The Circle of Healing Questionaire

(With a name like that, you know a Priest started it.)

With thanks to Lodur and Laerith for indulging my desire to answer questions and write words on the internet, this is a thing that’s going around healing bloggers to facilitate discussion.

Name, class and spec: Jadiera, Restoration Shaman.

What is your primary group healing environment? 25 man raid healing lead.

What is your favourite healing spell for your class and why?

Healing Rain. Because it’s amazing, effective, easy, and because it has a blue graphic, and it’s rain. I live in Seattle, yo’. You either hate or love the stuff, and I love the rain. I enjoy that I get to bring the rain in Warcraft. It’s also new and shiny. And powerful.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

Healing Surge. In some ways, it’s a toss-up between Surge and Unleashed Life, but I do actually use the latter a bit more. Healing Surge, especially after the -20% hotfix just feels sooo… Wasteful. Pointless. Yeah it’s faster than a Greater Healing Wave, but it’s also dramatically smaller. If I really want to make sure someone doesn’t die in the next 1.3 seconds instead of the next 1.5-2.2 seconds, I’ve got some other means to deal with the problem that doesn’t involve spending a massive ton of mana on a Surge. If they really need a lot of healing, when you pile on a bunch of Mastery, Surge can’t even begin to touch GHW.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

We are Swiss-freaking-Army Knives. We don’t quite have everything, but we’re close. We can do it all and still have mana left at the end, too. I feel like we’re more constrained by making proper spell decisions than we are from limitations of mana as a resource. Even if we’re wasteful or inefficient with our mana, or end up bottoming ourselves out early on in a fight, Telluric Currents is a hugely powerful mechanic.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?

Movement and spreading out. And I think that’s why Shaman are weaker in 10s versus 25 man environments. The need for denser clusters of players for Healing Rain and Chain Heal to shine make 10s weaker for us because those spells have fewer opportunities, and you see the same effect on any fight where the the players are dispersed. When it comes to really only being able to rely on our single target heals, Shaman really start showing a disadvantage. Even with haste gear, we tend to have slower casts that we can only fix half the time with Tidal Waves. So while we can do amazing things with Mastery heals, we have to beat others to the punch for real power of it to kick in, and we’re not going to when we’re casting heals that are half a second slower.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?

As a class or me personally? I think Shaman do best with raid healing assignments because of the strength of Healing Rain and Chain Heal, but at the same time, you can keep a Healing Rain down and then spend your remaining time focusing on a single target assignment. With our healing roster changing up around the same time we’re headed into Firelands, I’m finding myself on tank healing more and more lately because we only have one Paladin and one Shaman, and none of the Druids and Priests want to do it.

Which is sort of not answering the question, because I think of the four classes we’re the most easily flexible between raid and tank healing roles. In our raid, Shaman always tend to get the weird, or swing healing assignments because it’s either me doing it, so I know that it’ll get done, or at least who to blame when it fails, or because the other two Shaman I borrow from are a part-time backup, and an offspec Elemental, so they tend to get plugged into whatever’s missing.

Which healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

I’m not sure if this question is trying to ask what my favorite healing class to play is, or who I like healing alongside as a team. Same for the next question, and I’ll answer both! Maybe I’m a special dork who has done a fair amount of healing as all four classes.

I honestly kinda like healing alongside other Shaman most. Our single target healing capacity only feels weak when pitted against people beating us to the punch, or against Paladins because they can make anyone feel inadequate at tank healing. Maybe it’s a class camaraderie thing, but I enjoy seeing other Shaman do their thing, or coating the ground in totems or rain circles. I love rotating out a string of Mana Tides or Spirit Links. We’re awesome.

As for me, I obviously enjoy healing on my Shaman the most.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

Druids. They just spooge HoTs all over everything (Oh god, am I going to regret using that word for the spam it’s going to draw in.) You can work your little butt off, and they’re just all FARTZ FARTZ HOTS EVERYWHERE WHOOPS TRANQUILITY and you look like you’re not even trying.

They also don’t have any fun tools for me to tell them when to push their buttons, and while I’m starting to get into the groove of having my Spirit Link Totem as a cooldown, I’ve still got that mindset that it’s nice to have someone who can save tanks and protect the raid since I can’t.

But I probably least enjoy healing on my Priest. Druids have interesting, different mechanics through their reliance on HoTs. I find it both relaxing and boring both because you’re less directly reactive to the situation. Paladins are just little energizer bunnies, and they have a lot of tools to play with. It’s fun to work in the hand spells and maintain the Holy Power mechanics. Double healing with Beacon feels powerful.

Priests just don’t interest me as much. Chakra does allow for versatility, and it’s way better now than when it had to be maintained, but it feels more like an annoying chore than a powerful tool to me. It’s sorta like keeping Water Shield up but with worse consequences.

What is your worst habit as a healer?

Spamming Chain Heal. Sometimes it’s just like I’ve turned my brain off, and all those practices I should be doing instead and I’ve reverted back to the Sunwell when I could be doing better.

Secondary worst habit is being too conscious of my mana and not healing as hard as I could. People have died because I’ve tried to cheap out with a Healing Wave and not kept up with damage.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?

This is probably more of a healing lead specific issue, but sometimes my pet peeve is the information overload. You’re trying to work out healing strats and assignments, and you’ve got 24 people asking you questions in different channels and someone who doesn’t want to do the assignment you’ve given them, or tanks who don’t talk about the fight until three seconds before you pull, and you just feel like you don’t have enough eyes and you’re just trying to herd the cats. Heading into Chimaeron and making sure everyone knows their assignment and their mark, and can see the marks, and rearranging groups was the worst.

I just want people to prepare ahead of time. Make my life easier.

Funny answer: Constantly having Priests try to kill me with Leap of Faith.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?

Yeah. I think we’re still pulling up the rear a bit overall across the WoWsphere as a whole, but I think there’s not any glaring balance issues. I think the fight design in Firelands is a little more up our alley than some of the encounters in Tier 11. (Twilight Council, Al’Akir, I am looking at you. I am really, really looking at you Al’Akir.)

So as Shaman we’ve got a few weird quirks left that mostly revolve around how Totem mechanics are clunky, and how Water Shield dropping so fast makes us all want to strangle someone.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

World of Logs, and Death Note, primarily. I will also in the moment look at my own healing data in something like Skada or Recount to see what spells are doing the lion’s share of my healing.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

That Focused Insight doesn’t work with Healing Rain, when it now effects every tick on every target.

I think that’s a memo that a lot of people still haven’t gotten. And that makes FI extremely powerful for a 25 man raid healer.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

That there are other spells besides Chain Heal.

And like I answered above, even I fall into that groove sometimes. But I think compared to the other healing classes, we’re the ones that benefit most from learning how to work in everything we’ve got. Even as a 25man raid healer, you can get a lot done by using Riptide + 2 Tidal Waves’d GHW casts in. Or keeping Riptide on cooldown, keeping ES on a tank, and the casting some Chains. There’s a lot of squeeze in between those Healing Rain casts, and it’s not just SPAM CHAIN HEAL.

If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see?

That I never use Surge or Unleashed Life. I also don’t cast Riptide as often as I should, and I could improve on uptime on both Water and Earth Shield. But this is a lot of stuff you don’t see on recount. I think that there are definitely better ways to measure someone’s performance as a healer. I’d rather watch how their assignments are doing, or where their focus is, and recount doesn’t show that.

Haste or Crit and why?

Neiiither?

I think Shaman are unique in being the only healing class that actually wants to use their Mastery and will benefit more from stacking it over the other stats, which is probably why Mastery isn’t even in the question. This was definitely written by a Priest. Or Maybe a Paladin.

But, between those two, I would probably say Crit over Haste. Assuming that we can get to that 916 threshold, I really don’t see any compelling reasons for a Shaman to stack Haste. I think it’s an outmoded ICC sort of mindset where we just spam Chain Heal over and over and whatever makes more chain heal wins. Our Mastery is very powerful, especially when it’s needed. There are sometimes going to be those moments where a heal landing .2 seconds earlier might have saved someone, but there are three other haste-loving healing classes to handle those moments. Trying to stack haste to snipe out other healers with inherently faster spell mechanics is an exercise in futility. They can have just as much haste as we could get, and will still be ahead of us in cast times. Meanwhile, we’ve got other, more productive stats.

Previously, I would have still said Haste over Crit, I think the changes to Crit in 4.2 make it a more attractive stat for us, especially in a 10man environment. Not only are Crits twice as big, instead of 50% more, but they’ll regenerate our mana, put up Ancestral Healing, and pop off free smart heals through Ancestral Awakening. And while AA tends to perform poorly for someone who is spamming Rain and Chain, Rain and Chain both can Crit and Chain will renegerate some mana. The synergy between Mastery making healing bigger, and Crits making heals ever bigger and proccing a smart heal for us gives us a lot more bang out of a healing crit than the other classes can muster.

I wouldn’t stack Crit over Mastery, but I would aim to build Crit before Haste.

What addons or macros do you use to aid you in healing?

I don’t understand how anyone can heal using the default frames, so I use Grid. The big addons that help me in my daily life are Grid, Power Auras, and a boss mod of choice.

For macros, I’ve written before about some of the ones I use, but getting macros for Focused Insight, Wind Shear, and Lightning Bolt are the ones that make the biggest difference.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats or do you stack some much higher than others and why?

I stack Mastery like the stuff is made out of gold. I poopooed on Haste above, so that’s about covered. Our Mastery is just really powerful. I’ve come around, and I love it. While I do have the gear to get myself to 2005 Haste if I wanted to–and I will surely experiment–I just can’t conceive of that being more useful than Mastery.

No tricks there, just Focused Insight + a crit during Shannox.

With the extension of Mastery’s effect to every bit of healing we do, right down Healing Stream Totem, it becomes an extremely potent throughput strat. What we do as healers matters most when people really need the healing, not when they’re at 80% health. Accepting the value of our Mastery entails leaving behind everything we learned about healing in WoW for the last 6 years, but embracing our Mastery leads to freedom, power, and a giant epeen.

I’ve been healing again on my Paladin a bit more lately, and I feel so incredibly robbed when the tank is getting wailed on, sitting at around 10% HP when I land that Divine Light in time, and my inner Shaman is like “Whew, landed the massive heal I won’t have to worry abou–WHAT it hit for 25k?! THAT’S IT?! ROBBED.”