

Unfortunately, I have to link all of these to you in one great big list - she doesn’t have a dedicated gallery just to her WoW art. I cannot stress how awesome all of these are - keep clicking on them, they get better and better.

She says she also keeps her WoW art updated on http://community.livejournal.com/wow_fanart/ - but the site is regrettably blocked at work, so I can’t tell you whether or not it’s as awesome as I hope it is. (more…)