03-18-2008, 07:59 PM
Bolty covered pretty much all of it, I'm just chiming in a bit, I don't have a priest in end game raiding, I did pre TBC stuff on a pally and a druid (so before druids were super HoTies) and I did post TBC healing on shaman. I've not seen BT or Hyjal, just SSC and TK. But as Bolty said. Healing hasn't really changed. The encounters have changed allowing certain things to seem like it's new but if you healed pre TBC when you or the tanks weren't overgeared for the content (which they may have been even if they were in greens but using heavy consumables) you could see much of this in play.
Encounter design has let the priests start using all the tools they have though and have somewhat limited choices for other healers. I know I've seen druids and read bout others that used to be spec'd to maximize healing touch (resto / balance builds) that gave it up because the way encounters were set-up they ended up casting more like a tree anyway. Shaman are generally doing the right thing by casting chain heal in most situations. Even if they only heal one target if they were downranked on that CH they may have still been using the most efficient heal for that situation. Pallies that love to spam FoL or even Holy Light (generally downranked but with a 2s cast after you fire the first one off it's generally fast enough especially if you need a bigger heal) are probably doing the right thing as well. I have noted from observing priests (and I've played with several very good priest though several of them have been pulled away from the game by real life) that they do seem to get use many more tools and that those tools are the best choice for that situation they weren't just using them to use them. Even lightwell appears to have places where it is the best tool to use. This is a good thing. Priests should be the premiere healers (unless they change them to be like the other healing classes and give them 2 DPS trees or a tanking and a DPS tree, in which case they would have no reason to claim the need to be. Right now they still kinda have 2 healing trees and 1 DPS tree though balance is starting to get it's own identity for PvP). It's nice that tools that used to be only nice toys for 5 mans, and I say toys because while it may have been the best tool to use 5 mans are set up so that you can easily do it without that tool, have valuable uses in raids. Priests are turned into a weaker pally or shaman in raids now.
But like Bolty said, get a UI that works for you. I've always been a hover caster, a lot of that came from doing a lot of my learning how to heal as a pally and a druid growing up. I didn't need to constantly heal folks so I would often times flop between kitty and healer as a druid and old school pallies could be very deep in ret and still have all the really powerful healing tools from holy so you could be a DPS + healer. You didn't want to switch from the DPS targets in those cases just for the reason of keeping DPS going. And when mods started to show up that let you see what your target was casting and who they had targeted this became ever more valuable for healing.
My UI isn't as streamlined for healing as it should be on my shaman, but I've always made sure that I can hover heal how I need to. I also like to have an indicator that tells me exactly how many HP the target is down and how many they have left, not just the percentage. I used to use this to nail the heal that would get the person topped off with as little overhealing as possible. But overheal is less of a factor in TBC raids than it once had been when you needed longevity but you didn't have the gear to really make it happen. Now the biggest value for me is that since I'm not an every day raider anymore I would have no clue that if so and so's bar was 75% how much they are actually hurt and if they can survive another hit before getting a heal or not. As a shaman since we are so good at FFA raid healing this mostly just tells me who the CH should be cast on since the first hit is the biggest. If I were on a priest it would let me make choices of other heals, though as Conc said if it's a FFA situation flash heal first is generally good enough but you can see if you can not flash and get away with a prayer of healing (if prayer is appropriate), etc.
Pre TBC I didn't really use any healing macro's at all, partly because some of the tools you have in macros now you didn't have then and I don't really have too many of them now but I've experimented with some of them to get better. I don't downrank as much on my shaman as I used to on my pally and druid pre TBC but my L67 priest downranked a lot in 5 man content. This wasn't so I could spam all day but it was the old mentality of conserve as much mana as possible, mainly so that we can pull faster since I'll need to drink less and you can pull with just the healer and tank in most 5 mans your CC and DPS can be drinking for the pull and react later. Of course a healer can be drinking for a lot of 5 man pulls as well but you at least should be in position to react. It also makes OHB better when Thrall just wants to keep going like a good tank should. :)
Of course the other thing I do with my UI is try to make it so that I'm not mod dependant. This means I mimick what I can do with the default UI as best as I can. I have lots of hotkeys but they are all configured via the default bars. I don't even generally change bars, stuff is set up so that bar six over there on the side may have a spot that is hotkeyed to the 'c' key or whatever. It means that if I lose my keyboard I can do everything way less efficiently via pure mouse clicking. If I lose the mouse I can do everything via keyboard but I lose efficiency there as well since it's set-up to use both in concert. This is a concern because while I don't want to use the wireless keyboard and mouse I currently don't have a better option (and I don't actually pay for my own WoW subscription either). It also means that if a patch broke every mod I use (which isn't very likely anymore with the long PTR times and sticking with a lot of Ace2 and other mainstream stuff) that I can still at least function well enough to heal. I got burned by barmods in the past and getting too reliant on them so I changed my philosophy on how to deal with that and the default UI provides enough hotkeys if you spend the time. Since one of our major raiding nights is Tuesday (because when we started to raid for some reason Tuesday had a higher availability than any other night besides Friday, this may have changed but we haven't changed the schedules) having a UI that can function if lots of mods break is good too. I lose efficiency no doubt, but since I'm a shaman and raid design says that chain heal is probably the best heal 90% of the time you can get away with less efficiency. Know where your cleanse keys are bound and make sure the most used totems have hotkeys (I use YATA for totem management and there are some totems that simply don't have normal hotkeys anymore but that I could get back if I wanted) even if I don't ever use those keys and I can still work well enough to get us through the raid assuming the tanks, DPS and other healers weren't crippled too badly by the patch.
That's just personal preference though. There are things that I would like to do with my UI at times that I don't always do because if that mod broke and I got too reliant on it I'd be screwed. Does this mean I'm not as good of a healer as I could be? Yes it does. But I think most of the other healers I've healed with will say that I'm always good enough for what we are doing and I'm not even a full time healer, I think this holds true for past healing as well. I've never felt I was the best healer in a 25 or 40 man but I've never felt I was a liability (unless I'm having a really bad night). I have played with some healing crews where I felt I was the worst healer there but those were crews that were so good that I felt I could put them up against any other healing crew in some theoretical healing competition and they would hold their own. There are some nights where I just play like crap though, and the UI has nothing to do with this, like when I know that Jawana was in the demon chains and mouse over and heal a fully healthy Elixin, or when I know that JB is getting hit with Hydross's water tomb (or whatever the damn bubbles Hydross does in the water phase are) and I end up canceling my heal on him or when I know that Lurker actually goes 380 degrees with the spout and since I'm trying to keep totems hitting the MT that I need to shuffle or get back in the water and I don't. So I can still play a healer badly but I would have played my tank or DPS badly that night as well.
But yeah several classes are their UI, though some can get away with a weaker UI in PvE, I can't imagine anyone getting over 2000 in arenas with the default UI and not having done a lot of hotkey work. Not having something like Proximo at the very least to track the opponents I can't imagine. But I let myself be a bit more mod dependant in PvP because at most if I break I'm only potentially inconveniencing 4 other people. If I can't function well enough for the raid I can be hurting 24 other peoples play time. But again with Blizzard being better on giving out info on how mods will be affected and with most developers having a chance to mess with stuff on the PTR and with mod sights having better servers and ways to deal with patch day mod feeding frenzies I'm probably more cautious about mod usage than I should be.
Anyway there is a wall of text from GG to basically say "What Bolty and Conc said" and proably what Treesh said too as I know she posted while I was making this post but I haven't read hers.:)
Encounter design has let the priests start using all the tools they have though and have somewhat limited choices for other healers. I know I've seen druids and read bout others that used to be spec'd to maximize healing touch (resto / balance builds) that gave it up because the way encounters were set-up they ended up casting more like a tree anyway. Shaman are generally doing the right thing by casting chain heal in most situations. Even if they only heal one target if they were downranked on that CH they may have still been using the most efficient heal for that situation. Pallies that love to spam FoL or even Holy Light (generally downranked but with a 2s cast after you fire the first one off it's generally fast enough especially if you need a bigger heal) are probably doing the right thing as well. I have noted from observing priests (and I've played with several very good priest though several of them have been pulled away from the game by real life) that they do seem to get use many more tools and that those tools are the best choice for that situation they weren't just using them to use them. Even lightwell appears to have places where it is the best tool to use. This is a good thing. Priests should be the premiere healers (unless they change them to be like the other healing classes and give them 2 DPS trees or a tanking and a DPS tree, in which case they would have no reason to claim the need to be. Right now they still kinda have 2 healing trees and 1 DPS tree though balance is starting to get it's own identity for PvP). It's nice that tools that used to be only nice toys for 5 mans, and I say toys because while it may have been the best tool to use 5 mans are set up so that you can easily do it without that tool, have valuable uses in raids. Priests are turned into a weaker pally or shaman in raids now.
But like Bolty said, get a UI that works for you. I've always been a hover caster, a lot of that came from doing a lot of my learning how to heal as a pally and a druid growing up. I didn't need to constantly heal folks so I would often times flop between kitty and healer as a druid and old school pallies could be very deep in ret and still have all the really powerful healing tools from holy so you could be a DPS + healer. You didn't want to switch from the DPS targets in those cases just for the reason of keeping DPS going. And when mods started to show up that let you see what your target was casting and who they had targeted this became ever more valuable for healing.
My UI isn't as streamlined for healing as it should be on my shaman, but I've always made sure that I can hover heal how I need to. I also like to have an indicator that tells me exactly how many HP the target is down and how many they have left, not just the percentage. I used to use this to nail the heal that would get the person topped off with as little overhealing as possible. But overheal is less of a factor in TBC raids than it once had been when you needed longevity but you didn't have the gear to really make it happen. Now the biggest value for me is that since I'm not an every day raider anymore I would have no clue that if so and so's bar was 75% how much they are actually hurt and if they can survive another hit before getting a heal or not. As a shaman since we are so good at FFA raid healing this mostly just tells me who the CH should be cast on since the first hit is the biggest. If I were on a priest it would let me make choices of other heals, though as Conc said if it's a FFA situation flash heal first is generally good enough but you can see if you can not flash and get away with a prayer of healing (if prayer is appropriate), etc.
Pre TBC I didn't really use any healing macro's at all, partly because some of the tools you have in macros now you didn't have then and I don't really have too many of them now but I've experimented with some of them to get better. I don't downrank as much on my shaman as I used to on my pally and druid pre TBC but my L67 priest downranked a lot in 5 man content. This wasn't so I could spam all day but it was the old mentality of conserve as much mana as possible, mainly so that we can pull faster since I'll need to drink less and you can pull with just the healer and tank in most 5 mans your CC and DPS can be drinking for the pull and react later. Of course a healer can be drinking for a lot of 5 man pulls as well but you at least should be in position to react. It also makes OHB better when Thrall just wants to keep going like a good tank should. :)
Of course the other thing I do with my UI is try to make it so that I'm not mod dependant. This means I mimick what I can do with the default UI as best as I can. I have lots of hotkeys but they are all configured via the default bars. I don't even generally change bars, stuff is set up so that bar six over there on the side may have a spot that is hotkeyed to the 'c' key or whatever. It means that if I lose my keyboard I can do everything way less efficiently via pure mouse clicking. If I lose the mouse I can do everything via keyboard but I lose efficiency there as well since it's set-up to use both in concert. This is a concern because while I don't want to use the wireless keyboard and mouse I currently don't have a better option (and I don't actually pay for my own WoW subscription either). It also means that if a patch broke every mod I use (which isn't very likely anymore with the long PTR times and sticking with a lot of Ace2 and other mainstream stuff) that I can still at least function well enough to heal. I got burned by barmods in the past and getting too reliant on them so I changed my philosophy on how to deal with that and the default UI provides enough hotkeys if you spend the time. Since one of our major raiding nights is Tuesday (because when we started to raid for some reason Tuesday had a higher availability than any other night besides Friday, this may have changed but we haven't changed the schedules) having a UI that can function if lots of mods break is good too. I lose efficiency no doubt, but since I'm a shaman and raid design says that chain heal is probably the best heal 90% of the time you can get away with less efficiency. Know where your cleanse keys are bound and make sure the most used totems have hotkeys (I use YATA for totem management and there are some totems that simply don't have normal hotkeys anymore but that I could get back if I wanted) even if I don't ever use those keys and I can still work well enough to get us through the raid assuming the tanks, DPS and other healers weren't crippled too badly by the patch.
That's just personal preference though. There are things that I would like to do with my UI at times that I don't always do because if that mod broke and I got too reliant on it I'd be screwed. Does this mean I'm not as good of a healer as I could be? Yes it does. But I think most of the other healers I've healed with will say that I'm always good enough for what we are doing and I'm not even a full time healer, I think this holds true for past healing as well. I've never felt I was the best healer in a 25 or 40 man but I've never felt I was a liability (unless I'm having a really bad night). I have played with some healing crews where I felt I was the worst healer there but those were crews that were so good that I felt I could put them up against any other healing crew in some theoretical healing competition and they would hold their own. There are some nights where I just play like crap though, and the UI has nothing to do with this, like when I know that Jawana was in the demon chains and mouse over and heal a fully healthy Elixin, or when I know that JB is getting hit with Hydross's water tomb (or whatever the damn bubbles Hydross does in the water phase are) and I end up canceling my heal on him or when I know that Lurker actually goes 380 degrees with the spout and since I'm trying to keep totems hitting the MT that I need to shuffle or get back in the water and I don't. So I can still play a healer badly but I would have played my tank or DPS badly that night as well.
But yeah several classes are their UI, though some can get away with a weaker UI in PvE, I can't imagine anyone getting over 2000 in arenas with the default UI and not having done a lot of hotkey work. Not having something like Proximo at the very least to track the opponents I can't imagine. But I let myself be a bit more mod dependant in PvP because at most if I break I'm only potentially inconveniencing 4 other people. If I can't function well enough for the raid I can be hurting 24 other peoples play time. But again with Blizzard being better on giving out info on how mods will be affected and with most developers having a chance to mess with stuff on the PTR and with mod sights having better servers and ways to deal with patch day mod feeding frenzies I'm probably more cautious about mod usage than I should be.
Anyway there is a wall of text from GG to basically say "What Bolty and Conc said" and proably what Treesh said too as I know she posted while I was making this post but I haven't read hers.:)
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.