Healing Strategies

[cilyna]

(x-posted from my livejournal)

Last night I had the dubious honor of running Blackfathom Deeps. I say dubious, mostly because I ended up keeping the Paladin from booting the mage in the group after the mage got upset on the paladin rolling for things to give to his friends. But that's not what this is about.

During the run, the Paladin seemed to think we had healing problems anytime he fell below about 80% health. Now, I'll note he never died and rarely got anywhere near being in danger. And I don't think I ever aborted a heal to drop an emergency PW:S on him. Never the less, he seemed to think he needed to yell out "Heal!" or something along those lines anytime he lost enough health that flash heal wouldn't over heal by at least 50%.

Now, let me document my usual healing practices:

When the tank starts taking damage, drop Renew on him.
The reasoning behind this is Renew is the most efficient healing I have, it just takes a while to do all of its healing. At the beginning of the fight, it should tick after at least the initial mob hits and usually does only slightly less healing than what the mobs are doing in damage. Most fights, assuming the tank isn't terribly under-leveled, this keeps up with damage just fine. Also, Renew draws aggro relatively slowly, as each tick generates minimal aggro and a good tank is building aggro on all mobs in the fight.

If someone other than the tank is down health, but not actively taking damage, Renew them
This helps keep people at full health. I might ignore this in a fight that I'm struggling to keep up with the tank's damage, since as long as only the tank is actively getting killed, the others can heal post-fight.

Flash Heal people who have less max health than my Heal can heal.
Flash Heal, while mana inefficient if chained, blowing more mana to over-heal a soft target is worse. This is usually just for other priests, mages, warlocks and the like, if they're down health and actively losing it.

Heal the tank, don't Flash it.
Flash Heal, while fast, isn't the best option on the tank, who better have a good bit more health than I can heal in one go. Usually what I do here is start a Heal running on the tank when they hit 50-60% health. It will usually go off before they break the 25% mark and heal them to 80-90% total health. This way all of the health healed is used and none is wasted. Tanks that aren't used to having a priest around (specifically this particular paladin) might get edgy when getting that low. Hopefully the first time they realize you just dropped one spell and healed most of their health back they'll understand. I wasn't so lucky this time.

Power Word: Shield is an emergency spell only
Nothing drives me crazy like seeing the over abuse of PW:S. The only 2 real uses I see for this spell in a group are 1) stopping someone from dying and 2) AoE. If they're down to <10% health and still getting beat on, PW:S away. If they're at 90% health, well, there are better ways to keep their health up. As for AoE, a -lot- of the AoE spells of a mage/warlock are channeled, so taking damage while casting them isn't going to make this effective. I hear a priest/mage duo can get a lot of XP fast by collecting green con mobs, shielding the mage and Arcane Explosioning them to death.

When out of combat, Renew
Once combat is over, drop a renew on anyone who's not at max health. This should top them off and get everyone ready to move on faster. If they're down a lot of health, drop a renew and the Heal them.

That's basically it. This is more a priest-specific document, as Druids, Shaman, and Paladins all have different spells.

[Ehran]

Beautiful writeup, and quite useful I'd say (from my limited knowledge of Priests). I would like to emphasize the astounding usefulness of PW:S on a mage, however - not only does it prevent the channeled spells from being disrupted (of which Blizzard is likely the most powerful) but it also allows other spells to be cast without interruption. In a situation where the Mage's Area Effect magic is needed, then the shield can be a true godsend.

-E

[Threya]

This is indeed an excellent write-up. There are a couple of things though that I would add here though;

1) PW: S is also very useful to cast before combat starts on the tank to give them some extra health, though that is probably pretty obvious.

2) more importantly, classes that can heal themselves should try to do so as well, in particular Paladins. This does not mean we ignore then, but they should pay attention themselves. Some (well, actually most I would say) Paladins that I have had the...honor...of battling with get the impression that since there is a Priest (or druid) in the party that they can then completely ignore all healing themselves. It is more important that they watch the Priest and everyone else as well and step in when it is needed. There have been times (Clexxor is a good example) where the Paladin has actually saved me when things were getting bad.

[Citizen]

Excellent write up, but I'll add my own as well.

After running through BRD with Riff (Clexxor) he gave me some advice that I've found useful. Know the capabilities of each of your group members. Know what rogues, mages, etc can do to break out of combat in a hurry, and see if they use it when the situation arises. This can save you a hurried flash or heal spell on a DPS member that takes away from the tank. Rythar, the warrior who I've done these instances with, and I have found that there is a very direct relationship between the tank and the primary healer. If one goes down, the other will most likely follow shortly.

[Vaejovis]

threya said:

2) more importantly, classes that can heal themselves should try to do so as well, in particular Paladins. This does not mean we ignore then, but they should pay attention themselves. Some (well, actually most I would say) Paladins that I have had the...honor...of battling with get the impression that since there is a Priest (or druid) in the party that they can then completely ignore all healing themselves. It is more important that they watch the Priest and everyone else as well and step in when it is needed. There have been times (Clexxor is a good example) where the Paladin has actually saved me when things were getting bad.

I couldnt agree more. Far to few Paladins realize that healing aggro > any other type of aggro, so a Paladin with the correct seals and aura on themselves plus adding in the extra aggro from healing shouldnt have any problem keeping mob(s) on them.

Another thing I'd like to add is to never heal someone to 100%, it's honestly a rather huge waste of mana and unnecessary aggro put on a soft class (espically druids who only can only turn into bear or cat and cower which effectively stops them from healing). What I do as Vaejovis is have an entirely seperate toolbar with a range of the same healing spells in different levels.

Right now I have my left toolbar set up with Healing Touch (Rank 6, 8, 10), Regrowth (Rank 5, 7, 9), and Rejuv(Rank 8, 10). This way i can gague my targets level of health and get them as close to 100% without going over. It's also great for healing different classes, typically a mage wont need a level 10 healing touch even if in the worst situation. Also this is a very good way of saving mana as well.

I highly suggest a seperate toolbar for healing...I've never had a problem with aggro ever since switching to this method.

-V

[cilyna]

Some people have said that Paladin healing aggro is basically near non-existant. This might be more based on their heals doing considerably less healing than others near their level, but I've not successfully taken aggro with my paladin from my wife's warlock by healing. Usually I have to wail on the mob a couple times with Fury going.

That said, barring an admission from Blizzard, we have no real way of finding out if this is true.

[nejy]

A lot of people seem to think healing causes a lot of "raw agro", I don't think this is the case. From what I've seen, it can appear this way because healing, while causing a moderate amount of threat, is causing it as an AoE. Essentially a heal will generate threat on ALL monsters involved in the fight. That means if your group is fighting 3 mobs, and only tanking 1, even a couple renews will cause the extra mobs to come and say hi. It's happened to me before. I've compensated for this by not casting renew at all and waiting on any heals, but also, I'm thinking I had very bad tanks. Well I *know* I was with very bad tanks. Basically in both these groups, casting renew on more than a single party member was a sure-fire way to get mobbed. I'm only level 21, is that the sign of a bad group?

[cilyna]

It's the sign of a tank that doesn't know how to hold aggro on more than one target. A friend of mine from Blackhand plays an excellent tank, rarely if ever losing aggro on multiple targets. He'll make sure virtually all non-CC'ed mobs get hit on by him and affected by his AoE skills. (He's gotten busy IRL with a new kid, so I can excuse him not being on as much as he was.) In fact, the only time he loses aggro to anything, it's to my rogue when I'm going whole-hog on something and he's actively not trying. (Which is usually only in the pre-instance areas where there are lower level elites.)

So far, I've done a decent job (I think) tanking as my paladin. I will say I don't heal myself much, but that's mostly because I've noticed it doesn't pull near the same amount of aggro as a couple whacks with my weapon and SoF.

At 21, most warriors and nearly all paladins have no real idea how to tank properly. So it's more a typical pickup group than anything else. Warrior run around with 2 handed weapons and in battle stance, charging into groups of mobs and the like. My friend thinks that warriors should get some sort of solo-only escourt quest where they basically have to walk some guy who's fairly weak through a zone with a bunch of low level mobs and basically make sure he doesn't get hit, since currently the only way to learn tanking is to group and instance run, and even then people won't necessarily tell you when you're doing something wrong.

[Ehran]

Perhaps then another thread should be suggestions for Paladins, Warriors (and any other tanks) to hold agro?

[Threya]

A note about the efficiency of heals...

1) Greater Heal is about 10% more mana efficient than flash heal, and talents can improve this to about 20%
2) Renewal, without talents, is less efficiant than Greater Heal, and varies a lot based on what talents you have.
3) Greater Heal is the most efficiant heath to time spell (it takes on average 2.5 FH's to equal 1 GH)
4) Prayer beats all of these out if multiple people are hurt badly, and at that point beats them out significantly

The moral here is that Flash Heal should not be over-looked for healing the tanks or others, I actually use it much more than greater heal. It may be a bit less mana efficiant, but the fact that healing someone for more than they have is a waste makes up for this. Also, since any items that improve the amount healed are an additive number, these improve the efficiancy of Flash Heal more so than Greater Heal (not greatly with the casting time reduction, but still).

EDIT: I mistyped and said flash heal was more health over time efficiant than greater heal.

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