I'm a bit late to announce this, seeing as how we accomplished the feat on Monday night, but the Summer of Sindragosa has officially come to an end for my raiding team.


Summer is tough on all raid teams really, and we struggled as much as, if not moreso, than any other typical raiding team. As a reminder, we only raid one night a week, and only for two hours. Monday night the stars aligned so that all three of our healers were there, and everyone in the raid was now familiar with the fight. We normally two heal content, and only use our Third Healer to help us learn new fights, or when the mechanics of the fight specifically call for a third healer (i.e. Dreamwalker). Our successful strategy included our ever-flexible Shaman of Awesomeness in his healing spec, DPSing during the first phase, and healing during the second (with every innervate and Power Infusion reserved for him for his mana reserves).

The Summer and the Roster

To give you some context on how brutal summer issues can be to a raid, let's look at some numbers. When you only raid 2 hours a week, attendance issues are severely magnified, however, due to the fact that we only raid 2 hours a week, it is generally less common that we even have issues in the first place. But even we struggled with the summer blues.

• June 7th: Our first attempt on Sindragosa.
• Total number of attempts before first kill: 31
• Total number of nights we attempted Sindragosa: 5 (total amount of time spent on her is probably around 8-9 hours)
• 7 Attempts at 20% buff.
• 8 Attempts at 25% buff.
• 16 Attempts at 30% buff.

I wanted to differentiate between levels of the buff, because other guilds might have needed 40 hours or 100 attempts to take down Sindy, but made all those attempts with a much smaller buff or none at all, and I feel it would be wrong of me not to recognize that difference.

Now, to look at roster changes. We had two nights of working on Sindy before we began having roster problems, and had a role switch, most specifically of one of our tanks. While this did not have a negative impact on the fight itself, as the new tank is incredibly good, it did cause a lot of slowdown, as we felt that our new tank, who was normally a DPS, had never tanked in ICC, should get a chance to tank through the entire raid up to and including Sindragosa, so we reset. And then we had two weeks of having to sub some people, and getting new people up to speed on the fight and everything that goes along with that.

The Power of the Versatile Third Healer

So let's talk about the healing makeup. Of the five separate nights we worked on Sindragosa, 2 of those nights were with only two healers (however, on one of those nights we had a shadow priest, and that helped). This was not intentional, and certainly not what we wanted, but our SuperShaman went away for a couple of weeks to do summer things and he is completely irreplacable as it turns out.

• night 1 (7 attempts): 3 healers. Shaman, Druid, Priest.
• night 2 (8 attempts): 2 healers. Druid & Priest. (Shaman on DPS)
• night 3 (2 attempts): 2 healers. Druid & Priest. (Shaman out of town)
• night 4 (7 attempts): 2 healers. Druid & Priest, but Shadow Priest present (Shaman out of town)
• night 5 (7 attempts): alternating attempts with both 2 healers and 3, Druid, Priest, and Shaman. Our final kill had our shaman DPSing during the first phase, and healing during the second.

That means that out of 31 attempts, 19 were with only 2 healers, 8 were with 3 healers, and the 4 most successful (and finally leading to our kill) attempts had our third healer DPSing during the first phase, and healing during the second. You know what this calls for? PIE.



Okay well, I think I've gotten carried away with my entire meta-analysis of our Sindy attempts. There were a lot of factors contributing to our final kill that Fulguralis discussed in more detail. He's great at talking strats, and I'm much better at talking stats, if you will, so I tip my hat (which is the same one he wears) to his discussion of it.

I hate it when our Third Healer is gone, but I hope we are never guilty of taking his flexibility for granted. It's one thing to be willing to switch specs for different fights, but quite another thing to ask someone to switch roles so drastically during the fight itself. "Stay in your healing spec, but do damage that will be inefficient and kill your mana and is completely out of your comfort zone!" I mean, really, who asks for that kind of thing?

Me, actually. And it totally worked. Damn that kid is awesome.

I leave you with the required screenshot of a situation in which I hope to spend much less time indulging now that Sindy has died.

Remember how you were taught to eat certain foods from every food group? You probably learned young that while you may be able to survive off of nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the rest of your life, it was far from ideal. Health wise, you'd definitely be gimping yourself.

The same principle applies to raids. You could do an entire raid with nothing but Druids, I'm sure. You'd survive, with a bajillion combat rezes. Hell, you'd even be covering the basic 4 food groups of a raid: Healer, Tank, Ranged DPS and Melee DPS. You could go with all pallies as well, though you'd be lacking on the ranged dps.

The point is, you don't necessarily have to have optimum raid synergy or diversification to succeed. Blizzard has really pushed the "bring the player, not the class" mindset since the release of Wrath, though there have been multiple exceptions. None of us healing priests have forgotten the nightmares of trying to Mind Control for the first time on Razuvious. *shudder*

However, the main way that Blizz has worked in this philosophy of raid makeup is by merging various kinds of buffs. They started this in BC, and I really think a big reason for that was the true takeoff of 10 man raiding that was coming in Wrath. Instead of utilizing Shadow Priests as mana batteries, they introduced the Replenishment buff that could be provided by several classes (Frost Mages, Ret Pallies, Survival Hunters, Shadow Priests, Destro Locks - learn it, live it, memorize it!). The tradeoff to opening up that mana return ability to multiple classes? You really needed to have it. Lots of folks didn't like this, as it went away from the BtPNtC attitude.

What do I mean when I say a certain buff is "required"? I use the word loosely. Shadow Priests were definitively required for Instructor Razuvious in 25 man, and that is certainly a different degree of requirement than Replenishment. However, there are certain buffs around which encounters and dungeons were designed. When Ulduar was designed, and when it was first released, it was done around the assumption that parties going in would have a Replenishment buff just as much as a typical tank/healer/dps setup. The same goes for Icecrown.

Blizz recently added Runescroll of Fortitude to the game, as well as Drums of Forgotten Kings and Drums of the Wild, admitting that they consider these buffs as somewhat "required" for raids (and therefore allowing you to have a slightly inferior version of the buffs without the particular class in your group) - i.e. the encounters are designed around the assumption you have that buff. Does that mean that you can't take down a boss without a Stamina, Kings, and Gift of the Wild buff? Not at all - it just means that you will have to work that much harder, or be geared just slightly better than the suggested iLvl.

Putting Diversification into Practice

When I first assembled the roster list for my babyicc10man group, I agonized over the buffs and whom to invite. Trust me, Fulguralis gave me hell for it. At the time, there were only 5 people in my guild, and therefore I had to reach out into my various networks to figure out the best way to fill out my group. I also had to consider the various group makeup requirements of each of the fights that had already been released when we started (I'm looking at you, Deathwhisper).

• Prot Warrior - Tank
• Prot Paladin - Tank
• Disc Priest - Healer
• Resto Druid - Healer
• Elemental Shaman - Ranged DPS (designated Third Healer)
• Arcane Mage - Ranged DPS
• Affliction Warlock - Ranged DPS
• BM Hunter - Ranged/Melee DPS (The Hunter may be ranged, but the pet is melee - for BM hunters, their pet is worth quite a bit of dps!)
• Rogue - Melee DPS -> Later replaced with an Enhancement Shaman - Melee DPS
  
• Retribution Paladin - Melee DPS

Since its conception, I had to change the raid night, and in doing so had some roster swaps. Having a second shaman made me cringe a bit, but in actuality, it has worked out marvelously. Besides, nothing wrong with have two sets of totems.

The value of this raid lies not just in the ability of each individual player, though I am insanely proud of them. I've watched the DPSers go from a struggling 4k when we first started, to pushing 7k on Festergut - and I know it's not just gear upgrades. The diversification scheme also helps a lot. They each contribute to one another's abilities. I base my personal gear choices around the assumption that I will have replenishment and blessing of kings. Even Fulguralis finally acquiesced that having a diverse mix of class combos also helps on the gear front (and trust me, he and I have argued about the raid mix question for months, so even a tiny acquiescence is like a gigantic victory for me!).

But it's not just about the individual buffs that each class brings to the table. Having a diverse group that covers every type of damage mechanic means that the same 10 people can go through the entirety of Icecrown Citadel without having to swap people out for certain fights. This was incredibly important to me - I wanted my group to be cohesive and comfortable with one another. If we kept swapping people in and out, we would constantly be battling the challenge of learning how a new player works. I could have simply ignored raid synergy, and brought only the highest DPS possible. I could have chosen only those with the best gear.

I chose not to do either of those things, because I wanted this group to go into ICC from the start, and grow as a group through the entirety of this raid sequence - together. Spending all the extra time and effort into building a solid and diverse mix of classes for the team from the beginning means that I don't have to worry later about whether or not we can take on a certain fight without our makeup - we can. We have multiple forms of rezzing, buffs, crowd control, healing, damage, you name it.

I'm incredibly proud of my group.

It was pointed out to me by a couple of people that I didn't have a blog archive up. I have no idea when and why it disappeared, but it has now made a grand reentrance. Obviously you won't see it through a feedreader, so you'll actually have to pop on through to see it. Thanks for the heads up guys!

Tam gave me the gift of syph. Results are incoming.

So several other people have contributed to the Divine Aegis vs Power Word: Shield testing (see the comments), and they all seem to have come up with results similar to mine (That Divine Aegis is used up before Power Word:Shield). If you've done some testing of it yourself and can provide combat log data for me, I will post it for others to give more practical evidence to our skeptical theory crafters (skepticism = good!).

Also, Soluna asked in the comments section: "would it be reasonable to theorize that the shield with the lowest duration is used first?" and I will answer that here. I thought that as well, but though I did not post the testing I did on that particular topic, I did test that by proccing Divine Aegis just before my power word: shield wore off, and DA was still used up before PW:S. However, this was incredibly difficult to test well due to the exactness of timing, which is why I didn't post it (since it was very easy to do it improperly). If you are able to test this and confirm, please let me know.

Today is my last day at my internship, and then I get to breathe a sigh of relief and update all my guides - especially as I now have a lot more experience with the Disc aspect of priest healing. I used to think that Disc Priests were only really for single target healing, but now I know better, and I want my guide to reflect that.

Last night was my first foray into ICC10 man! We only spent two hours in there, but we were able to two shot Marrowgar, and get in a few solid tries on Lady Deathwhisper. I hadn't expected us to get that far in such a short time, to be honest, so I was not completely prepared for Deathwhisper. We had a lot of fun learning how all the trash worked, since I had only looked up boss guides. It was a nice challenge. Also, if you are doing ICC10, and haven't brought a rogue in yet... you should try it. There are some special little things Rogues can do in the first room - but I won't spoil it for you :)

Thanks to lots of help from some fellow bloggers via twitter and my genius fiance, I was able to get World of Logs up and running last night for our ICC10 run. I made it work, but I don't really know how to interpret the results. Also, for some reason it doesn't show our Marrowgar kill :( Also, my recount is not working 80% of the time now for some reason. I find that really frustrating as I'm only just starting to learn how to properly interpret the healing meters, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. Along both those veins, I am putting out a general call to my fellow bloggers (especially you healers) - I can't tell you how much I would appreciate an idiot's guide to reading and interpreting log parsing results. Right now, for the most part, it's just a great big jumble to me.

I'm so excited! My first email request for aid! It was like a little christmas gift in my inbox, and I giddily unwrapped it, squealing the whole time.

Yes, yes, I'm a dork, shut it.

So! My first emailed question was from a holy priest who was looking for help with some problems she found herself having with mana regen. As someone a bit new to the whole raid healing thing, she sent me an email with the following request.

"I don't do much raiding, I'm mostly healing five-mans, but I decided to really go for it and respec for raid healing. I followed your suggested build but I have one huge problem: my MP5 is only 348 during a fight. I don't think my gear is terrible, but I enter ToC-10 and I find myself popping my mana pet before the impaler is down. Heck, even in a heroic I see my bar get hit hard (albeit I mostly see this with under-DPSing pugs). "

(For privacy reasons, I'm not revealing her name, but she reads this blog, so if she wants to step up and say hi in the comments, she's welcome to do so /wave!)

I took a look at her gear and her stats, and the 348 number seemed to come from in "while casting" mana regen, unbuffed. I let her know that there was some tweaking she could do with her gems and replace some items with a bit more crit and less haste, but aside from that, it didn't look like gear was the real problem here. 348 while casting is similar to what I have, unbuffed.

I wanted to pass along the following considerations I emailed to her, because I think a lot of Holy Priests struggle with mana regen in the beginning of their raiding career. People can look at your gear and stats and spec, and tell you to pile on more spirit or intellect, but that's not always the problem. So if you're having mana regen problems as a Holy Priest, and you can't find anything really wrong with your gear, consider the following:

• What sort of buffs are you running with? In a ten man scenario, it can be a lot trickier to get the right raid balance that will give you all the mana regen buffs you would ideally like to have. Because of this, I usually have far more mana problems in a 10 man than in a 25 man. In 10 mans, i have the flask of pure mojo and spicy fried herring for personal mana regen, but I also depend quite a bit on getting a blessing of wisdom or mana spring totem in there somewhere, and always, ALWAYS Replenishment (frost mage, shadow priest, ret pally, destro lock, or survival hunter). The raid makeup may be something that you have absolutely no control over, but take a look at what you've got in your raid mix. If you're running with a pretty steady group, and your buffs will likely always be the same, then you can make adjustments to your gems, enchants, and talents accordingly.

• What are the other healers doing? What is the healing makeup? are you running 2 healers or 3? If you're running with just 2, then you probably will run into more mana problems. If you are running with a pally, are you wasting your mana having to help on the tank too much? If there's a druid, are you spending a lot of mana trying to heal up targets that are hotted when you don't need to? I'm not fond of pointing fingers at other healers when there's a problem, but healing should be a team - if one person is running out of mana, then it's a good idea to talk about it with the other healers to see what changes can be made.

• What is your casting style? I can throw in a couple of pointers on mistakes I've made in the past that left me mana starved, and you can check to see if you are doing any of the following things.

1. Overusing Serendipity stacks - Everytime I see 3x Serendipity, i desperately want to use it properly. But the truth is, if you do this in a ten man you are going to go OOM pretty quick. Dont feel like you have to use it just because it's there. Use a Circle of Healing if you can, because it's cheaper and pretty powerful. You shouldn't need to use Greater Heal at all if you're on raid heals (except for Incinerate Flesh), especially if there's a third healer.


2. Are you catching all your surge of light procs? Unlike Serendipity, the proc for SoL is much shorter, so you have to be sure to use it faster - and you definitely want to use it since it's free! If you find that you're missing a lot of the procs, pick up an add-on like SurgeTrack.


3. Are you bubbling too much? For disc, you can never bubble too much, but for holy, our bubbles arent that great, and theyre kinda expensive too. In a 10 man, the only person I ever "pre-bubble" is the tank when he's pulling, and a feisty mage here and there - if you try to bubble too much, you will end up OOM.


4. How are your overheals? If you run with a druid, check their overheals as well with recount, because often the overheals credited to a druid are actually due to another healer healing over their hots. This is inevitable, and to a certain extent completely acceptable - but if someone has a HoT on them, and they are unlikely to be in any immediate damage, let the HoT do its job. Make sure if you are running with a tree that you have an addon that tracks who has HoTs on them. If you aren't running with druids, are you and another healer often going for the same target? There are addons that will let you know who the other healers are healing (Healbot will do this if multiple people use it), but sometimes you just need to watch them, or have better assignments, or communicate more, that sort of thing.
   

She responded to my email to give me a little update about how things are going, and she mentioned something that I wanted to address as well... but this post has already gone on long enough, so I'll save it for another day ;)

In true Miss Medicina form, I started writing my piece on reflex and rotation yesterday, and it just got way too TLDR, so I tried to split it up a bit. This chunk seemed the easiest to divide from yesterday's post.

The Theorycrafting Behind it All

I've posted before about the problems with theorycrafting, and I wanted to bring it up in regards to my continuing topic of reflex and rotation, because all my pondering on the difference between these two has affected how I see theorycrafting for healers.

Of course theorycrafting is useful, but how you use it, or perhaps when you utilize it differs slightly between the rotational and the reflex healer.

Much of the theorycrafting used to prepare your character takes place outside of a raid setting - how you choose your talents, the enchants, gems, and gear you choose, the consumables you will bring to a raid. It comes down to min-maxing your gear, and choosing your talents based on what you expect you will use most during a raid. Or, perhaps you choose the talents you think are best, and intend to train yourself to use the proper spell combinations that will benefit. Either way, once you're actually in the raid, that is where your efforts come to fruition.

If you are working on a rotation, you are working the theory in as you cast... because your rotation is based on maximizing your potential. Perhaps you know the exact moment when it is best to pop your cooldowns, knowing when they will be available again. You will make the choices needed to keep the target alive while simultaneously maintaining Grace, or building stacks of Serendipity.

But when you are a reflex healer, you need to put more preparation into the theorycrafting before the raid, and the best thing you can do to improve your healing skills are to develop the proper habits. Trigger fingers need training! When you are responding to unpredictable damage, or popping a reflexive reaction to something, you may not have the time to calculate in your head what is the best spell for you to use to maximize output while minimizing mana usage. My use of Circle of Healing on one target who takes damage? Perfect example. I don't think about how wasteful it is - I respond. I have developed a bad habit, and trained my trigger finger that way.

This is not to say that Rotational healers do not have to train their fingers, or make snap decisions. Nor do I mean to suggest that Reflex healers do not come into a raid with an expectation of what spells and cooldowns will work best in combination. All healing classes have a combination of both Rotation and Reflex based methods in order to allow all of them to be effective as the sole healer in a 5 man scenario. At end game, however, each class begins to display more strength in one realm or the other.

For instance, I've used Pallies as an example of rotational healing... but all those "Hand of..." tools are indicators of different methods of "emergency response", if you will. If all you ever consider is the best rotation for healing single or dual targets, you won't know what your "extra appendages" are for (you know, like me).

If the Holy Priestess does not work some rotation into her raid healing, and intends to respond purely by reflex, then she will not be adequately prepared when massive raid damage hits everyone. If she has not built up her stacks of Serendipity, if she's already blown her Divine Hymn cooldown, then she's left scrambling to top people off before they find themselves dangling limply and lifeless from Kologarn's fists, because a Circle of Healing may not be enough, and the cast time on a non-hasted Prayer of Healing is painful.

***

Thanks for humoring me in one of my biggest rambling "philosophy of healing" segments ;) If you ever needed proof that I love theorycrafting (perhaps sans numbers), this was for you!

I am in a very tiny guild. We only have 6 people at level 80, and only 8 individuals total. I have had friends ask to join our tiny little guild from time to time, but it's not going to happen. We are unlikely to ever grow, because our roster is limited to a gang of friends who hang out together on friday and saturday nights around a table full of minis. Many of them even went to high school together (a concept completely foreign to me, for the record - I moved way too much for that!)

So how is it that we are able to raid at all? Well, those among us who have larger social networks (and if you hadn't noticed I am one of those - thus the Circle of Healers project) have put forth a lot of effort into building alliances with other individuals we know, as well as guilds. These alliances have enabled us to see quite a bit of 25 man content on a fairly regular basis.

But somehow, Ulduar just burnt me out.

Maybe it was the officeering duties that dragged me down, or the state of the leadership. I'm not sure, but those are all good topics for another day.

Today, however, one of our guildies sent an email to the other 5 of us asking if any of us were planning on participating in the 25 man raid currently scheduled by the greater alliance for tonight.

And not a single person was interested.

Half of us are ex-raiders from the Vanilla WoW days, and when they came over to my server and made alliance toons, they had no real interest in raiding anymore. But Kara and a good group of friendly alliance members warmed us all up to it, and for quite some time, we were all back into raiding.

Yet now, the majority of us have no interest in running the 25 man content anymore. Now that Blizz has enabled us to see everything we'd want to see on 10 man mode, we just can't see the point.

Back when I was new to raiding, there was something truly epic about 25 folks all packed together, trying to take down a boss. I'm sure the 40 man versions were even more impressive (as long as your computer could handle it!)

But that sense of "epicness" has long since worn off for me, replaced by the dull boredom that comes with the vast amount of organization needed to get a 25 man off the ground. The strange thing is, I normally love organizing things. I love the attention to detail, and group dynamics. Perhaps if I were in a raiding guild with enough members that I had choices for people to fill in various slots, it would be different. But instead I'm always in a situation where I simply have to take what I can get to fill out a 25 man - and it's not fun.

From a non-leader's perspective, there's the issue of individual accountability. Look, let's face it - people like to be singled out for praise, and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that (unless you ask Gevlon). It's a lot more difficult to note individual strengths in a 25 man group as opposed to a 10 man group.

Personally, all organization efforts put aside, I find 10 man content to be more challenging. You can lose a few people in 25 man and still be okay - the same cannot be said for 10 man. Unless you are overgeared for the location, quite a bit of precision in execution is needed for ten man, arguably moreso than the 25 man equivalent. 25 mans need to have a bit more leeway and tend to be a bit sloppier (at least, the non-hard modes), and I would argue this is partially due to connection and system requirements. We always had people disconnecting during the Heigan dance in 25 man naxx.

Regardless, I haven't sworn off 25 mans completely... I'm just struggling to see the point anymore. None of us are trying to compete with others progression wise, we just want to have fun.

Here are some of Gordin's thoughts as to why 10 mans are better than 25 mans:

1. "when you do your job well, there are more chances for people to ruin progress because they can’t do theirs
2. there is a lot going on
3. your character is less unique and feels like less of a contribution
4. it might be too easy (??, like naxx??)
5. someone is prob going to rub you the wrong way
6. feels like work
7. with that many, at least a few wont like the pace
8. rather just hang with friends that won’t care when you swear and you can talk openly about other stuff too
9. less drama
10. loot is faster
11. I like pie
12. Feels a little more like home
13. Doesn’t feel forced"

So what do you think? How much do you think quality leadership affects your choice? If you prefer 25 man content, what are your reasons? If you prefer 10 mans, share yours! I'd love to hear some thoughts from others.

A big thanks to everyone who responded to the no-seriously-this-is-not-a-meme healing survey! I hope that those of you who are linked on the page will benefit from the extra traffic, and be encouraged to post more useful information! It probably goes without saying, but the survey became vastly larger than I expected, and despite my best efforts, I just can't keep up with finding everyone who has responded and linked to the post, unless you left a comment for me - too many WoW.com hits have flooded by statcounter log. Not that I'm complaining... it was like having a big weekend party at my house. I will try to continue posting links to blogs that responded as long as you leave a comment, however.

I'm still trying to work my way through all the responses... I've been trying to copy and paste them all into a word document, but after crashing word a few times, I gave up for awhile. I do fully intend to finish reading through them though, and I am pleased that all the new material will hopefully help everyone who reads them become a better healer.

So far, one of the best things I've seen to come out of it is a post over at MoarHPS. Noting how few people really understood how the stats that come from meters work, Moar posted a really informative guide explaining how all those measurements work, and what they are good for. I think the point is that while meters are not the end-all, be-all for healers, they can definitely be used to help you figure out where your strengths are, and where you need to tweak - as long as you understand what they mean. I'm exceedingly grateful to Moar for the post, because I wasn't willing to admit how poor my understanding of those stats was >.>

On a slightly less happy note, there was a pretty nasty comment over at WoW.com referring to my own answers to the survey that I wanted to respond to here. Had I known the survey would become so big, and so many people would be looking at my own answers with such a critical eye, I might have explained my answers better. So, from the perspective of this holy priest, I'm going to respond to the criticisms leveled at my answers - because it's my site and I'll do what I want to, even though I know that some people just want to rip others apart, even though they may have no better answers themselves. So there. Suck it.

Lack of Burst Healing for Holy Priests

One of the questions on the survey I wrote was "what is the biggest weakness of your class?" Some of you might have found this very difficult to answer! I know that I did, because the thing about Holy Priests is that we can do a little bit of everything, and quite well. We can fit into any healing role. But, as with every jack of all trades, there are none for which we are truly the master. One thing that I have desperately craved since the days of Kel'Thuzad is a solid single target instant burst heal. The critic in question insisted we have plenty of burst heal options, and for each spell they mentioned as an example, I will respond accordingly:

• Power Word: Shield - This is NOT instant burst heal, and to say that it is is so ridiculously silly that it barely warrants response. This will reduce the next incoming damage of course, but I'm talking about green-bar-go-up type mechanics when I say burst healing. Is it something that can be used in an emergency scenario to keep the target from dying from the NEXT hit? Of course it is - but that was not what i was talking about.
• Prayer of Mending - First of all, as Matticus discussed in a post that all Disc Priests should definitely read, Prayer of Mending doesn't go off if the damage is absorbed from a shield instead. Prayer of Mending needs to be cast BEFORE the damage hits in order to heal. The target CAN die from the damage before benefitting from the PoM heal, if I understand the mechanics of this spell correctly (if this is not the case, please correct me). Therefore, this is NOT instant burst healing that makes the green bar go up immediately - it is a response to the next bout of damage. I am talking about the desire for something to respond to a massive damage input that has already happened.
• Surge of Light - Sorry, I don't always have a surge of light proc sitting in my pocket. It's great when it procs, but because it is a proc, and because it is based on crit, which in and of itself is based on chance, you cannot rely on a surge of light to be there when you need it.
• Circle of Healing - This is a viable answer - and this, in addition to Empowered Renew, is what I currently use when an individual needs an immediate burst of healing. With any luck, I can CoH, Renew, and have a SoL proc - but all of those are subject to global cooldown, and do NOT aggregate into a single target instant burst heal. And yes, this works quite well, but I suppose it really grates on me to use an AoE spell to respond to single target damage.

That was the biggest criticism the commenter made that I felt warranted a response, but in answer to the other comments he/she made, yes, I realize Divine Hymn is a very powerful spell, and that I should use it more. Obviously, that's why I listed not using it as my worst healing habit (eyeroll). I love having druids and their innervates and b-rezes and HoTs around not because I expect a druid to give me an innervate or B-rez - but because when it is needed by someone in the party, I appreciate knowing that those options are there, since aside from Hymn of Hope, I don't have a way to return mana to my fellow raiders - and IMO, Hymn of Hope is somewhat weak unless coordinated very well with others. The final criticism was in regards to my insistence that Holy Priests CAN do main tank healing, despite it not being optimal. I've already discussed that topic ad nauseam, however, so I feel no need to delve further into the topic.

I will be the first to admit that I am far too sensitive to criticism, but despite that, this comment reminded me of the same thing that always annoys me about so many players - that the vast amount of wow players are not in the upper echelon of raiding. Why do I rarely use Divine Hymn? Because I'm serious when I say that I'm rarely in a situation in which that powerful of a healing spell is needed - usually a CoH or a Serendipity-hasted Prayer of Healing will more than suffice. Were I currently working on TotGC 25 man hard mode, I'm sure my answer would be different. But I'm not. I am probably one of those average WoW players, really. I do 10 man raids regularly, I do 25 mans on occasion, and I do a lot of 5 mans. I like to think that were I interested in participating in hard core raids that I would perform fairly well, but the truth is, I just don't want to make the commitment that requires.

There are a lot of new subscribers to my blog, so it probably bears repeating here that while my focus is on Holy Priests, and to a lesser extent Disc Priests, I do discuss a lot of the issues relevant to assembling a strong healing team for raiding, as well as some officeering topics. However, I am not solely interested in raiding - if you prefer 5 man content, I always try to consider that aspect as well when discussing Priest mechanics. I see too many people give advice to priests that completely ignores the differences between a 5 man scenario, and a 10 man or 25 man scenario. Healing a 5 man all by yourself is actually quite different than healing in a raid. I do try to always keep that in mind when I dish out Medicinal Wisdom :)

NB: For those of you wondering, part of the reason why I'm not using pictures so much in my posts these days is due to the covert way in which I am forced to blog at my current job. Pictures of WoW related things seem to be a bit of a red flag on google reader when my boss walks by. I would apologize for the walls of text, but I feel apologies should carry an intention of stopping the crime with them, and since I have no intention of stopping... well, you see the dilemma.

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.

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'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 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."

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

Last night, I snapped mid-raid. I slammed my keyboard. I shrieked to high heaven and bawled like a baby. In fact, it was so terrible, that when I went to sleep, I had nightmares, woke up still a mess, and couldn't fall back asleep. And today I'm confessing it on my blog, because I have no shame.