One thing I've noticed in our raids is that I am overhealing a ton. In pretty much every boss fight I'm chain-casting my biggest heal spells. And all of our other healers are pretty much doing the same thing.

This sucks my mana dry, obviously.

If we get a bit more organized, I think we'll have a much better chance of finishing these boss fights without drinking a ton of Major Mana.

So, here are some ideas.

1) Healing Macros that say what spell you're casting, who you're casting it on & how long until the spell lands. Example, "Greater Heal on Widget in 2.5 seconds."
2) A healer chat channel, vsmedics, to display macro-generated messages. No need to clutter up the raid channel with these messages.
3) 1 designated priest and 1 designated druid in charge of HoT spells. My Renew does more healing than Aro's for example. So I'd be in charge of casting it on the MT. No need for her to cast it, using her mana, just to have me overwrite it.

Any other ideas? Dissenting opinions? Jibber jabber?

THE LIVING ARE HERE!!!

Actually I was just looking at this:

http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons-4743-1-prefects-healing-addon.html

This is pretty damn cool. Here's the description:

This addon is made with healing rotation in mind. What it does is that it
heals whoever has aggro from your target. For example, when you target
Broodlord and hit the key you have assigned in Key Bindings, it will heal
the one who has aggro from Broodlord at the time you push the button.
When your mana gets below the % you choose and it's time to switch with your healing buddy,
it will autowhisper your buddy and ask him to take over for you. Currently
it supports Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Renew and Power Word: Shield. There is a
Setup section where you can set your current healing buddy and the message you
want to send him when you are low on mana. You can also from this menu select spell ranks
and mana whisper threshold.

lern2heal nub!

Jam, I'm actually trying to avoid an add-on heavy solution. Also, that doesn't support any druid spells, apparently.

I almost never target the boss, unless I'm unsure who has aggro. 90% of the time I'm targeting the MT. So targeting the boss & then pressing the Assist button is just an additional step.

What's your overhealing at, percentage-wise? To some degree overhealing is inevitable, so your goal should be to minimize it, not to eliminate it.

Some ideas:

- The CTRA MT targets has a built-in target-of-target that makes it really easy to target whoever currently has aggro. It's not on by default, but all healers should have it enabled.
- Use a mana conserve macro / mod. Not perfect but better than nothing.
- Have designated people flash healing vs. greater healing. If you need to go into regen mode, start casting long, big heals with the intent of cancelling as many of them as possible.
- I'm not in your raids, but IMHO the healing announcements get annoying really fast, and it's hard enough to worry about health bars without having to worry about parsing a healing chat channel too.
- This last one doesn't directly address overhealing but it does address mana efficiency: Have you done a healing rotation? There are a bunch of schools of thought on how to do this. Here's one of my favorites:

http://conquest.teamgbu.com/strats/moltencore/healingstrategies.php

It's probably just a question of playstyle; I'm afraid I'd get so worked up about missing my macro on some big heal-rotation mechanism that I'd totally kill efficiency right there. I don't have the +heal gear you do (by choice), but my +crit gear has been really effective in helping pick up some slack. I tend spam just regular Heal, too, since it's the lowest mana-cost, and I've noticed that I only ever have to pop a potion when things go dreadfully wrong (frex I've been carrying the same stack of 5 for about three weeks; I used one last night, and haven't cast more than half a dozen Flash Heals since my Jack-of-all-Heals respec).

I use Benecast, which is not only handy for the people that suck at healing (like myself) it also manages the spells needed and you can limit overhealing. Say you are chain casting greater heal, if your rank 9 is needed it casts it or if at the time of casting only a rank 2 is needed, it will do that instead.

The only fights I've ever healed on in raids with Ing is the bat priestess and on Drak, usually only when one of our main healers goes down or is silenced, although Jorack and I were both throwing a few on the bat priestess JUST IN CASE. I think the macro thing would help a lot, and so would the separate chat channel. It would help the backup healers like the pallies, who really only throw heals if the PH-es are OOM or trying to get aggro off themselves, to only do so when necessary, as opposed to us just watching the health bars and hoping we don't step on PH toes and/or miss a chance to throw an overtaxed PH a save because we were AFRAID of stepping on said toes.

That said, Laur will eventually be a PH, and I'm getting better at figuring out when to and not to throw an extra heals to the PH-ers, and I PERSONALLY want to avoid getting too bogged down in addons just because that makes it less fun for me. I know there are several addons and macros that can be used to stop a healing spell or some such, but to me part of the fun of playing a healer is learning to time the heals right and manage mana is part of the good time.

THAT said, there are some good, helpful addons and some good helpful macros (I like Gleja's ideas and Jam's to some extent - I would try Jam's addon if we were ever at a point where Lauris was responsible for keeping an offtank up, for example.), and I definitely would like to try some to help conserve mana. Mana management seems like the trend for the boss fights that are more difficult because of timing or endurance, so I wouldn't want to ignore it.

It's probably just a question of playstyle; I'm afraid I'd get so worked up about missing my macro on some big heal-rotation mechanism that I'd totally kill efficiency right there.

Well, I always figured the macro would be bound to the key you're already pressing for the heal. So there'd be nothing to miss. It'd be automatic.


What's your overhealing at, percentage-wise? To some degree overhealing is inevitable, so your goal should be to minimize it, not to eliminate it.


No idea. I don't track it. But I know my greater heals hit for 2500 - 3500, and I saw them landing when the MT was down by much less than that.

The problem is one of timing, I'd start my cast when the MT was down by 3 or 4k and someone elses would land just before mine and I wasn't quick enough to cancel out.

The raid channel messages are so that we can have a rotation. Aro sees me cast & then she goes. Kae sees Aro cast & then he goes. Etc. Then we're not stepping on each other's heals.

I'll take a look at that healing link. thanks.

I use Benecast, which is not only handy for the people that suck at healing (like myself) it also manages the spells needed and you can limit overhealing. Say you are chain casting greater heal, if your rank 9 is needed it casts it or if at the time of casting only a rank 2 is needed, it will do that instead.


Due to a weird quirk in my morality I think Benecast - along with mana conservation mods/macros - is a sin. You're welcome to use it, of course. But I won't.

yay I'm a sinner!
Wait, already knew that.

I ... ... press a key?

I click on my target and go down and click my little bar-two-button-four happy little yellow hand. I only use my keyboard to physically move.

That is totally what I do also.

I ... ... press a key?

I click on my target and go down and click my little bar-two-button-four happy little yellow hand. I only use my keyboard to physically move.


Same thing. The Happy Yellow Hand is currently mapped to cast "Greater Heal" or whatever. What I'm suggesting is that you make a macro, that can use the same Happy Yellow Hand icon, that both casts "Greater Heal" and announces on vsmedics that you've cast greater heal.

Your actions would be exactly the same. So you wouldn't have to adjust your play style at all.

CLICKAS 4 LYFE

/script renewtank = 0 for i=1,16 do if UnitBuff("target", i) then if string.find(UnitBuff("target", i), "Renew") then renewtank = 1 end end end if renewtank == 0 then CastSpellByName("Renew") end

Here's a macro that may be useful, it would replace your Renew button. It simply checks to see if Renew is already on the target - if it is, it aborts, if it is not, then it casts Renew.

YAY I've got bandages...
...sorry, just wanted to say something :)

/script renewtank = 0 for i=1,16 do if UnitBuff("target", i) then if string.find(UnitBuff("target", i), "Renew") then renewtank = 1 end end end if renewtank == 0 then CastSpellByName("Renew") end

Here's a macro that may be useful, it would replace your Renew button. It simply checks to see if Renew is already on the target - if it is, it aborts, if it is not, then it casts Renew.


With CT_RA you can configure it to show up to 4 buffs on a player. And you can tell it which buffs you don't care about, so it will never show them.

So I set up mine to only show me Fear Ward and Renew. I'm going to add the Druid HoTs as well. Those are the only buffs I care about during a fight. That way I can always see if there's a renew on a target.

I PERSONALLY want to avoid getting too bogged down in addons just because that makes it less fun for me. I know there are several addons and macros that can be used to stop a healing spell or some such, but to me part of the fun of playing a healer is learning to time the heals right and manage mana is part of the good time.


Same with me as well.

As for the channels, I probably wouldn't watch it much if at all. Too much going on with 40 health bars and tactical awareness to watch the chat as well.

The primary heal that I use is Rejuvenation (HoT) and with my current healing gear each tick is just over 300. Other than that I pretty much just spam Healing Touch rank 5 which hits for over 1k.
A few more pieces of gear and I'll be moving down to HTr4 for the same heal with a more reduced mana cost and cast time.

That's my problem too, Jak -- I don't even see the *instances* most of the time; I'd be really concerned about my ability to follow a chat channel.

That's my problem too, Jak -- I don't even see the *instances* most of the time; I'd be really concerned about my ability to follow a chat channel.


Heh, it was almost 3 months before I even found out what the inside of Strath-UD looked like.
10 health bars is a lot to watch when you're the only healer and stuck with shitty green gear.

Healing the rogue tanking the baron.

Yeah, that damn rogue was some uber shit.
Really need to have the Rogue Wiseguy have a chat with him about learning his damn role though!

The primary heal that I use is Rejuvenation (HoT) and with my current healing gear each tick is just over 300. Other than that I pretty much just spam Healing Touch rank 5 which hits for over 1k.


What's the casting time or Rejuvenation? And is Regrowth instant cast?

Rejuvenation R10 -Instant cast, 335 Mana, Heals 868-872 over 12 seconds - just over 300 per tick.

Regrowth R8- 2 second cast, 740 Mana, Heals 839-935 + 861 over 12 seconds.
Rarely used since it's horridly mana-ineffecient.

Healing Touch R10 - 3 second cast, 720 Mana, Heals 1916 - 2257
Healing Touch R9 - 3 second cast, 600 Mana, Heals 1545 - 1826
Healing Touch R8 - 3 second cast, 495 Mana, Heals 1225 - 1453
Healing Touch R7 - 3 second cast, 405 Mana, Heals 958 - 1143
Healing Touch R6 - 3 second cast, 335 Mana, Heals 762 - 914
Healing Touch R5 - 3 second cast, 270 Mana, Heals 589 - 712
Healing Touch R4 - 2.5 second cast, 180 Mana, Heals 376 - 459

None of the above includes my bonuses from my healing gear so add to that +416 from my current gear.

Once I finish my healing set (4-5 more pieces to go!) I'll be bordering, if not breaking +600 healing.