I liked that you acknowledged HoTs exist. Whatever UI you chose to use as a healer, there is no excuse- none- for not having a means of displaying other healers’ HoTs. Those are real heals that can save you time, energy, and mana- and save your druids (and priests) from shoving a mace through your skull after one too many overwrites. ^_^

I’m currently using a mix of:
- 4-5 macros, dedicated to our MT’s (5 of them so that I don’t have to edit them everytime one of them gets swapped out - I’m lazy, sue me) which basically cast lifebloom, rejuv and regrowth (depending on modifiers shift/alt) and fire my essence of the martyr (I keep getting outrolled on better trinkets >.<)
- mouseover macros for lb, rejuv, regrowth, swiftmend and NS/HT for raid healing which usually means dropping rejuvs left, right and center. Your typical mouseover macro would be something like
/cast [target=mouseover][] spellname
- clique for buffing, decursing/abolish poison, and rebirthing.

I found clique+grid for general MT healing to be too laggy to keep up 5 stacks of lifebloom (loads of haste ftw :P), plus it reminded me too much of healbot which I hate with a passion ^^

As for healing assignments on trash - usually never do them except on the trash between the Twins in SWP and M’uru when you have locks tanking, or the Gauntlet up to the Twins which can be quite long/mana consuming so you want to optimize there.

Ithiliens last blog post..Noobs/Newbs

Going to strongly recommend every healer get this. Today.

Thanks, Nibuca!

Hmm, though regarding healing assignments on trash, when I’m doing assignments, I error on the side of caution and do trash assignements even. Pallies get tanks, while druid and shammies get raid. I’ll stick priests on tanks or keeping dps up (bubble and flashses on mages and warlocks helps a lot on those Murloc packs). Once again, then you don’t end up with 5 people jumping on Mage A, while Warlock B goes down.

Also, who cares about mana efficiency on trash, unless its a really long pull and 1/2 the raid is dead, or if you’re chain pulling to get through the hallways faster.

Thirdly, clobbering HoTs is also ok. It’s the ticks in between that count. Tidewalker is a prime example of a tank who does a whole lot of damage in a very short amount of time. When we first started learning him, the tank would be fine, and then Fwoom dead. So we stuck 2 resto druids on him, and solved the problem. With 6 stacks of LB and rejuvs and priest renews, there were enough heals incoming to keep up with the damage. = )

Sorry, not trying to refute your point, just that healing assignments and mana bugeting are more important imho than worrying about overhealing and canceling someone else’s heals. IF, the big if, your healers aren’t going oom. If so, then find a new UI ala Grid and communicating better re: heals would be extremely good ideas.

The genesis of this post came from a raid where I helped heal.. and we didn’t have heal targets for the trash pulls.. and I would often -see- two other healers start heals on my heal target.. and that wasn’t even considering the HoTs I clobbered.. or the healers using Healbot that I couldn’t see.

I didn’t vastly overheal on that raid.. but I did feel that alot of my mana was needlessly wasted.

Heal assignments are another good solution.. but at least being able to see my fellow healers would reassure me that “person B who is hurt” is getting some attention.

I fully appreciate how much people LOVE grid. I’m also certain that you’ll think I’m stark raving mad that I don’t use it. Yeah, I play a holy priest. Been CoH style since we got into BT. I’ve tried Grid and Clique, but it just felt awkward. I’m very happy with my xperl raid frames for seeing incoming damage, who has aggro on the boss, and what debuffs people have. My overheal is usually around 40% depending on the fight.

Our healing team is really good about assignments. If you have extra mana in your budget for the fight, then you cross heal as you like, otherwise we have all the targets covered. Thus we don’t run into the 5 healers jumping on one person to the detriment of the rest of the raid.

I guess my point is, as long as the healers isn’t going oom, and is keeping up % wise on WWS reports with the rest of their class of healers/assignment, then why consider those healers less prepared? I should give Grid/Clique another chance, but… I dunno, the only fight where mana/healing is desperate at times is Illidari Council and Brutalis, but the first is just crazy times, and we’re still learning Brut.

Great blog though, glad I took the link over.

Makes me cry.

Kikidass last blog post..Mini-Rant and Other Things

However, Grid and its estimated incoming heal are very useful. I recommend to raise refresh priority of health status to 99, to slightly increase the refresh rate of health deficit. It’s amazing how that setting can contribute to increase effective heals.

Another topic you might want to touch on though are healing plans. Standing the chance that 5 people will heal the same person simply won’t cut it anymore once you get a bit higher up in the endgame business. You need clear cut healing plans, both for trash and bosses. Healers x + y on MT’s & group healing for trash for example, and very clearly defined assignments during boss fights. It’ll greatly improve your healing performance and reduce the risk of accidental deaths - faster trash, faster&cleaner kills, less corpse running, more clearing/night. And all it needs is 2 minutes of organising prior to raid start or a boss fight.

Hulans last blog post..Aaaaaaagh!