Posts That Never Happened - Rainbow Circles!
Alright, time for the big reveal.

Your responses, while hilarious, were nowhere near the truth - with the exception of commenter Tannim Murphy. There's a very simple way to make the rainbow circles make sense. Here's the key.


If you noticed, the circles are drawn on a grid. Were you to count the number of squares that measure the diameter of each rainbow circle, you'd find the range of each AoE healing spell (I assumed maximum glyphs and talents).


The original intention was to measure the surface area of each heal. Unfortunately, the dynamics and characteristics that make each heal different and unique make it really hard to compare them to one another fairly, let alone measure surface area.

Chain Heal, for instance. Chain heal doesn't look anything at all like a rainbow circle. It looks, ironically enough, like a CHAIN. Imagine that.

Methodologically speaking, you can't directly compare Chain Heal to the other AoE healing spells, because it doesn't function the same way. It's linear instead of radial.

Divine Hymn is channeled. It works on ticks, and therefore it's unlike many of the other spells - You don't have spellcast -> spell effect.

In order to really compare all these spells, you'd also need to think about the differences in cooldowns, mana cost, and the amount of time it takes to cast each spell. The spells are also different in that some affect only one's party instead of the whole raid. Some are smart heals. Some, I have no idea how the UI decides who gets the heal (i.e. Holy Light glyph splash).

And thus, I gave up on the rainbow circle AoE heals post, because after spending hours creating my rainbow circles graph (not to mention days spent searching to find the perfect software program with which to create it), I went and confuzzled myself with all the ways that my methodology would not function properly. And then I abandoned it.
9 Responses
  1. Klepsacovic Says:

    Never let poor methodology stand in the way of an argument. What's the fun in being reasonable?


  2. @Kleps

    You sound like so many of my professors in grad school...


  3. Juzaba Says:

    New Game!

    You are a Wow healer-god, able to cast every healing spell in the game. Using these spells, what is the quickest way to aoe-heal your way from target to target across a football field (100 yards). Every time your spell heals the target, you may teleport to where that target is standing. Spells are always centered on you (i.e. no casting a CoH at a target 35 yards away). No talents, glyphs, or gear allowed, except those that grant you use of Aoe spells.

    So I start off at the Horde's goalline. I'm going to cast Chain Heal (2.5 sec cast), which will heal me, then bounce to someone 10 yards away, and another 10 yards for the second bounce. Woot, I'm at the Horde 20! Now, I'll cast Wild Growth, which will hit someone 15 yards away and heal them 1 second later, allowing me to move up another 15 yards. 3.5 seconds used, and I'm on the Horde 35 (but I have another 0.5 seconds of GCD time left).

    See kids? Wow makes math fun!


  4. Anna Says:

    Regardless of whether you decide to make the eventual post, the diagram itself is really cool. Visually having the various sizes of AOE heals all stacked like that is just fun and interesting.

    Also, I like charts. :D


  5. Rhii Says:

    Where's healing stream totem? It sort of heals too...


  6. gameldar Says:

    Can I put up my hand and say I knew what it was?

    But then again I cheated since I was the one that suggested your drawing tool and asked difficult questions at hte time!

    Nice to see your work with inkscape being put out for all to see!


  7. @gameldar

    hurrah! I'm now currently using it to make a floor plan of my house. Thank you so much for recommending it, I love the program!


  8. Anonymous Says:

    This reminds me of my long-abandoned (because the GIMP makes me cry) post about why Outlands messes with one's sense of direction. Cheers though! Beautiful graphics should never go to waste. :)


  9. HP Says:

    Wow.. How long did it take you to figure out the exact proportion of the ranges relative to each other?

    Makes me wonder if an addon like AVR can show the range on heals as well...


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