A day in the life of ..

[Quark]

It would annoy me greatly to be in the process of dropping a big heal on a tank and have it be stuttered after 200 hp because a mob broke wind in my general direction. Especially since it means I lose the mana.
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Assuming Greater Heal is the most mana efficient, time efficient heal, why not have it channeled? Sure, in some situations it becomes dangerous/unusable. How is that any worse from the current situation where many priests simply don't use it at all?

Remember the key to the end-game: Spikes kill tanks. A channeled greater heal would reduce spikes, just like Flash Heal does.

A channeled Greater Heal would take time to get right. You'd have to learn when it's safer, when it's more dangerous, and try to gouge using it versus not using it. It would make priests more dynamic at healing.

In the current situation, you can spend 3.3 seconds casting Greater Heal, see the tank's life go up to full, and interrupt it just in time (via yourself or mods). Sure, you saved the mana. But you just spent 3.3 seconds doing nothing. If Greater Heal is channeled, in that case you lost the mana (bad), but you were still healing the tank and helping prevent spikes (good).

Please, don't think of only the bad things that could come with a channeled heal. Think of the good also. You get the mana efficiency and the smoothed out tank life at the same time.

Also, don't forget the nature of a channeled spell: it isn't destroyed when you're hit, it's shortened. If you're only 10 hp into the heal and take one hit, you'll still heal just as much as if you were 1000 hp into the heal. Edit: assuming you stop getting hit.

Finally, Priests currently have a talent that reduces chance to lose casting time on Flash Heal when hit. Mages can get 100% non-shortened Arcane Missles. Who's to say a talent reworking wouldn't have a similar idea for a channeled Greater Heal?

This idea may be completely out of whack compared to what Blizzard has in mind for improving Greater Heal. But don't forget there can be many good effects that come of this too. We can't think of this in our current healing paradigm. Healing tactics would completely change. Good group interaction becomes even more favorable, while bad group interaction could hurt even more.