Flash Healing?Follow

When I'm healing in 5-man instances I use 4 heals; Renew, Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Prayer of Healing.

Well the tanker should always has Renew on him/her, use Flash Heal when they havn't loosed to much HP, and Greater Heal when its needed. Then I use Prayer of Healing if everyone or most of the group has lost health, it cost losts of mana so don't use it if it's no need.

Well that's how I do it, hope I could help whit something..

For your level it's decent - I was a flash healer until mid-50's. As you get higher up, you'll notice you start to run out of mana much faster. Ideally, you use two heals 95% of the time, Renew and Gheal. Flash Heal is used only in emergencies (a surprise crit on the tank), and shield on casters that are taking too fast of hits or AoE'ing. Renew on the tank, any offtanks, and anyone who took a hit or two but not taking any more. Prayer of Healing only it at least 3 people need healed, preferably more.

There are, of course, exceptions, but these are good general rules.

Why do people keep different ranks of Flash Heal? My priest is level 42, but she only carries one rank of each type of heal and always the highest rank.

I realize that once you get mad +healing, downranking is beneficial due to the mana cost being lowered, making +mana/5sec more valuable.

But does it matter if I use the Flash Heal that heals 300 health points or 400 health points? Why wouldn't I just wait for the player to lose the additional 100 health points so I can use the next rank?

Just curious because I've seen Priest UIs with crazy many ranks of the same spell on the actionbar and I never understood it.

I have a 70 priest....been holy the whole entire time. The way I heal is mainly with Heal...yup just regular old heal. With the gear I have I"m sitting at 1220+healing unbuffed making my Heal heal for about 1500...you may say...thats not alot, why not use your new heals. For one, Heal costs about half the mana of Flash Heal. If you have points to make the casting time less, it isn't really that long, and if everyone is taking slow dmg why not use a slow heal? Save mana and have less down time. Of course, you don't use this all the time, there are times to use Flash heal or greater heal.

Prayer of Healing...I do love to use this, Inner focus and Prayer of Healing is awesome. Inner Focus also gives your spells an extra 25% chance to crit so basically with the amount of +healing I have, if it crits on everyone, you're looking at 2500 health to all party members for 0 mana. Very very nice.

I also don't use different ranks of heals. I have different heals for different situations. I never really got into the whole lower ranks...and like mentioned above I do see my flash heal as my "Oh **** the tank's gonna die!" heal. I want it fast and I want it to hit hard :D

I have a lvl 70 shadow priest and occasionally I still slip into the healing role in a group, and I do pretty well up until the lvl 70 instances. Shadow Labs seems to be the first instance I don't heal very well in. I can't say for holy priests, but I need my highest rank heals to be effective when healing. The outland mobs do hit very hard. There are times though, that I have been helping guildies out in lower lvl instances and during these times, I find that using lower ranks of heals is better because the high ranking ones will result in alot of overhealing and waste mana. So I would say that would be the only time I would even think about using the lower ranking ones.

yeah, going into boss fights, i like to pre-cast bubble and renew on the tank, so i can begin mana regen and it gives me a bit longer to regen mana..

Well, I myself have never been fond of Prayer of Healing, due to that the group scatters alot and there are always people left out and also is long castime, if someone didn't draw aggro but was hit by an AoE spell i would just pass renews around, its mana efficient since the renew coefficient is 100 unlike the lesser coefficient of Prayer of Healing and also the talent, And since mobs don't spam AoE I could safely assume that they won't die form another one.

Flash heal and Shield is a last resort, if a tank is taking alot of Damage and close to dying then yeah, (normally because I spent half the time running around trying to get people to pull adds off me) but flash heal is pretty much one of the most mana inefficient spell, not for the tank but if a mage was getting pummeled a flash heal does the trick since they don't really have that much hp.

Edited, Apr 2nd 2007 4:47pm by namekiller

If you never downrank a heal, then you're a lousy healer. The tank needs to be topped off in case of burst damage or aggro problems. Believe me, you'll be very very happy that the tank is at full health when a mage does one of their stupid crits and draws aggro, and you have to spam flash heals and shields until the tank can taunt it off. You'll be happy the tank is full when there's a series of nasty hits and the tank loses 6k hp in 2 seconds. You'll be happy the tank is full when a mob comes after you and kicks you before you can fade.

Above these benefits? With a decent amount of +heal, downranked heals cost less mana per point of healing. If you're in the 30s or 40s, you haven't learned how to heal yet, so don't worry too much about it. It gets... different.

i wont go as far as to say downrank heal is not worth it.

with my playstyle, i use gheal 3 and gheal 7 depending on who i heal. usually, i use gheal 3 on lower hp class and gheal 7 on class like warrior more often than not. i know healers who keep more than 2 ranks on their hotbar.

in a way, downranking helps with mana conservation. spamming gheal 7 most of the time in a boss fight will more than likely make you go oom faster.

i like to keep my healing aggro to the minimum if thats possible. by using lower rank heals, i am able to better my aggro management. you want to keep your group members alive but that doesnt mean you have to top off their health every time they take a hit.

different healer has different playstyle. whether downranking works for you, you are the only one who can answer it. test it. experiment it. in the end, you will find a playstyle that you like.

also, do your warrior a favor. if you get aggro, dont run around. if you want to run, run to your warrior so he can taunt it off you faster. running around and away from him is not going to help. if you want people to peel mobs off you, say something in the chat or make a macro. besides, with you staying at one place, you can still heal.

QFT. Pretty much stay away from flash heal unless you're in a situation where you're likely to get interrupted (PvP mainly) or the person is taking insane, constant damage (aoe).

I just have to quote some things that I find...reprehensible.



I think you're absolutely playing the wrong class, or you're posting in the wrong forum. If we were talking about Paladin healing, and the way they regen mana, I would be with you on this one...but as a priest, you have efficient big heals for a reason...so you can regen mana by staying outside of the FSR as much as possible. That goes hand-in-hand with our reliance on the +spi stat.

You would be much better off using a combination of PoM, shield, renew, and Gheal (of whatever rank is appropriate) to stabalize the tank before dropping out of casting for a tick or two to regen some mana. Chain casting weak heals is absolutely not helpful, especially with the downranking penalty Sjans mentioned. Also, if you were pre-casting Gheals, when your tank does get hit hard, you can pretty much instant-cast a very powerful spell while regening mana using this method.

If you have DPSers who are constantly drawing aggro, I would say that you have other problems outside of your effectiveness as a healer. I absolutely do no cater to people who refuse to understand how aggro and threat work; doing so actually makes you a much worse healer. You enable others to not play their class well, and you end up drawing infinitely more threat yourself by trying to keep the tank-mage alive.

And to counter your points about floating a tank's hp at max all the time, when...



I'll keep them alive the first few times, politely asking them to keep an eye on their threat (or see what's going on with the tank), and then I'll stop making it a priority to heal the selfish, unskilled player who cares more about his/her own dps then the success of the group.



Read before about how I won't be healing the suicidal rogue/mage, and how I'll have to fade much less often.



My Gheal will land moments later for a very nasty heal, I won't be OOM and I'll use a combination of instants and a few Gheals to stabalize him/her right before I drop back out of the FSR.

I don't think you're thoughts are awful, but I do think you're dead wrong on chain-casting downranked heals. There might be a handful of situations where topping a tank off is important to strategy, but it might be better said that if you keep a tank's health topped off at all times as a priest (using anything but Renew and PoM), then you're a lousy healer.

Leave heal-spamming to the Paladins who can do it infinitely (pun intended)better than you.

imho, to be a good healer, you have to be flexible. you have to adapt to the situations you are facing. downranking helps. flash heal helps. shield helps....etc.

although there are certain general guidelines one can follow, but ultimately it boils down to the situation you are facing.

also, sometimes to be better at some things, you have to learn the hard way... or harder way. be a shadow priest and be the main healer in instances. expose yourself to many different situations and learn from it. try something different... downranking? spam flash heals? use renew? etc. once you become a healing spec healer, you will realize healing has become easier.