Circle of Healers – Cataclysm edition

Back in Wotlk Miss Medicina had a big project going on that had a huge success: Circle of Healers. I think that was what made me start blogging. I wanted to give some answers and I wanted to do it the proper way so, I created this blog.

Anyway, after filling up a guild application last night I felt like this should be updated for Cataclysm… so, here is my

Circle of Healers – Cataclysm edition

• What are the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

Bati, Discipline Priest (lately I have started to enjoy holy again but I will go for discipline at any point)

• What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

25 man raiding even too, sometimes, not showing up from certain members in my EX guild leaded to doing bosses in 10 man also.

• What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?

At the moment Inner Focus is pure win. If you have Train of Thought talented too, maybe Strength of Soul, if you know you are constantly on tank healing, then your job becomes much easier.

• What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

That would be Heal. As disc I don’t use it that much. In current raid environment if I am on tank healing then I will use it to fill up and have something incoming at times but that’s rare. Usually on heroic the damage is too big for Heal to catch up on hp pool.

When I am on raid healing usually I have responsibility over 1 group or 2 and we all know how much spike damage there is sometimes. Using Heal seems again unnecessary.  Overall and depending on fight the place of Heal on my healing done is often 1-2%.

I have added to my grid any absorption that are up on my raid at any given time plus the number of hots rolling from other classes. Thus, just to cast something for the love of it didn’t felt necessary.

• What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

Flexibility!  This was my answer when this Circle of Healing was started by MissMedicina and is still is.

Considering Blizard tried to give to all healers similar spells so they can fill both roles (raid/tank healing) a discipline priest is still a bit weak in terms of burst healing when is needed. We do very well as tank healers with PW:S and decent strong heals to fill up the gap left by weakened debuff. With Strength of Soul talented as very important for tank healing, disc can be a good option for the job.

We can keep up a group up, again, with almost no issues if we time shields and PoH but sometimes still it feels needed a druid/shaman or holy priest to help us catch up on the huge health pools. The raid group won’t die do to still some absorbs that probably are up on them but becomes risky.

• What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?

With the current design of encounters not being able to pop up 25k hps as raw healing and not abortion, makes me feel  like I am there when I shouldn’t be.

• In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?

On some fights I feel it’s a bit of a waist to have a discipline priest strictly on one group when he can help more supporting the entire raid. Of course the assignments can be a guideline and rest of the time we can help up mitigating the incoming damage. But, overall the healing team must work together and stick to their jobs.

I love when I have 1-2 more priests in raid and we make a full use of PoH glyph by casting PoH on different groups in a certain order.

• What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

Paladin – with this Blizzard really made a fine job. Just a few reasons to be mentioned are the Holy Power mechanic, nerfed beacon (which can still help out) and the aoe healing a paly can put out, while still topping up the tank.  A plus for any encounter now is also the amount of personal cd’s they have to stay alive (40 sec cd on Divine Protection!).

• What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

I do play paladin, priest, druid but I must say in a 5 man/raid environment druid is dead boring. Probably I would like more a shaman… If I find the “straight”  to the level up one.

• What is your worst habit as a healer?

I like to see bars at full health and this gave me hard times at the start of Cataclysm when topping one person will starve me on mana later on if wanted to heal right away and not use spell with a low mana cost.

• What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?

People not moving under Barrier. If is not Chimaeron  or any other boss where I would put the barrier on top of the raid I find it sometimes annoying to see people just standing outside of it. Getting close to your raid is fine in some encounters and it’s stressing out to see after so much time people still don’t know the fight.

Also, in a heroic dungeon I often see the tank moving out of it… “dude! I put it there with a reason and I am 100% sure is no fire under it!”

• Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?

PvE healing – yes. I could complain because we can’t top up so fast but that’s minor because then again we do have our absorption which is very strong still.

• What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

Did any of my assignment targets died? If they did… what killed them? Why I didn’t heal them at that time? Those are the first 3 questions I first search an answer and usually I get this from recount. According to the info I get from checking this I try to adjust. The second step is to see my healing done, overhealing and comparing with other disc priests. I do this using the logs or recount if there are more than 1 disc priest in my raid (and it did happen).

If I have a group assigned I still check my top targets that I healed and see if I did focus on my job or I was random throwing heals.  Another thing that I frequently check is energy gained (mana in this case)  and what I did use for it… ofc comparing this with other disc priests.

• What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

We are shield bots! Considering Blizzard made some changes and some players  made full use of the game mechanics, thus having healing done by shields at an outrageous amount (80-90%) will still put a mark on other discipline priest even they don’t do the same thing. Of course after the “nerf” on mana cost for a PW:S, things balanced out a bit.

• What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

How to use wise the entire arsenal of healing spells. Compared to Wotlk this has improved a lot because the encounters and mana cost forced in a way healer’s hand to think twice before casting something. Also… use that Binding Heal!

• 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)?

Until now I was on top of healing meters but that was also because some of the healers I play with underperformed… I think. And, as for any disc, overhealing won’t be that big but absorption will count a lot toward ends. Depending on the encounter and my assignments I will have shields or PoH fighting for a % on top and then divine aegis, PoM, Greater Heal, Binding and the list will go down with spells from my healing arsenal.

• Haste or Crit  Mastery and why?

I will update this question with Haste or Mastery – bc is Cataclysm  and is no news here, the answer will be Mastery. Maybe if I would have been more often on tank healing job my choices will be different but… is only a maybe.

• What healing class do you feel you understand least?

Resto shamans… I have never played one and I think that’s the best way to properly understand a class. My shaman is lvl 17 now… and she just doesn’t want to go further… I hope I will manage to pull myself together and level it at some point.

• What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?

Grid and a bunch of mini grid addons plus Clique, Ingela’s Rapture, Power Auras. My mouse has an impressive 16 bindings on it… of course along with keyboard modifiers.  On top of this are some mouse over macros.

• Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

As I said before Mastery I stack at the moment. For gems I keep intellect, intellect + mastery or intellect + spirit (as Intellect is still the queen) and I reforge mostly crit and a bit of haste for mastery.

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