In the comments section a couple of days ago, Xeppe asked me about the trinkets I use, since I noted that I tend to swap them out depending on fight. I've been wanting to make a gigantic trinkets post since the beginning of this blog and I just never got around to it. This is me still not getting around to it.

I will, however, list out the trinkets I carry with me everywhere, and talk about them a bit.

I absolutely love trinkets. I know that most people tend to stick two trinkets in their character screen that have the best ranking on the Ultimate Trinket List and forget about them, but not me. So many trinkets are unique and whimsical in their usage that I prefer to mix them up and try them out in different scenarios.

Once upon a time, I hated using trinkets with a "use" effect, because I am truly terrible at remembering to actually use them enough to make them worth it. Then Paolo walked into my life and taught me to bind my trinkets to my most commonly used heals, and I felt the warmth of a whole new world opening up to me.

Having multiple trinkets allows me to customize my gear for a specific fight, or a specific strategy. Nowadays, since we've been running ICC with the buff, I haven't been playing around with my trinkets nearly as much, simply because everyone's health pool is larger and my heals are so much more powerful that it's pretty much a moot point. But back when the fights were fresh and new and challenging and there was actually the chance I would run out of mana or not heal fast or big enough, my trinkets got a lot more use.

Case in point: When we were learning the Blood Prince Council fight, we tried a lot of crazy strategies. At one point we even tried using three tanks just to try and get some of the mechanics down. With three tanks, not only did the fight go on for a very long time, but we also lost our source of replenishment since our ret pally switched to his tanking spec. I guarantee you I got a lot of use out of my trinkets during those attempts, because it was the first time in a long time where I used every mana return ability I had and still my blue bar went empty.

So, here's a list of the trinkets I keep on me at all times for healing:

• Ephemeral Snowflake - This trinket is summarily hated by theorycrafting priests all over the internetz. If you run the numbers, that 11 mana per heal is not very impressive. Maybe it's great for druids with their constantly ticking HoTs, but for a Disc priest who runs with a Druid and therefore never even bothers with Renew, it's pretty lackluster. However, I like the 20 second haste buff on fights where I will be spam healing the tank (i.e. Festergut). Truthfully, this is also one of my higher iLvl trinkets, so when I want to log out with my highest score possible on WoW-heroes (so that I can preen proudly at my toon), I equip this. Mostly just to give Paolo a heart attack though.
  
• Talisman of Resurgence - I carry this trinket around mostly for my shadow set actually. But for disc, the Intellect on it is very nice, especially for fights where I will be bubbling a lot and I want a higher return of mana due to Rapture. The spellpower proc also means that my bubbles will be bigger when the trinket is used, however, see below for why I rarely use this trinket on my Disc set out of pure annoyance. To be totally honest, I don't find much use for this when healing.
  
• Je'Tze's Bell - Of course I carry this with me all the time. I had to have this trinket, and saved up a long time to buy it on the AH. Hello, my name is Jessabelle. Now, all that aside, this is a good default trinket if you have nothing similar that does a better job. It has a solid full-time spellpower boost (so no problems with overlapping bubbles), and the mana regen occurs often enough in the background to give me around 30 mp5. I don't use this trinket very often anymore due to the fact that I have better ones, but I refuse to DE it, and I carry it around because IT'S MY DAMN BELL.
  
• Ancient Pickled Egg - This is actually the same thing as The Egg of Mortal Essence which you can get with badges (this is something I picked up from Coren Direbrew). It cannot be DEd either, so it sits in my bags making everything smelly for the most part. I like the solid spellpower boost which is always a good option when there is no need for anything particularly special for certain fights. I will occasionally use this trinket when I have absolutely no mana concerns in a fight. Because there is no "use" ability, it's pretty much equip and forget. The haste proc is nice, but since it is a proc, and not a use effect, and therefore I cannot bind it to a spell I cast when I need the haste and therefore direct its use, I don't equip this trinket for any fights that would give me a particular challenge.
  
• Majestic Dragon Figurine - This is one of my favorite trinkets, though I haven't used it at all in ICC, since I'm running Disc. I love this trinket for Holy, and even use it on occasion when I'm running around in Shadow. When I use this trinket as Holy, I always keep an eye on how many stacks of the buff I have, and I always try to maintain my 10 stack. It gives me a nice little 25 spellpower boost (around 30 with kings) as well as some good solid mana regen. And I find it fun, and a nice little challenge to keep it fully stacked. I like fun trinkets.
  
• Spark of Hope - I was really lucky to get this trinket, and it is a very good one, especially for Holy Priests. Love that spirit, always! It's still good, even for a Disc Priest, even though we don't get nearly as much use out of Spirit. Fights that have wonky mana debuffs are perfect for this trinket. The best example I can think of is Vezax, but if you ever run into a fight where there is some form of mana burn, this is great for that fight too (such as those nasty mana burn spots on the ground in Valithria). When no amount of mana regen is regenning fast enough, the absolute reduction of mana cost for your abilities is always a great thing.
  
• Sliver of Pure Ice - That spellpower is delicious. There are two ways to use this trinket. You could use it as a second mana pot - put it right next to your mana pot button, or make some kind of macro that will attempt to use this first, and if it is on cooldown, use a mana pot (I'm terrible with macros, so if someone knows specifically how to write that up, I'd appreciate it). Or, you can do what I do, and simply bind it to a spell you use quite often (I use it with Prayer of Mending). Use it when you come back from a battle rez. Use it when you oopsed into the mana burn spot in Dreamwalker. Or, if you prefer to get maximum usage out of it, even if not always at the best time (and therefore consider it more of a background mana regen device), bind it to a spell.
  
• Purified Lunar Dust - This is essentially an upgrade to Je'Tze's Bell. For maximum standard spellpower and regen increase, I will on occasion equip them both. Unlike my bell, however, you can purchase this one with 60 frost badges.
  

A lot of these trinkets share certain aspects in common, and depending on your Priest spec, they may be more annoying than useful.

• Use effect that increases spellpower: I'm sure lots of people love this, and for Disc priests, spellpower is king. However, I personally hate spellpower procs, due to the bubble breakdown I've mentioned before. There is nothing more annoying to me than trying to put a fresh bubble on someone, and being told that I can't because a "more powerful spell" is in effect - even though usually that is blatantly untrue. Theorycrafting wise, these are probably still best, but personally, if the fight is a stressful one, this can set me off into a very undisciplined rage, if you catch my drift. Therefore, if you're disc, you probably don't want to bind the use ability to a spell you use a lot if you will get as frustrated as I do. Bind it to a spell you use when you need a burst of throughput, such as Pain Suppression, or Power Infusion. For Holy, anything goes, and I'd recommend binding it to an often used spell to maximize its usage. Otherwise, you could throw it in with something like Guardian Spirit, though that might be overkill for most normal encounters.
  
• Use effect that increases haste: As a tank healer, I really like these kinds of procs. When my trinket goes off, I shield the tank and cast a greater heal. However, unless it is a fight where I really need to be spamming a single player, the proc will usually go to waste. The best way to use this kind of trinket is to bind it to something that you use when you really need to cast fast. For instance, if you ever use Greater Heal, particularly for tank healing, that is likely the best heal to bind it to. Other options might be Power Infusion, if you use that on yourself. Power Infusion + haste trinket might be more speed than necessary. Similarly for Holy, you could bind it to Guardian Spirit, but again, this may be overkill. You might try binding it to Prayer of Healing instead. I'd recommend trying it with a few different spells, and see which ones give you the most benefit.
• Chance on spellcast or heal to increase mana regen for xx seconds or return mana: This basically works as a background mana regen feature. The shorter your general casting time, the more likely you will get a solid benefit from this. You can run the numbers for yourself, but trinkets like this are really great for long fights that will require... well, longevity. Using a trinket like this also means that you can swap out some of your other gear for better throughput stats. This is always a good default for healers, as far as I'm concerned.
• Reduction of mana cost vs Return of mana every cast: There are a few trinkets that have one of these abilities (see Spark of Hope and Ephemeral Snowflake). Reduction of mana cost is superior if it applies to all your heals. It is always better for your mana to spend less of it in the first place than to get some back after you've spent it.

If you make good use of your trinkets, they can really help you in "edge" encounters - this could mean heroic fights, or fights where you feel your gear is not really up to par, or where you are missing essential buffs (i.e. Replenishment). Trinkets give you the ability to tailor yourself to a fight or to a group makeup - use them wisely and with lots of thought.

When it comes to bindings (Clique is fantastic for this by the way), here are some tips to help you better organize trinket swapping:

• When you write your macro for using a trinket at the same time as casting a certain spell, instead of writing "/use Sliver of Pure Ice" into your macro, type "/use 13" for the upper trinket, and "/use 14" for the lower. (I think that's right - please correct me if I'm wrong)
• If you set your macros this way, try to always equip a similar trinket in the same slot. For example, you might choose to have your upper trinket slot saved for throughput pop trinkets. Then, whether you use a trinket that increases your haste or spellpower depending on the encounter, you are less likely to need to change the macro, since you would probably bind it to the same spell anyway.

For instance, let's say on one fight, I am going to equip my Ephemeral Snowflake to give me some added tank healing burst on Festergut. I want the haste instead of the spellpower, because I'd rather have faster smaller heals than larger slower ones. In another fight, I might want to use a trinket that has a spellpower pop effect instead. When I swap the trinkets, I just make sure they are both in the upper slot, and the same macro will work - I don't have to make any annoying macro changes.

Perhaps I'd keep my lower slot for mana trinkets, such as Sliver of Pure Ice which has a use effect, or in another fight Purified Lunar Dust, which does NOT have a use effect. I bind the use of that trinket slot to Prayer of Mending, and then throw in a suppression to my macro so that I don't constantly have to hear about how that item isn't ready yet when Sliver of Pure Ice is on cooldown. Or, for that matter, due to the fact that there is no use effect for Purified Lunar Dust.

Copied and Pasted directly from Wowwiki article on macros:

No Error Text or Sound (Improved Again)

This is just like the one above but with an added tooltip that matches the original skill, and doesn't disable sound for the skill's error messages. Sound and error messages for the trinket use are still suppressed though. If you set the name of the macro to a blank space, you can't even tell it's a macro. This one is designed more for trinket use than anything else, but it's here for when you only want to silence one of the two skills this macro uses.

#showtooltip ExampleSpell1
/run sfx=GetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX");
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/use ExampleTrinket2
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/run SetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX",sfx);
/cast ExampleSpell1

If you're running low on characters and you're using this for a trinket, you can replace the use command with "use 13" (for upper trinket) or "use 14" (for lower trinket).

• Credit: Vandalite of Feathermoon, and Xaeros of Shadowmoon for the macro this was based on.
• Use: Replace "ExampleTrinket2" and "ExampleSpell1" With your cooldowns and abilities, then drag to your bar like a normal macro.
• Works in 3.3.2

I should note that I am pretty much useless at macros, so I may be incorrect on some of my assumptions here. I know there are lots of folks who are much better at Macroing than myself, so if you see any errors, please correct me in the comments, and I will change this. Some of the things I've recommended are things I've been thinking about doing myself but haven't yet done, so if you have problems with it, again, please let me know so I can make the relevant changes. People who help me correct my stupid mistakes in comments are my heroes.

You'll hear a lot of people talk about how Paladins or Discipline Priests are tank healers, or how other classes are subpar tank healers. I mean, everyone knows that Druids and Holy Priests are raid healers, and Shammies are Chain Healers, right?

The biggest mistake a healing lead can make, especially in a ten man raid when you only have 2 or 3 healers, is to pigeon-hole your healers based on their perceived niche. The larger the group, the more healers you have. The more healers you have, the more each healer can be specialized based on their niche. Thus we find ourselves in a situation where healers often have very specific roles in 25 man, but require a bit more flexibility in 10 mans. And too many people equate the strengths of each healing class in a 25 man to what their abilities will mean in a 10 man scenario.

Yes, some healers are better at certain tasks than others. However, never fail to recognize individual player style in combination with the flexibility of their class. A very important thing to remember is that all healing classes are balanced with abilities to heal single targets in addition to group heals. They absolutely have to be designed this way so that they can solo heal 5 man dungeons. Therefore, all healing classes can potentially do a stellar job with a tank healing assignment.

In order to break this down, we need to systematically break down the descriptions of single target healers and tank healers, and we also need to learn to differentiate between raid healers and AoE healers. Today I’m going to discuss single target healing.

Single Target Healing is an ability. It’s a niche that some healers, by design, excel at better than others. Tank Healing is an assignment. Got it? Wondering what the difference is? Well, it’s a subtle difference, I’ll give you that. The two classes most often referred to when discussing Single Target Healers are Disc Priests and Holy Pallies.

Last week Kurn had a post that discussed this conundrum with Holy Pallies, and it really got me thinking. Here’s a snippet of what Kurn said, but you can also read the whole interesting post yourself:

Single-target healing is our focus. True, this will generally be a tank, but that’s not always the case. Tank healing does not equal single-target healing. Apart from anything else, calling us “tank healers” completely ignores paladins who like to engage in PVP and arenas. There’s no way a mage, for example, can properly be called a “tank”, unless they’re tanking Krosh Firehand in Gruul’s Lair… Tank-healing is a subset of single-target healing.

I agree completely with Kurn (though I would probably flip that 3rd sentence and say that while tank healing IS single target healing, single target healing is not necessarily tank healing). And I will take that one step farther with Disc Priests.

When I was in charge of healing assignments in 25 mans, we had far too many Holy Pallies, and not enough raid healers. Therefore, when we had a Disc Priest, it was a challenge for me to come up with a specific assignment for them at first… and then I realized that most encounters have a situation in which a single player aside from the tank will start to take considerable damage.

Slag Pot. (Ulduar - Ignis)
Stone Grip. (Ulduar - Kologarn)
Bone Spike Graveyard. (ICC - Lord Marrowgar)
Mark of the Fallen Champion. (ICC - Saurfang)
Mutated Infection. (ICC - Rotface)
Penetrating Cold. (ToC - Anub'arak)
Legion Flame. (ToC - Jaraxxus)
Incinerate Flesh. (ToC - Jaraxxus)

Our resident Disc Priest could easily focus on these individual targets and allow the tank healers to continue doing their job and the raid healers to continue with theirs. It worked out fabulously – that is the strength of single target healing, and it does not necessarily need to be tank healing. I'll bet Kurn would agree that Holy Pallies would also do an excellent job at taking on these single-target non-tank healing assignments.

The Discipline Priest versus the Holy Paladin

There have been a lot of discussions lately about Disc Priests simply not being up to par as tank healers. Personally, I do not see a particular problem with tank healing as a Disc Priest in 10 man ICC (though I’m not a Hard Moder), but I can definitely see the argument in a 25 man raid.

The issue is actually less to do with single target healing ability, and more to do with the fact that most fights are two-tank fights to some degree – and Grace in effect punishes Disc Priests by 9% when we switch healing targets to try and heal two instead of just one. That is a significant gimp on our throughput. Pallies, on the other hand, can simultaneously heal the Main Tank AND the Off Tank through Beacon of Light (though they may not always choose to do this – see Saunder’s post).

Therefore, anytime there is a two tank fight, Pallies have an advantage over Disc Priests. In a 25 man environment, Disc Priests make better support healers for tanks, whereas Pallies can really do the brunt of the throughput healing. In 10 man, the problem is less extreme – Binding Heal, a Power Word: Shield, a Renew or a Prayer of Mending along with a splash heals from the raid healer will often be enough to keep up the OT until an actual tank swap occurs.

So, fine, Disc Priests are weak compared to Holy Pallies in terms of Tank Healing, at least in 25 man. Even Ghostcrawler has admitted this, albeit somewhat cautiously and grudgingly.

Personally, I suspect that it’s not so much that Disc Priests aren’t very good at it, it’s that we just can’t compete with Holy Pallies. For a vast portion of the healing public, that competition factor doesn’t really come into play – but for those who are in progressive raiding guilds, it does.
Therefore, the problem with Disc Priests as tank healers is that we are quite possibly the perfect example of a Single Target healer – whereas Holy Pallies are dual target healers. And current fights are usually designed around dual- tanking.

Other Classes as Tank Healers

As I mentioned before, all healers can adequately tank heal when necessary. I’ll repeat myself here – it is a requirement of designing healers that they be able to maintain the tank and group because healers are not just designed around raid encounters. They also need to be able to do their jobs well in a 5 man scenario in which they are the only healer. This was the most important thing I learned from the Circle of Healers survey – most responders who were not of the “tank healer” category commented that too many people don’t understand that they CAN tank heal.

Of course they can. There were plenty of times when, as a Holy Priest, I had to tank heal. This is one of the strengths of the Holy Priest, for the record – the ability to slip into ANY healing role at a moment’s notice without any significant gear or talent changes. If the tank healer goes down, the Holy Priest can slip right in to the role quite easily. Yes, a Holy Priest can definitely keep the tank alive and do a damn good job at it – they’ve got the burst and the single target throughput abilities to do it. They have a solid, and yet simple, rotation – as well as some “health pool softening” talents with Renew (side note: how do you like the word I chose to describe HoTs? Health pool softening – yay? Nay?).

For most raiding purposes, what sets the role of Tank Healing apart from other roles is that of sustainability.

Holy Priests can slip in and do an admirable job. However, they are not usually the best permanent choice for the role because of sustainability. In many situations, a Holy Priest will really struggle with their mana if forced to heal a single target for the entirety of a boss fight. It’s much better than it used to be, of course – now that we don’t have to pop in and out of the five second rule to stretch our mana, we can do a better job of it. But even still, Holy Priests just don't generally have the mana regen capabilities of a Disc Priest or Holy Pally unless they really go out on a limb to gear specifically for it.

I regret that I’m not as well versed in the styles of Shammies and Druids, but I suspect that in order to perform at their best as a tank healer, it requires a specific talent and gear selection. I rather like Druids as tank support healers, but burst is not the strength of a Druid. In my opinion, the best tank healers are the ones that have a reliable burst throughput and sustainability.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this though – especially from you Shammies and Druids. How do you feel your tank healing abilities compare?

Later this week we will discuss raid and AoE healing.

From a healer's perspective, there's a lot of fancy schmancy terminology in WoW. You've got people discussing throughput, mana management, mitigation, effective health, AoEability, clustering, stacking, proactive, reflexive, reactionary, etc etc etc. Sometimes when I want to feel good about myself, I just start throwing around these words like how I used Foucaultian terms in grad school. Makes people think you're smart or something.

Inevitably, these terms will get confused and misused. People will use one term when they mean another, or perhaps not understand the difference between two terms. And that's fine – after all, knowledge is relative. What one word means to you is not necessarily what it means to me. But I won't bore you with critical theory and philosophy today (I always get especially philosophical at 6 am, I have no idea why).

Let's look at a primary example of a word that is often misused or misunderstood conceptually. Fulguralis calls me a word nerd for a very good reason!

Mitigation.

-verb

1. to lessen in force or intensity, as wrath, grief, harshness, or pain; moderate

2. to make less severe: to mitigate a punishment.

3. to make (a person, one's state of mind, disposition, etc) milder or more gentle; mollify; appease.

4. to become milder; lessen in severity.

Disc Priests are the king of damage mitigation amongst the healing classes, and I don't think there's any argument about that. However, I often hear of Druids being referred to as damage mitigators as well, and this grates on my word nerdiness, and does not accurately reflect the power of the HoT. If you say that Druids are damage mitigators, then it could be interpreted that a Disc Priest + Resto Druid is a poor healing combo for a ten man raid. This is absolutely untrue – Disc Priest & Resto Druid is a fantastic ten man healing combo.

I have been unable to find a term that adequately describes the purpose and power of the Druid HoT. The word for Disc Priest is, of course, mitigation, but I cannot conceive of a proper alternative for Druids. I understand, therefore, why people often refer to them as mitigative (lawl I will not be put off by that squiggly red line!).

The power of mitigation healing is that it reduces the impact of a big burst of damage, smoothing the incoming damage out a bit, taking off the peaks of pain. HoTs have this same power, but in a different way. Mitigation smooths out the incoming damage. HoTs smooth out the health pool. They result in similar effects, but go about it in different ways. Both Disc Priests and Resto Druids are "smoothers" if you will – but they are inherently different in their processes, and misunderstanding the difference can be fatal.

The fundamental difference between the two is best described in an example.

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that you have a tank with 35k health. This tank takes a hit of 37k damage, and consequently dies. A Disc Priest can actively prevent this by using one of their many mitigative abilities – be it Power Word: Shield, Pain Suppression, or perhaps a well timed Divine Aegis proc. These "mitigation" abilities are, in effect, temporary hit points that will be absorbed before any of the actual damage. If I pop a 5k shield on the tank, I have effectively increased their health to 40k, albeit temporarily. This is enough to allow them to survive that hit.

A resto druid cannot give that tank temporary hitpoints. However, if my Penance is on cooldown, a Resto Druid can do something that I cannot. What if, right after that tank takes that 37k hit, and is down to 3k health, he continues to take melee damage? With his health so low, and all my cooldowns blown, he could die before I get my Flash Heal cast off. But if he has HoTs on him, he will have health trickling in that may be enough to keep him alive between the time that he took his giant hit and the time that my Flash Heal or Greater Heal lands. THIS is the power of a Resto Druid.

Of course, in the effort to find the right word for teh HOTNESS that is a resto druid, the Twitterati came out and threw me a variety of potential words to meet my demands. None of them were perfect enough for me, but some of them were pretty epic.

Cadistra and Angelya suggested "lifestream".

Angelya again: Trickling?

Me: Trickle top-offing?

Sheqeri: Increased effective health?

Dristanel: Flailing? Foundation HoTs?

Matticus: Health gappiness?

Nibuca: Hottification? Pre-cognitive burst smoothing? Bursty effective armor displacement stamina throughput druid mob tree? (I get this strange sensation as if she were almost teasing me...)

Wonderful suggestions, eh? But I do believe that Deyndor takes the prize for the best suggestion of all time: Colander Heals. (I made sure I spelled it right this time! Ever notice that my spelling errors are mostly limited to double consonant words?) Do you have a difficult time conceptualizing Colander Heals? Well, LET ME DRAW YOU A PICTURE

Do you know who the awesomest person in a 10man raid is?

No, it's not the tank.

Not the raid leader.

Also, not me (I'm second though; Nice try you brown-noser!).

It's the Third Healer.

See, the Third Healer is the magical person who agrees to bounce back and forth between a healing and a DPS spec at your every whim. When you're testing out new strategies and logistics on new bosses, that Third Healer is the lynchpin to success.

When I'm running a raid (I use the word "running" because I don't technically lead, because that requires me to click things like "give people assist" and mark people and that's totally hard, and also, I get really mad when people talk over me, and then I shut up and pout, so it's usually better if someone else takes the official leading role, even if I'm bossing him around from the background... ahem), I like to try new bosses with an eye for surviving as long as possible on our first few attempts. I don't care about enrage timers; I want everyone to live as long as possible so that they can see as much of the boss fight as possible, and get into the swing of things.

And that, my friends, is where the Third Healer comes in.

Our Third Healer is a Resto/Elemental Shammy. He is the perfect Third Healer. What does it take to be a great Third Healer?

• Ability to do solid DPS in one spec
• Ability to do awesome Healing in another spec
• Ability to properly gear both specs
• Patience with a very annoying RL who keeps telling you to switch things around
• Total flexibility

This shammy is the best at all those things. The other two healers in our raid DO have off-specs, of course. We *could* DPS if needed. I have a very nice Shadow set, and though I'm not going to top any meters, I could probably... well, still come in dead last but not by a huge margin. The druid healer who sits next to me, however, isn't even hit-capped on his off-spec.

The Shammy in question, however, is never a waste of resources. He can top the DPS when that's his assignment, and he can also top the effective heals when he's healing. He can tank heal if needed. He can raid heal if needed. As a shaman, he is not particularly strong on the mobility front, but that's a feature of his class - not him as a player. And I don't fret about that too much, because the Disc Priest and the Resto Druid have mobility coming out the... well.

Because he is constantly switching back and forth to help us out as we learn new bosses, I have a Third Healer loot rule. That means that his main-spec and off-spec are one and the same for loot purposes. We don't really have strict rules in our raid, it's mostly based on courtesy - if someone has already won something, they can still roll, but we'll give priority to someone who hasn't won anything yet (for the record, this is sooo much easier to do in a 10 man raid!). We do, however, give priority to people's main specs. For the Third Healer, however, he can roll on anything that would benefit either of his specs.

It sure helps that the person who made that rule, however, is one of the healers against whom he will be rolling for items. Not sure how well that would go over if the other healers didn't agree with this philosophy.

Anyway, the point of all this, is that if you are starting to put together some ten man raids, if you are learning new fights - bring someone who can deeps AND heal, and is flexible enough, and willing enough to do both. And don't screw them on loot - you WANT them to maintain a good healing set as well as a good dps set. And that's not always easy!

That Third Healer is integral to learning new fights, especially if you're a pretty casual bunch.

A toast to our Third Healer, who helped us learn every boss in ICC so far!

Alright, Aion has temporary control over my soul. It’s not that I like it better than WoW (far from it), but simply that it’s something new to me, with lots of different aspects I can analyze.

The other day, I healed my first “instance”. It works strangely in Aion, and I’m still rather new to the whole thing, so I won’t try to explain it. The point here is that I was in charge of healing a group of six. I had been playing the game less than 5 days, so unsurprisingly I was more than a little nervous. One of the good things about starting a game that is only 3 months old in North America, is that everyone is at least a little new, so they are more understanding if you are still trying to learn the basics… most of them are still learning too.

Despite the complete lack of healing interface add-ons (no add-ons in Aion, zomg), and regardless of my noobishness, everyone in the party was very pleased with how well I healed. I learned a lot about my spells during that run… “Ooooo! Hey look! I have a dispel! I didn’t know that…”, but there were a lot of things I didn’t need to learn. There are some aspects of healing that seem to be somewhat universal across MMORPGs.

• Watching health bars. In Aion and in WoW, if you are healing, you are keeping your eyes on everyone’s health bars. It’s a bit easier right now in Aion, because since there are no add-ons, and since I’m low level, the interface is very simple and clean. It’s easier to see when someone is at drastically low health. You have to split your focus between player status bars and your surroundings – and that is always tricky. It’s a skill you learn through lots of healing.

• The value of HoT effects. I don’t have any shields yet in Aion, but I know from my healing experience in WoW to keep a HoT up on the tank at all times. I currently have two different HoTs in Aion, but it unfortunately appears as though these two HoTs don’t stack. So, I know from my experience healing next to druids that I usually put the longer time, less heal per tick HoT on the tank, and the shorter, burstier HoT on some of the melee, or other classes that take damage. I also keep a HoT ticking on myself all the time while soloing and running quests.

• Threat, zomg threat. Call it aggro or enmity or threat, whatever you like. It’s a balancing effect for healers. It used to be a lot harder to manage in WoW, but in late BC they changed some of the threat mechanics, so at end game, it’s almost a non-issue. In Aion however, at least at this level, it is a big freaking deal. The tanks only have so many taunt abilities (maybe only one) and it has a serious cooldown. I was constantly pulling threat and getting beat on. However, the Cleric in Aion is more along the lines of a traditional D&D Cleric – I can wear all armor classes aside from plate. So, decked out in Chain Mail, it’s not as devastating as it would be were I playing my priest in WoW.

• Triage. Anytime you have a certain class makeup with specific roles, prioritizing who gets healed first is a crucial component. Keep the person taking the beating up so that others who can’t handle the beating don’t die. Keep the people who keep others up. Keep the people who perform crucial duties alive. Keep people who can rez alive. In Aion, you can rez while in combat (something I didn’t realize until a bit later during our run… whoops), and if you buy certain implements, you don’t need to be a healer to rez others. With this knowledge in hand, I knew who had resurrection implements on them, and made sure to prioritize them along with the tank… at least if I go down, they can rez me. Anyone who can combat rez gets bonus triage points. There is a common philosophy that healers don’t need to know bosses or mob abilities… “just heal stuff”. This is not exactly true. Sometimes, there is someone else performing a crucial duty other than the tank. Anyone else remember the mage-tank fight in Gruul’s Lair? The mage taking on that task needed a special healer as well.

• Pre-Casting and Stop-Casting Heals. This is another reason why it’s good to know mob abilities as a healer. This was also the main thing that made the others in my party realize that, noob though I may be, I am a good healer. If you wait until after someone in your party has taken damage, it may simply be too late. Anyone who has ever been assigned to tank healing knows the value of a big burst, long cast time heal. Greater Heal and Holy Light often work best when you start casting them right before the party member takes a big fat hit. When I was healing in my Aion party, I knew when we went into some of the fights that some of those mobs started out hitting big… so before they even got a hit in, I had started casting my biggest heal. The tank never even had a chance to panic. He would take the huge damage, and half a second later, be healed to full.

• Know Your Duty. If I'm a healer, I need to be healing. I generally should not be worrying about contributing to damage. I know this isn't true in all games, and not always in PvP. But when in doubt? Just focus on healing, or you might get distracted and miss something important when someone needs heals.

• Watching the Target's Target. I didn't figure out until a day or so ago how to turn on this feature in Aion, and it was killing me. When you are spending more time watching bars and interface aspects than the actual creatures around you, you need to know who a monster is pursuing. If you just always assume it's the tank (which, in many cases may even be a fairly safe assumption), it's quite possible that someone will slip under the radar and get dead. This is another reason why I hate having to target someone to heal them - I want to keep my focus on the boss so that I always know who he's going after and prepare myself to heal them. For instance, in the Lady Deathwhisper and Onyxia fights, I keep the bosses targeted so I know who they will be casting their next frostbolt / fire breath / whatever on, so that I can bubble them before hand. Here's hoping I can figure out how to do this more effectively in Aion!
  

There’s something reassuring in knowing that if you can master the art of healing in and of itself, that skill and knowledge is transferrable. You still won’t walk in necessarily knowing what each of your spells do, or how to battle specific mobs, how you will mesh with other players and classes, but you’ll be on a solid footing from the start.

The strangest thing has happened over the course of the past week or so. Somehow I suddenly became - dare i say it? - a good healer.

Now, I'm not saying I wasn't a good healer before. To be quite frank, I really don't know if I was a good healer or not. I tried to make up for whatever I lacked by being generally jovial and apologetic. Oh and being a dwarf, and therefore awesome. It's not like you have to be some expert WoW player to surf on over to blogger.com and create a healing blog after all. Don't be fooled by all the *sparkly* rhetoric.

While this revelation did not occur to me until last night, it began on Monday night in our regular 10 man ToC run.

For various reasons, the entire night was somewhat frustrating for me because I am the kind of person that really needs to focus in order to do well. Some people can pay attention to 18 different things at once, and still do a great job - not me. One thing I canNOT multitask is conversation. When one person is talking to me IRL, someone is asking me questions in vent, I'm trying to keep up with both raid and guild chat, and then multiple people are sending me tells, I just lose it. It probably comes from deep seated guilt issue involving a childhood friend and a dog, or an abusive half aunt twice removed or something, but I can't drop a conversation when someone is talking to me. I feel like I need to keep up my end, or else I'm a total failfriend.

Yet somehow, through the tears and frustration, and arguments, we got to Anubrekhan for only the second time in our short ToC10 experience, and we two shot him. And it was the best New Patch Eve raid ever. I was finally able to accept that 3.3 was coming, and embrace the new content knowing that I had finally seen the last of the old. True, it wasn't hard mode, and it wasn't 25 man, but I don't really care.

And the best part is, we successfully made it through phase 3 the very first time we'd ever seen it. I thought for sure it would be a struggle for us healers. But as a Disc priest? It's just awesome. I spent the entire time throwing bubbles and making last second saves with uber bursty Penance. Three times I let someone get below 5% health before I finally blasted them with a Penance. It was like this delicate ballet, and I was in the middle doing my Penance Pirouette.

And just as I'm really starting to have fun and get my groove on, SHAZAM I have a new achievement, and I'm looking around me saying "What? That's it?"

****

Yesterday I successfully pugged several of the new 5 mans as well as some other random heroic dungeons.

The crowning moment each time for me was Ick & Krick. Similar to the rogue in ToC 5 man, there are pools of poison that spawn in which you do not want to stand. But what I noticed was that you can see the pool splurge poison thingies being thrown at you, so you can move out of the way before they land (although you do seem to take one tick of damage before they even land, which is rather annoying).

I guess to many others this wouldn't be that big of a deal, but to me it was. For once, I proved that I am capable of good situational awareness. Before I specced Disc, I was always staring at healing bars, and never noticed these things. The difference is that as Holy, you are reacting to the damage people take, whereas for Disc, you are primarily trying to prevent it. Since you are attempting to prevent the damage, you need to be more aware of what damage is coming in - and if you have everyone shielded, you can afford to spare a few more glances around instead of glaring at green bars the whole time.

I'm not saying one spec is better than the other. But, having now healed higher end content in both specs, I'm integrating the lessons I learned from both of them and becoming a better healer because of it. (I was also quite proud of myself for spontaneously remembering to use Shackle Undead during Halls of Reflection on annoying random ranged ghosts.)

The point of this post is not to toot my own horn. My entire premise for writing this blog, and for reading so many other healing blogs, is that I firmly believe that we become better healers by learning about other healing classes. Although Holy/Disc are not two different classes, they are vastly different specs. And I can say, without any hesitation, that learning both specs has improved my healing skills for each one. It goes beyond healing better with members of different classes and specs, and relates more to the different skills used for each healer type.

Holy taught me trigger finger reflex response.

Disc taught me awareness of incoming damage.

Shadow taught me that just because a spell looks weak on the tooltip doesn't mean it's not super strong in practice. (Why hello there Vampiric Touch, so nice to meet you.)

My experience with the two-trick pony healer over the weekend left me pondering the nuances of a skilled healer.

Of course, much like the Pretentious Priest, it is possible to make your way through a lot of content by merely bashing your face against your keyboard in rhythm to Tchaikovsky, as long as you bind all your keys to Flash Heal or Circle of Healing/ Penance. I mean, let's face it - it's not actually that difficult to buy yourself some top notch gear these days, and especially for healers, once you outgear an instance, you end up healing yourself out of a job.

There's all this talk going around about how much harder healing is going to be in Icecrown. Health pools will be larger! Heals will be smaller! There's a debuff thingie that will make your tanks weep with pansy-fication!

Rubbish, say I.

Well okay, maybe not total rubbish, but I do remain skeptical. I remember all the hubbub about Ulduar as well - how it was actually going to be HARD on healers. How mana regen was going to be tricky, you would have to choose your heals wisely. You would need to coordinate better with your fellow healers. Sound familiar to anyone else?

It didn't take long before healing was no real challenge in the first half of Ulduar. And it was the gear that made it so easy.

I'm not standing up here on my soapbox to tell you all that zomg healing is soooooo easy, why are you struggling?! This is a cakewalk! I could solo heal this lol. Especially since I'll be the first to tell you, I'm a middle of the road raider. I haven't seen most of the hard modes, and I'm certainly not on the cutting edge of the raiding scene.

What troubles me is how quickly healers are made obsolete. How, the better we get, the more we improve our gear, the harder we fight to learn all the best ways to use our spells, the nuances within the trigger finger dynamic... what ends up happening is that we heal ourselves out of a job.

Suddenly those 6 slots that were set aside for healers become 5. Because if you don't do that, then your healers CAN get away with Easy-button face smashing to fulfill their duties. You might as well turn that 6th slot into a DPS, so that we can take down the bosses faster. I'm not complaining about this decision - it is a practical one, and I understand it.

When the content is new, and your gear is beginner level for the instance, it's fun. It's a challenge. You have to think, and you have to make real choices. This person needs healing NOW. Should I use Renew? Or Circle of Healing to give others around him a little boost? Should I bubble or is there no risk of more damage coming at him. Should I use GrittedTeeth or AngelWings?

It doesn't matter how much health you add to the bosses, or even to the tanks. You can nerf regen all to hell. Gear is so easy to get due to the way badges are handed out like candy. The gear gap is traversed so quickly that it's not worth blinking. It's not worth worrying over. Oh you want to ninja my epics? Meh. I've got 18 more in my back pocket. Yawn.

We are able to upgrade our gear so quickly, and so easily, that Blizz is shooting themselves in the foot - the easier new gear is to acquire, the shorter our attention span becomes. This is due not only to us finding ourselves with no desire for anything that drops in the instance, but also because we gear up so fast, the instance is quickly turned into a moot point. A challengeless chasm.

Don't you love when people criticize something but have no solution to the problem? >.>

I have hopes for ICC, despite my skepticism. I hear murmurs of a healer glory encounter. I hope there are more of those in the future - Incinerate Flesh is my favorite fight mechanic so far (though I'm not as fond when I'm running Disc). But I am again brought back to the question: How can Developers fix healing? It doesn't scale with gear and encounter difficulty properly. At least for DPS, if you outgear the place, you get it done faster.

This is a question I'm still pondering, but I leave this for you readers to think about as well. I'm thinking some creative solutions lie in the D&D world. I'd love to read some creative thoughts on how to address this problem. Or do you see no problem at all? Tell me all about it by clicking that little comment button down below XD

I generally detest blogging about… well, blogging. It’s like making drama about drama. A topic, squared, does not necessarily increase the amount of interest on that topic. Meta-blogging is really not my thing.

Be that as it may, I am currently having a previously only internal debate regarding the direction of this site. No, I’m not going to stop writing it anytime soon. I have 12 drafts in my blogger queue, 7 drafts sitting on ScribeFire, and 18 emails I have sent to myself with other column topics I’m working on. And let’s not forget the giant Healer Survey data analysis that glares at me angrily every time I sit down to my macbook with the intention of running dailies. This brain, it’s like a fountain I tell you. A FOUNTAIN OF SPLENDOR. There’s no risk of drying up anytime soon.

But… what is the purpose of Miss Medicina? If I had a mission statement, what exactly would it say?

When I originally began to write this (with lots of encouragement from Fulguralis and Fuubaar), my premise was simple - a blog about healing philosophy. Not traditional theorycrafting, because math is like, hard, but a different kind of theorycrafting that comes from finding overarching general patterns amongst how healers heal, how they play, and the nuances of healing style. I planned to start with healing as a Priest, expand into Holy Healing (by progressing into Holy Paladin information), and then slowly begin integrating Nature Healing with Druids and Shammies. First and foremost, I wanted to write a blog that would be a resource for new healers. I wanted to help them cover the gap between “l2play n00b” and an Ensidia application.

The progression never happened. It’s not because I don’t love resto shammies (why does Word keep trying to change this to shimmies?) and druids, but more because I struggled with my Paladin, and then kept going back to my lovable, huggable, femdwarf priest. There are plenty of people who are altoholics, who simply love playing lots of different classes. I, however, judge everything against my Priest. I love everything about the Priest class. I love my class so much that when I play OTHER games I always pick the priestliest character class I can find (such as my 4e cleric). When I try to level a new alt, I never get past the early teens… unless it’s another priest. Yes, that’s right. Arguably the most detested class to level, and it’s the only class I’m interested in leveling. That having been said, I certainly enjoy reading about other healing classes.

So therefore, as it happens, I have posted a lot more information specific to Priests – yet even here I’ve made a distinction. I’ve completely ignored that shadowy spec, because I wanted to restrict my focus to healing (hello… Medicina?). So now I’m in something of a conundrum that really grates on my type A – I-like-things-in-neat-little-categories brain. If I’m going to focus on priests, shouldn’t I include more shadow priest discussion? If I’m going to focus on healers, shouldn’t I expand to more than just Priests?

This is one of those things that makes Priests a somewhat tricky class about whom to write. Of the four healing classes, you have two full blown hybrids that can cover every role (Druids and Paladins), one class that has 2 DPS trees and 1 healing tree (Shaman) and then you’ve got Priests, with 2 Healing specs, and 1 dps spec. I don’t read a large number of Shaman blogs, but of the ones I have seen, there seems to be some struggle with this as well. For priests, most of the time you find people either writing solely about the Healing Priest (Holy & Disc), or the Damage Priest (Shadow), and ne’er the twain shall meet.

Before dual spec, it seemed that we Priests had something of a standoff. Many who were healers were adamantly opposed to Shadow, and many more Shadow Priests were sick of being asked to heal. The lines have blurred a bit with the release of Dual Speccing. Many of us who were once solely healers picked up a Shadow spec for the purposes of grinding dailies, or other every day tasks.

Dual Spec has allowed me to play around with shadow in ways I never had before. I have a lot of questions, and a lot of topics I could write about shadow priesting, especially as I have recently begun raiding as shadow (the irony is that these are alt runs – everyone else brings an alt, and here I am, just running a different spec on the same toon). But is this really the place for it? Can Miss Medicina bear the weight of so little focus?

Ideally what I would prefer is a place to regularly write about Priests specifically (all different manifestations), and another place for Healing Philosophy in general. Until such an opportunity presents itself and is settled, however, Miss Medicina remains as it has been – a healer’s blog, with a special interest in Priests of the non-shadow variety. If, however, I were to have a weekly post specific to Shadow Priests, would it merely annoy my readership?

What a heavy Friday topic. I am having an identity crisis, it appears. Which role am I first? The Healer or the Priest?

One of the most difficult things for me in regards to switching from Holy to Disc, is learning how to bubble properly. Since I rarely use Power Word: Shield when I run Holy, and since I'm a habit-based healer, I knew that training myself to bubble properly would be tricky.

I originally suspected that I would not bubble enough, so when I started as Disc, I forced myself to bubble all the time. As I mentioned before, this actually turned out to be a bad thing - I bubbled too often when people wouldn't take damage, and therefore spent far too much mana on bubbles without benefiting from Rapture. In effect, it's no different than overhealing. I was bubbling often enough to try and keep weakened soul up on every member of my five man at first, before I began to realize that was over-doing it.

I ran several heroics this past weekend, and my primary intent was to learn to bubble properly. Here are some of the tips I picked up for bubbling in a 5 man:

• Always bubble the tank. When Weakened Soul falls off, rebubble - you want weakened soul to remain on the tank at the very least.
  

• It's usually a good idea to keep a bubble up on yourself, whether or not you know you will be taking damage, but I don't think you need to worry about bubbling often enough to maintain Weakened Soul.

• If there is not a lot of group wide damage, and all the damage can effectively be picked up by the tank, then do not waste your mana bubbling the rest of the DPS.

• Squishy, high threat DPS (i.e. mages) who may have occasional trouble with aggro, particularly when there are multiple mobs and they are providing AoE damage, are good candidates for full time Bubblage. However, again, I do not find it necessary to bubble enough to maintain constant Weakened Soul.

• When there is group wide damage, it is then a good idea to bubble all members of your party. If everyone is likely to take a fairly large amount of unavoidable damage, this may warrant maintaining weakened soul on everyone, as best as you can.

• Regardless of the circumstances, be sure to bubble people often enough to keep up Renewed Hope buff for the whole party.

Bubbling properly is one of the trickiest arts to master as a new Disc Priest, so I will likely be posting more information about various Bubbling tips and suggestions as I gain more experience.

I know there are several Disc Priests who read this blog, so please provide more suggestions about proper bubbling procedures for the five man scenario in the comments - I'd love to hear them! I'll post about bubbling in raids at a later date.

Eventually I intend to put all of this information together into one long guide specifically on the art of bubbles for new Disc Priests. It's become something of an obsession with me, because as a healer, mana usage and mana regen is always on my mind - and for Disc Priests, bubble management is fundamental for mana management. I hear all the time about how Disc Priests should not have problems with mana, so I am trying to get to a point where I feel I can say that about myself as well.