WoWGrrl's World

In aiming for the goal of getting my Priest to 70 and running a few heroics as healer before the expansion pack hits, I've put steady love towards levelling this toon - mainly through instance runs.

This toon has been running instances for most the level up I've done from Level 38 to now, minus a few levels in the 50s when the BRD groups were too slim and I was bored of Azeroth and wanted to get to Outland.

I'm quite enjoying healing for the Outland instances, because they're less tank-and-spank and require more "learning" on my part in order to be successful as a healer. Realizing, for instance, that the major damage I should be looking out for on the tank in Slave Pens comes AFTER the boss dies (Rokmar the Crackler) was one of the things that made me realize I've got to pay WAY more attention as a healer than I ever did as a DPS, at least when it comes to boss fights.

Or maybe it's not true, and I'm just so used to Mage'n It that it feels like this requires more attention.

At least as a Mage, with a good tank I just worry about sheeping the mark and not pulling aggro when I DPS down the targets in the specified order. When it comes to bosses, I work on not pulling aggro while I DPS, and moving out of things that hurt me (charred earth, fire patches, shadow patches).

As a healer, I have to worry about everyone's virtual lives, respond quickly to injury of certain squishy classes, and at times, make quick and tough decisions about who lives and who dies... and worry about what the mobs are doing and bosses are doing as well. It's a real challenge, for sure.

What's The Trick To AOE Healing?

I'm doing Mana Tombs these days, getting Consortium rep (Mana Tombs gives Consortium rep to just short of Honored) and plenty of experience healing in tough situations, including AOE healing.

One big thing I've learned is that healing AOEers is hard! Man, bigger kudos go out to those healers who are able to keep me up when I'm AOEing!

Then again, maybe I should pay attention and see if it's Warlocks and Fire Mages who are hardest to keep up because they don't tend to use shielding in their repertoire, and my shield vanishes in a couple of hits and I just can't heal them fast enough.

Hmmm... then again...

Moving to Flash Heal from Greater Heal

One thing I've noticed is getting markedly important is that while I have been able to use the slower-casting, higher-healing Greater Heal since level 38, it's often the length of my spellcasts that are causing me grief nowadays in the mid-60s Outland instances.

So, after these couple of runs in Mana Tombs and being reminded of that spellcast-length fact, I've adjusted Healbot so it uses Flash Heal(Rank 8) by default on a left-click, and I have to alt-click for the Greater Heal. Maybe that'll help with my healing of AOEers.

At any rate, it's interesting to me that I really hadn't noticed a problem with Greater Heal's cast time until I started hitting healing of AOEers in the 63-65 instances. I'm hoping this will make things a little easier on everyone.

I'll let you know, and would be glad to hear your experiences too if you'd share :)

Related posts:

1. Toon Updates: Healing Priest Hits 44
2. Hitting Mana Tombs, Gaining Consortium Rep
3. Mana Tombs Run #2 – PUG'ing it