The Reverend's Holy Handbook of Hallelujah Healing 

by 

Reagence of Earthen Ring 



I. ToC 



I.   Table of Contents

II.  Preface and Disclaimers

III. The Trinity

IV.  Add-ons

V.   Your tools and using them well

      A.  Spells

1.  Bread and butter

	    a. Flash heal

	    b. Renew

	    c. Greater heal

	    d. Prayer of healing

	    e. Debuff removers

2.  New dishes

    a. Binding heal

    b. Prayer of Mending

    c. Circle of healing

    d. Mass dispell

3.  Side dishes

    a. Fade

    b. Power word: Shield

    c. Shadowfiend

 B.  Consumables

 C.  Teamspeak/Ventrillo

VI.  Efficiency and Mana Management

      A.  Core mana stats

      B.  Dressing for the occasion

      C.  Burst casting

      D.  Downranking

VII. Healing as a team

      A.  Establishing a baseline

      B.  Troubleshooting your encounter strategies

      C.  Developing strategy models

      D.  The Playbook - A list of strategy models for use and development

          1.  Healing rotation

          2.  Gatlin gun healing

          3.  6 Deep HoT healing

VIII.Helping your healers help you

IX.  Triage

X.   The evolution of healing in the Burning Crusade

XI.  Healing with Hallelujah

XII. Invitation for dialogue

XIII. Input Credits and thanks

II Preface and Disclaimers:

1. This was originally written as a post on my guild's boards, hence you may see unfamiliar player names and references to guild rules/policies etc.. Beyond the odd names being quoted within, there is nothing internal to our guild knowledge base being shared here. None of the strategies are “guild strats.”

2. I'm a firm believer that having open source discussions and knowledge sharing is far more beneficial to the healing team and the community as a whole than keeping "trade secrets" hidden away. Please understand that what is being offered here is simply an in-depth view of one priest's healing style and way of thinking. This is not meant to say that my style of healing is the best, the only way, or any similar such absolute statement. Nor am I trying to say that if you don't heal the way I do, you should, or you're wrong. If you heal effectively doing a completely different style, that's wonderful and I'd hope you'd share your style as well, so that I and others can gain some insight.

3. This guide was written off-the-cuff and with emphasis on the thought process behind the healing rather than the statistics and mechanics of healing. I’m not a bean counter and you will assuredly find statistical errors and misrepresentations within. Rather than discounting the entire body of work, please point out any errors you find so they may be corrected for the benefit of future readers. Know that I would never intentionally lead anyone astray. Realize that this work is essentially 1 priest’s viewpoint and opinions and the culmination of learning things the hard way by screwing up and wiping – Countless people died to bring you this information.

4. Copyrights: While you are welcome to link to this post, I ask that you not copy and paste this anywhere or to other boards. This is requested primarily to insure that folks are always accessing the most current and accurate information and also to discourage plagiarism.


Work in progress:

Putting a guide like this together requires a lot of research, link checking, fact checking, and online stat verification etc... When I started writing this, I was naive enough to think I might finish someday. Truth of the matter is this guide will have to be constantly updated as talent revision patches, changes in mechanics, and the inevitable author errors are discovered. Your patience and constructive feedback are appreciated and valued.


Facts and Figures:

Due to differences in talent spec, gear etc., the facts and figures used in this guide may not be congruent with what you, as a priest, are actually casting. Don't get hung up on the differences, look at the picture as a whole and realize that the ratios represented can still be used as a fairly accurate tool for discussion. If you find glaring statistical or mechanical errors being stated here, please point them out. I will gladly test, learn, admit errors and faults, and edit mistakes to make this guide better.

III. The Trinity

While the trinity for most priests IRL may be the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, in WoW it represents the core philosophy behind putting together well balanced groups with the makeup for success. There are 3 pillars of the Trinity:

1. Tanking (damage taking)
2. Healing (damage mitigation)
3. DPS (damage dealing)

Think of the trinity as a three legged stool. If you remove (or have too little of) any single pillar (leg), the stool falls (the party/raid wipes). Most priests tend to be pretty focused on keeping their tank up, as they've learned early in their careers that as soon as the tank falls, the healer's head is generally next on the chopping block. However, many a healer tends to neglect or overlook the DPS classes when it comes to healing. Granted, an aggro-whoring rogue or mage who is constantly stripping aggro from the tank before he even has a sunder on the mob may be well served with a few face-planting reality checks. Reminding them, after they've kamikaze'd themselves into an early grave, that tanking in cloth or leather is generally a bad idea, may be prudent. However, most good DPS classes won't intentionally jeopardize your party this way, and if they do, consider replacing them with a more team-oriented player and suggesting that they solo whatever content they keep screwing up for your group. You may find yourself in situations (Triage) where you can't save everyone, because too many people are taking too much damage for the healer(s) to effectively handle. In such cases, DPS is usually the first class to go, due to their lower armor, lower hit points and high threat value. Just be aware, that losing too much of your DPS too early in the fight will still yield a wipe in most cases. Even if your tank is able to keep mobs from wailing on you after your DPS bites the bullet, you'll generally run out of mana before the tank can kill them. In a nutshell, all 3 pillars of the Trinity are essential to success, do your best as a healer to preserve them all.

IV. Add-ons:

Your success as a healer hinges on several things; knowing your class, knowing your tools and having a pre-planned way of thinking about various situations and applying the appropriate actions at the appropriate time are all vital. These and other things combined are dependant on a single common denominator - reaction time. Using add-ons can help you significantly improve your reaction time. If you find that using macros and hot keys, or just your mouse and keyboard, with nothing but the standard interface meets your needs – I salute you. For the rest of us non-deity healers, you may want to spend some time researching and testing some useful add-ons to improve your reaction time and capabilities. In the end, you’ll have to find what works best for you and meets your needs – there is no single answer here – there are many solutions available and ultimately, the choice is yours.

WARNING: Use caution where you acquire these from. Try to always go direct to the source rather than using mod-shop sites. The problem with mod-shop sites is that they rarely (if ever) check the source code of the mods they’re hosting and just about anyone can upload one of these. Consequently, many a key-logger has been passed off as “the latest decursive” etc., and cost folks heartache, downtime and gear due to account hijacking.


Organizing your view:

Being able to see all the members of your group and get a visually accurate reading of who needs healing most is an important element. Personally, I prefer healbot for this and other functions. Most of the priests in my guild prefer to use a tool called Grid. Others use Perl frames and some just use the CTRA frames.


Cutting the clicks:

Each time you have to click a frame or select a player, you increase your reaction time. Having the ability to select your target + perform an action with a single click saves time and lives by eliminating the need for the initial target selection click. In addition to reaction time benefits, you also have the added bonus of not having to change your target from the main mob or boss of the encounter. This allows you to always see who has aggro, when debuffs are incoming and who they’re targeted at, and improves your response time on your fades. Entire add-ons have been dedicated to this single function, though many include this functionality with others. A tool called Clique integrates well with the Grid and other tools. Healbot allows mouse+keyboard combos to be assigned to various spells for one click executions on unit frames as well. Decursive was quite popular for this reason alone. Click-cast and other add ons provide (or used to) this same functionality.

Because I want to know:

The KTM (KLH) threat meter - can be a very useful tool for you and your teammates if (and only if) everyone is using it and you all have the same version running. Being able to monitor your threat real-time can help you avoid pitfalls and mistakes. There are assuredly other, possibly better threat meters available, and note that this particular meter is not exact.

Timers and tooltips – can provide vital stats and tracking info such as, “where’s my PoM now and how many charges are left?” or, “How long until I need to rebuff that player/group?” or, “How long is that shackle going to (potentially) hold?” etc... See what your standard interface can tell you, find what’s vital but missing and fill in the gaps. Specifically for tracking your PoM – MendWatch is an excellent add-on.

Bag/Inventory mods – can help you manage the infinitum of pack rat crap and valuables you lug around. Mods like Item Rack can help you change entire armor/weapon sets for specific roles.

Healing meters - are the subject of contested debate. My opinion on these is that they can be a good tool if the only person you’re competing against on the meter is yourself. Look for healing done and overhealing. Make a mental note of what encounter you’re facing and compare your results when you hit the same encounter the next time. Apply critical thinking to your healing and use the meter to help you track and improve your results. Don’t let the meter dictate your healing, there are many instances where overhealing is unavoidable and being overly mana-efficiency oriented can be downright deadly.

Because they made me do it:

If you are in a raiding guild, there may be one or several add-ons they require you to have. A lot of times they don’t even care if you have these actively displayed, as long as they’re installed and running in the background – they generally provide status information to your raid leaders about your condition and the condition of the group. CTRaidAssist and a whole slew of raid condition and boss mods fall in this category. Because of their “participation mandatory by all team members” nature, you usually won’t find these (or the ones you were hoping they’d have) in a PUG environment.

V. Your tools and using them well

Any good mechanic will tell you that having the right tool for the job and knowing how to use it is the key to success. Healing is no different. What follows is a breakdown of a preist's tools, the pros and cons of each, and my opinion of how best to use them and under what conditions.

A. Spells Your primary tools are the spells you employ. You have a mana bar - use it.

1. Bread and Butter - these are the old school mainstays of pre-TBC healing. Their use is every bit as vital today as it was then. You may think you know these spells well enough to skip over this section. I'd encourage you to read over it anyway. How you approach and employ these tools is likely different than how I do, and although you may still think your way is better after reading, I would hope that you'd reap some benefit from getting a different healer's perspective on them.

Flash Heal Fast casting medium powered healing spell

Pros: Speed - fast cast 1.5 seconds

Cons: Inefficient - your greater heal gives you a better ratio of mana:healing. Additionally, this spell does not yield the full benefits of your bonus healing

Good usage: In combat, this spell is good when you're in a pinch. Generally, I only cast it if I don't have time to use a more efficient healing method and waiting will result in that target's death. Out of combat, you'll notice your healbot mod constantly downranking this spell to closest rank which meets a given target's needs. Its a cheap way to top someone off before you start drinking.


Renew Powerful heal over time stabilizer

Pros: Instant cast, full bonus healing benefits, stabilizes your target's health loss rate, stacks up to 3x with other priests' renews

Cons: If you're working with other healers (raiding) your renew will rarely get the chance to proc every tick. In most cases a paladin's heal will restore a spot of damage before your renew has had a chance to tick more than a single time. Be aware of your healing environment and focus on targets taking repeated and sustained damage (tanks generally). Also bear in mind that the final tick of your renew is when it expires, so if you are refreshing early, you are losing efficiency.

Good Usage: This spell is on your target for 15 seconds. During that time, you'll have 5 tick intervals where actual healing occurs (My renew currently ticks for about 570 hit points per). If your tank is engaging a mob that has a non-crit dps of almost 1200, keeping a renew on your tank cuts that mob's dps by almost 15%. Your tank's health drops at a lower and more controlled rate, enabling you to regen mana outside the 5 second rule longer, and to have more time and margin of error on your castings. I look for targets that will take 2500-3000 damage over the next 15 seconds of the encounter. For tank targets or targets that will continue to take damage throughout the encounter, I reapply the renew religiously. For dps targets (who generally should not be taking continous and sustained damage), I may drop a renew on them to keep them safe and to buy me time to focus my attention on my tank - I generally only use it this way when i'm the only healer present. Make sure you have a way of telling which targets have renews ticking - you need to be able to see all renews, not just your own, and you need to be able to differentiate if your renew is still active or if the renew on target X is from someone else. Pick your mods wisely.

Greater Heal: Slow casting high powered healing spell

Pros: Highly mana efficient, yields 86% benefit of bonus healing.

Cons: Slow casting (2.5 seconds with talents, 3 seconds without) expensive mana cost. Nothing sucks worse than having this spell land on your target a milisecond after another healer just brought him to 100% To get the full benefit of this spell's power, you would want 100% of the healing to actually heal your target (not overheal). Currently, this means I have to wait until my target is already, or will be by the time the spell lands, down about 3500-4000 health. This is roughly 1/3rd of a good tank's total health. Depending on the dps your tank is facing, it may be fatal to wait that long. Having a stabilizing renew on your target already can help you afford to wait without sacrificing the survivability of your tank (varies by encounter).

Good usage: This is your big gun. It uses the biggest ammo. It will drain your mana pool fast if you get locked into a situation where all you can do is chain cast Gheals. However, if you have a stable situation, or can create stability by augmenting your target with other HoTs and spells, you can create a rhythym wherein you cast infrequently, regenerating the highest amount of mana throughout the encounter, and healing for big chunks. This is the spell I use most for tanks. Tanks are built for this spell - they take less damage, and at slower rates than almost any other class. You can afford to wait longer with a tank because his armor and high stamina give you a larger margin of error. If any other class drops down around -4K health, and I'm confident that they won't die over the next 3 seconds; and that taking that much time to heal them won't jeopardize my life, my tank's life, or another party member's life, then i'll use the Gheal on that target to bring them back to full with the highest mana:healing efficiency ratio.


Prayer of Healing: Powerful group heal with flash heal strength per target and a slightly longer casting time.

Pros: This is the one spell that can pull your party through those unavoidable - everyone takes 2.5k damage no matter where you're standing - AoE strikes. In cases where all members of your party are requiring a heal at the same time and you're staring at more mass damage coming down the pipe - this spell can be the determining factor for success. You can effectively restore stability to your entire party, and even though the tank may be needing twice the healing the rest of the party needs, this at least gives your tank enough health to buy you time to get back on your more powerful and efficient single-target heals.

Cons: This spell costs about 1k mana, takes a bit of time to cast, and once it lands - you get a whopping spike in your threat. You don't get the full benefit of your bonus healing, but you still get a substantial amount. Your range on PoH is smaller than your Gheal range. Fortunately, you can tell who is out of range for this heal by simply glancing at your healbot mod. The ones out of range will have no estimated healing displayed - you usually have time to adjust your placement to compensate for this - or call that member back towards you over teamspeak.

Good usage: In the simplest terms, anytime 3 or more members of your party need a flash heal or greater strength healing spell, you'll find it costs less mana and time to throw your prayer of healing instead. The ideal situation is when all 5 members of your party need this much healing or more at the same time, and with the same degree of urgency. In most cases, however, you'll find that at least one or two of your party members will be adding a sizeable chunk of overhealing to your tab. That's ok, sometimes your time constraints and targeting opportunities outweigh the need for mana efficiency. One of the ways I offset this spell's high mana cost is by having my inner focus available. You save yourself 1K mana, and keep yourself outside the 5 second rule (if you were already there) by using Inner Focus. Sometimes you'll find yourself in situations where chain casting your PoH is the only way to keep the majority of your party from dying - do it. Because of the high amount of healing threat generated by a well placed PoH, it is highly recommended that you fade immediately after casting one of these. If you're going to have to cast it more than once, try to get your subsequent casts completed while the fade effect is still active.


Debuff removers:

Cure Disease: self explanatory - removes (or attempts to) 1 disease effect

Abolish Disease: A short duration spell that will remove (or attempt to) a disease effect on each tick of its duration. This is the spell I use for removing diseases because if you're in a disease bearing encounter, chances are your party is going to be afflicted mutliple times throughout the encounter. You probably don't have the time or want to waste the mana doing single removals a bunch of times. Your healbot mod will darken the name bar of afflicted players.

Dispell Magic: self explanatory - removes a magic effect. Your healbot mod will darken the name bar of players suffering from magic debuffs.

2. New Dishes - These are the new spells which came out for the expansion. I remember reading about these spells before they were patched in and scoffing at how situational I predicted their use would be. While it holds true that their use is situational in many cases, you'll find that a lot of the new content has situations that are appropriate for, or downright engineered for these spells. If you haven't fully embraced these new tools yet, I highly recommend you do. Don't just take a taste of these new delights, you need to immerse yourself in full-course servings on a regular basis to be able to effectively and reflexively employ them with success.


Binding Heal - a flash heal strength healing spell that heals the caster and one other target for about as much as a single flash heal each would do.

Pros: A stitch in time saves nine. This is generally the fastest way to get a medium powered heal to yourself and one other party member

Cons: There is no substantial savings in mana compared to casting 2 seperate flash heals. The bonus healing yield is about equal to what you get for a flash heal as well. We've already established that flash heal isn't a very mana efficient spell, this spell follows suit.

Good usage: For this spell to be of any use, you have to be one of the folks needing a heal. I generally find myself using this spell when I know I need to heal myself, but I can't afford to stop healing someone (generally the tank). Even though this spell wouldn't put as much healing on my tank as a Gheal, it allows me to heal 2 birds with one stone, getting myself back to health stability without sacrificing the survivability of the tank in the process.


Prayer of Mending: A very low cost spell (358 mana for me) that has the potential to be an incredibly effective, or abysmally ineffective healing spell depending on its usage. The PoM's host must take damage for the PoM to proc.

Pros: Instant cast. The spell has targeting A.I. (artificial intuition). This spell will hop around as folks take damage. If more than one person in your party is taking damage, the spell will hop to a player who is taking (or has recently taken) damage. This can also be employed as an effective emergency damage control measure on critical condition targets.

Cons: In situations where only 1 player is taking damage, the PoM will heal them once and then hop to a non-damage taking player and rot away (pidgeon-holed).

Good usage: To use this effectively, you need 2 or more members in your party taking damage at fairly regular intervals. The best use I've ever seen was when I launched a PoM on my tank, and it bounced back and forth between him and the off-tank. Nobody else in the party was taking damage, so the PoM just kept bouncing back and forth between those 2 targets. Both the MT and OT had fairly substantial damage to begin with, so the PoM was fully healing each time it proc'd. It was healing for roughly 1.5K per proc. With all 5 charges being fully utilized, i reaped close to 7.5K healing between 2 targets for the measly cost of 358 mana. This spell, by nature, is kind of a "hail mary" spell. You have control over which target you initially launch your PoM on, but after that, its out of your hands where it goes next. Still 358 mana for a single proc of 1.5k healing is nothing to scoff at. As long as you have 2 or more folks taking damage, this spell generally pays for itself and then some. It also helps alleviate the strain on your mana pool by helping mop up some of the incidental damage on your non-tank party members as it bounces here and there. Although it has a chaotic way of working - it works, and usually works well. When damage is all over the place, this gem of a spell can really save you some mana and buy you time to focus your casting on your tank. If you keep at least a peripheral eye on your healbot mod, you'll notice the party members' health bars spiking up as the PoM procs and hops. I can usually keep a rough estimate of how many hops i've seen spike and will re-apply this as long as the multi-party members taking damage condition applies and the fight is not close to being over. In the worst of conditions - party member has a nut-hair sliver of life left in their health bar - try this: Power Word: Shield, PoM, renew (or renew, PoM, depending on which you feel is more effective or neccessary), followed by a flash or Gheal - yes that's extremely mana inefficient, but if it saved a life and in doing so, saved your party from wiping that encounter - its damn well worth it.

Example Scenario: Let's say you're in a 5 man situation where only your tank and one other member (acting as an off-tank) are taking sustained damage throughout the encounter. For the sake of this example, let's assume that each mob is hitting their tank for about 1k damage every 2 seconds. I'm a HoT healer, so I'm including my renews in this timeline. Currently, in full raid buffs, they tick for about +600 health every 3 seconds and my PoM procs heal over 1500 on avg. Assuming that only these 2 folks are taking damage, the PoM should bounce as follows:

0 seconds: pull starts:.....Tank Health deficit (0)...OT health deficit (0)
2 seconds: 1st hit:...........Tank (-1000)...............OT (-1000)
Cast renew on both..........Renew.........................Renew
4 seconds: 2nd hit:..........Tank (-2000)................OT (-2000)
5 seconds: 1st tick:.........Tank (-1400)................OT (-1400)
6 seconds: 3rd hit:..........Tank (-2400)................OT (-2400)
8 seconds: 4th hit:...........Tank (-3400)................OT (-3400)
.................2nd tick:.........Tank (-2800)................OT (-2800)
Cast Prayer of Mending.....PoM host (-2800)..........OT (-2800)
10 seconds: 5th hit:..........Tank (-3800)................OT (-3800)
......1st PoM proc..............Tank (-2300)->jumps->PoM host (-3800)
11 seconds: 3rd tick:........Tank (-1700)................OT (-3200)
12 seconds: 6th hit:..........Tank (-2700)................OT (-4200)
.....2nd PoM proc...............PoM host (-2700)<-<-<-OT (-2700)
14 seconds: 7th hit:..........PoM host (-3700)...........OT (-3700)
.....3rd PoM proc...............Tank (-2200)-->-->---->PoM Host (-3700)
..................4th tick:.........Tank (-1600).................PoM Host (-3100)
16 seconds: 8th hit:..........Tank (-2600).................PoM Host (-4100)
.....4th PoM proc...............PoM Host (-2600)<--<---OT (-2600)
17 seconds: final tick:.......PoM Host (-2000)...........OT (-2000)
Recast renew on both.......Renew..........................Renew
18 seconds: 9th hit...........PoM Host (-3000)...........OT (-3000)
......final PoM proc.............Tank (-1500)................OT (-3000)
Recast Prayer of Mending..Tank (-1500)................PoM host (-3000)

So... granted, I recast both of my healing spells, but if this had only been an 18-20 second encounter, that would not have been necessary. Essentially, for the first 18 seconds of this encounter, I kept 2 tankers alive using 2 Renews and 1 Prayer of Mending. The total mana cost was roughly 1200 (I'll get the exact figures tonight). The total damage mitigated was 13,500. Although this is a very simplistic model, it hopefully helps to illustrate the effectiveness of PoM. Just remember, you need at least 2 folks taking damage or its generally a waste. Also, if you can burst cast your Renews and PoM back to back, you wind up spending about 11 seconds outside the 5 second rule vs. using 4 castings of greater heals to mitigate the damage (both members ending at or near full health) and having practically no time outside the 5 second rule and expending about 2800 mana for roughly the same survivability (again, will check exact figures tonight)


Circle of Healing: I'm not far enough down my holy tree to have this ability, so I don't feel I can comment on it due to my ignorance and inexperience. If anyone else has this ability and has had a fair amount of experience employing it, please give me some input here.


Mass Dispell: A powerful (supposedly more powerful than a regular dispell) Area of Effect dispell magic.

Pros: Can save mana and time if used properly

Cons: High mana cost and 1.5 second casting time

Good usage: To get the most efficient use of this spell, you'll need at least 3 affected targets that are all standing in the same general area. The efficiency goes up as you have more than three targets. If you look at the cost, it is slightly under 3x the cost of a single dispell magic. The casting time is a wash if you meet the 3 target condition because 3 global cooldowns to cast your instant dispell magics is actually longer than the 1.5 second mass dispell casting time. To expend that kind of mana though, its best to insure that what you are dispelling is truly detrimental (and not just a minor inconvenience) to your party's chances for success, and that the debuff isn't about to expire in 2 seconds anyway...

3. Side Dishes: these dainty delights aren't healing spells at all, but they still play an important role in any healing strategy.

Fade: This spell should become an auto-reflex action as soon as any mob sets his sights on your healing hynie. As your primary (and usually only) means of dropping aggro, your reaction time hitting your fade button is vital to your survival. In situations where you are standing at max range from your group and the mobs they're engaging, you can use your fade to get a bit of extra crowd control by letting the mob path towards you until just before it reaches melee range, then fading and returning him to the main group. This slight delay disengages the mob for a few seconds at least, giving the party a bit of a break on the dps they're being pounded with. It works best if you can afford to not heal while the mob is pathing to you, otherwise you increase the chance that your fade will be insufficient to drop the aggro. It works by basically dropping about 1200 threat points. By the time the threat value is returned to you, your party has moved beyond where you were when you had to cast Fade. UPDATE: I have to eat some humble pie here, because I had it previously mis-stated that Fade allows you to heal while faded without generating threat. Maybe I need to update my threat meter more often, because i could've sworn it never showed before... anywho, apologies to the community at large for the erroneous info and thanks to the same community for teaching me and correcting me about playing my class. Kudos to the tanks I have the luxury of working with - you guys were obviously way better than I'd imagined. And yes, you still get threat for heals while faded, and yes, you'll still be getting that 1200 threat points you dropped when the effect wears off...

Power Word: Shield: An additional layer of temporary damage protection

Pros: buys you a bit of time.

Cons: "but Paul, I'm a healer, not a shielder..." Your shield, albeit handy in a pinch, does nothing to restore someone's health bar. Therefore, Shielding is NOT healing. For the amount of damage it mitigates, your shield is one of your more, if not most, mana inefficient spells. (However, now that your bonus healing enhances your shield's damage absorption limit, it is a more viable tool than it was pre-tBC). WARNING: Hampers a warrior's ability to generate rage!

Good Usage: Us priests prefer to leave the title of "shielding class" to the paladins. I've heard many a priest from other (won't name) raiding guilds spout off, "...good priests don't use shields." I think the underlying reasoning for their aversion being that shields are (and used to be much moreso) a mana inefficient crap shoot. I suppose its a matter of opinion, mine being that a good priest knows how to use all of his or her tools, and uses the right tools for the job to insure the highest survivability of their party for the least amount of resource expenditure. Shields just buy you a bit of time. If you're wearing a priest shield, your plan for surviving when the mob pops it like a soap bubble should be foremost on your mind. In most cases, your priest is sending you a bubble-gram that reads, "your ass is grass buddy - enjoy what's left of your life as I scramble to save it." This is a good time to consider popping that healthstone or quaffing that potion. You might also want to consider breaking out your bandages and disengaging from the battle for a moment, if you can afford to.

Tank shields:
For the most part, you don't ever want to be shielding a tank unless you're out of better options and making a last ditch effort to save them from the grave. Otherwise, its better to have them generating full rage. Nowhere is this more important for the tank than at the beginning of a pull. This is when they'll have the least amount of rage to work with, and when being able to use their abilities quickly to hold and solidify aggro is critical. Your shields, in essence, put the DPS and healing pillars of the trinity in jeopardy by slowing your tank's aggro building. If your DPSers are watching their threat meters like hawks and intentionally staying below the tank, then your shields are holding them back from using their big guns and unnecessarily prolonging the encounter. But, like all rules, there are exceptions. Versus mobs that hit like Mack trucks, you may want to consider PW:S, PoM, plus casting a renew right before it lands the first blow on your tank… In these types of situations, your tank will probably have more rage than he can get rid of due to the high damage rates, so getting a safer start is more important.

Emergency Shields:
Casters, on the other hand, will frequently need a shield because if the first shot didn't kill them, the 2nd one most likely will. (Clothies have varying degrees of squishiness, and some encounters are more damaging than others - use your judgement.) Remember to follow through with a heal after casting an emergency shield, or you'll likely wind up losing that player a few seconds later anyway and wasting the mana it took to shield them in the first place. Shielding a caster also has the added benefit of preventing casting interruptions while it holds. For a priest, if you have aggro and your fade ability is still cooling down, your shield is usually your next best choice - see: #1 rule of healing...

Preparation: S
Intentionally shielding players is usually best reserved for pulls involving channeled spells and AoE tactics. It can also be a good idea if the pull involves starting with one or more members far out of range and possibly out of your line of sight. If your encounter strategy involves shielding, it is always best to get the shields up before combat starts so you don't get the aggro for casting them. If you know the encounter will involve re-shielding one or more party members, consider having them wait to pull until your first shield target's weakened soul debuff has worn off (they'll still have 15 seconds of shield left and you can re-shield immediately).


Shadow Fiend: Summons a pet for 15 seconds that adds a nominal amount of DPS to whatever you're targeting and gives you mana when it damages the target.

Pros: I haven't figured out exactly how much you get from the fiend, but I know that if I can afford to stop casting while the fiend is out, I usually end up with about 3000 more mana than I had when I cast it.

Cons: Because this critter attacks whatever you are targetting, it can be disasterous if you're keeping a mob shackled. When you target the mob for a shackle - your fiend is right there to break it.

Good Usage: Anytime you're in a pinch for mana, and don't have to keep something shackled, this is a good way to get about as much mana as a high-end mana pot will give you over the next 15 seconds. To get the full benefit, the encounter needs to last as long as the shadow fiend is active. Its a good idea to have your shadow fiend available for boss fights, and not on cooldown. This should usually be your preferred option for emergency mana infusions so you can try to save your potions. As for the fiend's DPS - hahaha! what dps? The fiend should also be a recognizable marker to the rest of your party that your mana is getting low.



B. Consumeables: Always good to have a few tricks up your sleeves for tough encounters and new content. Some of these I consider must-haves, others are optional but quite beneficial.

1. Must Haves:
a. Drinks - whether you have a mage in your party or not, you should always have your own supply of mana restoratives - the best you can buy. I keep 60-80 waters stocked at all times.
b. Candles - Its nice to have 20-30 of these for each group buff you can, and will be expected to cast. For me, its 3, so I keep 80 candles on-hand at all times, and restock back to 80 after my runs.
c. Mana Pots - even if you're the kind of priest who never runs out of mana, its still good to have these on-hand just in case. I usually keep 1 or 2 stacks, but it does take me a long time to use them and with familiarity of the content we're hitting, I hardly have to use them at all. New content is where they are most in demand.
d. Bandages - If you've never once in your career run out of mana, then you're the exception, not the rule. Eventually this happens to all healers, regardless of their skills or regeneration abilities. Just because you're out of mana doesn't mean your job is over. You are still the primary healer, meaning, you're probably the only one with the time and freedom to run around and throw bandages on folks anyway - do it. You have to wait for your mana to regen whether you like it or not, don't just stand there when you could be doing something to help and heal.

2. Additionals (may be must-haves for your guild or your personal preference):
a. Buffing foods - my favorite food buffs add +healing and/or +mana regen. if those aren't available, your run of the mill +stamina and spirit is still quite beneficial for a priest. Golden Fish Sticks or Blackened Sporefish anyone?
b. Mana Oils - my favorite is the brilliant variety which adds +healing and +12 mana/5. the superior is nice too: +14 mana/5, but no healing bonus. Wizard oils are essentially worthless for healing priests.
c. Buffing pots – Elixir of Healing Power, Adept's Elixir, Elixir of Wisdom, flasks, resistance pots, protection pots, there's a lot of crap you can put under this heading. These can augment your abilities and are quite useful to have. Blizz will be limiting their usage (stacking) in the next patch…

C. Teamspeak/Ventrillo:

I’ve used both of these, and chances are if you’re in a raiding guild, you’ll have to use one too. I personally prefer Ventrillo, but TS is just as effective. Both are Voice over IP programs that allow real time verbal communication with your teammates.

“I can’t hear you!” - Make sure you check your microphone settings after installing one of these programs as you’re rarely where you need to be volume-wise with a default setup.

“You’re turning me on!” – Although some pervs, such as myself, may enjoy your heavy breathing, most will get quite annoyed with an open-mic setting. Make sure you set a press-to-talk key so the team doesn’t have to listen to everything else around you.

“QUIET!!! STFU for a second!” – the more folks you have on TS, the more channel discipline becomes necessary to prevent a raucous rabble from getting out of hand and wasting your group’s time on strategy debates, differing opinions and pontificating preachers who like to hear themselves talk.

Good usage: Unless you’re leading the raid (and hopefully you won’t have to so you can focus on healing), you and everyone else should generally keep their mouths shut and their ears open. Vital information, however, should always be shared. Some examples of vital info are:

1. “Something is killing the Rev” – In a 5 man, I can usually just say, “on me,” and folks know what’s up. But in a raid, there maybe 24 other players all calling themselves “me” so using your name is good practice. You should always let your group know when you have aggro so they can do something about it. (Then you should figure out how and why you got aggro and do something about that too.)

2. “Incoming!” – your tank won’t always notice the adds that warlock’s fear is bringing from a mile away – best to give a heads up when unexpected guests are arriving to your party.

3. “Healer down” – if you die, your group might not have noticed they lost a healer. Let them know. Also inform your party if you get unexpectedly stunned, incapacitated, mind-controlled etc… Anything they weren’t expecting to happen which is preventing you from doing your job should be communicated.

4. “Crowd Control is OFF” – whether its from breaking early, getting resisted, or just plain expiring, chances are your shackle or mind control target will be making a bee-line for you as soon as its down, let folks know you are in peril before its too late. If your CC is holding until the end (and you have the timer tooltip that shows how much time you have left… like you should) let your party know how long they have left, or let them know if you’re cancelling the effect beforehand.

5. “OOM” – Can’t drink a pot, can’t or shouldn’t use the shadowfiend, all other restoratives exhausted – let your group know you’re out of mana. If you’re lucky there will be a pro-active druid with an available innervate to juice you back up. Your team needs to know regardless. The best time to let them know is before you bottom out, so hopefully folks will have time to react and adjust.

VI. Efficiency and Mana Management

Managing your mana efficiently is what makes or breaks your party's survival in endurance encounters and when unexpected things happen. My first concern is and has always been the "survival efficiency" of keeping people alive. If it costs me too much mana and I bottom out, there's usually a good reason for that - we had adds, someone grabbed aggro and had to be bailed out, etc... In almost all encounters, if you don't get a bunch of adds, your mana pool should be sufficient to cover your party's healing needs. If you ran out, figure out why. Conversely, if your overriding concern is your mana efficiency and people are dying while you're at 90% mana, your party isn't going to be very happy with their healer. Manage it how you see fit. For myself, especially in 5-man groups, I'll spend whatever it takes to keep my party alive and if this sucks my mana pool dry, its almost never my fault - the encounter wasn't handled well is what it almost always boils down to.

I'm not going to delve into a deep discussion of formulas for mana regeneration, because there is already an outstanding post stickied in the priest forums which does just that:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;?topicId=11893046&sid=1

If you've never read this before, I highly suggest you spend some time studying this one. The formulas given therein are extraordinarily helpful in determining which spec and gear will best suit your playing style and the encounters you'll be facing. Granted, this information is hard to distill without a 3rd party mod which tells you how much time you're spending inside and out of the 5 second rule. If you really wanna get down to brass tacks on this subject, you'll need to get such a mod so you get an accurate reading on how you're casting and regenerating as you party and raid. Based on the information you gather, you'll be able to see which gear setup will be most beneficial for that particular encounter. Based on an average performance of all your encounters, you'll be able to piece together an all-around gear set which will give you high yields on your mana efficiency in most situations. No way around it though, if you're serious about this (and you should be) you'll have to do your homework.


Core Mana Stats:

A. Spirit - determines your mana and health regeneration rates. Inside the 5 second rule, you get no mana regeneration in combat unless you have the talent spec which allows your mana to regen while casting. Spirit has additional value if you the talents: Spiritual Healing and the Improved Divine Spirit buff. High spirit is also invaluable for endurance healing in a rotation where you'll actually get down time for mana regeneration.

B. Intellect - determines how big your mana pool is and what your chance for a critical spell strike is. In the discipline talent tree, the Mental Strength talent will increase your mana pool by up to 10%, but does not add intellect, thus no additional crit.

C. Mana per 5 - works inside our out of the 5 second rule for a straight regeneration value added to whatever your spirit produces. For folks spending the bulk of their encounters casting inside the 5 second rule, this will generally yield more benefit than high spirit.


So which is best? That's totally subjective to what your casting style is like and what your encounter calls for. If I could invent my own gear, it would include all of the following: Spirit, Intellect, Stamina, +healing and +mana/5. Having additional bonuses like +chance to crit is nice, but you'll generally find that kind of gear more suited for DPS casters. So while the best gear may have "all of the above," you'll generally only find such gear at the epic grade or beyond. In the meantime, you'll have to make choices about what fits best for the time being.


Dressing for the occaision:

So while you're working on acquiring the all around uber super suit that is second to none in every situation, you may want to do what I do. Make a suit of each flavor to fit the occaision and as you acquire familiarity with content, dress appropriately to meet the demands of your encounters. What does that mean? That means I have a crap-load of mules to hold all my stuff so I can lug around the following:

1. Spirit suit
2. Mana/5 suit
3. +healing suit
4. DPS solo suit
5. Resistance suits (1 of each flavor)

Yeah, I know - a full suit costs 18 slots essentially. Some of my suits consist of merely changing a weapon and one or two other pieces from what I normally wear for general healing duty. That doesn't leave much room on your person or in your bank for much else. You'll find, with experimentation, that a mish mash of the first 3 suits will yield the best all around results for general campaigning. You have the added bonus of being able to convert your gear to a highly specialized role for a specific encounter. Maybe this works for you, maybe you don't feel like messing with all that - the choice is yours.


So everything we've covered so far is highly dependent on your gear and your spec, as well as your personal playing style. There are, however, a few things that all healers can do to get more efficient use of their mana regardless of spec, gear, style, etc...


Burst Casting:
This is a pretty simple concept. You wait as long as you safely can before and between castings. When you have to cast, you try and do all your castings back to back, without pausing between castings, and then rest again for as long as safely possible. When you're casting a burst of multiple spells, it keeps you outside the 5 second rule longer if you're casting your slowest spell first. The whole goal is to maximize your time outside the 5 second rule. This is only worth doing if it doesn't jeopardize the survivability of your crew, in my humble opinion.


Downranking:
+healing gear should always be on your shopping list for any and all of your gear suits. The best +healing gear will have +healing only. The stuff which is +damage and healing is really more geared for DPS casters or a soloing suit. Once you've acquired enough bonus healing on your suit, you can afford to downrank your healing spells and save mana by casting cheaper spells for the same effect as what you were able to cast a higher spell for before you had all that +healing. Do this with caution, and get used to the "feel" of your downranked spells. If you don't notice much difference in the feel, but you're seeing your mana go further - you're on the right track. If your heals feel weak and your control is iffyier than before you downranked, you might want to consider acquiring more +healing before you downrank. If you're unsure where to start doing this, you can wait til you're at about +1000 bonus healing and then downrank your Greater Heal. (I generally don't use my flash heals unless i'm in a pinch - so its fairly rare and I find that leaving them at their top rank gives me more of what i'm looking for when I find myself in those hairy situations. Because I'm a HoT healer, I wouldn't dream of downranking my Renew. Additionally, I always have my highest rank G-heal on my casting bar so my option to direct target a teammate and give them my max heal is always at my fingertips. Downranking is much easier to do if you're using a healing mod, such as healbot, so you don't have to mess with your hot keys, or have dozens of healing icons - one for each rank of your spells.) So for myself, my downranking is as follows:

Top ranked G-heal - on my hot bar = roughly +4000 health
Downranked (-1) G-heal - my top cast using healbot (right click) = roughly +3600 health
Downranked (-3) G-heal - my mid cast using healbot (shift+right click) = roughly +2800 health

VII. Healing as a team

A good team consists of skilled, well equipped, and highly motivated players with a strong committment to finishing what they start and working together cooperatively and constructively to find solutions to the challenges they'll face. With the new content we've seen so far, its fairly safe to assume that if any one player isn't giving 100%, their shortfall will be felt be all. Gone are the days of sleepwalking through a 40 man and letting others pick up your slack if you're having an off day for whatever reason. Like an intricate machine, each little cog has to be oiled and functioning properly or the whole thing breaks down.

Its a given that as we tackle new content, we will endure a trial and error process of trying to find what works and wiping on what doesn't. It is imperative that each healer follow their assigned task to the tee. Put yourself in your healing lead's shoes for a moment. You can't expect the playmakers to get an accurate assessment of how effective or ineffective their strategies are if you have solo artists deviating from the plan. If the plan is destined to fail, go down giving your assigned duties all the due diligence and effort you can possibly muster and taking mental notes along the way as to how the plan could be improved. If all you can say after a wipe is, "well that sucked and obviously didn't work," without so much as offering a single suggestion for improving, then you're better off just keeping your trap shut and waiting for the next plan to be handed to you. The wipe and reload learning curve is a grueling test of our ability to maintain focus, positive attitudes and cohesion as a team and a guild. Constructive criticism, suggestions and feedback are invaluable for hatching out the plan that works. ##%!%ing and moaning, on the other hand, has no redeeming value and only serves to undermine the morale of your teammates.


Establishing a baseline:

As we tackle new content, we need to insure that we're giving ourselves the best chance for success. Sticking with the trinity concept, this means that our initial forays into new raid zones need a full representation in the healing pillar. If you do equal splits of manpower amongst the 3 pillars, you'll have 8,8,8 and 1 spare for 25 man content; 3,3,3 and 1 spare for 10 man content. This equal division of roles leaves the DPS department a little on the thin side, imho. But, before you give the spare position to the DPS team, consider whether or not you need 8 (or 3) tanks or if some of those slots can be filled by off-tank capable melee units, or just straight-up DPSers. If you can afford to have a healing heavy team, do it. If your lack of DPS is a problem, it will quickly become obvious. For the folks filling the healing positions, you need main healers that are spec'd and equipped for healing and experienced filling that role. Heal capable units that prefer to DPS don't cut the mustard as a main healer, imho, but that's not to say their healing won't be needed for certain encounters.

When you're setting a baseline, you should take focus on mana efficiency and healing meters and throw them out the window. You can work on fine tuning for efficiency AFTER you've figured out what the minimum requirements for surviving the content are. While you're still in the discovery phase, your group will be better served by having an overabundance of healing rather than coming up short.


Troubleshooting your encounter strategies:

1. If your abundance of healing is causing aggro problems, consider whether or not you've distributed the work-load evenly enough. The tanks can only build aggro so fast and its a given that we have to keep them alive to have any chance for success. On top of that, you don't get threat for overhealing anyone, so the worst (and best) we can do is to be constantly bringing tanks to full health. If the work load has been divided as equally as possible to distribute threat evenly amongst the healing team, and keeping the tanks alive is causing us to pull aggro, then we're either failing the gear check or the tanks need to step up their game. Neither the healers nor the DPSers can survive for long under direct damage, so both pillars are governed by a threat ceiling which is determined by the tanks' abilities to build and hold aggro. (This means everybody needs to have their frikkin threat meters installed before showing up to the raid, and folks should be paying attention to them as we learn new content - especially the DPSers and healers.) If the cieling is too low for the healing and DPS pillars to effectively execute their duties then the responsibility lies squarely on the tanking team's shoulders. It is possible that they are doing everything they can to keep that ceiling rising as quickly as possible, but if they don't have the gear and/or the skill to get the job done, they will still fall short.

2. Another bellwether to look for is running out of mana. I'm a firm believer that if content is approached carefully and handled well, one full mana pool of your healing team should be enough to handle most jobs (encounters designed as endurance fights being the general exception). While the content we're tackling may be quite technically challenging, it was still designed to be an achievable objective if executed properly. If you're running out of mana, look for the reasons why. Some possible culprits could be that the DPSers and healers are picking up too much incidental damage and sapping the healer's mana via spare healing. It is critical that your tanks be taking as much or all of the damage as possible. If you've ruled out the aforementioned possibilities then, in most cases, you'll find that we're either failing the gear check or, more likely, that we have insufficient DPS to get the job done fast enough.

3. One particular red herring to look for is your tanks dying while neither the DPS or healing pillars have taken any or much damage, and your healers still having plenty of mana. While, again, it is possible that we're failing the gear check, the more likely explanation is either that the healers need to step up their game, or that the healing strategy for the encounter is ineffective.


Developing strategy models:

So now we've established what we need to bring to the table and what the warning signs and possible culprits are for failed attempts. Since there is no longer a one size fits all for every encounter strategy that seems to work, we need to develop and refine a variety of different strategy models to meet the challenges ahead. For this to be effective, one must understand that it is a 3 part process:

1. Develop a working model - If you have the best strat model ever developed and nobody has a clue what it is, it isn't worth a wooden nickel. The healing team needs to be intimately familiar with the model before using it, and applying critical thinking to the things that go well and the things that go wrong when it is actually executed. Essentially, we need our models posted in one place on the boards so everyone can familiarize themselves with the plan, and need to insure that folks actually do their homework before trying to use them.

2. Implement your model - theories are great on paper, but everything changes when you take it live. Try to anticipate all the variables and what your plan for handling those will be. Take notes on what the actual outcome was vs. what the anticipated outcome was and tweak your model until it is accomplishing what you intended.

3. Refine your model - A model is a strategy which has been defined in writing for all to see and critique. If you decide something isn't working on your model but only make the appropriate adjustments in your head, you're doing your team a disservice. Make sure you go back to your playbook and update those changes in writing so everyone can be on the same page. Keep in mind that not all your healers will be present for every raid and the written model may be the only reference they have for what strategies are being employed until they can actually get in there and work with it first-hand.

The Playbook - A list of strategy models for use and development:


Healing Rotation:

General: There are a variety of ways to setup a healing rotation. This type of strategy is necessary when facing an endurance battle that will require well beyond 100% of your healing team's combined mana pool. Keep in mind that while a healing rotation deals with how the mana consumption and regeneration are managed, the healing strategy being employed by the casting healers still needs to be defined. Additionally, because there are so many variables involved, there are a lot of different ways you can stage your healing rotation and duties.

Variables to consider:
A. How many healers do you have?
B. How many dedicated healing targets (tanks) do you have?
C. What is the plan for covering spare healing on the rest of the raid if we need to mop up incidental damage?
D. Which of your healers are able to regenerate their mana fastest?
E. How many innervates are available for the encounter?
F. Is this an encounter where the priests can use their shadow fiends for additional mana recovery?
G. Should quaffing mana pots be a part of the strategy and if so, when is the best time to do so?
H. What are the markers for moving to the next phase of the rotation?
I. What are the markers for starting a big heal?

Example scenario:

Again, it bears repeating that this is just one of several ways you can setup your rotation. For this example, let's start by defining our variables.

A. 8 Healers: 3 priests, 3 resto druids, 2 resto shammies
B. 4 Dedicated healing targets: 3 protection warriors and a bear tank
C. Non tanks should limit their incidental damage by maintaining safe positioning if ranged, or by not drawing aggro if melee. Incidental damage to be handled with a HoT from a primary caster and augmented if necessary by the target's use of healthstones, bandages and health potions. Incidental damage may or may not be aided depending on the way PoMs and chain heals proc.
D. Regeneration: (fastest to slowest - hypothetical examples)
1. Priests: Zyiphite, Zartaff, Reagence
2. Druids: Murderwraith, Ashwalker, Whitehide
3. Shammies: Empresse, Massif
E. You have potentially 4 innervates available if the tanking druid's target isn't the last to go down and the bear can safely shapeshift to throw the innervate during the encounter.
F. There is no crowd control a fiend could potentially break in our example, so it is safe for priests to use them
G. If a healer is stepping into the front line casting position, is still low on mana, has no available innervates, and cannot afford to wait for shadow fiend (if priest), then they should quaff a mana pot.
H. When a front line casters (priest or druid) have used roughly 65-75% of their mana pool, they need to rotate. Casters on the rest(regen) lineup should be monitoring the front line casters mana pools and calling for the rotations, so the front line casters can concentrate on their healing targets. The shaman healers will only have 2 lines: the front line and the regen line. They should be rotating once the front line shaman has used 50-60% of their mana pool. When standing on the front line, having a weapon with high +mana/5 may prove beneficial. When standing in any other position, equipping a weapon with high spirit would be best. Overall, if you have a choice between spirit gear or +mana/5 gear, your spirit gear should prove vastly more beneficial since you should have a lot of time outside the 5 second rule.
I. At a health deficit of (-2000), the front line healer should start a big heal casting. This marker should be adjusted downwards if there is any significant overhealing. The marker should be adjusted upwards if the tank is not stable and continues to drop in health overall throughout the healing process.

Hypothetical walk-through:

Your healers are going to be split amongst 3 teams.
1. Priests in their own rotation focusing on Tanks 1 and 2
2. Druids in their own rotation focusing on Tanks 3 and 4
3. 2 Shaman rotating & assist/chain healing any of the 4 tanks in need

The applied healing strategy for this example is as follows:

1. Front line priest: apply a Renew to each of the tanks (1-4). Cast a PoM on Tank 1 (Main tank). Start casting greater heals when your tanks (1 & 2) reaches a health deficit of (-2000) [it will take 2.5-3 seconds to cast your greater heal, so its fairly safe to assume that if you start casting at (-2000) health, your tank will be much lower by the time the heal actually lands, this marker may need to be adjusted upwards if the tank is dropping too low to safely maintain]. Every 15 seconds, re-apply your renews and cast another PoM on Tank 1

2. Backup priest: apply a Renew to each of the tanks (1-4). Cast a PoM on whichever tank has the lowest health. Every 15 seconds, re-apply your renews and find another low health tank for a PoM casting.

3. Resting priest: Monitor the front line priest's mana pool and call for a rotation when it reaches 25-35% remaining. When you rotate, you'll be stepping into the front line position. The front line priest will be stepping into the backup position. The backup priest will assume the resting/regeneration position and cease all casting. If your mana pool reaches 100% before the front line priest needs to rotate, you can conservatively apply spare healing to the rest of the raid, but try to always keep your mana above 90-95% full. Throwing a PoM on a low health tank is a good way to get some spare healing bouncing around the raid very cheaply. Throwing a HoT to a non-tank in need is also fairly affordable. Throwing big heals should be reserved for when you're on the front line as they're too expensive for a resting priest to pay.

4. Front line druid: cast a Rejuvenation on each of the tanks (1-4). Start casting Regrowth on your tanks (3 & 4) when they reach a health deficit of (-2000). Apply swiftmend to your primary tank as needed (tank 3).

5. Backup druid: cast a Revujenation on each of the tanks (1-4). Apply swiftmends sparingly to tanks who are getting dangerously low on health. If an innervate is called for, the backup druid should be the one to cast it if available.

6. Resting druid: Monitor the front line druid's mana pool and call for a rotation when it reaches 25-35% remaining. The druid rotation follows the same pattern as the priest rotation. If an innervate is called for and the Backup druid is unable to provide one, the Resting druid should provide it (or if the bear tank's target is already dead - the bear tank can shapeshift for a moment to innervate so the Resting druid can continue regeneration). If you reach 100% mana before the front line druid needs to rotate, you can conservatively apply spare healing (Rejuvenations) to the rest of the raid, but try to always keep your mana above 90-95% full.

7. Front line Shaman: You will constantly be selecting whichever tank is lowest on health (at or below -3000). Throw a chain heal on them, followed by a big heal if necessary. Although your chain heal may not restore as much health to a single target as your big heal, there should be bigger heals incoming from the priests and druids. This approach is intended to limit the possibility of wasting mana on overhealing as well as provide additional spare healing to the other tanks, melee units and the rest of the raid.

8. Resting Shaman: Monitor the front line shaman's mana pool and call for a rotation once they have used 50-60% of their mana. If you reach 100% mana before the front line shaman needs to rotate, call for a rotation anyway and get them resting.

9. All-in healing calls: There may be times when all healers are needed to quell a sudden burst of damage to the tanks or to the raid at large. If you hear, "All in healing," that means every healer steps into the front line position and tries to get the situation under control as quickly as possible, beginning with their primary tanks, then checking the other team's tanks to see if they need help, followed by any spare healing needed by the rest of the raid. If the All-in healing was successful and the situation was stabilized, resuming the rotation may be necessary to allow for a successful completion of the encounter. When this happens, the person who was front line healing before the all-in healing call was made should move to the rest position. The person who was in the rest position should move to the front line position. The person who was backup healing should remain in the backup healing position. To execute this effectively going into and coming out of such calls, you need to remember that your rotation is based on your position, not on who was in front of or behind you before the call was made, because as you can see, the backup healer didn't really rotate at all and the resting and front line healers swapped spots after the call was ended.

10. Placement and kill order: If at all possible, the tanks need to have a tree druid in their party so they get the additional healing. You also want to start with your fastest regenerating healers in the front line position. It is also important to kill the bear tank's target first so the 4th innervate becomes a viable option as soon as possible.


This is just one of many possibilities that could be used as a healing rotation model. As you read over this, you were probably seeing things that you think could be tweaked to work better - that's great, we need that kind of input to customize a model to better fit a given encounter. Once a model has been decided on and fully tweaked, you'll have an encounter specific model which should insure the highest chances for covering your healin

Gatlin Gun Healing:

This is a very high intensity healing setup aimed at mitigating enormous amounts of damage occuring very rapidly. The downside to this model is the mana expenditure is very high and the duration for which your healers can continue this approach is a finite time span.

Variables to consider:
A. How many healers do you have? - The more the better
B. How many dedicated healing targets (tanks) do you have? - The fewer the better, ideally there would be only 1 target - the main tank.
C. What is the plan for covering spare healing on the rest of the raid if we need to mop up incidental damage? - you'll have to have additional healers which are not being used in the gun to cover this one.
D. Which of your healers are able to regenerate their mana fastest? - your casters in the gun will be chain casting, so they'll have essentially zero time outside the five second rule. +Mana/5 gear is ideal if you're in the gun.
E. How many innervates are available for the encounter? varies, but you'll probably need them all if the gun is firing non-stop.
F. Is this an encounter where the priests can use their shadow fiends for additional mana recovery? - most likely, yes
G. Should quaffing mana pots be a part of the strategy and if so, when is the best time to do so? - if there is no position for a healer(s) to rest and regenerate then quaffing your potion should most likely be done as soon as your mana deficit is equal to the max your potion can restore. Get that cooldown started ASAP.

I need to get more details and research done on this one before I can count it as a well thought out plan. I'll work on that. In the meantime, here is a rough overview of how it works:

Let's say you have 8 main healers in your 25 man raid. Your main tank is facing a mob/boss with a DPS of roughly 3000. You can only cast a big heal every 2.5-3 seconds. Your biggest heals will mitigate approx. 4000 damage. With a single healer targetting your main tank with nothing but chain castings of top ranked G-heals, your tank (assuming he has 12,000 hp and the mob never gets a critical strike on him) has approximately 8 seconds to live. So you set up a casting succession of multiple healers casting their top ranked heals, each starting .5-1 second after the previous healer starting casting and continuing to chain cast their biggest heals thereafter. I'll break out a full second by second analysis later, as I continue researching this model. From what I can tell so far, let's assume that you'll need 1 caster in the gun for every 1000 DPS the mob you're facing produces. I don't know if any of you have ever fired a machine gun on full auto before, but let me assure you (ex-Navy), the barrel gets very hot, very quickly. You also run out of ammo very quickly. This analogy applied to your healers means that they'll be generating enormous amounts of threat and consuming vast amounts of mana in a very short period of time. (I'll check how many chain casts of my top ranked G-heal I can throw in my full +mana/5 gear before I run out of mana completely. Last time I did this, I'm pretty sure it was somewhere between 15-18 castings). So either your encounter is going to have to be very fast, or you're going to need more than 1 gun to keep the other one from blowing up. Lots of grey areas here, but I hope its enough to at least give a general understanding of the model concept. I'll work on the details...


6 Deep HoT Healing: The trash mob pairs in Gruul's lair, which were hitting for an estimated 3000 non-crit DPS were the inspiration for this model. Although keeping 3 tanks up this way, possibly even 4, may be achievable, it would drain your healers' mana significantly and quite rapidly. The ideal scenario for this model is providing max stability and healers' threat distribution for 2 tanks. If your Renew ticks for 600 every 3 seconds, you're getting 3000 healing over the full duration. This is the equivalent of mitigating roughly 6.66% of your tank's non-crit damage. You multiply this by 6 and you're up to 40% non-crit damage mitigation. That leaves about 27,000 non-crit damage to mop up over 15 seconds on each tank, or 54,000 remaining combined damage to mitigate. If nobody else is picking up incidental damage, the 2 PoMs have the potential to mop up 7500 damage each - bouncing between the 2 tanks, per cast, dropping each tank to 19,500 remaining damage which needs to be mitigated. The remaining damage is handled with Regrowths from the dedicated druids, big heals and chain heals from the shaman, and G-heals from the dedicated priests. The mana regeneration in this model comes from having the backup druid and priest watching their class counterparts for risky threat levels and rotating in to relieve it. Although the backups still have the responsibility of keeping their HoTs active on both tanks, they'll only be casting every 12-15 seconds, and regenerating the rest of the time. The shaman are S.o.L. for regeneration in this model, so they may need +mana/5 gear, innervates and potions depending on the duration of the encounter.


Proper Setup:
A. The MT, OT and 3 tree druids should all be in the same group - maximizing the HoT efficiency relies on raising the bonus healing, and triple stacking the tree buffs is important to this strategy.
B. The raid healing team should include 3 holy priests and 3 tree druids, plus 2 restoration shammies or other classes spec'd for main healing.
C. The priests and shammies should be in their own group and should have a wrath of air totem in play for additional bonus healing.
D. +healing gear will be most beneficial for the priest and druid healers. The shaman will probably find +mana/5 gear more beneficial.
E. All healing needs to be focused on the tanks, so it is important that all other players do whatever they can to limit their incidental damage and self-heal when possible.
F. Each tank is assigned a priest and a druid for dedicated healing. The shammies will either split the tanks or each heal both. The 3rd priest/druid will be a backup and is responsible for keeping their HoTs applied, monitoring the threat meter, and relieving a healer of their respective class if he is getting too high.

Execution:
A. The healing will need to begin as soon as the pull starts. Each HoT caster opens with a HoT (Renew or Rejuvenation) to their assigned tank, followed by a HoT to the other team's tank.
B. The shaman will be watching the tanks and using their big heals. As the raid starts picking up incidental damage, casting a chain heal on a tank may be recommended to help alleviate the spare healing demands from non-tank damage.
C. After the tank has taken his 1st hit, the dedicated priests should cast Prayer of Mending on their assigned tanks. The dedicated druids should cast a regrowth on their assigned tanks. The backup priest and druid should be watching the threat meter and regenerating their mana.
D. All 6 HoTs must be re-cast as they expire. The PoMs and Regrowths must be re-applied as well. If a swiftmend is used, the HoT which was burned off needs to be replaced.

Walk-through example casting sequences by role:

Dedicated priest:
1. (Pull starts) cast Renew on your tank
2. Cast Renew on the other tank
3. Cast Prayer of Mending on your tank
4. G-heal your tank
5. Fade
6. G-heal your tank again as necessary
7. At 15 seconds, your Renew has expired - go back to step 1 and repeat the sequence

Dedicated druid:
1. (Pull starts) cast Revujenation on your tank
2. Cast Rejuvenation on the other tank
3. Cast Regrowth on your tank
4. Swiftmend your tank on the last second of your Rejuvenation
5. Once your Rejuvenation expires, go back to step 1 and repeat the sequence.

Shaman Main Healers:
1. (Pull starts) start casting a big heal on your tank
2. Re-apply big heals as needed to your tank
3. If others are picking up incidental damage, try casting a chain heal on your tank

Backup priest:
1. (Pull starts) cast a Renew on the Main Tank
2. Cast a Renew on the Off Tank
3. Make the determination as to whether a tank needs additional stability and apply a PoM or a heal to that tank
4. Regenerate your mana while watching the other priests' threat.
5. At 15 seconds, your first Renew is expiring, go back to step 1 and repeat.
6. Call for rotations as you deem necessary and switch out with the Dedicated priest who is highest on the threat meter

Backup druid:
1. (Pull starts) cast a Rejuvenation on the Main Tank
2. Cast a Rejuvenation on the Off Tank
3. Make the determination as to whether a tank needs additional stability and apply a Regrowth to that tank
4. Regenerate your mana while watching the other druids' threat and the Shamans' mana pools.
5. Reapply your Rejuvenations when they expire (back to step 1)
6. Call for rotations as you deem necessary and switch out with the Dedicated druid who is highest on the threat meter
7. Innervate or call for innervates as the Shammies get low on mana.

VIII. Helping your healers help you

Teamwork is vital for efficiency, speed, and ultimately success. A good healer is fairly worthless if he doesn't have a good tank and good DPSers to back him up. I've always strived to find a niche group within my guild of players that I can hit content with on a very regular basis. (In fact, I even posted a thread on these boards before the expansion was released trying to recruit just such a team...) They're online when I'm online and we have similar goals for grouping, learning, and farming instances and other content. This may sound a bit exclusive, but giving yourself the opportunity to intimately know a small team's playing style and modus operandi can do wonders for how quickly you can conquer content. It also serves your guild better in the long run to have folks who are ahead of the game on their gear, keys and attunements and knowledge of key content. Their experience, knowledge sharing and support proves highly valuable to easing others in the guild through difficult content. The most elite special ops teams in the military are rarely larger than a handful of soldiers and its this same team of soldiers, that does everything together - assignment after assgnment, they live, eat, drink, sleep, play, work, kill and die together. This allows your team to become very tight knit and bonded together. Those conditions, in my humble opinion at least, breed excellence.

If you're a priest, look for a good tank, the rest of the positions tend to fall in place once you've established this pairing. Outside your niche group, your guild, obviously, is your extended family. I would rather do content with my guildies than anyone outside the guild (excepting my brother in real life, and one other very close friend). Serving their needs, as a whole, is generally my top priority.

So once you have your team, or at least your group for the night, you want to do everything in your power to support them in their efforts. Unfortunately, there's a lot of stuff they can be doing to help you as well, and most folks are either ignorant of what these things are, fail to see how important they are to the team's success, or just plain don't care. If you have the self-centered, "I could give a %%*@," type of teammates, consider getting new ones...

You've hopefully got a real good undestanding of what you need to do (keep people from dying), and how you can help others succeed. Astyxia gave a link to a nice post regarding what we can do to help warriors. I've yet to read anything regarding how you can help your DPSers, but would love to do so. I would imagine that such a guide would read something like this:
1. Tanks: build aggro quickly and keep it
2. Healers: don't let us die
:roll:

Here's some things that tanks and DPSers can do to help you. If you have more ideas for this section, please share.


Tanks:
In a lot of cases, you'll be the one doing all the pulls. Before you make that pull, run down this mental checklist:
1. Does my priest have mana? If not, is he drinking? (sometimes we forget to do these things, a reminder should be welcomed)
2. Is my priest positioned where I think he'll be safest, and where i can get to him if necessary?
3. Am I, and the rest of my party, buffed and ready for the pull? (your priest won't always notice if you got debuffed during an encounter, and there are plenty of mobs which can dispell your buffs. At the minimum, you should ALWAYS be wearing a fortitude buff if you're working with a priest. Ultimately, its your responsibility to ask for what you need.)
4. Am I in defensive stance and wearing a shield? (may sound stupid, but it makes a huge difference in how much effort and mana the priest has to expend to keep you alive. If you're going to dual wield-DPS through an encounter, its best to let your priest know beforehand so he can keep extra attention and healing on you.)
5. Are my priest's crowd control targets clearly marked?
6. Does the party understand how the pull will be handled?
7. Am I doing everything I can to limit the damage to me, to my healer, and to my team? (this may sound silly too, but i've been in several situations where my "tank" decided it would be a good idea to step into berserker stance and throw some ability that increases his damage and cuts my healing in half. If you do this, especially without advanced warning, it will be the last time the Reverend, or any other semi-sane priest, willingly heals you again.)

--==Tanks - Q: Which of your abilities is the best threat generator?
A: If your answer is sunder armor, you need to go back to school.


DPSers:
Your DPS is your best chance at succeeding in an encounter while expending the least amount of time and resources. As Chemwoo put it, "its the DPS that gets the job done." The tanking and healing are essentially just there to give the DPS the time and protection they need to bring the mob down. But, if you're soaking up the majority of the healing instead of the tank, you're more of a liability than an asset. Being a DPSer is like being the driver in the fastest frikkin race car available. Like any race car, if you floor the throttle and exceed the redline too quickly or for too long, you're gonna blow the engine. Learn to throttle your dps, as all-out dps from the start of the pull is usually a recipe for disaster. A good DPSer can do high damage. A great DPSer can control his damage and threat, delivering the highest possible yields for the least amount of risk. How DPSers manage their threat is the key factor differentiating the masters from those who have much to learn.


Mages:
If you're a frost mage, you can throw ice block to drop aggro. If you're not, and you have no available options for crowd control or escape, the best thing you can do is to let your healer know as soon as possible when you've acquired accidental aggro and to cast your most effective shielding on yourself. (Usually all this takes is a good crit shot or 2, and this happens frequently with mages - it shouldn't be a death sentence for them)


Rogues:
If you grab aggro, you have a few options. You can vanish and completely drop your aggro. If that's not an option, you can hit evasion so the mob has a really hard time hitting you for damage. You can feint, and i think there are a few other tricks...but i'm not a rogue. If you're going to be stealthing ahead to investigate uncharted territories, let your priest know, and don't be afraid to ask for a shield before starting such explorations. I've also seen some rogues using a mod that notifies the party of a bad sap and immediately attempts to vanish. Realize that your priest's first reaction will be to help/heal you. Once you have that heal, your option to vanish and save the party is effectively gone. If you're in a really bad situation that could result in a wipe, but the rest of the party isn't yet involved - saying, "don't heal me" can save the group.


Hunters:
I've seen a lot of hunters that will feign death once the mob has been chewing on them for a few good hits. This is helpful, but the really helpful time to FD is before the mob even touches you. If you bust out your melee weapons and start fighting the mob until you're halfway down your health bar, you've significantly increased the amount of healing required for the encounter, decreased your healer's mana pool, and raised your healer's threat by a good chunk while he was healing you. You should have the "show target of target" option checked in your interface options. As soon as that mob's target is you, you should be feigning death. If you've got really good control and experience with FD, you may want to let the mob path to you a bit, disengaging them from combat temporarily, but you still want to FD before they actually reach and damage you.


Warlocks:
There is an ability you get at lvl 68 called soul shatter which is an aggro dropping ability that costs 1 soul shard and has a 5 minute cooldown. Make sure this is available for boss fights and use it in non-boss encounters when you get in trouble. You have your pet to help you, and your healthstone to help your healer help you and the rest of the group through emergencies. Other than that, good communication with your healer is probably your best bet for avoiding death by accidental aggro. Use your threat meter to help you.

Life-tapping: Its good to communicate with your healer about this ability. If you're tapping in combat, you're essentially stealing your healer's mana unless you have a plan for restoring your own health, and you've communicated that plan to your healer. After combat, if you're going to tap way down and then bandage, eat or cannibalize, telling your healer, "don't heal me" will help them recover their mana more quickly. Some priests, such as myself, will throw a HoT on their warlock just after combat, before sitting to drink. I always watch the warlock to see if they use or waste this HoT. A warlock who sits at full health with a HoT ticking away on them, and not doing any life-tapping while their mana is down, is essentially boosting that healer's overhealing stats. I don't get upset about it, it may be that warlock's style to drink instead of tap - that's fine. I can assure you, however, that if you're putting my after combat HoTs straight on my O-healing tab, you won't be getting them again.

DPS Shammies:
I'm fairly ignorant when it comes to this class. There are a multitude of abilities a shaman has to help with healing, aggro, dps, damage mitigation, mana regeneration and other cool stuff. I'm asking for input from shammies to help me flesh out this section. The one suggestion I can think of, is if you know you're going to be in a fight where you will assuredly pull aggro, consider putting on a shield instead of dual-wielding. You may wear mail armor, but from a priest's perspective, once you get aggro, you feel about as squishy as a cloth wearer. Most of the shaman I've worked with don't have huge stamina, so while their armor may be helping, their health bar still falls quite rapidly.


Paladins:
Ok, so you have plate armor. That does not mean you can take damage as well as a warrior, or if you can, I've yet to work with a pally who felt as solid as a tank. But, pallies can heal themselves and do other neat stuff. The one thing to watch out for is your bubble. Unlike a priest's shield, a pally bubble usually causes the mob to drop aggro and target something else. If you've been off-tanking a mob, chances are the only other person with any real aggro on that mob is your healer. It stands to reason that if you bubble yourself in this situation, you may have given your healer a death sentence.


Druids:
I'm gonna kind of skip over this class. Bears are tanks, Moonkin are mages in bear-form equivalent armor. Trees are healers. Cat form druids can cower to drop aggro. This class has a lot they can do to help themselves and their healer... the extent of which is so in-depth, I don't think a blurb in this section would do it justice.



It goes without saying, that if your priest is in trouble and cries out for assistance, someone should step-in and save his squishy butt. A good priest will let you know when he's in trouble. I usually say or type, "on me" and that's enough for everyone to know what's up. In a raid, there may be a lot of "mes" though. Best to include your name in those situations if you're using TS as your communication method.

Generally as you move through content, especially the 5 man content, you'll find that you're able to cover it much faster if your tank takes the bulk of the damage and your healer only has to worry about keeping the tank healed. Even if you find yourself in a situation where your healer is astoundingly good and can heal you right through your aggro-whoring in most cases, you're still wasting time because the healer will have to drink much longer than if he had just been healing the tank. As an added bonus, everyone gets a higher repair bill this way too.

IX. Triage

Webster's does a nice job of summarizing this one.

triage: 1. the process of sorting victims, as of a battle or disaster, to determine medical priority in order to increase the number of survivors. 2. the determination of priorities for action in an emergency.

You've seen this situation before, and unfortunately, you'll probably be seeing it again. For whatever reason; adds, hesitation, lag, bad pull, D/C etc., folks in your party are going to start dying. In fact, the death will be so widespread that it is impossible to save everyone. What you're hoping to do now is to get enough damage control on the situation to prevent a complete wipe. Learning to recognize these situations early can help you deal with them more successfully. The time to start thinking about your triage plan is NOT during the triage situation. You need to think about this stuff beforehand because when the dung hits the fan, all you'll have time to do is react, and even the slightest hesitations will cost lives. After the situation is over, take a moment to ask yourself a few questions:

1. Did I follow my triage plan?
2. Did my triage plan work, work well, work not so well, or was it total crap?
3. What could we as a group have done to avoid the triage situation in the first place?
4. What could you, as an individual healer have done to deal with the triage more effectively?
5. What could the healers, as a team, have done to deal with the triage more effectively?

Like everything else in tBC, there really isn't a one size fits all solution. In some cases, certain classes may be indispensible to an encounter. In other cases, those same folks may be the most expendable. It isn't easy choosing who lives or dies. Do your best and learn from the experience. Your efforts may give you the illusion of having control and making a difference - and sometimes they really do. In reality, you're getting a good exercise in dying gracefully most of the time. These are the worst of situations, so expect it to be rare that you emerge on the other side of that steaming pile smelling like a rose.

So, there are no absolutes but, there are some good rules of thumb to remember.

1. The #1 Rule of Healing: If the healer(s) dies, there is no more healing.
This is one rule that i frequently have to kick myself in the pants for not paying closer attention to. Its quite easy to become so focused on everyone else's health bars that you lose sight of your own <--Don't let this happen. You have a job to do, and you can't do it if you're dead (or if you have the talents, you can only do it for a few seconds after you die).

2. Generally, the only thing standing between you and a really nasty mob that would love to come eat your lunch in 1 or 2 shots is.... YOUR TANK! 9 times out of 10 (for me at least) if the tank dies, the healer is right behind him. This is generally considered to be the most important healing target (but if you're paying attention, you'll see that its actually the 2nd most important).

3. In almost all cases, the tank alone cannot do enough damage to a mob or boss to kill it before the healer runs out of mana. Makes sense because if they could, there'd be a lot of 2 man instance runs happening. Like it or not, the DPS classes are usually where your first triage fatalaties will occur. They have less armor, less hit points, are capable of jaw dropping crits, and they're usually not the ones that healers are pre-targeting and watching for damage. Be keenly aware that the DPS is a pillar of the Trinity, and if you lose too much - you've sealed your fate anyway.

4. If you're going to die - pick a good, safe spot to do it.


"So what's the point? Folks wipe, crit happens, nothing is perfect, etc."

The point is, even if you still end up wiping - having a plan for how to deal with the chaos leading up to the wipe will generally help you to fare better or last longer in these types of situations than having no plan at all and getting caught off-gaurd when it does happen. (And it will happen - just a matter of when) Having a plan also gives you a source of feedback, a tool to use in determining what works, what doesn't work, and what may work more effectively.

X. The evolution of healing in the Burning Crusade

Ok, humor me with my analogies. Let's say you're in construction. You've been handed a totally new blueprint for a building. You've been given newly designed tools with which to build it. You've been given new building codes and specifications that are significantly different from anything you've built before. It stands to reason that if you show up to the job site with nothing but your same old trusty hammer, you're going to have a hard time getting the job done efficiently and successfully.

The same holds true for healing in the Burning Crusade. The content has grown in scope and technical difficulty. Mobs and bosses hit for significantly more damage in the outland raids and instances in my experience so far. How you setup your positioning for some fights, and what your healing strategy for dealing with that encounter is, can be make or break factors for success.

You've been given new tools (spells) to get the job done with. If you're going to be able to employ your tools effectively, you'll need to get a good bit of experience using them. A single style of healing is no longer adequate. Sure, pre-TBC with the right gear and group, you could fine tune a single style of healing to be successful in all, or nearly all encounters. But today, in my humble opinion at least - that just doesn't cut the mustard anymore. You have to be multi-faceted. Be able to recognize a situation and what tools will be most effective in dealing with that encounter. Be able to shift on the fly from single target healing to group healing, from using HoTs and/or PoMs to saving the mana and threat you generate from their use, from being reserved and conservative in your healing to being liberal and generous. There is no more one size fits all healing style; at least not one i've seen that can be employed successfully across the board in all situations. Be adaptable, flexible, learn from your mistakes, and learn from the mistakes of others. Share your knowledge and ask for input from others to help you build your knowledge. If one approach doesn't work, try it from a different angle. If you find something that works - let others know about it so they don't have to chew glass to get to where you are now.

Make no mistake, the content has evolved in tBC. If you're going to keep up or conquer, you will undoubtedly have to evolve in your healing and playing skills as well. It is no mistake that HoTs now stack 3 deep. It is not simply for decoration that you have new spell icons to place on your action bars. Much of the content, I've found, is extremely difficult to overcome without these new spells and tools being used. Their necessity is apparent to the point of being obvious that the content was engineered to cater to, and in some cases mandate, the use of these new tools for any chance of success. (Blizz obviously didn't want their new priest spells and talents to be optional novelties)

We are creatures of habit. Most folks, by nature, dislike change. But change is like a wave. You can get the thrill of your life if you recognize the waves of change coming and surf them to victory. Or, you can ignore and overlook the impending waves of change and be pummeled beneath them. If you're still pounding that square peg into the round hole - this is your call to sanity. Recognize the evolution occurring all around you and remember what happened to the dinosaurs... Don't be a dinosaur!

XI. Healing with Hallelujah

I had to include this section because playing a priest lends itself so well to role-playing. I'm hoping that all of you chose to roll your toons on an RP server because you actually enjoy the RP aspects of the game. If you rolled here because you thought it was your best opportunity to have the least competition in pvp, pve etc... well... then you're just weak-sauce in my book.

The biggest compliments I've received in the guilds I've played in were the times that various members of these guilds asked me, "Are you a priest in real life?" LMAO! No, i'm a hedonistic hell-raiser, but your questions were the highest praise you could've possibly given my RP efforts - thank you.

As a priest, you're not just a spiritual leader, you're also the medic for your team, and the shepard of their morale. In my experience playing my non-priest toons, I've found that there is no uncertainty greater than being in an instance and having your main healer start to get really negative. The whole party gets nervous about whether or not they'll be able to continue. Being light-hearted and positive goes a long way to setting the constructive tone which fosters successful runs. You should also recognize and set your limits for how much glass chewing you're going to endure. With the guild, that's one thing - you stay in there til the job is done and the chief says its over, but with 5 man groups and PUGs, you shouldn't waste your time beating your head against a brick wall and racking up a huge repair bill for an effort that is obviously going nowhere. I usually uphold the 3 strike limit for wipes. After our party has blown it 3x, and not near misses or "we almost had that!" attempts, I'm talking about the careless and completely avoidable mistakes that are generally the fuel for volatile party attitudes. Rather than blow your cool, I've found that just saying something like, "sorry guys, i'm not sure what the problem is but I think a different group may be a good idea - good luck to you all," and then making your exit generally works best. In cases like these, what is left unsaid is worth a thousand words. You've also gone a long way to preserving your guild's reputation. I tend to think poorly of anyone who leaves a party in a burst of flames, spouting crap like, "you guys couldn't instance your way out of a wet paper bag - n00bs!" That's just uncalled for. Everyone was a n00b once and nobody is born with WoW skills.

So, a professional attitude and a good bedside manner are golden feathers in any healer's cap. I'd encourage you to go beyond that and really flesh out some personality for your priest. Personally, I prefer the greasy, often scandalous, televangelist archetype for my priest. I draw character material from Rev. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Jim Baker, Cleophus James (James Brown's character in the Blues Brothers movies... my avatar for the guild boards too), Rev. Bubba Flavell (Porky's III) and a few other hilarious fictional and real life men of the cloth. Play it good, or play it bad - playing it up is a bonus either way. Granted, there will always be those sour-puss types that turn up their noses at any RP (ignore them, they don't belong here). Whether you are reverent or irreverent with your character's personality - at least you have some personality, and that makes the game more enjoyable for you and most of the folks around you. It breaks tension and gives you opportunities to inject humor into edgy situations.

One day you'll find yourself in an encounter where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong; and the primary reason your party is still intact and not making a corpse run is the fact that your healing performance was nothing short of a miracle. Then suddenly, you hear(or read) a resounding, "Hallelujah!," and maybe a few amens from your party... its a deep sense of satisfaction knowing that your skills pulled you through and that your character's personality is enjoyed and appreciated.

XII. Invitation for dialogue and criticism

When I got serious about my healing career in WoW, I told myself that someday I would write the book on healing. Well, this ain't it! But, its where I am now and what I know so far. Rest assured that I am confident in the fact that I still have much to learn.

Before you critique this work, allow me to throw in a few of my own criticisms. This came off sounding more like a pitch than I'd hoped, but its kind of unavoidable considering it is almost entirely based on my personal experiences and opinions. To a veteran priest, there may be nothing new here at all, and you may be saying to yourself, "ok... so tell me something I don't know." If that's the case, then thanks for taking the time to read it anyway. My writing style tends to be a bit... editorialized? and the points I consider important have a tendency of recurring to the point of being redundant. That's semi-intentional and semi-writing style subconciousness. If you found it annoying or condescending, I apologize and assure you that was not the tone I was going for.

When we're standing on Illidan's head at the end of the black temple and this handbook has had a few dozen more revisions and updates, and we've developed a consensus amongst the healing team and the community at large that the concepts represented are sound and effective, then maybe I can call this "the book" I was hoping to write someday. Until then, there is much work and research to do, new things to learn and experience, and a myriad of different viewpoints and feedback sources that need to be considered and integrated. I need your help to make this handbook better, and hopefully someday, the best it can be.

While I welcome all feedback, there are certain gems I'm hunting for. The information which will be most valuable to future revisions will come from other priests and healers who have actually found something new, different, or interesting and took the time to use, try or test it out. I need to know what worked for you and what was totally off-center from what you expected after reading this. If you're a healer who found something new here but completely rejected it before even trying it; then your opinions about that are essentially worthless to me because you're too closed-minded for me to consider your feedback objective. You're welcome to post them anyway. ;)

If you're a non-healer and this handbook helped you gain a greater insight of what a healing priest's role is and the challenges they face, that's awesome! I would love to hear what you learned and how it benefitted you. If you noticed things written about your class that you consider to be off-target or misrepresented, I would appreciate your clarifications and explanations so I can do a better job on that.

If you read this entire beast from top to bottom and have absolutely no comment or opinion to share regarding it, that's ok. I want to sincerely thank everyone who took the time to read this monstrosity. It means more to me than you know.

Sincerest thanks,

--Reverend Reagence

XIII Input credits and thanks

My sincerest appreciation and thanks goes out to everyone who read this and provided new insight, knowledge or content contribution. …In case you were wondering who these characters are:

Character name - Contributions

Kragen - Helping your healers input
Munchies - Helping your healers input
Aldemar – Fade/threat mechanics
Aniwen – talent clarifications and PoM mechanics
Constance – PoM mechanics and Fade/threat mechanics
Niimue – multiple statistical error corrections, PoM mechanics and Shadowfiend mechanics
Amarrah – debuff remover mechanics
Tarmah – Shadowfiend mechanics
Calliea – Circle of Healing input
Quinnae – Circle of Healing input
Osimus – Add-ons input
Charlize - statistical errors and factual clarifications, add ons, spells and mechanics, grammar and reading flow.
Haez - factual clarifications, team healing

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