Oof! Sorry I haven't been posting any new content over the past couple of days!

Looks like the Healer Questionnaire is a bigger hit than I expected... and I've had my hands full trying to keep track of who all has answered it, and read all the responses.

I've always been of the mindset that in a raiding environment, the best healers (or, if you prefer, the most efficient healers) are the ones who understand at least a little bit about the other healing classes: their strengths, their weaknesses, how some of their major heals work, etc. The larger the healing team, the more varied the healing makeup, the more important this is.

That was the original purpose of this questionnaire for me... I have great interest in understanding all the healing classes, even though I don't seem to have the dedication to really level all of them... but reading through these questionnaires has given me a lot of insight into the different ways each class works - and the variety of ways you can play each one!

One of my major goals is to summarize all this information, and put it together as a handy guide for healing organizers.

I can say this much so far to all the healing leads out there about a healer's biggest pet peeve, since this seems to be the most popular response - STOP TELLING US WHO NEEDS HEALS.

Dammit, I'm angry.

Why am I angry, you may ask? Is it because of the changes coming to Haste? No.

What about the increase in ease of reputation grinds? Does that anger me because I'm already exalted with everyone? Nyet.

Is it the fact that Level 1 toons will no longer start with food and water in their inventory? Unh-unh.

What about the fact that Miners will now be able to make Enchanted Thorium, instead of Enchanters?
Nein.

Here's what's pissing me off.

Brittle Revenants, quest creatures fought for the Sons of Hodir daily quest "Hot and Cold," no longer cast Shield Slam.

WHAAAAT

Fine, fine, you can all prance about happily. I'm sure the shadow priests love that. But the fact is, those stupid bastards taught me more about how to play as a Shadow Priest than any stupid battleground. I had to figure out how to get them dead before they would stun me out of my shadow spells.

See, I primarily use my shadow spec for running dailies. Lately I've had more opportunities to run heroics and some 10 man raids as shadow, because I have a few friends who want to try out healing. But I'm certainly no expert on it. I NEVER tried shadow until dual spec came out, and I figured I would give it a shot, since I have a slight addiction to dailies.

So, see, I never had a reason to use Psychic Horror, and I've been trained all too well during BC and Steamvaults to never ever ever use Psychic Scream.

But those little cobknobbers over near Dun Niffelem taught me everything I know about PvPing as a Shadow Priest (which, granted, still isn't much - but I have now defeated THREE PEOPLE in duels! Hurrah!!!! That's a big deal for me, shut it). I wouldn't even have Psychic Scream or Psychic Horror on my action bar if not for them.

So, I salute you, Brittle Revenants, for being such awful opponents, that Blizz decided you were just too much of a PitA for the people who hate dailies and hate grinding rep.

Much like most things that are difficult, you actually taught me how to play my class.

If you are participating in the non-memey Healer Questionnaire, you may want to bookmark this post, as this is where I will be keeping track of people who have responded and posted their own answers. Consider it like a Chain Heal... it started with me and went to someone else who will hopefully send it to someone else, and so forth. My hope is that no matter how far out that chain heal extends, I can maintain a list of all the responders here! (See what I did there Zigi? That was for you!) Hopefully the survey will experience some Wild Growth. Ha ha I'm so full of funny. Okay, bad puns aside....

If you know of someone who has responded who is not included on this list, please let me know via comment! Also, if you do post a questionnaire response, it would be great if you linked back to this post so that others can also see who all has answered.

Once this post was linked from WoW Insider, the amount of traffic quickly surpassed my ability to keep up with all the responses (not that I'm complaining!). That having been said, I will continue to try and keep track of the people who have responded on their blogs, as long as you comment and leave me a link! There are also a lot of people who have left their responses in the comments section below, so be sure to check it out.

ETA: Hey look! Koriel at What is Boom started a Circle of Tanks!

ETA: If you are looking for responses in French, pop on over to wowfrostmage, where the generous proprietor has assembled a list - merci!

Holy Priests (Most of us roll Bubbly on occasion):

• Miss Medicina – Jessabelle
  
• Christine - Amerence
  
• Righteous Orbs - Yay Tamarind joined the party! I was feeling like the only Holy Priest on teh interwebs!
• Theatre of the Absurd - Tiis
  
• Artisan Level - Maegwen
• Holy Nova NOW! - Bati (it's a swinging i as i like to call it, but i fail at putting in different characters...)
• Priest with a Cause - Shintar
• Rainbow MMO - Bloodsun
• Harpy's Nest - Erinys
• Empowered Healing - Andracon
• Strictly Heals - Suvixon
• Peripeteia - Sabely (btw Sabely, your site is beautiful!)
• SpriestBlog! - Spazmoosifer (lol epic)
• Misadventures of a Priest - Elisse
• Balance of Power: Earth and Moon - Presaya
• The Unconventional Priest - Fuyuko
• She Plays Wow - Caste
• Priest Punditry - Mads
  

Disc Priests:

• Killing 'Em Slowly - Abigora
• I Like Bubbles finally got harassed into joining (thanks everyone for helping with the pointy pokes) - Lyrandre
• Anathema - Sinespe (well, normally Shadow, but shh)
• Penance Priest - Paolo
• Save the Lightwell - Mongrr
• A Klockwerk Luka - Klockwerk
• Hybrid Love - Amharach
• World of Matticus - Matticus was very sad that no one tagged him earlier. We musn't forget to invite the big famous guys to the party as well!
• Mind Blast - Kaelea
• Divine Aegis - Lilitharien
• Duct Tape and a Prayer - Theande
• BobTurkey - Turkelife
• WoWGrrl - Shrimproll
• Troll Bouquet - Grindall
• Rez the Weak - Xeonio
• Pain Suppression - Sheqeri
• Runcible Trout - Runcible
  

Resto Shammies:

• Twenty-Five Boxes – Zigi
  
• DKDeathGoddess - Hinenuitepo (It's a DK blog, but one can't resist a NON-MEME!
• Planet of the Hats - Chayah
  
• Unreal Realities - Serevok - Two thumbs up for using the proper plural of Shaman! My OCD side just twitched a little in happiness!
• Cat Tales - Ezza
• Tank 2 Heals - Airdrigh
• Shamantics - Exelus
• Shaman on Ramen - Elam
• Altadin - Liluye
• Sham's Life - Khaelie
• A Shaman's Journey - Nimayne
• Healing Way - Llyra
• Cabboose - Cabbini (with another swinging i!)
• Blueberry Totem - Rahana
• Life in Group 5 - Vixsin
• Monstarkin - Kelmaa
• Kattastrophe
• Elemental Healing - Selacia
• Kamalia et alia - Kamalia
  

Resto Druids:

• Sheep It – Kailanii
• Kotakh (not a blogger, but responded in a comment)
  
• Kungaloosh AKA Shadow Word: Blog - Sammich
  
• Dreambound - Kaelynn
  
• The Angry Healers - Aanthe (You have to check this site out - the banner alone made me guffaw in ways that should not be done at 8:30 in the morning)
• HoTs & DoTs - Lathere
• Rejuvo - Verile
  
• Sushi-Cookie was sad to not get tagged - but I could have SWORN i saw some sushi tagging somewhere - or maybe it was something i thought about but forgot to do, so now I shall make you pie.. PIE! - Sersokhi
  
• RamblingDwarf's responses cracked me up - Kochi - Dwarf Warrior.. oh wait, I mean Resto Druid!
• DoTs & HoTs (I giggled) - Tatia
• Unreal Realities - Isla - The Tree of the group chimes in!
• Dysmorphia at LiveJournal
• Tree of Doom - Hermia
• DorkArt on Livejournal - this is a PvP resto druid, which is really interesting to read, since I don't PvP much! Great info if you do :)
• Tree Healz - almost missed your comment, Firewood (ps i LOVE your name) - sorry for the delay!
• 4 Haelz - Bellwether
• Restokin - Lissanna
• Forrestump - Forrestump (yet another name I love)
• Evian Tree Bear - Wingood
• Elsen
• French Version posted on WowFrostMage - Killh
• Divine Aegis - Oestrus
• Buel's World - Buel
• Wild Growth - Tazha
• Druid Tree - Innoue
• Nerf This Druid - Averna
• Resto-Melee - Mikata (Sorry I missed this earlier!)
• Cannot be Tamed - Jasyla
• Monstarkin - Rebella
  

Holy Paladin

• The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon (YES A SPOON) - Rykga
• MoarHPS - Uruz
  
• The *urnaks - Turnak
  
• HolyPaladin.net
  
• Divine Plea - Amathalanea
• I Sheep Things - Myrhani
  
• Non-Squishy Heals - Saunder
  
• Unreal Realities - Nazaniel - There are several healers over at UR, the resident Pally pipes in to clear up some pally-confusion!
• The Secret of Being Numb - Beladin
• Holy Shock - Ruhtra
• Lux Legis - Almaster
• Lintuperspektiivi - Kyer - OMG it's in Finnish! I tried to read it anyway. I was only really able to make out name and class, but baby steps, right? Thanks so much for taking the time to translate it Lintup... Kyer!
• Altoholic Anonymous - Anonymous preserves his anonyminity... anoninnymini... secretness.
• Kurn's Corner - Madrana(h)
• Flash of Moonfire - Gillien
• Resto Nation - Koramoor
• World of Warcraft Wanderings - Akromah
• Snottydin is totally a girl IRL - like, DUH - Snottydin (best response EVAR)
• A Touch of Arcane - Shazalyn
• Holy Ret - Tomkr
• A Healadin's Tear - Tarinae
  

Overachievers who have too many healers:

• LFM: Need Healer PLZ - K & D - Disc Priest & Resto Shammy, respectively
• Casual Hardcore - Kyrileanthos, Erdkrieg, Maedchen, Selfreya - Holly Pally, Resto Shammy, Holy Priest, and Resto Druid respectively
• Thoughts of a Discipline Priestess - Nymarie - Disc Priest
• There's a thread over at CafeMom for WoW moms for this questionnaire too!
• Falling Leaves and Twigs - Beru (Resto Druid), Dannie (Holy Pally), and Mynn (Resto Shammy)
• Green Bar Spec - Resto Druid, Disc Priest, and Resto Shammy
• Gnome Warrior is an Oxymoron - Druid, Priest, and Shammy
• Light & Leafy - Druid, Priest, and Shammy
  

Fire Mage: Wait, what? Oh you silly gnomes. First you think you can tank, and then you think you can heal! There's a resto shammy in there somewhere too, but that gnome is stealing all the limelight.

Some time this weekend I am going to totally geek out and... /cue dramatic music.. ANALYZE TEH DATAZ

Stay tuned! I'm trying to keep this updated as quickly as possible! If you notice someone is missing, and it's been more than 24 hours since they posted, please shoot me an email to let me know -> elimeny at gmail dot com.

Thanks!

Looking for a list linking everyone who has participated in the Questionnaire? Miss Medicina at your service!

Ever since my introductory post over at Blog Azeroth, I’ve been meeting quite a few new bloggers who are just loads of fun. Being the type that always likes to foster a sense of community, I thought it would be helpful and beneficial to start a little healing questionnaire going around the interwebs. I refuse to call it a meme.

There are plenty of larger websites where you can find all the healing info you might want in one place (a la plusheal.com), but I’m enjoying following a lot of smaller bloggers as they express their thoughts on healing in this game. In an effort to get a little cross-promotion going amongst some of us smaller heal bloggers, and since I’d really like for all of us to become better connected, I thought this might be a good way to start that. It benefits every healer to understand the other healing classes better, and I think that by connecting us all together, we can accomplish that as well.

I mentioned this idea for a “circle of healing bloggers” to my fiancé, who responded “Oh. Like a webring?” No. Not at all like a we… okay exactly like a webring. Shut your face.

So here’s how it works.

Post this questionnaire, with your answers, on your blog. Pick the healing class you know most about (or is the focus of your blog) for the questionnaire, and then send it over to another healing blogger you know and love who heals with a DIFFERENT class. Include a link to the blogger who sent you the questionnaire, as well as a link to the blogger to whom you are sending it.

• What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer? Jessabelle, Holy Priest (and occasional Disc!)
• What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans) Almost always raiding, fairly evenly split between 10 mans and 25 mans.
• What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why? Circle of Healing, because it's instant, it's AoE, and it's smart! nomnomnom
• What healing spell do you use least for your class and why? Divine Hymn - I just can't seem to get myself to use it, or find a situation in which it would be useful!
• What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why? Flexibility and versatility. I can handle any healing task needed in a raid, and I can bounce back and forth between multiple healing assignments without a problem.
• What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why? Lack of instant burst healing... I'm thinking Penance or even Holy Shock. I wish we had a single target instant burst heal, even if it were on a long cooldown. Something like desperate prayer, but for someone other than ourselves.
• In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you? Raid healing is best for me - and with that comes the assumption that I will lend a healing hand to any task that needs it, whether it be those stuck in pits or fires or even just some back up on the main tank. It gives me a lot of flexibility.
• What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why? Probably Disc priests - when they are around, I never feel that I need to bother with bubbling. Also, what healer *doesn't* appreciate 3% reduced damage? I mean, aside from a really bored one, of course. Plus, Penance is really fun to watch.
• What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why? Druids. Don't get me wrong, I think Druids and Priests play quite well together - we have Divine Spirit, which I'm sure they like, and they have Innervate which makes me drool with love, not to mention combat rezzing. It's just that it can be tricky to heal well with druid priests, because it is difficult to resist healing over their HoTs. I try not to do it whenever possible, because I don't want to waste their mana, but Circle of Healing does not take HoTs into account, and just heals whoever is at the lowest health within range anyway.
• What is your worst habit as a healer? Using my AoE heals when there are only one or two people who need heals! I'm especially bad about this with Circle of Healing.
• What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing? I really hate when people say "so and so needs heals!" over vent, unless it is a fight mechanic, or due to some error that person will need more healing than normal. Otherwise, I assure you, I am watching people's health bars more closely than anyone else who is not a healer - I don't need you to tell me who to heal, and if I did, well, then I think we have much bigger problems at hand, haven't we?
• Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing? Absolutely. I personally don't there are any other healing classes as well balanced as priests. Others may have more pure healing output, but when it comes to overall balance and viability, Holy Priests have it made, IMO.
• What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer? First thing's first, I check to make sure no one is dead. That's the best indicator of healer skill! Secondly, I check my healing output against my overheal amount, and compare it to the other healers in my group. I have a basic idea of where I should fall on the healing meters, and if I'm far above or far below, that gives me an idea of how the healer balance is working out.
• What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class? People make the assumption that Holy Priests are only really good at AoE heals, or raid healing. Holy Priests are fantastic at raid healing, but it's not just because they have good AoE heals - it's also because they can react well to changing fight dynamics, and MT heal if needed. I cringe whenever I hear someone say "holy priests can't MT heal!". Of course we can - it's a waste of our abilities to put us primarily on MT if there is a disc priest or holy pally around, but we can still do a good job.
• What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn? First off, newer priests seem to have a hard time remembering to use Binding Heal, and it is really a great spell. I see a lot of new priests merely cast Flash Heal on themselves when they take damage, instead of Binding Heal to someone else who has also taken damage. Lack of use of Binding Heal is probably the biggest indicator of a fresh healing priest, but the biggest difficulty I think newer Holy Priests have is trying to figure out how to boost their mana regen. I see too many focus on Mp5, when Spirit or Intellect would actually benefit them more.
• If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)? Holy Priests tend to be somewhere in the middle on recount, though this can vary a lot depending on what happens during the raid, as they often switch assignments and duties effortlessly when needed. I am likely to fall below Holy Pallies and Druids in total amount healed, but above Resto Shammies and Disc Priests, and my Overhealing is somewhere in middle as well.
• Haste or Crit and why? I prefer balance overall. That having been said, I started by stacking enough crit to nearly ensure me that I will always get a Surge of Light from Prayer of Healing or Circle of Healing (You can never give yourself a 100% chance, but 20-25 is pretty good), after which I began to stack haste indefinitely.
• What healing class do you feel you understand least? Definitely Resto Shammies, and I am working very hard to amend that.
• What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing? I use XPerl for unit frames, and Clique for healing. I also use Decursive as a separate mechanic for dispells and abolish disease. IRFAIL at macros.
  
• Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why? My main goal, at this point, is balance. As i start to turn my focus more towards ten man raiding instead of 25 man raiding, I intend to begin stacking a bit more mana regen.

So, to start out this meme-that-I-refuse-to-call-a-meme, I'm going to tag multiple people!

• Fuubaar over at Killing 'em Slowly who recently has begun raiding with a Disc priest, the loveable, Holy Novaing Abigora.
• Tamarind over at Righteous Orbs - yes, yes, he is also a Holy Priest, and I just broke my own rule, but it's my party and I'll do what I want to. Plus, he's a Belf in sissyrobes and I'm alliance, so it doesn't count. Shh.
• Zigi at Twenty-Five Boxes, who writes a fairly new (and so far, one of my favorites!) blog which includes info on Resto Shammies.
• Ophelie at The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon is a pretty amazing tank/healing pally blogger, and now that she's no longer in charge of policing PallyPower, maybe she'll have time to fill out the questionnaire-that-is-not-a-meme!
• Though I do read several Druid blogs, none of their writers have recently been communicating with me, nor do I know for sure whether any Druid healers even read my blog - with the exception of my friend Kelly who recently started writing over at Sheep It. She has multiple toons with whom she raids, and she has posted a bit about druids as well, since she used to heal a lot for us on her druid. So Kelly, feel like making a post about druid healing?

A post over at Healing Way , and a response from twenty-five boxes (one of my new favorite blogs!) got me thinking. If one of the Developer goals for Cataclysm is to make healing more fun, what can they do to make this happen?

First off, it takes a certain type of personality to truly *enjoy* healing. You don't usually get the e-peen rewards as a healer that many dps can get, so if that is the source of your fun and your pride, healing is likely not for you. However, healing is also one of those strange roles where, if everyone is doing their job properly, healing can suddenly become very boring. Sometimes I get so bored I furtively try to nudge that little gnome mage next to me into the NooBSauce, just so I have something to do. No really - when I'm dropping F-bombs left and right in my basement, I'm actually having *fun*.

That having been said, I can think of a few things that would improve the overall healing experience in WoW.

Change the stupid UI
More than any other role out there, healers have to use all kinds of add-ons to do their job to the best of their ability. Though there are macros you can use to tweak the UI without getting an add-on, the fundamental basic way to heal in WoW is to target the person you want to heal, and then cast a spell on them. It just takes too damn long. We need a way to have Clique like effects without putting in an add-on or trying to figure out how to write a macro (my most complex macro is /e pulls out her Snark-o-Meter.)

Situational Awareness
We rarely get to actually SEE the fights. No, I do not have a solution to these UI problems. That's why you're paid the big bucks and have iphones and yachts. I'm looking at you, Ghostcrawler! My biggest hope is that Cataclysm will bring with it some solid UI changes that will benefit healers, and actually allow us to stop glaring at healing bars every now and then!

NPC Healing
Sometimes, when running CoS, I like to heal Arthas. Of course, I don't need to, but it offers up a new challenge for me. I always liked the escort quests where I could just keep the NPC healed up (as few as those are, since the NPCs rarely do any real damage). I'd kinda like to see this in raids too. Wouldn't it be neat if instead of needing to stand near the NPCs in the Hodir fight to get the benefit, you could send some heals their way, and they buff you in gratitude?

Fight Mechanics
So far, one of my favorite fight mechanics is the Incinerate Flesh ability of Jaraxxus in ten man TOC. I'd love to see more of these kinds of challenges that require us to take a step away from the tank and use our healing abilities to essentially dispel something.

Less Priest, Moar Cleric
One of the things I'm enjoying most about 4th edition D&D with my friends is this entire other world of healing. I spend less time healing as a Cleric in 4e, and more time finding ways to keep others from taking damage. All my abilities are still based on hitting the foe though. It reminds me a lot of some of the Pally abilities... between all their many hands (which I have yet to figure out), and then different judgements, they may not be doing a lot of damage, but in addition to the healing they do, they also have other bonus abilities to help out their allies. I suppose Resto Shammies are similar, with their totems. Priests don't have much other than bubbles, and Power Infusion if you're disc - until you move over to the Shadow side, which is truly intriguing. No matter what spec of Priest you are, there are ways to do some healing. Druids have Innervate, but that's actually more helpful to other healers more than anything else. I'd like to see healers brought not only for their ability to heal, but for some of the other abilities they can provide. I realize this is not an easy thing for Blizz to do, however, as then we get back into the era of raiding in which you feel required to bring certain classes.

~~~~~

I see this happen a lot, and I'm quite guilty of it myself, but we all also need to get out of the mindset that the only thing that matters is raiding. The problem with being a healer is that it is very raiding focused, or perhaps group pvp focused. Despite all my insisting that Holy DPS is a very effective leveling build, after level 40 it is difficult to compete with Shadow. With the exception of a few things such as Glyph of Smite, Blizz seems to have little interest in giving healing specs viability for leveling or questing - I will say, however, that the Holy Healers have it better than the Nature Healers. Penance and Holy Shock both do damage OR healing, and Surge of Light for Holy priests allows for benefit to dps or healing.

There are some things that I don't *want* to see change, however. The healing community, unlike the tanking or DPSing community, has a much warmer and closer bond - mainly because it is stupid for us to try and compete with one another. Sure, some people still do it, but those of us who "get it" usually just roll our eyes at them. When I hear about "heal sniping", I roll my eyes. The REAL healers are usually trying to work TOGETHER to keep everyone alive. If I see that the pally is running low on mana, I immediately start throwing some heals on the tank to help out the pally healer, and the group as a whole.

I would hate to see that change. I don't want to compete with other healers; I want us to all help one another be better healers.

And have world peace and stuff. Awww let's all have a group hug!

I have designated Sundays as my "PuG & Pray" day. It seemed fitting.

Now that I'm raiding on a much less regular schedule, and mostly in ad hoc situations, I find myself pugging even more often. I don't mind for the most part; I rather like pugging raids in general, and most of the time I actually have a fairly pleasant experience, and meet a few new people to add to my growing friends list. I've mentioned before how I use pugs as a powerful recruitment tool, but to be quite honest, I don't think most people have the patience I normally have for pugs.

I generally have a pretty good sense of humor about it, and can swallow a lot of annoying people. However, annoying and rude are two different things - and I really cannot stand rudeness. With rude people, you cannot outsmart them or win - because it would require you to sink to their level and be rude. So, when I tried *yet again* to complete the Onyxia 25 pug this weekend, I didn't stick around too long when after one wipe, there were several people chastising the healers in all caps, and generally cussing people out and calling them losers.

I know that I did my job just fine. I also know that when you pug newer or harder content, it is very difficult to coordinate everything perfectly. Sure, the dps might have been 4000+, and the tanks may have had 40k health, but that doesn't really matter if I can't find the whelp tank, and dps are too distracted trying to figure out what's going on to get out of the deep breath.

So, after telling the rude people that perhaps they would be happier running their own raid instead of being in this one, and then being told off yet again, I did something that I *never* do. I dropped group and hearthed. I was in a funny way yesterday anyway, and it suddenly occurred to me that I no longer even wanted to run this raid. I liked the leader, but I didn't have to stand around for the next 2 hours and get frustrated with rude people. I don't want to down Onyxia THAT badly. I sent a tell to the leader and apologized to him, and let him know I thought he was great, but I didn't have the patience to sit around with a bunch of elitist asshats who just wanted to make everyone feel badly about themselves.

Of course, as soon as my feet landed in Dalaran, the two asshats in question sent me tells. One said "emoquit lol" to which i merely responded "mmmmm" (M is for Moron!), and the other let forth a slew of words in my direction that I do not care to repeat, to which I lawled. I probably could have come up with more witty comebacks had I not been so out of it yesterday, but it wasn't really worth it anyway.

I thought a lot about this when I read Larisa's post yesterday, and cheered for her as she told the story of one of the most memorable moments of her WoW experience. She's right, sometimes we healers and tanks do take it for granted that people will want us back (though I suspect I might have convinced 24 people that they DON'T want me back...), but at the same time, I have had a lot of those moments myself, particularly when I first started raiding. They want me back! I must have not been awful! No one died on my clock, and I guess the raid leader decided I was a good healer! When I was newer to healing in raids, it did mean a lot more to me.

I spent a lot of time yesterday finding new blogs and such to add to google reader, which I have only recently started using. One of the things I don't like about google reader is that you don't see the little wowhead mouseover links... and considering how much time and effort I put into linking everyone of those damn spells in my guides at least, that just irritates me - especially since I know a lot of the folks who follow my blog do it through google reader. :::shakes fist at internet:::

Anyway.

I know of quite a few very good priest blogs, of course, but I would like very much to go further than that. First off, I see a lot more Disc blogs than Holy, which is interesting, although that could be simply because my disc guide was so popular, that I just became connected to a lot more disc priests.

Priests and Pallies have a tight bond, sitting next to one another in that Cathedral in Stormwind and stuff, so I know a few good Holy Pally blogs too.

Holy Priests and Resto Druids understand one another, due to that whole spirit thing (Dear trees - we love your innervates, and I sure hope you love our Divine Spirit!), so yesterday I picked up a couple of tree blogs as well.

But where the hell are all the resto shammies?

I would love some recommendations for healer class specific blogs - not just big popular ones, but also smaller ones that are more likely to have time to banter back and forth with me. I want to start a little meme thing about the different healing classes, but I don't want to do it unless I know several healers who would be willing to post their responses.

Random thought of the day: Famous last words from a dog lover who meets my cat - "Oh look! She's wagging her tail at me! Here, kitty kitty ki-AHHHHH" News flash: A cat wagging its tail translates into pretty much the opposite of what a tail-wag from a dog means.

There are a lot of interesting discussions going around regarding elitism in WoW, how things have supposedly become so much easier, how those that complain about it are meanie mcmean elitists, etc etc etc.

Much like politics, what always concerns me about these sort of discussions is the lack of any real middle ground.

If you think WoW is too easy these days, you must be an elitist. If you think it's great that it's getting easier and less grindy, then you are a, gasp, >CASUAL< (haha I love The Guild...).

What if it's neither of the above?

Elitism

I leveled my two 80s back when you got your first mount at level 40. Back before the xp bonus was increased significantly, so it took a lot longer to level. Back before the BoA XP bonus items. And I'm rather proud of that.

Does that make me elitist? Does it make you elitist if you are proud of the challenges you faced? Does it make you elitist if you want to preserve the challenges?

There's ease, and then there's accessibility. I believe that what we are seeing from the developers these days is less about ease, and more about accessibility. If you wanted the best gear in Vanilla, you needed a 40 man raid - very difficult for most people to manage, organize, and maintain. Then, in BC it was reduced to 25. And now, in Wrath, we have the option for 10 OR 25. With each succession, we find that more and more people, from small guilds or large ones, are able to access the instances that provide the best gear.

Because people are able to access more difficult scenarios, they are becoming better at playing their class. I know people will disagree with me on this, and I certainly do not think it is true in every case, but overall, people are becoming much more aware of how to play their toons through more and better experience. Dual speccing allows them to more easily practice with other specs. Everyone is a raider these days - and the blogging community has flourished under this change, though we've definitely lost a few of our best.

But, much like capitalism, someone has to be poor in order to make someone else feel rich. There have to be people who HAVEN'T accomplished the things I have in order for me to be proud of it. Otherwise, who cares? It's just something that everyone else has done. That is where elitism comes in. Some call folks who feel this way elitist, and imagine them sulking and pouting in the corner of the room. I, however, have some sympathy for their situation.

We are generally most proud of those things that go above and beyond the norm. It's not just the difficulties faced in raids themselves... the advent of "less grindy" rep battles inevitably means that those of us who worked so hard to finish that grind will outwardly appear exactly the same as those who breezed through it once it was nerfed. To use an Economics analogy (because I see a lot of economics analogies in this debate), the supply is suddenly bloated, and therefore the demand is lower, and each achievement has a decreased value.

Granularity

I remember doing my first heroic dungeon in Burning Crusade... and it was HARD. We spent 4 hours in there, and it was considered the easiest of all heroics. Back when crowd control meant something. Back when healers really *did* run out of mana. I have not used Shackle Undead once in a dungeon or raid in Wrath - and with all the undead running amuck, I fully expected to.

Do I think that Blizz is making WoW too easy? Not necessarily. I think they are increasing the granularity of game challenges. Perhaps the thought is that Heroics don't need to be so hard, because you can simply pop into an OS, Naxx, or VoA pug right after hitting 80, and you'll see more challenge. The development of 10 man options along 25 man options, and then even further into 10 man reg, 10 man heroic, 25 man reg, and 25 man heroic, along with hard mode options on top of all that - THAT is what I call granularity.

However, along with this granularity we have a very muddled progression path. In fact, one might say there is no progression path at all anymore. You can get everything, up to and including the top tier from running heroics, with no need to step into a raid, thus inspiring the new fad of "heroic grinding". Can you imagine "heroic grinding" in BC? I sure as hell can't. Shudder.

All that having been said, I did not enter the raiding scene until late in BC. To be honest, I didn't think I *could*. I was a n00b raider, and who wants one of those?

Maybe there is validity in the comment that raiding has just become far too easy - that you shouldn't have to hold your hands behind your back, jump up and down on one foot with a blindfold dosey doeing to Achy Brakey Heart in order to get a challenge (what? You didn't have to learn how to Dosey Doe to Billy Ray Cyrus in Elementary School? Must be a Texas thing...). Personally, I think granularity is a good thing. But I also rather agree with what MoarHPS said - that one of the big problems now is that you can buy tier items from badges, whereas you could not pre-Wrath. Tier tokens only dropped from certain bosses, so you knew you had to progress to those bosses in order to put together your set. I suspect that this is part of why the progression path is so non-existent these days, and I think it's one of the best points I've heard in some time.

A lot of healing is about instinct and reflex. While some damage is more predictable than other kinds, in general, raid healing at least is very reactive. When you rely on reflex to do your job properly, that means you have to develop certain habits, and train your fingers to respond without requiring too much forethought.

Of course, the problem with this, is that it is very easy to form *bad* habits. This is one of the things that makes it difficult to switch from Holy healing to Disc healing by the way... the styles are so different, though most of the spells are the same. What is a good response and a good habit for one spec is a truly bad idea for the other. For instance, if I'm in the habit of bubbling raid members when I have some down time as a Disc Priest, that's great. However, bringing that habit over to the Holy side is not nearly as great an idea.

So, in order to get us all in the proper mindset to think about our habits critically, I'll start by confessing all those nasty dirty healer habits *I* have.

• Circle of Healing. It's just so easy! It's instant, it's powerful, and I already use it so much, which is a good thing... that sometimes I just can't make myself stop. Everyone is at full health, and I see one person at 95% health, so what do I do? I cast CoH. Go ahead, laugh at me, I deserve it. I use CoH improperly and inefficiently all the time, because it is instant. If I see someone take damage and they need some healing right away, I have a bad habit of just CoH on them to get them some instant healing... even if there aren't 4 or 5 other people who need the heals.
• Prayer of Mending. If you are specced into it, the cooldown on casting this spell is much shorter than how long it can spend bouncing around. Granted, if it has "settled" on someone who doesn't need it, it IS a good idea to start it bouncing on the tank again. However, if PoM is still bouncing around, why cast it again if it's not needed? I have just wasted the charges that remain on my previous PoM.
• Renew. Because I'm specced into Empowered Renew, this HoT gets a nice little instant upfront healing portion to it as well. Sometimes, if I see that someone needs healing, I will just cast renew on them in an effort to take advantage of the initial upfront healing. In fact, sometimes I've even been guilty of casting Renew on someone once... twice... three times, right after one another, just to get the instant heals on them. Baaaaaad... that brings us to the next one...
• Healing through HoTs. I know I am not the only one who has this habit. Someone has a HoT on them, whether it be from one of your own Renews, or from a nearby Druid. In some situations, it makes perfect sense to cast another heal on the Hotted person, or they may take too much damage before the HoT finishes its heal - particularly on tanks. But, if someone in the raid takes some one time damage, and someone throws a HoT on them, don't Flash Heal them... let the HoT run its course, or you are wasting someone else's mana.
• Staring at Healing Bars. This isn't entirely our fault... part of this is simply due to how the Blizzard UI handles heals. I don't know a solution for it, mind you, but as a healer, how many fights have you actually *seen*? Most of the time, I have no idea what's going on in the fight, really, because I'm too busy staring at health bars. This lends tons of problems to situational awareness. Half the time I may not even notice my own health is low. But where this really sucks? Fights like Hodir where you need to look for soemthing around you to stand near it for a buff. I don't have time to look for a toasty fire! Mages are DYING ALL AROUND ME.
• Forgetting to Heal while in FailAngel Form. I know, sad isn't it? Why do I even spec for it if I'm not going to take advantage of it? But a lot of the time I'm so distracted by the fact that I just died, that I completely forget to, you know, use my free heals to save the group from a wipe.
• Not Bubbling Enough. This is only a problem for me when I run Disc... and I think it is mainly a problem because I normally run holy. Regardless, when i run Disc, I just cannot seem to bubble *enough*. I underestimate my bubbles, and I run out of mana, because I'm simply not shielding the way I should.
• Neglecting my Cooldowns. This applies for trinkets that have to be popped, but since I know this is a weakness I have, I usually avoid those trinkets anyway. No, the biggest problem are spells like Divine Hymn and Inner Focus. I don't spec into Inner Focus for a very good reason - I always forget to use it. Divine Hymn is a truly amazing spell... that I never remember to use. It has such a long cooldown, I just cant seem to get myself into the habit of using it. My goal is to use it during every boss fight for the next month, even if it's not needed, just to remind myself that it is there, and to get a handle on how powerful it is.
• Not using Binding Heal. This is not a problem I have, because I identified it in myself, and fixed it, but I see a lot of other Priests who do not use this spell nearly enough. There is little reason to ever simply Flash Heal on yourself. You might as well Binding Heal to someone else who has taken damage, or likely will while you are casting it. Binding Heal is your friend, priests! It is low threat, it builds stacks of Serendipity for Holy, it does all the fun procs... no, it is not the most efficient heal ever, but it keeps you from having to potentially sacrifice others while keeping yourself alive. If you are Disc, don't Penance on yourself! Penance on the tank, or another target, and Binding Heal if you have taken damage. Don't waste those potential juicy procs on yourself, since it is unlikely you will be taking the most damage.

One of the best ways to improve as a healer is to identify the bad habits you have, and try to fix them. So what about you? Be honest with yourself! What are some of your worst healing habits? Do you share any of my bad habits? I didn't even mention all my keyboard turning...

I'm actually not one to spend a lot of time criticizing other priests, but I ran a VoA pug this weekend that really made me start thinking about all the wrong ways you can priest-heal. If I ever needed proof that it is completely possible to have a fully epic set of gear without knowing how to place your class and spec, this run provided the requisite evidence.

This run also provided me the perfect opportunity to use Recount to get an idea of what was going wrong with the healers. Since it was a pug, however, I didn't really feel it was my place to necessarily do assignments or criticisms.

So here was the initial healing set up - Two holy priests and one resto shaman. The resto shaman was somewhat new to 80, and while he'd been making plenty of heroic ToC 5 man runs, he explained right from the beginning that he wasn't sure how strong his heals were going to be. The two priests were myself, and another girl.

On the fire boss dude fight (Koralon, but you knew what I mean by fire boss dude, right?), there are certain times when the two tanks take a significant amount of damage... and you basically need to spam heal them. The raid really should not be taking much damage except when he does his fire breath thingy. Therefore, I suggested that the other holy priest focus on one tank, and i would focus on the other, and let the shammy do the raid heals, since we would need stronger healing on the tanks.

After three tries, we gave up - we couldnt seem to keep the tanks alive.

I knew it was a healing problem because I was watching the tanks' health. My tank stayed up, hers continually went down. When I looked at her top three spells, it was Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing, and Renew. 20% of my heals were overheals, which, while not great, is not unexpected for single target spamming. 40% of her heals were overheals.

So what? I hear you say. Holy Priests excel at raid healing, it's their biggest strength! That's what they're supposed to do!

And I will have to disagree. Yes, Holy Priests DO excel at raid healing, and that is the optimal assignment for them. However, the biggest strength of a holy priest is not their raid heals, it is in their versatility - they can do everything well. That includes single target healing.

A really great holy priest who understands their spec knows how to roll with the punches and switch healing assignments quickly. If you are the person in charge of keeping one of the tanks alive, Flash Heal (Binding Heal as needed) should be used often, along with Greater Heal and/or Prayer of Healing. Greater Heal is useful for precisely this scenario. If Prayer of Healing is your most used spell, and Flash Heal or Binding Heal isn't even in your top 3, then you aren't utilizing Serendipity to its fullest extent.

To her credit, her main spec was shadow and she was only healing to help out. She likely would have been one of the first to admit that she did not know how to heal holy very well, so I don't mean to pick on her.

When another player offered to come on his Disc Priest, she jumped at the chance to return to dps. And now we come to the Disc Priest.

The Disc Priest that joined us was dual specced Holy/Disc. And he healed exactly like a Holy Priest with Penance, but sans CoH. He did not cast a single Power Word: Shield. However, it worked, and we were able to finish off VoA.

At the end, he was boasting about how he was number one on the healing meter. Observe as I gracefully and elegantly bash my head against my desk repeatedly.

Did it work? Yes. Did we finish the instance? Yes. Everyone survived, the epics flowed like manna from the heavens, and everyone left a few badges richer, and relatively happy. Myself, the disc priest, and the resto shammy all did our jobs, so does it really matter if the disc priest didn't take advantage of the strengths of his spec? No, most likely it did not. When most people are overgeared for something, then it really doesn't matter. But I did walk away learning a few things about what people may or may not understand about priest specs.

For Holy?
YES YOU CAN HEAL ONE PERSON. And when that is necessary, you should be casting a lot of Flash Heals to build up Serendipity stacks for hasted Greater Heals.

For Disc?
Yes, Penance is awesome. However, Disc Priesting is not all about Penance - it's also about those Bubbles, so don't stop bubbling!

I'm in the sort of field where I spend a lot of time doing data entry. You know, that mind numbingly boring repetitive stuff that everyone hates doing? The reason why I'm actually quite good at it is that I *don't* find it mind numbingly boring.

Larisa over at the Pink Pigtail Inn has made it very clear multiple times that she hates grinding... whether it be reputation grinds, or daily grinds, and I can completely understand why so many people hate that. The thing is... I don't... and sometimes I'm actually somewhat embarrassed by it. After all, Larisa calls herself a moron for it... what does that say about ME? Eeek!

So why don't I get bored and hate it? Having always been the kind of person who enjoyed entertaining myself with whatever I happened to have in front of me, I turn those boring tasks into challenges.

I'm the speediest woman on a ten-key I've ever met due to all that boring data entry I've done in my life. I type faster than a speeding bullet. And I can clear 20 dailies in under an hour - 2 if I'm distracted.

I know most folks love to test out their dps numbers on a dummy, and I do realize that gives a much better indicator of boss dps... but to me, dpsing on a dummy seems like something of a waste of time (but then again, this is also because I'm always healing in raids). I would rather do it while doing my dailies. Why grind for cloth for tailoring when I can get it while doing dailies? Why buy eternals on the AH, when I can get them while working on dailies? Why buy things to DE if I get so many silly green items while running dailies? Herb farming? Dailies, again.

I challenge myself over and over. Just how quickly can I get these dailies done? How many mobs can I take and AoE grind at the same time? Can I do all my dailies without emptying my bags once until I'm done?

Why would I ever be embarrassed about this? It comes from that one adjective - mind-numbing. The fact that I enjoy doing dailies tends to suggest that I enjoy mind-numbing tasks that don't require me to think - or rather, that I do not enjoy doing things that DO require me to think.

Of course, I've already explained why that is not the case for me, but I'm sure there are others who are like me... right? It's certainly not that I'm not a creative person. Hell, I'm a writer, a sometimes-musician, a cartographer, and someone who enjoys painting and drawing more than most. I enjoy puzzles and challenges - I'm not brain dead!

I like to multi-task, and I can do that while running dailies. I can chat with others, or watch TV... or even play Civilization on another monitor. To be quite honest, most of the time I much prefer running dailies to grinding instances, unless there is something specific I want from the instance - which is rare. I don't need anymore Emblems of Conquest, I have the Culling of Stratholme mount, most people don't seem interested in doing the achievements... I'm just plain overgeared for them, and there are still plenty of things I want to buy with gold and Champion's Seals!

So stop judging me just because I like doing dailies, and I'll stop judging you simply because you don't want to make the effort to get exalted with Sons of Hodir!!! :P

Recently, a bunch of my alliance friends invited me on a couple of their guild runs. We were laughing and chatting in vent, when one of them said "Jessica keeps interrupting me and asking me questions!" Confused, I said "What? No I'm not, you silly warlock!" to which he responded "No, no, I was referring to my daughter, Jessica." Slightly embarassed, after a short pause, I replied "Oh. Whoops. Guess the cat's out of the bag now, I just gave away my real name!" Much to my surprise, everyone else exploded in laughter, with rounds of "It wasn't really that big of a secret, Jess."

Well. I never claimed to be subtle.

I've thought about this a lot since. We play daily with these people, get to know them and their personalities, and often quite a bit about their personal lives - Yet a lot of the time we don't even know their real names, though we can recognize their voice over vent. While this sort of thing is becoming more and more common amongst my generation, the majority of people still aren't quite sure where to draw the line in what they say about themselves over the internet. In my own case, a strange mix of factors contributes to the internet paradox that is Elimeny, aka Jessabelle, aka Miss Medicina. After all, if you google Elimeny, I'm all over the place.

No, I don't publicize my real name or too many identifying details of my personal life for a lot of very legitimate reasons, though I suspect it would be very easy to get that information, should someone want it. For one, my fiance is intensely private, and it would be disrespectful to him if I were too open about myself since he values his privacy so much. Secondly, if it were not obvious before, I do a lot of work in a research based academic field... one day I really do hope to publish some of my research (if I ever get around to finishing it), and once you do that, you have to be pretty protective of your name.

The funny thing is, I grew up on the internet, and it's very integral to my personal life. I met my fiance online, and several people whom I count amongst my best friends I only talk to over the internet (that includes Fulguralis and Fuubaar!). Relating to people via a handle is not a difficult task for me, nor does it keep me from connecting with others on a very personal level, real name or not. But I always hate these awkward conversations...

Jessabelle: Hi! My name is Jessica :)
Sneakarillio: Hey! Nice to meet you. My name is Sneakarillio.
Jessabelle: ...

There's always this sort of awkward moment as we try to figure out how much personal information to give someone else. After all, we don't want to push people beyond the line at which they are comfortable. When you give people personal information, sometimes it makes them uneasy, because they feel they are expected to return the same amount of information - an amount with which they are simply not comfortable.

I guess my name became obvious, because Jessabelle got shortened to Jess over vent and party/raid chat, and everyone identifies Jess as a nickname for Jessica. I blame Kelly and Fuubaar, FYI.

For the record, most of my face to face friends (I shall now call them F2F) call me Jessie. I actually despise the shorthand IRL - Fulguralis is my real friend in real life. Just because all of our communication happens over the internet does not make him less of a real friend. To be quite honest, most of my communication with my F2F friends happens via the internet as well - I'm a total homebody.

So, maybe it's a psychological thing. I hear about wow being addictive, but I think *anything* can be addictive if you enjoy it enough. I think my grandmother was addicted to church. WoW combines my love of high fantasy role playing games, with my desire for social interaction that does not require me to leave the safety and comfort of my own home. I can be a gamer without being a friend-less loser, who knew? I think people hate PuGs because in general, it's a lot more fun to play with your friends - with the people you know. I know these people, even if I don't know their address. To me, raiding isn't fun if I'm not raiding with those I know - even if I don't know their real name.

I have a love/hate relationship with ElitistJerks, the kings of theorycrafting. If you are looking for numbers on something, they provide some of the best resources. If, however, you are looking for tips on how to handle various situations better, or how to become a better healer, they are useless. They will throw numbers at you and ridicule you if your numbers are not what they consider ideal.

The thing is, it is very rare to find yourself in a raid mix and situation that is ideal - that's why it's CALLED ideal. The numbers they provide always have basic assumptions attached to them - such as who else is in the raid with you, what buffs you have, that sort of thing.

But what if I *don't* have a resto shammy with me? What if there are no druids available for an innervate? What if we don't have a shadow priest? Surely all these things would be ideal, but it is not practical to always assume this will be the case.

The way you should gem and enchant your gear, the talents you choose, the stats you prioritize should all take your fellow raid members into account of course. As I've said before, raiding is about synergy, not about individual perfection. At the same time, the numbers and theorycrafting provided by folks like the ElitistJerks will very rarely actually properly apply - because it is very rare that the average raider will ever meet all the conditions assumed by the EJ calculations.

The problem is, people get so hung up on tiny little numbers that will potentially boost their stats by such infintesimal amounts, that they completely forget to balance themselves.

Theorycrafting and the math that goes with it gives people the impression that there is really only one "best" way to do something - the way that maximizes the numbers used in the calculation. But the average raid is a lot more dynamic than I think people like to admit. Changing things up is how people learn new fights, conquer new material. If I couldn't keep people alive with loads of crit rating, maybe I'll try it with tons of haste and see if that works better. And people heal differently. So if you don't gear yourself for how YOU heal, and instead try to gear according to how EJ insists you should heal, you are not doing yourself or your raid a favor.

Does that mean theorycrafting is stupid? Not at all - much like meters, it is a useful tool to help you improve. Use that theorycrafting to make decisions between choices you have in front of you, between items you might pick up. But don't let the theorycrafting of others dictate everything about your character, because especially for holy priests, there are a lot of flexible variables.

If you are new to a class or role, reading up on theorycrafting and scanning through the EJ priest forums is a fantastic idea. Had I not done this, I would still be stacking spirit and ignoring intellect. Until you find your niche, until you train your reflexes and trigger fingers properly, it is not a bad idea to default to the suggestions of the more experienced among your class, and those with the math skillz to explain it all.

But, once you get a handle on the basics of your class, and once you start to develop your own rotations and habits and strategies, stop depending on the way others choose to gear, and start figuring out what works best for you. There is an awesome discussion along this line of thinking from the Penance Priest for those Disc Priests who are at the stage of the game - you've got the basics down, now you are ready to personalize your style and priorities a bit.
There are still wrong answers, a la agility for Priests and all sorts of degrees of less obvious fail. Every healing priest (probably all priests period) need to pick up Meditation, for instance. It's really not optional. But just like how there are multiple wrong answers, I assure you friends, there are also multiple right ones.

From Poptisse, whom I absolutely adore, and for whom I have tauren-loads of respect:

"What people have to understand is the basics of raiding. When you gem and enchant your gear there is more then 1 aspect to look from. [...]Gems and enchants should always be decided upon a wide perspective of your raidsetup. My guide isn't a bible, neither is EJ guides."

Well, as Matticus posted over on WoW Insider yesterday,Blizzard has updated the tier 10 set bonuses for priests on the ptr. I suspect a lot of priests will be much happier with the change, but I'm actually not very impressed. After all, only a few days ago I posted my initial reaction to the t10 set bonuses, and while I will admit that my excitement about seeing them sort of blinded me to many of the flaws in the bonuses themselves, my opinion really hasn't changed *too much*.

I'll start with explaining why the 2 piece bonus is so unimpressive.

"Your Flash Heal critical strikes cause the target to heal for 25% of the healed amount over 9 sec."

Blizz likes to dazzle us with crits, but as I've said before, critical strike is fundamentally a flawed stat for healers. You CANNOT depend on a crit to heal when you need that heal out there. Particularly at higher levels of spellpower and stats, too often the crit becomes overheal. Matticus points out that this revised set bonus is similar to the Paladin's Flash of Light on a target with Sacred Shield, which will give an additional 100% of the heal over 12 seconds.

The difference is, Paladins can count on that added healing - it is guaranteed, not based on chance.

So hurrah. Now when my Flash Heal crits, which is usually an overheal in and of itself, it will now overheal for even 25% more! Yay!!!

I say all this from the perspective of someone who raids as a Holy Priest, mind you. If you are a Disc Priest, this is actually kinda nice - an increase to your actually healing output in between shields.

So what about the 4 piece bonus?

"Your Circle of Healing and Penance spells have a 20% chance to cause your next Flash Heal cast within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells."

I hate procs that are based on a chain of events based on a chance of something happening. I just get totally lost in the line of logic. Okay, so let me translate this to myself... If I cast CoH, there is a 20% chance i will gain some effect that will encourage me to cast Flash Heal sometime during the CoH cooldown in order to reset the CoH cooldown. Same goes for Penance.

Well, I will say that comparing this to the original 4p bonus, it is far superior (though it took me a few minutes to work that out for the record). If you forgot, the original 4p bonus was:

"Your Flash Heal spell has a 15% chance to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance Spells."

I can see why they made the modification - obviously there would be a significant portion of time in which I gain that proc when CoH isn't even ON cooldown, which is a waste. So, despite the mild complication of the tooltip, this is essentially the same effect, and has just had its proc improved upon to make more sense. That 15% number has been improved to 20%, which is also a lot better.

Despite the improvement, I wanted to recap something Betelguese mentioned in a comment. She (he? Oh bollucks) pointed out that while it sounds nice, 6 secs isn't a long time to take advantage of this proc. After all, you need to notice that it procced while waiting for GCD, and then cast your Flash Heal (1.5 sec unhasted) and THEN you can take advantage of it. Accounting for lag and attention span and all those things, you probably only have about a 3 sec window, practically speaking, in which to take advantage of this proc.

That is, of course, unless the orignal CoH that procs the bonus also procs a surge of light - and chance are, it will. At the T-10 level, you will likely have enough haste to speed up your GCDs a bit, and enough crit to nearly always proc an instant Flash Heal after CoH - especially since most priests who have the 2p set bonus will likely be stacking a bit of additional crit. Having said that, 20% still seems a little low to really make any noticeable difference, especially for a 4 piece bonus.

So overall, I stand by my approval of the 4 piece set bonus for the revised tier 10 priest set on the PTR, but I think the 2 piece is a waste, at least for most holy priests, although this likely depends on your style too. I know that most people probably much prefer it over the original Guardian Spirit/Pain Suppression version Blizz had, but in all honesty, at least in this scenario, I'd rather get the strong boost to a spell I use rarely but need in an emergency than a boost to a spell I use a lot that will mostly just be completely wasted.

First and foremost, most bloggers are writers, and that holds true in the WoW blogging atmosphere as well. Some of us (such as myself) seem to spend more time writing guides than blogging our thoughts on various things, but regardless, we’re still writers. My guides are not pure theorycrafting, with math and formulae – I usually direct people to elitistjerks for that. Everything I write is infused with my own personality and my own personal writing style.

Therefore, it IS writing, and it is NOT courteous to copy it elsewhere without properly referencing it.

Imitation is one of the best forms of flattery, but if you copy a writer’s work and place it elsewhere without directing people back to the original writer, then we don’t get to hear the comments about it (which to a writer is like pure gold chocolate ponies in a pie) and that makes us sad pandas. Comments and feedback from readers is what sustains us and keeps us going – otherwise we would stop writing altogether, and give up. The truth is, if you copy the stuff I write, I know that it is a compliment to me that you liked it enough to repeat it, and I’m not actually angry. I

In the Academia world, plagiarism is a Very Big Deal. Out here on teh interwebs, it’s really not, and I don’t think most people even understand or recognize when they are doing something that might hurt the writer. Plagiarism is not always cut and dry, and instead is usually very fuzzy.

But basically, if you would like to repeat the words of someone else and print them out for others to read, please make sure you make it ABUNDANTLY CLEAR who the original writer is, and direct others to the source, and to a place they can contact the original writer. If they have comments or feedback on the writer’s words, direct them to the original writer to leave their comments – don’t take our bread and butter away from us, or we starve 

Luckily, I don’t ever want to see another Evony ad again, so I don’t put ads on this website, or use it in any way to make money. But I did invest a massive amount of time and effort into each of the guides I’ve written (30-40 hours on the Holy Healing Guide alone), and so it means a lot to me when people leave feedback on it. If feedback is left elsewhere, and I don’t know where to find it, I do kinda feel like someone stole my golden chocolate pony pie from me. 

Therefore, feel free to pass along and share any information or knowledge you gain from this blog/site. But please, please, please, make it very clear to others where you got the information, and encourage them to stop by and drop me a line if they liked it (or, you know, if they hated it and want to call me a noob). If you quote a large amount directly from my page or any of my guides, please put it in quotes, tell people Miss Medicina wrote it, and then link to the guide from which you quoted.

As I was reading through some of the WoW.com articles this morning, I came across this page showing some of the new T10 set bonuses from the PTR. I’ve been trying to clean out/organize my bank a bit lately, which is full of all these epics from the raiding process that I can’t bring myself to DE yet. For instance, I have lots of different pieces from T7, both shadow and holy.

The set bonuses from T7 were… well, kinda awful. Disc priests seemed to get ignored entirely, actually. As I started looking through all the Wrath set bonuses (including the one on PTR now – we’ll see if that set bonus remains into live), I began to notice a trend. It seems like with T7 Blizz decided “a priest healer is a priest healer, so what?” and then they finally got the message that uh, Disc priests and Holy priests not only are NOT the same, they don’t WANT to be the same.

So then we move to T8. It’s a little better. 2p bonus is pretty good for Holy Priests, and sure, Disc priests *have* Prayer of Healing and use it occasionally. The 4p bonus just screams Disc (in fact, one might even argue it’s almost a little OP for Disc!) but kinda leaves Holy out… at least if we’re running around with any Disc Priests.

But then, by the time T9 rolls out, Blizz finally gives up on trying to make each set bonus generic for priests, and begins to call out spec-specific spells in the set bonuses. The 2p bonus is a spell that both Holy AND Disc should be using all the time. The 4p refers to individual talents that each spec has really began to relish.

And then we come to Tier 10. Holy mother of Flash Heal. Nomnomnomlove. The 2p bonus picks up again on spec-specific talents, and the 4p bonus does two awesome things: it uses a spell that BOTH specs will use a lot, and reduces a cooldown on each spec’s awesomest spell with the most cooldown QQ.

T7 Healing Priest: Heroes' Regalia of Faith (10 man) / Valorous Regalia of Faith (25man)

• 2piece: Your Prayer of Mending will not jump an additional time.
• 4piece: The cost of your Greater Heal is reduced by 5%
  

T8 Healing Priest: Valorous Sanctification Regalia (10 man) / Conqueror's Sanctification Regalia (25 man)

• 2piece: Increases the critical heal chance of your Prayer of Healing by 10%.
• 4piece: Casting Power Word: Shield also grants you 250 spellpower for 5 secs
  

T9 Healing Priest: Too Lazy To Type All Potential Names

• 2piece: Increases the healing done by your Prayer of Mending by 20%
• 4piece: Increases the shield from your Divine Aegis and the instant healing from your Empowered Renew by 10%
  

(Tentative) T10 Healing Priest:

• 2piece: After your Pain Suppression or Guardian Spirit talents expire on your target, they grant your target 10% increased healing received for 10 secs.
• 4piece: Your Flash Heal spell has a 15% chance to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.

I really do find it fascinating to watch as Blizz developer goals evolve through time – and how they find creative and random ways to respond to suggestions from the class communities.

Last night we didn't have enough people for 25 man, so our RL decided that we would do Ulduar on 10 man.

Gag me with a spoon. Ulduar is becoming the new Naxx, yo. I'm so sick of it, I'm so burnt out on it. I can't be the only one who feels this way... which is probably why we only had 10 folks around for our regular 25 man night.

Our RL valiantly tried to push us forward, tried to pump us up in his usual way. Instead, I felt I had been tricked. I signed up for a 25 man, with the hope that is that didn't work out, we could do 10 man Onyxia, to be honest. Hell I made the damn sign up, since no one else could be bothered. "After we clear Ulduar tonight," our RL said.

Whaaahahaaat?

You know, I'm all about positive thinking. In general I've got a pretty cheery outlook on life. But you can't be serious. With half the people in the raid being new, or at least playing new roles, and having only ever seen up to Hodir on 25 man and wiping there repeatedly, you think we're going to do a full clear on even a 10 man Ulduar in three hours or less? Are you DELUSIONAL?

I felt I'd been coerced into going into 10 man Ulduar (in which I held absolutely no interest) and had no reasonable way to get out of it. I'm angry. The night was absolutely awful. No surprises here, but no, we did not full clear Ulduar. Yet again, we got hung up on Hodir (and we skipped Iron Council, Ignis, and Razorscale). The only good thing I can say about the whole night, is that I got a little more practice on Hodir. To be honest, I would have liked several more attempts on Hodir. How are we ever going to progress past this guy if we can't handle wiping to him over and over and over again? That's raiding. THAT'S progression.

After all, progression is all about wipe wipe wipe rinse repeat ZOMG loot. Oh and beer.

But after wiping to Hodir 3 or 4 times (not to mention the handful of wipes to his TRASH mind you), it was decided that we needed to feel better about ourselves, so hows about we go kill us some Razorscale!!! yeehaw!

We wiped to Razorscale too. Miserably.

After that I announced I was done for the evening. It was decided after wiping to Razorscale, that we should go do Onyxia 10, of course. But after the misery that had been the entire night, I didn't even want to bother. I spent 2 hours on Sunday wiping to Onyxia in a PuG, so I've had my fill for one week.

So, what is my point? If you were looking for something productive and positive in this post, I am sorry to disappoint.

• I am completely sick of Ulduar. Last night just sealed it for me.
  
• I do not like signing up for one thing, and then feeling obligated to stick around and do something else in which I have absolutely no interest.
• I'm sick of doing the same bosses over and over, and never getting to see some new content. If anything, I would like to pummel Hodir into the frozen ground, even if it means that's all I do for 3 weeks. This whole "after wiping 3 times let's move to something else" is not working. I was only just starting to get my groove on last night and actually learn the damn fight.

And as a random hilarious sidenote, I have a Google search toolbar implemented in my firefox we browser. When you type in a search, it sticks around in the search box until you type in something else. Currently typed in my google searchbox?

"severus snape panties"

I will now leave you to ponder.

-brought to you by lack of coffee