Healing in Raids

[Treesh]

I asked similar questions the first time I went on a raid. It was a sorta pickup/sorta lurker & associates raid. The pickup priest was shielding just about everyone (regardless of groupings) the second they took any damage regardless of class. So I asked if I was supposed to be healing all the raid or just mainly my own group. I was told to do mainly my own group except in emergencies and boss fights so that's what I did. But the more raids I went on, the less healing I was allowed to do because everyone else was healing my group. I don't know if that was because no one trusted my healing or if that's just normal raid procedure. I still don't. The one thing I will not do is shield someone in another group if there is a priest in that group. Because of the soul sickness and not knowing if the priest who cast it has the talent points placed to reduce the length of time for soul sickness, it can really throw people off if they expect to be able to shield but can't because someone else put up a shield. I do not mind HoTs being thrown out all over because it's really not a mana sucker so if that's the cause of where the overhealing is coming from, no big deal. Now, when the shields go down on mages because of damage and the mages are still being hit hard, quick real heals from any and all healers is fine too. Sometimes they just are taking so much damage that the quickest heals just can't keep up and you don't have time to do the longer, stronger heals so cross-healing on those cases I don't mind either. The ones I mind are when the person in my group is at 65-75% health, not dropping all that quickly either, and someone else is casting flash heals on them just a fraction of a second before mine lands and I'm not having multiple people in my group getting hurt so I am focused on healing the one person in my group taking damage. I understand those who don't have the main tank in their group getting bored in some cases because they don't have anyone in their group getting hurt at the same time so the only person who needs healing is the main tank. It can get boring. I've been in the group without the main tank. I still don't unnecessarily heal the main tank in that case unless the tank really starts to get hurt quickly.

Again, I have no idea if what I'm doing is right or wrong and no one ever actually tells me. Since I have to ninja-heal my own group so frequently lately just to be able to do something, it's become more of a contest just to see if I can actually get in heals before a bored priest does it for me so lots of mana is wasted or else I'm bored to tears and stop caring about healing at all.