Couple of random tidbits floating around in my head.

So many bloggers getting involved in NaNo! You are much more courageous than I. I'll try to hold down the fort so you can write your novels this month, and therefore I'll probably be posting a bit more frequently. My usual schedule is about once a day, but I'll probably be making shorter posts a couple of times a day for a few weeks.

Tier 10 preview is out. Rogues continue to leave me gasping for breath as I guffaw rudely. I think Blizz is trying to make Druids happy that their armor can't be seen while they are in form so that they will stop whining. Do you *really* want people to see your gear, Antler Head? Pallies in skirts just make my day. What about the Priest t10? Yawn. Completely and utterly booooooring.

Mongrr made a fabulous post at Save the Lightwell yesterday with all kinds of information refuting common complaints about the love-it-or-hate-it Holy Priest spell Lightwell. I added a link to it on my page discussing the merits of speccing into Lightwell, but the StL post is far superior to my own.

I had a very delightful surprise last night when a healer of the non-squishy variety (!) sent me a tell last night from a level 1 character, offering to help out with the Healer Survey data entry. I might actually take him up on this... I'm going to see how far I can get this weekend, and if progress is still painfully slow, then I may take him up on his offer. If anyone else is interested in helping out with this project, please leave me a comment - I haven't decided if I'm ready to relinquish control of mah baby yet, but I also do want to get it all taken care of.

The Christmas spirit is upon us! Between BBB's Raid for the Cure (which is an awesome event because BBB is not telling everyone they should donate to one organization - you are eligible for the drawing even if you choose a different organization to handle your donation), or blame Syrana for Twitter being so annoyingly popular. Or even better, split your donation to Make a Wish Foundation by giving half of it to Blizzard, and you get a free pet! Wait... did I say that backwards? Ah, well, Freud is a bitch.

More later on endangered talents. The title of this post is a reference to a statement Gordin made regarding the recently ousted mayor of Fifth-Third, Ohi... oops, sorry, Dayton, Ohio. Damn, there's that Freud again.

While I flail confusedly amongst the waters of various options for my poor bored healer, the only regular things I have been healing have been 5 mans (groan). I haven't been playing much during the week, because I've been suffering from the mild affects of seasonal change (i love leaves changing color, but my ears, nose, and throat apparently do not - and who would have thought that quitting smoking would make all these pains even WORSE?). So, my healing has been reduced to only five mans and the occasional weekend pug.

I've spoken before about the debate regarding whether or not Greater Heal is a useful spell, and therefore the talents associated with it. As proof of my belief that Greater Heal is not entirely worthless, I thought I would take a minute and discuss my current spec.

Greater Heal is mainly useful as a tank healing spell. Therefore, in a raid where holy priests are usually assigned to a raid healing role, it makes sense that Greater Heal gets little use, and therefore renders the talents associated with it as wasteful if there are better options. After all, if you intend and expect to usually heal the main tank in raids, you really ought to respec Disc, who get more benefit from Penance than Greater Heal anyway.

But in a five man, you will of course be doing a lot of healing on the main tank - so for Holy, Greater Heal is still useful. That might do a little to explain to any nay-sayers who wonder why I have so many Greater Heal talents!

Even in a full raid spec, it's really hard for me to let go of Divine Fury, so in a 5 man spec, I definitely hold onto it. I love cast time reductions, and hate to give them up - especially when the alternative talents are so very weak. Were I in full raid spec, I would dump Empowered Healing in favor of Blessed Resilience and Spiritual Healing. As it stands now, in 5 mans, I use Greater Heal combined with Serendipity enough to justify Empowered Healing.

Do you have any questions about Holy Priest specs? Want some guidance as to what talents to choose? I am happy to help! It's quite a bit of fun for me actually. Shoot me an email at my new email address, missmedicina at gmail dot com, let me know what sort of content you usually heal, what other healers are in your raid (if you raid), and I will do my best to advise you! If you permit me, I'll even post it here so that the rest of the community can give helpful feedback (please note that any rude or disparaging comments will be removed - if you want to be mean, check out the forums, or comment on wow.com ;)). I'm not as good with Disc specs or other classes, but I am still interested in hearing questions or feedback about them.

So, the healing survey is still growing. In case you thought I just posted the questions, and let people go to town on their own blogs, I thought I would make a little post to let you know what I'm doing with mah baby.

Though I stated repeatedly that I would only include people on the list if they left me a comment... well, I'm a little too OCD to actually follow through on that. While it definitely HELPS if people leave a comment, I have been expending a lot of effort in tracking down any responses I can find to it, and linking to them. Obviously, if the responses are on a guild forum, this isn't something I can easily do - especially since about 2/3 of the guild forums that link to Circle of Healers are in a foreign language (why doesn't anyone post in Latin? Oh that's right, because I wasted 7 years of my life learning it!).

Llyra over at Healing Way finally posted her own response to the questions, and noted at the end of the survey that she suspected there were lots of foreign translations as well. This is absolutely true. I have linked to two foreign translations on the list (Finnish and French), but if there are other translations, I am still in the process of tracking them down. (I also just noticed that the French Proprieter over at wowfrostmage has linked to several French responses for me... merci beaucoup! ::did i spell that right?::)

There is also an interesting little IP that has been going through all the responses from a nice little place in California called Irvine. Read into that what you will.

So what do I intend to DO with all these responses? After all, didn't I promise to "analyze teh dataz"?

This has proven to be a lot more difficult and tedious than I originally hoped (also, when I posted it, I had no idea it would get to be so big), but rest assured, I AM trying to assemble all the information. In a spreadsheet. Nomnomnom <3 spreadsheets. Sans the foreign language versions, sadly. :(

After Bobturkey returned from vacation and made his response (which I had been gleefully waiting for, since I knew his responses would be very interesting), I finally began assembling the answers. I have not even finished with Holy Priests yet, it is just that time consuming. Lest you think that everyone and their great grandchildren has completed the survey by now, I still have a handful of people respond every day - and it's gone outside of the WoW blogging sphere, and into Livejournal, and even a blogger from a newspaper - which confused me a bit, but I'm just gonna go with it.

How have I been tracking responses?

• Through comments directly left on my blog.
• Through direct emails (to those of you who have emailed me, I did not respond via email, but I am including them)
• Through traffic coming from the blogs who posted the responses and linked back to my page
• When someone is tagged, I've been monitoring their blog to see if and when they respond.
• Through comments left on other people's responses on their own blogs

And so on and so forth. As you can see, I've been keeping myself pretty busy trying to keep track of all the responses! Only about half of the survey responses are directly linked on my Circle of Healers page, because a lot of the responses had no way I could link to them. In addition, there were likely quite a few responses made from people in the days immediately following the WoW Insider link that did not leave comments for me - Sadly, I'm afraid I may not be able to find those responses unless those folks generate traffic back to my site, because the WoW.com traffic flooded my logs!

In essence, I have no idea when I will be able to post the results. I will continue working on it, and posting about any significant progress, but it may be awhile. Truth be told, however, diffusing all the survey responses down to something that can be mathematically analyzed will strip a lot of the awesomeness from the responses. For instance, here are some gems from Tamarind at Righteous Orbs's responses that wouldn't show up in the charts and graphs that will result from the survey, and definitely deserve notice:

"It’s the good kind of pressure, like a slightly over-weight cat purring on your chest."
regarding Divine Hymn:
"Also it’s just got a rubbish name. This is a fucking battle, no time for singing!"
regarding MT healing:
"It’s not even proper whack-a-mole, it’s simply a direct transfer of the contents of your blue bar into their diminishing green bar, like you’re some kind of perpetual human health funnel. "

I mean, c'mon. Beat that. THIS IS NO TIME FOR BLOODY SINGING

In case you are interested (and please, pass it on!) Koriel over at What is Boom took the Healer Survey and converted it for tanks - so if you have a tank and like filling out and posting these surveys, try a Circle of Tanks!

Alright, alright, so maybe I have a teeny tiny obsession with debating crit and haste. But can you blame me? You usually have to choose one at the expense of another, so I'm always curious and fascinated by what people choose for their healers and why. I've gone from crit obsessed to haste obsessed to somewhere in-between and back again, never able to be completely decisive about it. I dislike crit on principle, but.... Surge of Light is all shiny and I am drawn in like Bella to a shirtless sparkly sunlit Edward. *sparkle!!*

Therefore, I've been poring through all my favorite resto druid blogs reading about thoughts on the upcoming changes in 3.3 for druids in regards to haste. I warn you ahead of time that I am by no means an expert on Druids, and I'm almost positive that my Druid readers are going to have to set me right on a lot of my thoughts... but that is exactly the sort of feedback I'm hoping to get!

ETA: If you are looking for some interesting blog posts that resto druids have been posting lately on the topic, I recommend some Rolling Hots, Dreambound, some tricksy maths from Forrestump, and Restokin has some really helpful PTR testing - for the record, the way I understand it, Haste will both decrease the time between ticks on HoTs, AS WELL AS the total time the HoT ticks - therefore, with the Rapid Rejuvenation Glyph, you will not be getting MORE ticks to your HoTs, just faster ones. If this is wrong, please correct me!

Haste vs Crit for Druids

One of the things that has always confused me is the lack of viability for Haste and Crit for Druids. Before anyone rips me apart for saying that (be gentle, I'm not a druid myself!), I don't mean that these stats are useless for Druids, but merely that they seem to be a lot less useful for Druids than they are for other healing classes. As a Holy Priest, I can completely justify stacking either one sky high, though if I were to crunch the numbers, I may come up with good reasons to put a soft cap on either one. Since a lot of Druid heals are quickie casts, if not instant, then Haste really only seemed to matter up until GCD cap. And, since HoTs can't crit (unless you've got the T9 4piece set bonus, of course), Crit seemed kinda blah as well.

Ever since the changes to Shadowform for Priests, allowing DoTs to crit while in Shadowform, I've been wondering why HoTs can't crit while in Tree form. I see Druids on the whole, more than any other healing class, stack spellpower at the expense of haste and crit, because for other healers, those two latter stats seem stronger (I'm somewhat guessing here, I'll have to ask Codi over at MoarHPS to come over and beat me over the head with her calculator in order to have any maths to back any of this theorizing up). I'm sure some balancing would be necessary if HoTs were allowed to crit, but at the same time, that would mean Druids would stack more crit than they currently do, which would inevitably mean less spellpower as well.

Broadening the Niche? Should HoTs come closer to burst healing?

Another thing that intrigues me is that it seems as though the developers don't know how to get Druids to use crit and haste, and they are trying different things, and using different tools to test it - but with the same spell, Rejuvenation. First they try tinkering with a set bonus to see if Druids would be too OP with critting HoTs, and now it looks like they will try something similar with a glyph in 3.3.

I'm not impressed with the glyph, myself. I can see why many think it's very exciting, but to me, it's a bit similar in theory to Glyph of Renew - which I've always found stupid. If I wanted more healing in a shorter period of time, i.e. more burst... why wouldn't I just cast Flash Heal? The faster HoTs tick, the less time they are buffering... I'm not sure if that really IS a great thing.

Between the T9 set bonus for Druids, and the upcoming Glyph addition, I suspect that Blizz still hasn't figured out for sure how they want to handle some of the stat streamlining they are bringing in in Cataclysm. It feels like they are using the posterkids for HoTs as a way to test out how different stats might work with HoTs. I don't think this is a bad thing, for the record - I just found it interesting enough to bring it up. I suspect that if the changes work well for Druids, without breaking class balance, we may see all HoTs and DoTs for all classes being affected by both crit and haste in Cataclysm - or at least, with certain talents.

I'm still not sure if I like that or not... by speeding up the effect of HoTs and DoTs, it just brings them closer to being burst healing or burst damage in the first place, and eventually (taken to the extreme), it may completely degrade and diminish the niche, power, and value of *-over time effects.

BUT - Perhaps I'm just thinking about it too much. What say you?

Alright, who's buying me this?

World of Warcraft and Philosophy
From Amazon:

Inevitably, such a cultural phenomenon triggers deeper questions. When does an assumed identity become real? Does the Corrupted Blood epidemic warn us of future public health catastrophes? What are the dangers when real life is invaded by events in the game? What can our own world learn from Azeroth’s blend of primitivism and high-tech? In these lively essays, a specially commissioned guild of philosophers, including Yara Mitsuishi, Monica Evans, Tim Christopher, and Anna Janssen, tackles these and other complex questions arising from WoW.

This is so far up my alley I feel a little dirty. WANT.

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.

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...