03-18-2008, 04:24 PM
Aside from what Bolty said, I will add that you do learn a lot from experience. It's not DPSing, where you can look at spreadsheets and figure your theoretical DPS and work your rotations to maximize potential. You have to react to things as they happen, especially when other healers go down.
I will absolutely second the importance of stam. I think it's as important as any other stat and I use 9500 buffed as a personal minimum goal... and I haven't even been in BT yet where the real raid-wide damage happens.
I think it's a tendency of new-ish priests to over-emphasize regen. It's one of the easy things to chart out "offline" and I see it regularly that new priests are gemming and enchanting purely for regen. While this may have been the way to go before the buff to Meditation, I think it's not needed now, and will be absolutely overkill in 2.4 for halfway decently geared priests who will gain another 50-100 MP5 inside FSR.
As far as actual healing, it's easy enough to get into a cast / cancel rhythm and spamming GHeal 1-4 is easy enough (GHeal 1 is the most efficient heal for 2 reasons.... Gheal procs clearcasting and lower ranks ("Heal") do not, and it gets the bonus from empowered healing). What I learned from experience didn't help that kind of healing much at all. It more helped in emergency situations.
When I started, I'd see an emergency situation and go "oh crap <cast ProM or shield>" Now I see an emergency situation and cast Flash heal first, then ProM or shield. If 2k will save him, then ProM wasn't useful anyway... and if you can't cast a 1.5 second heal spell, then no other healer can save him either. Flash heal + Prom or shield is our version of Regrowth + swiftmend.
Other than that, communication is key. If there are challenging issues to a fight, work it out with your healers and / or tanks what priorities are. 2 priests mashing shield or ProM in an emergency does no good, work out one to shield and one to ProM... for example. Or work it out so that like a priest does FH + shield, and a pally uses holy light instead of his flash.
I think healers are the most flexible in their gearing stats. You can be effective with mediocre gear if you know how to react. The flip-side of this is that, as you have experienced, you can have super geared healers with lackluster performance. The same is true to a certain extent for DPSers, but really it's way more straightforward for that role.
I will absolutely second the importance of stam. I think it's as important as any other stat and I use 9500 buffed as a personal minimum goal... and I haven't even been in BT yet where the real raid-wide damage happens.
I think it's a tendency of new-ish priests to over-emphasize regen. It's one of the easy things to chart out "offline" and I see it regularly that new priests are gemming and enchanting purely for regen. While this may have been the way to go before the buff to Meditation, I think it's not needed now, and will be absolutely overkill in 2.4 for halfway decently geared priests who will gain another 50-100 MP5 inside FSR.
As far as actual healing, it's easy enough to get into a cast / cancel rhythm and spamming GHeal 1-4 is easy enough (GHeal 1 is the most efficient heal for 2 reasons.... Gheal procs clearcasting and lower ranks ("Heal") do not, and it gets the bonus from empowered healing). What I learned from experience didn't help that kind of healing much at all. It more helped in emergency situations.
When I started, I'd see an emergency situation and go "oh crap <cast ProM or shield>" Now I see an emergency situation and cast Flash heal first, then ProM or shield. If 2k will save him, then ProM wasn't useful anyway... and if you can't cast a 1.5 second heal spell, then no other healer can save him either. Flash heal + Prom or shield is our version of Regrowth + swiftmend.
Other than that, communication is key. If there are challenging issues to a fight, work it out with your healers and / or tanks what priorities are. 2 priests mashing shield or ProM in an emergency does no good, work out one to shield and one to ProM... for example. Or work it out so that like a priest does FH + shield, and a pally uses holy light instead of his flash.
I think healers are the most flexible in their gearing stats. You can be effective with mediocre gear if you know how to react. The flip-side of this is that, as you have experienced, you can have super geared healers with lackluster performance. The same is true to a certain extent for DPSers, but really it's way more straightforward for that role.
Conc / Concillian -- Vintage player of many games. Deadly leader of the All Pally Team (or was it Death leader?)
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.