Some healing questions and discussion

[Gorrack]

as a priest, i know there is a talent in the holy tree that allows you to gain a +healing bonus from your total spirit pool. so havning high spirit isnt all bad in that regard.

[Aessina]

Holy paladins (5/5 Illumination or higher) gear for +spell crit and +mana/5. 60% of base mana cost of heals returned on heal crit. It's an effective way to lower your mana usage significantly. I cast far too often for spirit to have any value for me. If I cast big heals, I can sometimes get a tick in of mana regen between them, but at the cost of my healing target's health bouncing up and down. Big heals cost big mana, so in the end I'm actually worse off than if I just spam the little heals.

[Myrkris]

BTW, another reason for Resto shaman to gear for Int is Nature's Blessing, which boosts +healing and +damage by up to 30% of our int. Not a bad little perk, there.

[Aessina]

GREAT threadstarter C :)

I'd like to add a couple things to what Sol said, because I'm curoius and would like to know too.

1. Mana regen vs +int on gear. Should a new healer steer one way more than another?

2. Mana + vs + to heal stats on gear. Is there a preference one way or another.

3. Crit heals. How do you mitigate the crits without reducing your mana pool, since +int goes to crit (is that correct? I think so anyway).

CooL!

I missed this post earlier. It is never bad for a healer to crit a heal. Healers (except paladins) get 1 point of threat for every 2 health actually healed. What this means is that overhealing causes 0 threat.

Paladins get 1 point of threat for every 4 health actually healed.

So the only case where a crit heal will cause more threat than a non-crit heal is when the tank is low enough on health that the non-crit heal didn't heal him to full. In those cases, crit heals are welcome, since it just means you can wait even longer before you'll have to heal again.

[Shizma]

I missed this post earlier. It is never bad for a healer to crit a heal. Healers (except paladins) get 1 point of threat for every 2 health actually healed. What this means is that overhealing causes 0 threat.

Paladins get 1 point of threat for every 4 health actually healed.

So the only case where a crit heal will cause more threat than a non-crit heal is when the tank is low enough on health that the non-crit heal didn't heal him to full. In those cases, crit heals are welcome, since it just means you can wait even longer before you'll have to heal again.

I've been realy curious to how that worked, especially where it concerns threat. So for a surge-healer like a shaman, there's no real reason to worry about crit-heal and aggro? That's good to know.

[Elenca]

Well, when someone has +mana regen on their gear (mine's 334 without any sort of buffing) it does occur once those 5 seconds are up, as I understand it.

So, for example, lifebloom. It's instant and heals for 6 seconds before proccing a "big" heal of roughly 1000 give or take gearing at the end, unless the healee takes a big enough hit to break it, then it procs then. It can stack the HoT portion up to 3 times, and if you continually recast it, the timer starts over and it won't proc.

For me, I like to keep it at 3 stacks and keep looping it at the end, for about 500-600 hps on just that, with the option of Regrowth (2 second cast, heal, then HoT) or Rejuvenation (instant, HoT) if needed for extra HoT. Lifebloom costs just 220 to cast, so if I keep recasting at the last second on the timer, I basically just sit at full mana unless a bump comes along in the fight. In most cases, if I need to pour on heals, I will pop Rejuvenation and Regrowth, then recast lifebloom, and if it's really dire, start casting Healing touch (I'm hybrid specced, so no Tree, so I can still cast that, but it's 3.5 right now, I need to respec it down to 3). That also leaves me the option of letting life bloom proc for extra help and quickly rebuilding it to 3 stacks, since it's instant and cheap.

[Myrkris]

I've been realy curious to how that worked, especially where it concerns threat. So for a surge-healer like a shaman, there's no real reason to worry about crit-heal and aggro? That's good to know.

Well, yes and no. If you're taking a pasting on the pull, a big heal crit can put me quickly on top of the hate list, but when the alternative is a dead tank that doesn't seem so bad. Healing is healing, and overhealing is meaningless, so crit heals are inherently less problematic than crit hits (since over-damaging a mob means it's dead...).

I've never seriously considered trying to get my spell crit up for my healing set, so I have no idea how well it would work. Given the way I see healing gear itemized, though, I would expect it to be really difficult to get spell crit high enough to mitigate the low +healing and mana regen that would be the likely tradeoff.

[Elenca]

Oh! Speaking of Paladins!

Daeron has mentioned quite a few times about really liking Druid healers because of the mana regen he gets from them. As I understood it, it's linked to each heal, making HoTs bordering on a hack (as if Paladins weren't hacked enough! :D) but I thought someone mentioned it being linked to overheals instead.

How does that actually work, Paladins?

[Shizma]

Well, yes and no. If you're taking a pasting on the pull, a big heal crit can put me quickly on top of the hate list, but when the alternative is a dead tank that doesn't seem so bad. Healing is healing, and overhealing is meaningless, so crit heals are inherently less problematic than crit hits (since over-damaging a mob means it's dead...).

I've never seriously considered trying to get my spell crit up for my healing set, so I have no idea how well it would work. Given the way I see healing gear itemized, though, I would expect it to be really difficult to get spell crit high enough to mitigate the low +healing and mana regen that would be the likely tradeoff.

Indeed. I tend to see caster crits as the devil anyway.:saeek: since they tend to generate a lot of hate on some smooshie people. Where I was with the question was wondering if it would be worth gearing a little lower int and higher mana regen to avoid the crits from the high int. But it sounds like it would be a silly trade off and would reduce mana efficiency?

[Elenca]

I've never seriously considered trying to get my spell crit up for my healing set, so I have no idea how well it would work. Given the way I see healing gear itemized, though, I would expect it to be really difficult to get spell crit high enough to mitigate the low +healing and mana regen that would be the likely tradeoff.

Yeah, I've never really seen it as very worthwhile to try to gather up spell crit in my healing gear. I know when I was still a Balance Druid (OMG THOSE EXIST!?! LIES!) I had rather high spell crit, even when not a boomkin. Now, I didn't notice it about the rest of my heals, but for some reason, regrowth critted almost 50% of the time, for sick amounts of healing. I don't see that as much now, but I've got so much +healing that I don't really mind.