Dungeon Finder's New Bias ... how it forced me to run a dungeon with my guild.

I logged in and checked Dungeon Finder, since there was extra loot for healers, I queued.  Note, I'm not real social butterfly, I don't "/g hello everyone" because I don't care if people know I'm around or not.  So, I'm queued up ready to get my satchel of exotic mysteries when I get a group, and jump into a Random group filled with players from my own guild.  Apparently, their healer left and I got randomly selected to replace him.   We all had a good laugh about it, especially since they hadn't asked me to queue with them in the first place.   It's not like they wouldn't have asked me, if they knew I was around and looking for a group.  I least, I that's what I tell myself before I go to sleep.

The Dungeon Finder's new bias which matches with players from the same realm first is apparently to blame.  I've noticed a lot of people from the same Realm in my groups, and I think it's a great new feature.  It's amazing how many of these players whisper me, "hey you guys are level 25?"  So many new people looking for a high level guild.

If meet some random player from your realm and they are good, add them to your friends list.  These people could fill in gaps in guild runs, be it dungeon or raid.  Make a note, good deeps, great tank, whatever, so when you are looking to fill in a run, you'll have a list of contacts to check.

Dev Watercooler -- Number of Abilities - World of Warcraft

Dev Watercooler -- Number of Abilities - World of Warcraft

I've struggled with handling the number of abilities issue, especially with some of the more subtle abilities (hand of salvation, etc). My personal technique for handling this, is to simple focus on a new ability for a few runs. I'll do a postmortem of a past run and notice for example, that I'm not using Divine Protection. Obviously not using an ability that mitigates damage and therefore reduces healing is big no-no. This ability is especially valuable when used in conjunction with Divine Sacrifice, since you can redirect damage a player that is about to get slammed and mitigate it. Using the Glyph of Divine Protection makes it especially powerful when handling big damage spell based abilities. After this research, I make a new macro:

#showtooltip Divine Sacrifice

/cast Divine Protection

/cast [@mouseover, help] Divine Sacrifice

I then link it to a keybind and focus on using that ability in the next few runs. During these runs, I'll be thinking about it, as I let my normal healing routine run on automatic. After a few runs, I won't have to "focus" on it as much, and eventually, it'll just be part of my arsenal. This has a lot to do with learning each encounter and anticipating instead of reacting with an ability. I know the big bad Creep is going to blast the tank with a Giant Ball of Fire soon, so I can am ready with Divine Sacrifice. Once it's in your head as an option, it'll be more natural to react with it too.

I remember on my casual Holy Priest, I'd run several heroic 5-mans, without ever using Guardian Spirit. A 31-point talent with a short 3-min CD that I never used is shameful. I even had a key bind on it. But, now I pop that GS on players all the time, especially in heroics, when running with a Tank that doesn't like to CC.

Like all things worth doing, the room to improve is key to making me come back to the game raid after raid.

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.   

    

low level holy priest healing talents... or lightwell!?

The low level Holy Priest's Talent selection is frustrating because many of the talents do not apply to low level healing necessary in Random Dungeon Finder groups.

I know that the Light Well spell is improved and easy to use, but at levels 30-40 there's really no reason to use it.  I plopped it down and the couple of people that used it, ran up right next to it before clicking it.  So be ready to tell people how it works.

Empowered Healing and Improved Renew.  I'm not sure why they didn't just roll the renew buff into Empowered, but renew will be a low level holy priests friend.  Heal takes a long time to cast, and Flash Heal will eat your Mana up fast.

Note: Renew is good for the tank or anyone else taking constant damage.  Casting renew on everyone that takes a hit will eat up your Mana.  Use the very mana efficient Heal spell to top off a player that took a hit.

Divine Fury.  Faster heals is a good idea.  Still the Heal spell ends up being a 2.5s cast which is a long time when the tank has pulled too much trash.  Keep refresh running, when the tank starts dropping hit them with a Power Word: Shield spell, then start the 2.5s Heal spam.  A shield + heal is less mana then one Flash Heal spell.  Also, the shield is sometimes enough to let the renew catch them up and a heal isn't necessary.  It's okay to cancel the heal if it looks like they aren't going to need it.

Inspiration requires a critical spell hit which at lower levels requires spamming Heal.  Not real useful.

Surge of Light has a very low proc rate, which would be fine in a raid, when heal spamming is going to happen.

Desperate Prayer.  Free self heal, not exciting...

Divine Touch... Renew is great at this level, any extra healing from it is great.  Pop in the Prime Glyph of Renew for even another 10% extra.  Here's what I do, let the tank pull a group, they will drop a bit, hit them with Renew.  This allows the direct heal to land, plus allows the tank to establish could aggro control.  The smart play isn't always to keep the tank topped off.

Holy concentration.  Mana can be a problem especially in low level Random groups where Aggro Control is not always great.

That's it.  Two very useful talents, Improved Renew and Divine Touch.  Three okay talents, Empowered Healing, Divine Fury and Holy Concentration.  The second level (Desperate Prayer, Surge of Light, Inspiration) barely register.  Lastly, The Light Well, which shall always seem like a great spell but is just not useful at the lower levels.

Forcing a player to stay in a single tree at lower levels prevents some very effective low level healer builds.  It's Frustrating to spend a talent that's not going to be useful until I'm healing a heroic.

Healing the Elemental Invasion Bosses

I've lost more players to "standing in fire" then any of the other mechanics. The first time on the flame boss, the tank and melee damage just stood together in a huge fireball of flames. I hurled heals in as fast as I could but nothing was going to save them except a little movement.  So every flame boss attempt since then, "/p Please don't stand in the fire."  Every tank so far has understood, but the DPS still have trouble moving and still die because of it.

The water boss is good place to practice your interrupts.  The long spell, "Gahz'rilla Glacier" is the best "Ice Block" of all time.  It prevents all damage and restores a lot of health.  Interrupt or end up killing him twice.  You can see the ice spikes below your feet before they go off, so move, move move.  The pool is full of hungry fish, so try not to go swimming.

The air boss is good place to practice healing on the move since you can see those cyclones coming. 

I've only healed the earth boss once.  The damage spiked, requiring burst heals on 2 or 3 players at a time.

Greater healing waves and Lifeblood...

I have to admit, my shaman rarely used Greater Healing Wave during 5-man heroics.  I have it in a macro with Nature's Swiftness, so I "saved" it for when I need an instant big heal.  This has been a mistake.  With the Rapid Currents and Tidal Wave buffs from a Riptide, the first GHW has a 1.1 second cast time, the second GHW hits in 1.3 seconds.  When incoming damage is high, I can Riptide, GHW, GHW, Healing Surge and then repeat since Riptide will be ready again.  This rotation puts out a ton of heals very fast.  During normal damage, I can Riptide, HW, HW, HW, repeat.  The last healing wave will be slow, but the sequence is very efficient.

I have haste in every socket.  I have reforged when possible to add haste.  I don't have top end gear, but I imagine it's possible to get those GHW's down to 1.0s.

I recently skilled up my Herbalism to 450 to check out Lifeblood.  A macro activates it when I use GHW.   When it's available, I can Riptide, GHW(1.0s), GHW(1.2s), GHW(1.7s) matching my Riptide cool down exactly.  The haste buff lasts enough time for about 3 sequences.

The shaman is a true Big Healer.

The Heroic Boss Skip, Kingslayer Shaman, and Who Needs Healing Touch, Nourish Talents

I run heroics on my alternate healers for fun, practice, and justice points.  I keep getting tanks that want to skip bosses, like they are just there for the two Frost Emblems.   I would go along with this during those runs.  I understand that people were doing the dungeon only for the emblems.  But now, it doesn't make sense to me.

I tell them, hey all the bosses give Justice Points.  This is especially weird when the party is blowing the content up quick.  The other day doing Old Kingdom, I got the tank to go down and do the Mushroom Boss.  Three players got the Heroic Dungeon achievement even though it was obvious they had done the dungeon before.  I haven't gotten a calculator out to see if the extra couple of minutes to kill Dred is worth 16 Justice Points, but I'm guessing even if you have killed him 1000 times before it's going to be worth it.

My alternate Restoration Shaman got invited to do Sindragosa and The Lich King even though he has never been inside ICC before.  I know the fights well.  I kept up my earth and water shields, hit riptide on cool down, blasted out fast lesser healing waves and healing surges to low health players, and chain healed when everyone looked good.   Even under geared with no experience healing raids my heals were close to 35% of the heals.  I realized  I never used my Mana Tide Totem.  The extra Mana might have been useful to the damage classes, but I'm not sure.  I'll remember it next time.

We had two restoration druids.  One of them was blowing up the meters (45%) with rejuvenation, regrowth, wild growth.  He didn't cast a single Nourish or Healing Touch (not even with a Nature's Swiftness), but had both of them talented in his tree.  On my Alternate Restoration Druid, I decided to not take any talents buffing those spells, specifically Naturalist and Empowered Touch.  Instead I put the points in the Blessing of the Grove, and Nature's Majesty to buff rejuvenation and Critical heal chance.

The other druid barely used Wild Growth and as a result was very low on the meters.  I think he must have been concentrating on tanks.  We could have easily replaced him with a damage player.

I was pugging with a bunch of people I don't know, so I kept my mouth shut and just enjoyed the ride to Kingslayer.

Thorns is Number One

My alternate Druid healer runs Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle and using a cute little mouse-over Thorns macro, and the Thorns glyph that reduces the cool down, to put it on the tank.  I only used Thorns at the beginning of pulls.  Overall damage done by the tank at the end showed 14% by thorns, which was ranked number one.

Druid healing post 4.0.1 at level 80 is over powered.  During the Bone Storm I went to tree form, put instant cast regrowths on anyone taking damage, carpet bombed lifeblooms on the whole raid.  During the raid I never casted a nourish, and I only used Healing Touch when Nature's Swiftness was up.  I swiftmended on the tanks constantly, whether they needed it or not, just so I could see the pretty green circles.

denounce removes nouns?

Denounce is one of those talents you skip over if you are looking to maximize PVE healing performance.  I put a couple of points in there and started machine gunning exorcism during heroics.  The first time I ever felt like my "holy" DPS was fun.  Watching those 5k and 6k hits roll over the targets was so distracting sometimes I would forget to heal.  Not that heroics require much healing anyway.

It's all about Holy Shock now.  I put on my 4pT10 gear to get the extra fast Holy Light after a shock, now Holly Light takes about .4s after a shock.  Most of the time, I just wait for Holy Shock cool downs to heal during heroics.  Working on using the combinations and procs more effectively is going to be fun when serious raiding starts again.  I am looking forward to a totally new healing experience.

Plate Specialization

Why not just remove the ability to wear mail, leather and cloth items?

During my career as a Holy Paladin, I have always had some cloth, leather or mail armor equipped.  In most cases the gear was less then optimal, which was the punishment for using it.  It will now also cost 5% of our intellect to use a non-plate drop.  This is also a 5% drop in spell power and mana regeneration.

With mana and heal pools skyrocketing the 5% bonus will always trump any upgrade a non-plate drop could provide.

It feels like Blizzard is trying to influence raid loot rules.  Why not just put class and SPEC restrictions on all the items?

Meanwhile, my mail iLvl 277 bracers have be replaced by my old iLvl258 bracers.

New 80 looking for Naxx guild... want to enjoy tier progression...

• Hero Points -- Low-tier, easier-to-get PVE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, but no cap to how quickly you can earn them. Earned from most dungeons. (most like the current Emblem of Triumph)
• Valor Points -- High-tier, harder-to-get PvE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, as well as a cap to how many you can earn per week. Earned from Dungeon Finder daily Heroic and from raids. (most like the current Emblem of Frost)

Is this a "welfare" system to allow players who don't raid to get top end gear by grinding the same heroics day after day?  Or is it a system that allows more players to see top tier content without having to slog through the lower tier raids first?  The answer is both.

This system just like the current badge system ends up making top end content more accessible, but unfortunately closes older content.  New guilds won't be formed around running lower tier raids, because players can farm better gear by just grinding heroics. 

The casual player that doesn't want to spend 3 hours in a single raid can still get some top tier gear by playing an hour a day.  This casual player base pays their subscription and deserves access to top end gear.  This is a good system for them.

I think the goal of getting more players into top end content is a good idea.  The idea that some content is exclusive to raiders that are willing to spend 20 hours a week just raiding will lead to less subscriptions, not more.

Blizzard should come up with a system which meets these goals without removing low tier content from progression.  There should be some incentive even now for a new guild to form and start progression at Naxx.  

Currently gear is the only incentive for raiding.  The achievements, titles, and special mounts are a good start.  Those don't provide an incentive for guilds to start progression at a lower tier level.  There either needs to be a completely new incentive or gear has to gated.  

Gating gear leads to exclusiveness and barriers to top end content.  So a new incentive needs to be created.  

Goodbye to Johnny Train Set?

Cataclysm Raid Progression changes (source):

• 10-Man and 25-Man raids will share the same lockout.
• 10-Man and 25-Man raids difficulty will be as close as possible to each other.
• 10-Man and 25-Man raids will drop the exact same loot, but 25-man will drop a higher quantity of items.
• Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel
• For the first few raid tiers, our plan is to provide multiple smaller raids. Instead of one raid with eleven bosses, you might have a five-boss raid as well as a six-boss raid.

I'm not sure if a larger number of drops will be enough incentive to do 25-man raids.   

Dealing with Johnny Train Set for 16 hours a week has never been a fun part of raiding.  It's been more of a necessary evil to fill out the 25-man roster.  In most raids a 25-man team will include Johnnies who are brought along only because raid leaders need to fill out the roster.  A lot of raid leaders would not include these players given a solid replacement.

Not to mention the job required to schedule 25 players and deal with players that don't show up consistently, are tardy, just leave without notice, etc.  I believe a lot of the "no show" problem is directly related to the current pace of raiding.  We all love to play the video games, but when it becomes more like a job then fun,  there's a tendency to blow it off every once in a while.  A new slower progression requiring less hours per week should lower the "burn out" rate of Raider rank.

If the pace is a lot slower, I imagine their will be an explosion of ALT raiding.  

10 man heroic BQL or why you need to trust your healers...

I am almost sure I've written about this topic before, but it's important enough to write about again.  


Last week my 10-man team lacked Replenishment. On our first heroic BQL attempt my mana got low, even with a mana potion and casting Plea and Trinkets on cool down.  We had three healers, a restoration Druid, a discipline Priest, and Big Healer(me).  Being a Holy Light spammer, I was tossing out big heals on the raid liberally on anyone that didn't have a full health bar.  This attempt failed when a Pact'ed pair didn't close in fast enough. 

Attempt #2.  My plan is to only use Holy Light when another healer has Pact or Swarming and during the Air phase.  I would Aura Mastery Shadow during the first Air phase, pop wings and blow out heals to everyone.   The second Air Phase would get Aura Mastery and Divine Sacrifice and of course Holy Light spam. 

This plan requires that I trust the other healers in my team to be healing too.  On most fights, I don't run out of mana, so I don't really worry about over healing and it all goes to the tank via Beacon anyway.  My Flash of Light heals range from 7k to 10k, which is between 1/4 and 1/3 of a typical raiders health.  I have 2 other healers backing me up so that should be enough.  Of course if anyone looks like they are going down fast, a big heal will be coming.

This plan worked great, the raid stayed up, vampires all hit their marks, and the Queen died just as she was going into the second air phase (maybe Divine Sac during 1st air phase next time).  I was spamming my 1 second Flash like a Hyper healing machine.  My effective heals were lower then on the first attempt but people didn't die and I was never too low on mana to cast a big heal.  Trying to top the meters and playing smart are not the same thing. 

Party? What Party? Cataclysm ends wow Parties. Or Divine Sacrifice nerf not in the Spirit

Tranquility will always be raid wide, just because the concept of a "group" within the raid is kind of a strange one. What does that group refer to in the game? It's not distance for example. We'd like to do this with every spell. (Source)

Divine Sacrifice was changed in Patch 3.3 to be "party only" to the dismay of many raids who now had to shuffle paladins around to groups that needed the extra protection.

I imagine in the new party-less world of Cataclysm, we could get something, like 

• 30% of all damage taken by the 5 lowest health raid members within 30 yards is redirected to the Paladin...

which could fit well into the new Healing Hands model of paladins radiating heals and protection to players around them.  

If the goal is to make Holy Paladins be better raid healers, then I think it makes sense for them to more like Discipline Priests then Holy Priests.  A Holy Paladin should be a damage shielder, redirecting damage from the raid into some mechanic that sheds the damage.  Currently the mechanic is Divine Sanctuary, but The Bubble is too powerful to be on a lower cool down.  Some sort of Divine Aegis that absorbs redirected damage but has to be managed carefully by the paladin.