Why do I like healing?

Recently me and my girlfriend have been leveling some new toons while we wait for the expansion to hit. It has been a blast, and I am really enjoying the new class changes and the leveling experience overall. But after spending a couple of weeks leveling as a frost mage, I found myself wanting to hop on my pally and priest and just heal something.

I don't exactly what it is, but it was like I was craving healing again. I enjoy dpsing and tanking (at times), but there is just something about being a healer that I find to be much more fun. I think that it has to  do with the difference in gameplay, and general role.

As a tank, I am making sure that I am the one being hit, and that I am able to take those hits. As a dps, I am making sure I am killing things when I need to, and that I am not getting hit unnecessarily. But as a healer, I am directly responsible for keeping people alive. I need to use heals that will keep green bars from going black, and I need to use them in a way that keeps my blue bar blue until the fight is over. There is something really cool to me about that role. I know that a groups success is dependent of everyone doing their job and doing it well, but if the healers aren't doing their job no one else can do their respective jobs. Everything rests on the healers shoulders.

While some people might find that to be too much responsibility, I find it to be pretty cool. The desicion making involved, when choosing the right heal, combined with knowing that my failure means death to everyone else makes me find healing to be interactive and really cool feeling.

About Surge of Light

I have seen some points that have been brought up about Surge of Light. Currently this talent gives you a 6% (if you spend two points in it) for your Smite and Heal casts to allow you to cast Flash Heal instantly, without mana cost, and without a chance to critical.

Before 4.0.1 this talent gave you the ability to instantly cast a mana and crit free Flash Heal 50% of the time after you get a critical with any of your spells. This allowed for instant Flash Heals to proc very often. Which in turn allowed you to obtain 3 stacks of Serendipity very easily, which also made casting a faster Prayer of Healing (or Greater Heal) easier.

Now the proc chance is very low. And by very low I mean that if I were to cast 100 Heals in a row, Surge of Light would only pop up 6 times. In a night of raiding (in WotLK content) spells like Renew, Prayer of Mending, and Circle of Healing are the major spells that are used. So out of the total amount of heals you cast the chance to pop a Surge of Light is even lower. Making a lot of raiding holy priests (a lot better than me) find this talent to be very useless.

I personnaly specced into Surge of Light. I have been running a lot of heroics, since I stopped raiding, which means I have been using Heal more often, so it is more useful to me than the alternative (Tome of Light: reduces the cooldown of Holy Word spells). Having said that, I definitely think that the proc chance is too low. I like having talents that cause spells to pop up, but I like them because those procs actually happen. With Surge of Light, it rarely pops up. If they want to keep it from being OP, I would either let it take the form of the older version with a 25% instead of 50% chance, or allow it proc off of all spell casts at the same 6% as it is now.

Something to make it cool and useful. Right now it feels like one of those old Darkmoon trinkets, or one of those Vanilla legendaries with a cool put rare proc.

I think that BlizzCon is really cool

While I did not go, me and my girlfriend did order the live internet stream, and watched the panels and most of the events. This event is so cool to me because I always like the opportunity to meet people who play WoW, and BlizzCon brings so many members of the community come together like nothing else.

I can't wait to get the chance to go, and I am very glad that I have been able to watch it online over the last two years.

The new healing model

I will start by saying that I have really enjoyed healing on my priest and paladin. Now here is why.

The introduction of Heal and Holy Light as the medium efficient heal. This change has really changed how I have appraoched healing. I have a choice to make. If a tank is near half health do I use Heal because it's cheap, or do I use Greater Heal because they might die if I don't top them off soon enough? If a dps just took a huge chunk of damage do I use Greater Heal to get them to full health, or do I use Flash Heal because the sufficient heal won't get there in time?These options are a welcome change from the previous model of healing. (these apply to paladin just insert Holy Light, Flash of Light, and Divine Light respectively)

The new mechanics for priests and palains. For my paladin I really like how Holy Shock is the go to spell because it will buff the other heals. With the four peice set bonus on my teir 10 a Holy Shock critical makes Holy Light cast ridiculously fast, which is very cool. And I really like the options I have once I get 3 charges of Holy Power. Do I use Word of Glory now, or save that instant for when I won't have time to cast something?

For my priest I have enjoyed how Chakra has been working. Certain cases are better for corresponding Chakra states, and there is a decision to be made there as well. Surge of Light procs are a nice way to save some mana (I just wish it had a higher chance to proc), and like my paladin I really like the healing mastery bonus.

Mastery has turned out to be a very nice change. For my paladin I add some extra mitigation (which explains why Sacred Sheild went away), and for my priest the added heal over time helps me heal someone and not have to use a wastful heal to "top" someone off. Balancing how much mastery I go with, and making sure I still have enough Haste, Spell Power, Mana, Spirit, and Crit is a nice added bit of depth to stat choices.

So all in all I am very pleased with all of these changes. I know that a lot of people are not very pleased with these changes. To those people I say "QQ Moar!" The game is changing, and healing is changing with it. Hop on and enjoy the ride, or role a dps.

Healing at the speed of Heal

With the addition of Heal (Holy Light if you wear plate) the healing game seems to have slowed down a bit. I still find myself trying to fit in as many heals as the global cooldown will allow, but what I mean is that healing doesn't feel as jumpy. At least, it doesn't seem like it.

Currently damage goes out at the speed of Flash of Light, and at any moment a raid/party member could be on their death bed awaiting the speedy embrace of your fastest heal. And that worked before because the faster heals were alright to spam. But things have changed now spamming fast heals means the decrease of mana at the speed of Flash of Light. So what do we do? We spam the new cheap heal. But this heal is soooo slowwwwww! And people are dying! UGH!

But is it really that slow. I mean, I wouldn't consider 2 seconds to be slow, by any means. Maybe if we'll be able to play in a world where damage didn't kill people every 2 seconds, where we will have 2 seconds to heal a wounded ally. A world torn asunder, with men who become wolves, and giant molten dragons who destroy entire cities. If only such a world was out there ready to be played, preforably before X-mas time. *sigh* If only...

Reforging...

With the new patch hitting the servers today a new way to customize gear comes with it. Reforging, is a new tool that will let players pick a stat (ie. haste, crit, etc) on their gear and turn 40% of that stat into a more preferred stat. On both of my healers, this looks very appealing.

For my paladin I can turn some extra spirit into haste or crit, or I can make some of that extra crit into mastery or haste. I am not entirely sure how I am going to tackle this for my paladin, but I am thinking that crit is going to be more attractive for me.

For my priest, I've decided that haste is going to be very attractive. Not only will it help spells like Renew, and my mastery heal over time, it will help make the (very) slow Heal a little less slow. More Heals, will increase my chance for Surge of Light procs, and of course a smaller global cooldown. So haste is looking like a good first choice. So what I've decided with regards to Reforging I am planning on taking items that have crit and adding haste to those.

For my second choice, I am really liking mastery over crit right now. Crit is always unreliable, and only provides more overhealing. I won't need to rely on it for procs (like I did before 4.0), like I will be on my paladin (Holy Shock procs are nice). Which makes me think that mastery is going to be a nice stat to go with.

The Holy mastery will allow my direct healing spells to add a heal over time onto the target. You might not think that this is that great, but this is what I am thinking. Say I heal someone who just took a 6.5k hit. I heal for 6k, and apply the heal over time on top of that. This way the HoT will heal the remaining health preventing me from feeling a need to cast another heal that would then overheal. So if I can make this heal over time stronger, I'll be able to add a nice health cushion to targets, which I think will help out a lot.

So with regards to Reforging, I'm going to take items with Haste, and turn the Spirit on them into Mastery. I will warn you, though, Reforging can be very expensive if you decide to reforge all of you items at once.

Overhealing, and my Healing Approach

Since I started healing on my paladin through BC heroics, I used the approach of "big hit, use Holy Light, small hit, use Flash of Light." It worked pretty well, and during that time I began to get pretty good at keeping the green bars full.

Then Wrath came, and with it brought the "OMG everyone is taking big hits!" approach. As I began raiding in Naxx, and OS 25 man, it seemed as though everyone in the raid was taking a lot of damage. Combine that with my position as the tank healer, I began using the "use Holy Light" approach. No matter how big or small the hit was this was my heal of choice. This caused a lot of overhealing to be done. But it worked, all the way into ICC.

And then I started playing my priest. As I progressed through ICC 10, I found that about half of the fight were perfect for me. Whether there was constant pulsing AoE, or splash AoE damage, I used Renew, CoH, and PoH accordingly. I noticed though, that I was contributing to a lot of overhealing. Especially once my former guild began to work on the Lich King. So I wanted to start smart healing. Rather than throwing my array of heals at situations blindly, I stopped to think "Do I really need to cast that now, or can it wait?"

This shift in my approach, helped me become very efficient (notably on the Lich King fight itself). I would still use Prayer of Mending on cool down, and keep Renew on the tanks, but I became a little bit more selective on when I would use my other heals. Making sure they would not overheal, so that I would not waste my mana on heals that weren't needed.

Since I stopped raiding, I've kept this approach into my daily random heroics. Trying to fine tune my strategy and seeing a long I can wait to fill the green bars.

Now that I've begun testing my new spells and talents on my paladin and priest, I have tried to keep up with smart healing. And it has been going pretty well. with the change to Heal and Holy Light, I have that cheap small heal for when little damage is going out. I have the fast larger heal for when people get low, and I have the slow big heal for when people need to be brought up.

I have been working on utilizing these three heals when they are needed, while still using the rest of my arsenal when needed. While every fight, and group set up may shift my strategy, I still try to avoid overhealing as much as I can. This mini game that I am playing to keep people alive, while reducing wasted heals is why I like healing so much. The balance between mana efficiency and still preventing deaths is why I am especially looking forward to Cataclysm because overhealing will matter.

OMG I MOVED MY SPELLS!!!

After a good conversation with my friend about our keybindings and where we put our spells, I have come to a conclusion. My system didn't really make that much sense.

To start, the way that I set up my bars on my two main healers is as follows: I would put the three spells that I use most often at 5,6, and 7 with the rest going around those three. I wanted the main spells to be centrally located so that I could still reach the plethora of other spells in my arsenal if I needed to. This caused me to realize that a lot of the spells at the far reaches of my bar aren't really being used that much, and if they are they are being click. If they are going to be clicked that means they don't need to be on the bar.

So I reelvaluated. Now I have my three main spells at 3, 4, and 5 (GASP!!!!!). Big difference right, I know. But it has made a difference. My action bars seem more streamlined now, they feel effecient, and I feel like all is right with the world of action bars (a great idea for the next big MMO btw). I have healing and mana cooldowns above my bar and to the right, I have my dispells and "OH $*it" buttons above the bar and to the left, and my buffs to the far right. I move the AoE heals and the single target heals around depending on the content (raid AoE is closer to the big three, pvp single targets closer you get the idea).

After trying this out over the past week I am happy that I changed things up. From leveling to raiding my bars didn't really change. I would find a place for new spells, until just about every spot was taken. Now I've realized that I don't need Mana Burn on my bar all the time. I can keep those barely used spells where they belong, in the spell book until I need them.

Thoughts on 4.0

After doing some more testing on the PTR I have come to a couple of conclusions regarding the paladin and priest healing changes.

I found the paladin playstyle to be very fun. Holy Shock, Word of Glory, and Holy Light work really well together. The combination of chosing the right heal and managing holy power is much better than throwing the same heal at every situation. I also like how many choices there are for spending talent points once I spend 31 in the holy tree. The ret and prot trees have nice healing options, and there are a ton of nice soloing and utility points left in the holy tree. All of these changes make me very interested in playing my paladin.

As far as my priest goes, I am content with the changes. I haven't been able to get the most out of Chakra, but it is still a nice ability. What I have enjoyed is the desicion process when chosing the right heal. I've managed to figure out that I want to use Heal when the target is above 50% (give or take), and Flash Heal when they get below, and a Serendipitous Greater Heal if they are near death. I really like the dynamic that is going on here. Before Flash Heal was the only filler between Prayer of Mending, or Renews, or a needed Circle of Healing or Prayer of Healing. Now I've got some options. I also like how Surge of Light has found its way back into the spec. The instant  free procs from Heal go very nicely with Serendipity. I have realized that Archangel isn't as terrific as I thought for healing as holy, but it is still nice for pvp or soloing, and  I am going to want a ton of haste to make Heal as fast as it can be.

All in all, I am excited to heal on my pally again, and I am just as happy to heal on my priest. A win win for sure.