The skull of tanking

The standard marks that I use is a simple kill order, skull, then cross, then star, then square, and then moon.  I expect star, square and moon to be crowd controlled.  There are a lot of CC options, but the classic would be rogue sap the star, hunter trap on the blue square, and mage polymorph on the moon.

If you don't have a kill order, then players will split their damage instead of creating a focus fire on a single mob. This will make trash take longer and make the tank scramble to maintain the attention of multiple mobs.  If the players follow the damage order the tank's job will be much easier, the healer will use less mana, and the group will move faster through the dungeon.

I also like the CC to happen after the tank pulls (expect for rogue sap of course), instead of "sheep pulling" as many people refer to it.  There's always going to be the beat of time between the sheep's polymorph and the tank gaining control.  This beat of time, is very dangerous, especially if you have players laying into the targets fast.  Instead let the tank pull, then lay down the CC.  The player doing the CC, needs to worry about where they are going to CC the mob.  Casting polymorph on a mob that is sitting next to the tank isn't a great option.  If the tank range pulls the group, this usually gives plenty of room for the CC to take place while giving the tank plenty of room to cleave.

locked boxes inside boxes

I found this amusing.  A locked lockbox looted from a locked lockbox.

Troll Druid Levels 1 to 15... or Big Bear Butt Bounce

After reading, Bigbearbutt's Post about troll druids, I decide to roll a little troll myself.    First, I have to agree the starting area is fun and fast.  I especially liked how the rescued raptor hatchlings which were following me around jumped onto the face of the Big Bad Naga.

Cat form at level 8 is great, except that casting thorns breaks form, and returning to cat form leaves you with no energy for a long time.  I guess thorns is designed for the caster specs.  I know that on my Resto druid I cast thorns on the tank as much as possible.  Of course moonfire also breaks form as expected, leaving no way to range pull except to switch to Troll Form, pull, switch back to Cat Form, which would be okay, except for the energy problem.  Getting 3 points into Furor will solve the problem, but assuming you take Feral Swiftness first, it's going to be level 15 before you have a couple of points in that talent.  Faerie Fire is a level 24 spell unfortunately.

At first I used a rotation of Rake, Claw(Mutilate at level 10), Bite-- the idea was to put up Rake first, so you could get max ticks out of it before the mob died.  During these levels nothing lives that long.  Claw, Claw, Bite pretty much killed anything.  Sometimes, I would just save the energy, just Claw/Mutilate twice and skip Bite.

The troll cat form itself is very trollish and Blizzard did a good job of making them very unique compared to Taurens and Night Elves.  I've always preferred the sleek dark Panther look of the Night Elves, very Jazzy, just like the Cat Form dance.  On the other hand, the trolls are punk rockers who think punk rockers are all posers.   I was admiring my cool unique cat form appearance at level 8, when a twin druid ran up the trainer.   

I hit level 15, trained up the Bear spells, and next time I have a couple of hours, I'll queue up as a tank.  It'll be fun comparing low level instances between tanking and healing.

Lower Blackrock Spire... or Lets pull the whole room, again...

My level 57 priest appears in LBRS for the first time with a level 60 Death Knight.  This DK was one of the don't-stop-pulling-until-someone-dies variety.  While I'm picking up the quests, he's already pulled a couple of groups.  I pop a renew on him and a couple of them run right towards me.  I'm not sure if it's this DK's tanking style or what, but for the entire instance I was fighting heal aggro.  It didn't help that the tank's pulls usually ended up getting every group in the current room.  It was close a couple of times, but I was able to keep everyone alive.  It was a good change from the never ending Blackrock Depths runs.

During the Urok Dooomhowl event, where waves of ogres appear, I found that staying right on top of the tank was the best approach.  The tank would eventually get control of them, and binding heal kept me alive until then.

Body and Soul lets me drink and then quickly catch up to the group.  I ventured way out to the AV entrance in horde control Hillsbrad to pick up some manna biscuits which helps a lot for restoring mana quicky.  It's crazy that alliance has no flight points in this zone anymore.  It could be that when Cataclysm goes live and Gilneas is populated that some things will change in these zones.

Chakra Bleu ... Binding Pray of Healing.

How to heal level 50-60 dungeons using a Holy Priest.  Renew, Chakra, Heal, Heal, Heal, Heal, ..., Chakra, Heal, Heal, Heal, etc.

Things have changed now that my lowly priest has gotten the Chakra and Revelations talents.  The Chakra has too different modes, the Serenity Mode, which is activated by casting Heal after hitting the Chakra spell, and the Sanctuary Mode which is activate by casting Prayer of Healing (and Prayer of Mending but that's a level 68 spell).    Each mode lasts for 30 seconds at which point you have to start it again.  (There's a talent State of Mind that can be used to extend the time of the state, but I don't have enough talent points for it yet.)

Serenity
In the Serenity mode a Heal will reset the Renew duration on the Heal's target.  It also adds 10% extra crit on all direct heal spells.  It's my Chakra of choice at level 55.

The ability to keep a Renew spell running just by hitting the tank with the very mana efficient Heal spell is great.  I have enough mana regeneration to spam the Heal spell.  This keeps Inspiration up on the tank, and procs Surge of Light for free Flash Heals.  If you have an aggressive DPS that likes to off tank, keeping up renew on two targets is pretty easy.

The Chakra spell itself does not cause a GCD, so it can be added directly to a Heal macro.  Such as:

#showtooltip Heal
/cast Chakra
/cast [@mouseover,help]Heal; Heal

Revelations

The Revelations talent changes your Holy Word based on Chakra mode selected.  In Serenity, it becomes Holy Word: Serenity.  This is an instant heal that increases crit heal chance on the target by 25% for 6 secs.  Obviously a great spell if the Tank is going to be slammed with big incoming damage or a DPS pulls aggro and will need big fast heals to survive until the tank gets control back.  The problem is that at this level of healing, nothing is hitting tanks that hard and DPS can be saved with a shield and Flash Heals.  I also really liked the ability of Holy Word: Chastise to interrupt an NPC casting a nasty spell.  

Also, there's a bug which makes a simple mouse over macro impossible with the Holy Word spells.   I have to select the player to target the Holy Word: Serenity spell.  It's a very annoying for someone that's used to mouse over healing, and I hope it's high on Blizzards to do list.

Sanctuary
The Sanctuary Chakra is a lot more spectacular looking, with the big white AOE heal on the ground, but it's pretty pointless at this level of healing.   Except when pulls go bad...

Prayer of Healing
Binding Heal + Serendipity + Prayer of Healing is a life saver when pulls go bad.  Imagine you're in the Grim Guzzler and suddenly all the patrons are attacking.  You plant a Renew on the tank and 15 "Change Targets" flash up, the Mage starts spamming Arcane Explosion, and the Tank is turned to the wrong direction, trying to figure out where to spit his Cud.  Binding Heal, keeps you and the target with the lowest health alive and makes the next 2 Prayer of Healings go fast.  Rinse and repeat.  BH, POH, POH, BH, POH, POH, ...  The party will be amazed when everyone is alive afterwards.  The 15% heals from Chakra Sanctuary can't be discounted in this situation, but in general this shouldn't be happening very often.

Next Talents
Next I have to decide, do I take the Circle of Healing talent or the State of Mind talent.  Circle of Healing seems like a great spell in theory, but with the long cool down, I'm thinking its more of a Raid talent then a low level healing talent.  Where as with State of Mind, all I get is the ability to extend the Chakra state that doesn't really take any time to restart.

Goatee -- or can I change into a Tauren?

As a healer, I think the Blood Elf racial skills are going to keep my goatee safe.  The arcane torrent restores mana which will be more important then ever.  The Blood Elf's magic resistance works against all spells, not just nature spells like the Tauren's racial.  An extra stun would be nice, but I would miss the silence effect of arcane torrent.

I have not been healing with my Paladin much since 4.0.1 released.  I ran him through all the Elemental event bosses, but I didn't use anything but Beacon, Holy Shock, Holy Light, and Word of Glory.  I think Light of Dawn would have been useful, but by the time I remembered it, I had done all 4 bosses.

The patch notes for 4.0.3a shows the designers have been fine tuning paladin healing.

Holy Radiance now has reduced effectiveness on targets over 8 yards away from the paladin.  /RW Radiance Active, Move to me!   A talent that encourages Holy Paladins to move is unnatural.  We stand in one place casting Really Big Heals.  But, maybe not so much anymore.  Holy Shock, WOG, Light of Dawn, and Holy Radiance, makes us so much more mobile.

Beacon of Light now lasts 5 minutes, up from 60 seconds.  In Wrath the Beacon of Light was a signature spell of the Holy Paladin.  It was a priority to keep it active and learning the best times to refresh it was important.  It's possible that the new Beacon with a zero mana cost (Glyph of Beacon of Light) will be a more strategic spell.  I don't know, and I won't until I get some experience with actual level 85 encounters.

Blessed Life: the effects of this talent cannot occur more than once every 8 seconds, up from every 2 seconds.  I'm guessing the PVP players won't like this very much.  Free Holy Power from attacks is a powerful ability.  This talent would also be useful while leveling from 80-85, if you insisted on doing it as a Holy spec.

Illuminated Healing absorb shield now absorbs 10% of the total amount healed, up from 8%. Each point of Mastery increases the effect by an additional 1.25%, up from 1%.   Shields are good.  Shields that absorb even more damage are gooder.

Light of dawn has been redesigned. It no longer has an enforced cooldown, now costs Holy Power instead of mana, and scale in direct proportion to the amount of Holy Power used. In addition it now heals the 5 most injured group targets (including self) in a 30-yard frontal cone. A smart heal for the paladin.  Glyphed this will be very powerful in a 10 man raid, healing 6 of the most injured.  The cool down has been removed, but getting three Holy Power is a more organic cool down.  Decision time, WOG or LOD at three Holy Power.

Protector of the Innocent no longer triggers from self-heals.  Smells like another PVP tweak.  I imagine the Holy Paladin spamming heals on himself while laughing at the player attacking him.  This talent appears to address the common, I forgot to heal myself syndrome many healers experience.  A personal mini beacon.

Fine tuning pass number 41 or whatever.  I expect there will be more tweaks in the weeks to come.

Why Does Blizzard Hate Wrath Design?

“Why Does Blizzard Hate Healers?” - World of Warcraft

I'm glad the designers are spending so much time on healing.  But, this article is bad.  It's not surprising to see comments like, "...No reason why heal[e]rs should have it easy..."  The article needs to own the design decisions.  In Wrath they decided on a model that lead to very fast fights.  If the raid's DPS was below average then healers were definitely going to run out of mana.  If the raid didn't dance correctly then it didn't matter how much mana the healers had.  The Wrath model was as valid as the next expansion's model, but instead of saying that, this article props up the next design by breaking down the old one.

Stay on message, the next expansion is going to be different and just as fun.