Spirit, is a good thing. That’s pretty much the main thing I have grasped about being a restodrood. I finally have a combat regen above 2k, and it really helps, I can go oom and after a bit of relying solely on OoC procs from lifebloom and possibly tossing up an innervate, I’m back up to half mana and able to toss out more than lifebloom and HT when it won’t cost me anything. The only places I still really hate healing are Grim Batol, cause fskign hell, Throngus is an ass, and nobody understands that while yes, the fire shooting out of his shield is pretty, it’s best to look at it from behind him and not head-on. That and people tend not to move out of Blitz on the first boss, because it might interrupt their cast to move, or Binding Shadows for the last boss, which fsking hurts, gtfo of the way, and deals splash damage to anybody standing too close.

But mostly, I find myself using Lifebloom on the tank, keeping it at three stacks (generally with another LB cast, since it’s pretty much the cheapest spell ever) and tossing up Wild Growth when it’s not on cool down. Usually with that combo, by the time I need to refresh LB or cast Wg again, my mana has gone back up to full, and I am prepared for an ‘ohshit why the hell did the entire room pull I only touched one thing!’ situation. Nature’s Swiftness is my BFF if the tank (or myself) is falling too low too fast. LB should still be up, hit swiftness, Healing Touch, toss a Rejuv and a Swiftmend on there, and yes your mana takes a hit, but hopefully the tank will be alive and back up to a respectable amount of health.

My main problem, I find, is the same one I had when I started healing heroics in WotLK; Everybody has bigger health pools, and somehow I got it stuck in my head that !!They Have To Be At Full Health All The Time!! and really, when you’re tossing 10-15k heals that use 30% of your mana pool onto a tank that has 200k health, trying to keep him perfectly topped up because you are stuck in OHGODNOHE’SDYING mode, it’s gonna burn through you’re reserves very quickly. So I’ve learned to deal with the fact that yes, everybody might not be at 100% all the time in every fight, and yes I might have to let a DPS die because it’s being stupid (like that one DK who decided to stay inside the cyclone shield, then bitched when he went down faster than a penny whore on payday. I can’t heal through that, idiot. ), but at least I have mana for an emergency save or an ohshit BRez.

I think your best bet though, is to learn the pulls (vis-a-vis a healer standpoint) and the fights, and let the party know what you are and are not willing to heal through. You wanna stand in the pretty beams of light? Go ahead, but I’m not going to heal you. You don’t understand what stack on the tank means, and you keep getting rushed and killed? I’m sorry, but maybe you should go buy a dictionary and try again, cause I’m not wasting mana on somebody who doesn’t listen when I could be using it to keep the people who actually give a shit alive. Which is also why I try to make more of an effort now on my rogue to not be such a damage magnet. And if the tank is a douche who thinks he’s superman and doesn’t need CC, then hey I guess he can keep himself alive while I help out the dps, cause after all, he ‘knows his limits’. I’ve been told I’m a vindictive little bitch though, so maybe that strategy shouldn’t be adopted by all.

I’m rambling. It’s 8am, and I haven’t slept yet.

Paladin healing has changed a lot too… tried once at 82 and ran out of mana in a gymungus hurry. “I have twice what I used to and I have better gear, where did it all go?” No more judgement of ‘get mana back’, paladins are now forced to be combat healers. In with the melee whanging on the boss to regen mana and getting clobbered because we’re trying to heal and watch spells and run around like idiots…

Shaman healing hasn’t changed a lot, aside from the mana nerf… so at least I’m reasonably competent there. “I’m [Rolling Thunder], [Healing Rain], I’m coming on like a [Hurricane], my [Lightning Bolt] flashing across the sky… you’re only young but you’re (not!) gonna die…”

I’m hearing a lot of grumbly from restos about the state of healing, and sadly I can’t offer advice one way or another on druid heals. My shadow priest picked up a disc off spec to smite his way to shorter heroic queues, but that was after a full set of 346 gear. And there’s almost a total stat overlap there, so I had it easy.

Definitely pick up your rep items and some reasonable BoEs. Try as hard as you can to get your iLevel above 329, for heroics. And do those instead. Why, you ask? Because the only players hanging out in normals are undergeared and/or still learning the ropes of said instance. While you aren’t guaranteed a great group for a heroic, there is a greater than zero chance of finding one. I’ve “healed” my way through heroics where total incoming party damage was trivial to the point where I felt bandages would have sufficed: good CC and well geared dps is a godsend.

Good luck!

did someone say bailing out the ocean with a teaspoon?

The end result has been that I’ve found myself adopting even pre-cata content approaches similar to what Shatamall has been suggesting … and it makes a HUGE difference!

I’m still learning … that Regrowth on Omen proc I just still have not nailed but the others are starting to come more naturally and infact, over time my healing has evolved away from spam rejuv/wg (they are still in there) to a mix that actually features more of my spells.

It was a novel moment the day I realised I was pressing more than just 2 and 3 on my keys!!!

kk soap box away …

I think your reproductive organs become acorns when you go to tree form

Even once you’re overgeared, it’s a noticeable difference in healing difficulty depending on how much cc is used. I just got out of a H Stonecore run on my raid-geared holy pally with a pug tank who just charged in and aoed and I was drinking every pull. (someone was smart on the interrupts, we didn’t get any force of earths, I couldn’t have healed through those, but we did get imps) Some people just can’t get their heads around “cc is needed.” Don’t be shy about leaving groups who refuse to cc or who can’t do it effectively. Or kicking if there’s only one problem player. Get yourself an instancing buddy, dps works as well as tank as long as it’s a smart player. Someone with at least one interrupt would be nice, an interrupt and a cc would be ideal. (I have a pet mage, a pet hunter and a pet shammy. I may be just a touch spoiled. lol) Judge what’s going on by how hard it is to keep that person alive. And having a second set of eyes to see what various debuffs are and what aoe is going on can be a real help to your own mental stability. (“Yeah, you were looking at green bars, not the floor but x was standing right in that void zone…” or “the idiot y broke that cc on purpose!”) And don’t judge yourself by terrible groups. The worst of the bad is just incapable of making it through stuff, no matter who heals.

I actually like healing in Cata, but I like it for the same reasons I like tanking now. It very heavily rewards smart play instead of gear. Smart _group_ play. Being willing to work together as well as being good at making big numbers. It gives me a real excuse to build my own groups again and show off my way-too-accurate memory about fight mechanics. Not really a great environment for pugging. But oh well, I’m having fun. Hope you get it figured out too.

I have been a long time fan of the game and your blog. I am normally extremely slow to respond because people normally beat me to the punch. Anyway, as of now I’ve put my tanking fur away and pulled out the claws with cat form. I recently stumbled across a nice little addon called “GTFO! You’re dying”. Simply, it is an in game alarm designed to let you know you are “standing in the fire”. I tried this add-on in pugs and immediately it made a huge difference in not only my survivability but I realized that as a DPS it becomes easy to get tunnel vision. I get so drawn in to making sure my bleeds are up, my debuffs are up, and my cooldowns are burned correctly that I ignore everything else going on around me. So in other words it compensates for my bad dps habits.

I later suggested this addon to the top dps officer in my guild and after only one trial run, he made it mandatory for all dps, ranged and melee. The guild healers immediately noticed a difference as well because they could focus a ton more time on the tank. It did not cure the CC problem or interrupt issues respectively but it has nearly eliminated useless party/raid damage. I completely understand the issues a healer faces in-game and I feel that it is the role of the dps to take as much burden away from the healer as we can.

More damage output + less dps damage taken=less fight time=less damage taken overall=less healing done

I know this is wordy and my not have helped you in any way shape or form, but if you have a group that you play with regularly try suggesting this addon and see what you think.

Thank you for what you bring to the WoW community. It becomes infinitely tiresome to dig through all of the trolling to find those few helpful and useful gems of advice. You provide that here without all of the rabble. The commenters that have preceded me are dead on in that your struggles are not your failure. Keep your head up and do not be ashamed of your performance. The entire Cata expansion has made for growing pains felt by all roles, but it is not unbeatable. DPS players are just going to have to man up and accept the fact that we need to play more than a numbers game for ultimate success. Thank you Bear!!

Unfortunately, Remove Corruption is ALSO super expensive. I eventually went in and made a buff bar that plasters BIG debuff icons that are on my target next to my VuhDo bars so I can quickly mouse over them and see if they’re worth decursing. Some of the debuffs (magic, especially) are things that I don’t need to remove immediately on DPS, like reduces healing taken or something. I take those off the tank and then let the rest expire on their own. The reason I use really big icons in a place next to my healing bars is so I can see what the debuffs are without glancing far from my healing :P.

The reality is that healing has been made a lot more about knowing all the ins and outs of your class mechanics in addition to much stricter mana management. And like someone else said further down the comment stream, I used to use Healing Touch a lot more often for tank healing than I do now. Its cast time is the same as Nourish and it gives you a bigger health dump than Nourish. It gets better, though. Keep at it! :)