Blizz healing spell design philosophy.

New theories incoming, this time about heals.

Basically, I believe all healing spells fit more or less into these three categories:

Baseline aka Bread & Butter: Spells that have a clear defined purpose and are straight forward.

circumstantial: Spells that are better than the bread and butter spells for various special purposes. Most group heals fit in this category.

Cooldowns: Spells that are so powerful and good that Blizz gives them a cooldown to prevent only using them.

Blizzard tries to make every healer use as much as possible of their reportoire. Some spells are much better fit for either PVE or PVP, but they often try to buff the spell for the least used aspect. The baseline spells will be almost garantueed to always have a use. The cooldowns can pretty safely be buffed straight, as the cooldown will limit just how powerful they become.

For the circumstantial spells, though, they follow a different strategy. It can potentially be very dangerous to straight buff a circumstantial spell (as in more healing throughput without adding to mana cost), because you might end up it being completely superior to other tools at disposal for the same purposes. That's what happened to Circle of Healing. They can't balance it by giving it a high mana cost, because the players still will use the spell and then complain about mana. The way they end up buffing these spells are usually by adding secondary effects to them, or give them additional situations in which they might be useful. Adding another situation where the spell shines makes it less circumstantial, as the circuimstances in question show up more often.

Let's take an example, Binding Heal. When it was first introduced in Burning Crusade, pretty much every PVE priest shunned it. While it could outshine Flash Heal in throughput (healing per second), it had no significant advantage in healing per mana (especially compared to Greater Heal) and risked overhealing twice. In serious arena, it was much more common for the enemy team to focus one player rather than split the damage, and it offered no additional benefit to focused damage. Of course, there were occassions where it would shine, but it was very circumstantial. Blizz couldn't straight buff the throughput, as that would've made it put out more single-target healing than Flash Heal. They tried lowering the mana cost, which helped both in PVP and PVE. But since it still was too circumstantial in PVE, they gave it very low threat. That helped. Suddenly priests used it in heroic on threat-sensitive fights, or early in pulls before the tank had proper threat on all mobs.

Fast forward to WotLK. Blizz is talking about changing how healing works. At the same time, they can't mess up too much the existing healing style, as there is no way to garantuee that a new healing style will be better than the old. Read: More entertaining. It's hard to please most of the crowd, impossible to please all.

From the 3.1 preview, it said that holy priests now will have a faster Greater Heal after casting Flash Heal. Fairly unoriginal as it's basically the same idea that they used with both Discipline and shaman Resto end-talents, but it works. It changes Flash Heal so that instead of being a pure bread'n'butter spell (discounting Surge of Light procs), it will also be a circumstantial spell. At the moment, you get the highest throughput of healing as a holy priest by spamming Greater Heal. In 3.1, you will do better alternating Flash Heal and Greater Heal, perhaps Greater Heal several times if a single flash heal will give a stack of buffs (like Tidal Waves gives two faster Lesser Healing Waves/Healing Waves, not only one). In addition, you can also throw in a flash heal early so that you'll already have the buff ready when you need it.

What they do is give spells additional circuimstances in which they'll be better than (other) baseline spells. I offer two observations to Blizz approach in making spell more interesting.

First observation: By adding circuimstances such as the above, Blizz tries to reward planning and foresight. While combat in WoW always will have random elements, most of what happens can be anticipated. At the very least, it's easy to anticipate that the tank will take damage. Then you might also anticipate that he or she's going to take spikes, and that the rest of the group will take AoE damage from the spell the boss mob is just casting. While I think it is a good thing to reward anticipation, it leads to one of two problems. First case, fights might be tuned so hard that the healer is required to be very familiar with the fight in order to keep everyone alive. Second case, fights will be tuned so that it still is possible to improvise and catch up, in which case they might be too trivial for a healer familiar with it. Of the two evils, the second is the lesser and the most likely Blizz will follow.

Second observation: There might be problems at the horizon if you keep adding stuff to existing spells. Specifically, you will "need" to press your cooldown-heals at every possible cooldown to be an optimal healer. That, in turn, makes the healing game feels very spammy, and less dependant on good decisionmaking. Let's take an example, Riptide. For the moment, this spell has all of the following functions:

• A direct instant heal.


• A HoT that lasts 15 seconds.


• A buff to your next Chain Heal with the Riptide target as a primary target which removes the HoT.


• A self-buff to the caster, Tidal Waves, reducing the casttime of the next two combinations of Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Wave.


• A chance to proc Earthliving Weapon, a second HoT that lasts X seconds.


• A chance to crit, thus proccing Ancestral Healing.


• A chance to crit, thus proccing Improved Water Shield.


• A chance to crit, thus proccing Ancestral Awakening.

Pretty hefty list for a single spell. Why is it so long? Blizz has more or less stated that they considered it a problem that every resto shaman in a raid did nothing but spam Chain Heal all day. They wanted to buff Riptide so that it was worth the GCD to cast it for a resto shaman. In the process of buffing it (which also included buffing it's direct throughput), they added a lot of circumstantial reasons to use it. Now it is almost at the point where I feel that I need to cast it as often as I can while healing 5-man heroics, provided anyone in the group have taken damage. Holy Shock is very similar in the regard that it also has a lot of circumstantial effects attached to it.

The bottom line, I think we'll see even more of the circumstantial stuff for healers in the future. Consider the healer abilities in the Aces High daily, same as the last phase of Malygos.

(By the way, sorry for the lack of posts. Like WoW, a blog's priority is well behind both job and private life)

The healery arts of bursting

Pretty much every healer have the potential to put out some burst damage on demand. There will be moments in both PVP and PVE where this is handy. Mostly in PVP, of course, where the ability to burst down an enemy can be viewed as healing saved. But not exclusively, there will be times in PVE when bursting is handy. For example if you pull aggro on some add and it is mostly dead already or have low health, or on bosses which have vulnerability periods in which every point of damage counts. Take the Headless Horseman, to take an example a lot have experienced.

The main difference between bursting in PVP and PVE is the risk of getting counterspelled/kicked and thus getting that school of magic locked out. This is only a serious problem on your healing school (holy or nature) and only on spells with a cast-time. Actually, it's often an advantage to get your non-healing spell school locked, because whoever blew that cooldown can't immidiately counterspell you again. In both PVP and PVE you risk getting your casttime extended by damage taken for non-instants.

For all of the bursty combinations, you want to maximize the damage output for the given amount of time. The question is, how much time do you have? You can make several combos depending on how much time you have at your disposal. There's also an advantage to put an instant at the end of a chain, because it hits the same moment as the cast-time right before it, and the global cooldown triggered doesn't "count" towards the time the combo takes. In PVP, many enemies will hit defensive cooldowns if they take incoming serious damage. By making the damage hit at the exact same time, they won't have time to react between the nukes.

I ignore spells with long cooldowns. Though you can get a nice burst as a shaman by for example using Nature's Swiftness and Chain Lightning, you usually want to save those for other purposes.

Priest

A quick and safe 1.5 sec combo is Mind Blast -> Shadow Word: Death. If you don't risk getting counterspelled, Holy Fire -> Shadow Word: Death will probably yield better damage for a holy or disc-specced priest, at a lower mana cost.

You can of course drop both for a twice as long combo, Holy Fire -> Mind Blast -> Shadow Word: Death. I like using Holy Fire first because it packs a dot, slightly longer cooldown and better damage if you can't finish the combo.

If you're discipline, you also have the option of dropping Penance into the fray, of course based on the assumption that you don't immidiately need it for healing. If you're holy, pray for a crit and drop an instant Smite in there.

All in all, priests got pretty good burst potential, and at a neat 30 yard range. Use it well.

Druid

Druids are lacking in the bursting department. First and foremost, the problem is that to deal any kind of damage (except Thorns) you need to shift out of tree form, which means that the mana cost of the combo is sort of increased by the mana cost of shifting back to tree form.

The next problem is their spell selection. I don't assume any healer specs Starlight Wrath. Starfire deals decent damage and doesn't include any risk of counterspelling, but at a 3.5 sec casttime. Wrath deals pretty low dps without serious talent investment into the balance tree, risks counterspelling, and still has a 2 sec cast time. Moonfire deals very abysmal damage compared to it's mana cost when only looking at the instant part.

There's always the option of Moonfire spam, which has the advantage of being only instants. However, mana cost and low dps doesn't make it a too powerful burst.

The only option they have is to chain Starfire -> Moonfire or Wrath -> Moonfire depending on how long time they have.

All in all, druids are seriously lacking burst potential, in my opinion.

Shaman

Shammies have some interesting options. First and foremost, Lava Burst is a garantueed crit as long as the enemy has Flame Shock on them. Lava burst deals better damage at a significantly lower mana cost than Chain Lightning, even without Flame Shock present. In addition it's handy that it's not from the nature (healing) school, in case of counterspells. Like Lightning Bolt it has a travel time, which can be both a blessing and a curse.

The special thing about shocks is that they share the same cooldown. In PVP, if you *need* your enemy snared (Frost Shock) or the shock cooldown ready to interrupt a spell (Earth Shock or Wind Shock), you won't have the option of chaining Flame Shock into Lave Burst. In PVE, you might often be better of using Wind Shock to reduce aggro rather than use it for a nuke. There's also the problem with range, 20 yards (barring gear bonuses) rather than 30 yards on cast-time nukes.

All in all, there's a lot of different combos for different needs.

First, let's look at Flame Shock -> Lava Burst. Since you have to wait for global cooldown after the first, the combo takes 3.5 sec, barring haste and interruptions. While Lava Burst is a garantueed crit, without Elemental Fury it's only a 150% crit, and the initial hit from flame shock is nothing great. In effect, while handy, this isn't a superior combo. The redeeming trait is that you only need to stand still to cast in 2 of those 3.5 seconds. Glyph of Shocking reduces the time of this combo by 0.5 sec.

If you spend 4 seconds, you can chain Lava Burst -> Chain Lightning -> Earth Shock. Frost Shock at the end deals a bit less damage, but snares if you need that should the combo fail to kill. The advantage of this combo is that Lava Burst have travelling time while Chain Lightning and Earth Shock hit instantly, meaning they can hit in very short amount of time (<0.5 sec), giving an enemy player very little time to react, provided you're at max shock range. If you're in melee, this isn't such a good idea. Of course, there's the risk of getting Chain Lightning counterspelled. Just Lava Burst -> Earth Shock is a quick and safe combo, in the sense that you can't get nature counterspelled.

Given the nature of Lava Burst, the best option for bursting is setting up a killer combo by casting Flame Shock earlier, then load up a double or triple nuke so that you get a second shock in. This is easier said than done in PVP, slightly less so in PVE.

Paladin

Since pallies lack any casttimespells, their nukes are limited only to the instants they have. The interesting part is that Judgement of Justice (or any of the other judgements) is off the global cooldown, meaning you can that and another instant in at the same moment. Seal of Righteousness is probably the seal that causes the best damage on jugdement for a holy pally. Enlightened Judgements give judgement a lot of range, in fact more so than most other offensive spells in the game.

The primary nuke is Holy Shock, which has a few disadvantages. Only 20 yard range, for a start, and the fact that you might need it for healing rather than damaging. The bright side is that you probably have a fairly good crit rate on this, and using it with Divine Favor still grants the instant Flash of Light when used offensively, thanks to Infusion of Light.

Chaining Holy Shock and a judgement gives a fairly good nuke, and is completely instant. From 3.1 you can also throw in Exorcism, which will then be usable on all targets rather than just demons and undeads. See here for more details if you missed the change.

Last words

I believe Blizz doesn't dare to give druids a baseline high-damage, low cooldown ability like Holy Fire, Mind Blast and Lava Burst because they're afraid that it might make druids overpowered in PVP (again).

Why do we play?

As a parent, I'm reading quite a lot of child psychology, especially Alfie Kohn for the interested. The interesting part of it is that a lot of the psychology that turns up there aren't limited to children, or can be easily ported to the rest of the population as well.

One of the most interesting topics I've come across, both with Alfie Kohn and other sources, is motivation. I'd like to take a look at motivation in WoW with the insights I've come across there.

First, some background. While I may not use the exact same words, psychologists speak of internal and external motivation. The internal motivation is the motivation to do something for the it's own sake. The classical school example is a pupil that suddenly realizes a connection in mathematics, and desires or even aches to learn more. Then there's the external motivation. That's when you have some other reason to do something, and you're not nescessarily interested in doing whatever you do for the sake itself. Classic example continued: A teacher stands behind the pupil, watching him, and telling him "Good job" when he does something good, thus the pupil wants to do more math exercises (not nescessarily learn more) to keep hearing the teacher saying "Good job".

According to the theories I've read and what I've experienced, external motivation kills internal motivation. If you do something for fun, and someone starts giving you money to do it, chances are great that you'll now view it as a job rather than an interest. That's not saying you can't have internal motivations towards a job. What matters, in my mind, is your view of the task at hand. Do you do it because you want to do it, and payment is just a nice side effect, or do you do it to get the payment? If you fall into the latter category, you'll easily find yourself hating your job, or at least looking forward to job is done or the weekend.

Now, let's take a look at WoW. Internal motivation could be doing quests because you're curious what will happen or find the story interesting. External motivation is doing quests for the rewards only, to the point where you never really read the quest text. Internal motivation could also be exploring for the sake of itself, while external could be exploring to get an achievement.

WoW has so many ways of external motivations that it's almost silly. XP/Level, reputation, gear upgrades, money, titles, various mounts and pets, and achievements. My theory is that if you focus on these things, WoW will be less entertaining for you, raiding will feel more like a job than entertainment, you're much more likely to suffer burnout and so on. I used to skip every quest text through second half of vanilla WoW. Now I read every quest text, book, readable quest item and dialogue carefully, to absorb as much as possible of the story.

That is not saying you can't have fun with achivements. But if you do an achivement just to get +10 achivement points, that's possibly a bad sign. Do it because you find it entertaining, or just have fun with a random achivement popping up now and then without intentionally hunting them.

Still, there's a big playerbase, and a lot of them *are* motivated by external motivation. What keeps them back? I've got a theory of that as well, though I didn't invent that either. The general idea is that addiction is often caused by the enviroment rather than the thing you're addicted to itself. Translated: Many people who are addicted to WoW feel that their lives are lacking in some way. Thus, the sympthom of that is that they've developed an addiction to WoW, even to the point of playing when it feels like work. The actual cause is in their actual lives. Taking away WoW doesn't solve the problem, only removes a sympthom.

Aspects of the game: Soloing

I've tried to find out why I suddenly go all out with my shammie, when I could just as well be levelling my priest or druid. I have a theory. Bear with me, I need to start somewhere.

World of Warcraft combines many different types of game into one. The major parts as I see them:

• Soloing: Most notably levelling, but also grinding and dailies. You (or your pet) will be the only aggro targets. If you mess up, you've got noone to bail you out, but you won't pull anyone else down the drain with you.


• Instancing: Includes normal and heroic dungeons and raids. You have a defined role you're supposed to do, and unless that's tanking, you're not the usual target of aggro.


• Battlegrounds: Apart from the actual battlegrounds, I also include Wintergrasp here. Though it is slightly different, it shares many of the same traits.


• Arena: Different rules than battlegrounds, not least of them that you only live once.

There are also several minor parts of the game. Well, minor for most players:

• Grouping outside instances: Usually for group quests. However, some people level like this rather than soloing.


• World PVP, aka ganking: Where there's no reason for the conflict other than the interest in crushing your enemy.


• World PVP objectives: Removed in Northrend in favor of Wintergrasp.


• Duelling: A part some love and others completely avoid.

Finally, there's the social parts of the game. However, unless you're an avid roleplayer, they're not connected to what class you play at the moment. You might also count exploring and professions as special parts, but it is (at least techically) without any class restrictions.

Most players concentrate on some aspects of the game. Indeed, many players hate some other aspect of the game to the point where they try to avoid it completely.

While levelling through Outland, I tried a lot of different aspects. This time, I'm mostly doing soloing, with the occasional instance and group thrown in.

Now, soloing has some special "rules" about it. Like most PVE, almost all incoming damage is physical, and most are done in melee. And since every class is supposed to be able to solo, the damage must be moderate, because some classes have very low physical mitigation. Of course, this means that classes with high mitigation have a significant advantage while soloing, in the fact that they take less incoming damage.

To pull the analogy to myself: I'm now levelling a character that has a very acceptable physical mitigation of almost 50%. My priest and druid mitigates less than 20% damage. As my blog name implies, I love healing. But while a paladin has even higher mitigation, he's unable to do ranged dps which I prefer, and thus I end up with the three others.

Granted, a moonkin can have even more mitigation than me, but at the price of healing. And if they shift out, they're suddenly really squishy and risk dying faster than they can heal against elites. I feel I've got better survivability combining high-power healing with good mitigation. While a bear have way more mitigation (add dodge and demo-roar), they got way less healing even when shifting out than a moonkin.

The last piece in the argument here is that I like staying alive. As long as I can survive, I can beat every elite I come across, even if it takes time. I do belive that not everyone have the same preference as me. Many players would for example prefer superior dps to survivability. So what if they can't solo everything, they can still kill 99% of the mobs out there, and faster than I am able to while heal-tanking something.

However, I suspect that once I start PVP, I might be rather tempted to return to my priest, or perhaps even my druid. While physical mitigation helps, there are a lot other ways to mitigate damage in PVP. Various passive talents (Focused Will or Blessed Resilience, for example), or active abilities such as dispelling dots or frost nova to avoid getting caught in a shatter combo.

Bottom line, I'm wondering if I won't be more envious of other healers once I start serious PVPing at lvl 80. I already envy the number of instant heals priests and druids can throw around, and of course the all-mighty bubble of pallies.

Edit: Seriously, I mus've been really tired when I first wrote this. Forgot to explain the reason why I like high mitigation.

Roleplaying Rant

I've spent the vast majority of my playtime on Earthen Ring, which is an RP server. As I wrote in my earlier post, I was a rather active roleplayer for the first year of my WoW career. After that, it went downhill. At some point, the roleplaying in WoW was taken over by various drama queens and kings.

This post is aimed towards those drama queens and kings, but might be of interest to others who've encountered them, or even to people intending to start roleplaying.

How to recognize a drama queen

While I find the term 'drama queen' to be the most descriptive, other names are also floating around. 'Spotlighthugger', 'Power RPer' and possibly a dozen other such names describe similar behaviour in roleplaying. What generally defines them is that their roleplaying is all about them. They're the main character in the story, everyone else are less important characters. They're practically bursting to tell/play their story. Just push the botton (ask to hear their story), and they'll talk about themselves for at least the next half hour. Most won't even wait for that, if they believe someone will listen to them.

Practically every drama queen use some addon like FlagRSP. It allows you to write a description for yourself, which other players with the same addon can read. It can be quite entertaining to install this addon if you're on a RP server, and walk around some capital city just to read what people've written in the descriptions.

The third defining characteristic of drama queens is that they all want to be special. They try really hard to write stories and create characters that are completely unique, resulting in rather quite a few far-fetched bios.

The problem

Now, the problem with drama queens is usually not that their stories are uninteresting. Quite the opposite, it can be very entertaining to listen to a story. What type of entertainment depends on the story and the character, ranging from hilarious (often without the intention of the storyteller) through amusing to exciting.

The problem is usually that it can be rather tiresome to listen to yet another far-fetched, overplayed story, which rewrites the lore of WoW yet again. How many secret lovechildren does Tyrande have? How many times was Thrall saved by a single hero, who for some reason needed to be omitted from the common lore? That, and the fact that it can be quite annoying to listen to someone who won't let anyone else get through. Granted, unlike a verbal conversation they can't just speak louder than everyone else, but they don't necessarily need to. Many roleplayers are quite polite, and will wait their turn. And when their turn doesn't show up... well, then they'll just wait until their patience grow thin, and then stop showing up for roleplaying sessions.

Hints on backstory creation

I don't want to teach you how to roleplay. The paragraphs above contains quite a few hints on how to roleplay. Besides, there's quite a few sources that have written 'Roleplaying 101' guides before me. I'll just list up some spesific suggestions I have for drama queens.

Normality, the new originality

If you desire to be original, you needn't nescessary go out of the way to create a new original backstory, complete with some major names from the lore and some grand event that without your intervention would've doomed the world. In fact, there are so many of those, that it's refreshing to read/hear a down-to-earth story. There are still many things that can and does happen to "normal" people, and just because it can happen to normal people doesn't make them uninteresting. Try roleplaying a father who needs to feed a family, for example.

Avoid anything about rape

I'm very certain that 100% of all characters I've met who've been "raped" in their past, have been played by male players. Many other male players, and probably almost every female player will react very negatively to that. To the poor souls that've actually experienced it, it will probably be a lot of emotional pain. Here they come to WoW to relax and play, and get reminded of their probably worst experience ever. Tasteless.

Regarding lost eyes

... it's the peak of unoginality. But if you really want to lack one eye, first find a good reason that actually doesn't make everyone think "yeah, right". Second, most people don't cover lost eyes with the biggest gem in the world or something like that. Third, actually roleplay it. A person with only one eye will have a limited depth perception, causing him to occasioanly misjudge distance and bump into walls, loose their footing, misjudge a ledge. With that said, they will also be used to it, meaning they will avoid moving too close to somewhere they might misjudge and fall down. In fact, they might've developed phobia of heights. And that brings us to...

Mental problems

Now, this is something refreshingly new. I personally believe that every adult person in the entire world have some mental problems they live with. Most people don't have a diagnosis for this. Only those that have problems that in some way hamper their life get a diagnosis. Why shouldn't WoW characters have theirs as well? It makes a character way more realistic. But here's the trick: It must be some problem that you can function normally with, or at least hide really well. A challenge can be to roleplay a character with a problem the character itself isn't aware of, or at least views as a problem. Some examples of mental problems that could be roleplayed: Father/son-problems, general problems with authorities, virtually any phobia, schizofrenia (not to be mixed with multiple personalities), sleepwalking, hearing voices, paranoia, lack of respect for own well-being, bad judge of character (often trusts the wrong person), bad memory, and various fascinations. For more adult roleplaying, various fetishes. Again; the character must still be able to function normally.

Traits

A mixed bag of everything that doesn't include mental problems. For example, habit of chewing a root all the time, stopping to salute every guard, shouting when angry, blinking unescessarily much, raising an eyebrow occasionally, talking very polite, talking very commanding ("You will have a fine day!") or practically anything else you can think of. Make a macro and hit once in a while when the situation calls for it.

Emo is sooooo last year

Generally, making an emo character is not the best of ideas. There ought to be something in your story that's positive as well. A character with an optimistic view of life is so much easier to stick around with than someone suicidal.

Roleplaying the character

Now, let's say you have a wonderfully interesting, or plainly dull backstory. The most important part is how you roleplay, not how well you've written the story. Here's some general advice:

Listen more than talk

In a group of at least 3 roleplayers, if someone speaks more than listens, it means that the group's turned into a speaker and two listeners. Avoid that.

Be subtle with traits

A good roleplayer will be subtle about their traits and problems. They're something that you remember the character by, but shouldn't occur too often. If you do it too often, you'll start annoying others. I'd like to make an example from one of the best roleplayers I've ever met in WoW (hope you don't mind); A shaman that heard the spirits speaking to her. Once in a while, the combat log would say "Shacklya whispers to herself." What happened? She roleplayed that she replied to one of the spirits speaking to her, which no one else can hear. When asked about it (in character), she would explain that she was replying to a spirit which spoke to her first. And she did that once in a while, sometimes seldom, sometimes often. Never more than about once a minute. Ingeniously simple. Everyone that meets her will remember it, and I don't think anyone would be annoyed by it. And it can create great plotline hooks, depending on what she's discussing with the spirits for the moment.

Create stories/plots with solutions

Many roleplayers like to make large plots and stories. Great! As long as the rest find it entertaining, no worries. The problem, though, arises when you've created a plot that doesn't really include any input from the other roleplayers. It's really frustrating to "participate" in a character-driven plot when you can't do anything at all to affect the outcome. Be flexible! If a given character is possessed and someone tries something good, let them succeed. Don't just wait and eternity and then present *the* solution, which they never could've done.

Create positive plots as well

Practically every plot I've seen in WoW is some sort of negative. Try to create some positive plots as well, or at least some that has light points. Go to a pub and drink yourself silly, for example. Can lead to a lot of interesting roleplaying without demonic interference.

And a word of respect to my master...

Aside from Shacklya, the best roleplayer I've ever met on Earthen Ring have to be Cavran. Unfortunately, he's no longer playing, and hasn't for quite some time. His interest in WoW was killed by various bad roleplayers. Bah. Salutations, Cavran!

Journal of a shaman equipped with frost resistance totem

These are gathered experiences from my levelling in Northrend. I don't know how many of you have interest in soloing experiences anymore, as "everyone" is 80 now. I'll justify it saying that there will be plenty alts levelling through Northrend.

Speeeeed! Give me what I neeeed

Compared to pretty much everyone else, I've levelled pretty slowly. But if you only look at actual playtime, it's pretty good. All of it has been on rested XP. And this time, unlike the last (Outland), I'm only levelling one character, Kirba. Last time I levelled both my priest and druid, switching them every now and then when I got too annoyed with the other.

It feels slightly awkward that I've only finished Borean Tundra, with about 20-30 quests done in other zones, and I'm already half-way to 80.

Money money money

As a lot of others have pointed out, Blizz is trying to empty our pockets by every mean possible. Some of it can't be avoided, like spending 150 gold training (and I'm exalted with Orgrimmar) my lvl 75 spells. Others can be avoided, though. Some of the ways I've tried to save money:

• Obviously only repair and buy reagents at a fraction with which you're exalted. Orgrimmar in my case.


• Limit the number of flight path usages, by planning a route that involves very little flying. Of course, this might sometimes take extra time, so it's a balance there. For example, with my hearthstone set to Dalaran, I've plenty of times taken a portal to Orgrimmar and the zeppelin to either of the starting areas to save money. It's kind of extreme, though, and not something I do too often. Rather boring to wait for the zep. If I'm in one of the southern Kalu'ak towns, I'll use the boat instead of a flight if it happens to be there at the time I arrive.


• Except for my gathering skills (mining in my case), don't train tradeskills until you're honored with some fraction. I'm almost honored with Warsong Offensive myself.

There's also the flip side of the coin, making money. While I did earn 2k gold selling glyphs when 3.0 came out, I'm not usually much fan of hanging at the auction house too much. That leaves a few other ways:

"Normal" questing. Yields a pretty stable income, but nothing spectacular. Most of it will be going down the drain when I hit 77 and have to buy Cold Wheater Flying.

Dailies. Not too different from questing, really, except that they're slightly faster since you know what you're supposed to do.

Green BoEs... Sent those I can use to my alts, those that I expect to have a use for to a bank alt, and those that I don't think I'll be able to use at all to disenchanting. What to do with the disenchants? For now, they're stored. Later, perhaps they'll help finance my epic flying mount.

Resthancement

I've levelled to 75, about 3/4 of the time as resto, the rest as enhancement. Been respeccing to resto for each instance, there are never healers around. Not that I mind too much, means I always get a place in a group. I'd like to try dpsing as a shaman sometime, though.

I felt like a friggin' glass cannon as enhancement. Next time I go enhancement, I'll drop talent points in Anticipation and Toughness to counter that. I don't think I ever died, but I don't like seeing my health bar leap up and down as I take damage and use my Maelstrom Weapon stacks for instant heal.

Static Shock was not my cup of tea. Spesifically, the lack of Water Shield meant I only had Shamanistic Rage as a mean to get my mana up again. It's a raid/group dps talent, as far as I can see, less useful as a soloing talent.

Now that I've reached 75, Kirba just got a new spell at her disposal. Lava Burst is pretty hefty. As resto (with spellpower gear), it crits for about 2.7k. Nice. I was planning to respec sometime, but I think I'll just wait for 3.0.8 and the free respec.

I must admit, though, that I felt a bit envious hearing that a pally friend of mine crit for 4.5k on Holy Shock used offensively. Wow. That means 3k non-crits, instant, every 6 seconds if you want to. Seriously... overpowered, if it's true. My Earth Shocks hit for about 1-1.2k on non-crits. Looking at the tooltips, I can see that Holy Shock is more powerful. I can only guess that's because it can be used both for damage and healing, while I've got Earth Shock and Riptide on two different 6-second cooldowns.

Fanclub stuff

Thanks to the D.E.H.T.A. quests in Borean Tundra, I've gotten a nice boost to my Cenarion Expedition rep. Only half-way to Exalted to go.

I've been doing the Kalu'ka dailies when I can, so I'm already Revered. I don't know why I bother so much with them, but they're very likable. And since it's entertaining, that's good enough for me. Thanks to that, Cuttlefish Tooth Ringmail is waiting for me in one level, Totemic Purification Rod in three levels. And if I should reach exalted, I don't mind getting Pengu and the fishing pole.

Misc stuff

Astral Recall rocks while soloing. I can recall to Dalaran, go to Orgrimmar and do whatever I want, then hearth to Dalaran again and catch a flight back to wherever I want to.

Glyphed Water Walking rocks as well. Very nice whenever I'm close to water. Makes some quests ridiculously easy. Ride out to the quest mob, kill it, rebuff and ride back.

Fire Elemental Totem rocks like heck. Drop the totem, Earth Shield the elemental, make sure to damage all mobs at least a bit, and just pull wildly. I've pulled around 10 mobs at the most, and downed them all. Fun.

Speaking of Earth Shield, While I've been resto, I've tossed it on any horde I've met. They seem to appreciate it. I always buff those I meet as priest or druid, so it's nice to have something to offer as shaman too, sort of.

I've missed Glyph of Water Mastery a bit since I dropped it. I think I feel the difference in mana regen.

Is it just me, or did they recently add the feature that gives an arrow on your radar to the quest you've marked in the quest log? Only works for a few quests, but very handy for those it does work for.

Evil plan to take over the world

• Keep up my dailies and whatever other Kalu'ak quests I find until I earn exalted with them.


• Do Warsong Offensive quests in Dragonblight until I'm honored with them, then go train my professions. Won't take long, only got 500 rep left until Revered.


• Howling Fjord. Don't want to miss out the story. Hope I'm not doing something stupid, like killing the fun for my alts when I next level there.


• Respec to Elemental once 3.0.8 hits. Preferably test it as dps in an instance. Perhaps test it as a healer as well in an non-heroic instance.


• Keep levelling, obviously enough.


• Do some instances. No stress, though, I'm probably going to see the inside of them quite a lot as heroics.


• Have fun. Highest priority.

Aspects of the healer role

I'd like to share a view of the 4 healing classes and their 5-man healing styles.

Whack-a-health

First, let's review the obvious truth. A healer's primary job is basically to make sure there's always a hint of green on their party member's unit bars. Preferably lots of green. Of course, there are lots of details which add complexity, but this is the basic idea. If you bring along a healer, that's what you at least want him to do.

To this end, all the healer classes have various spells which make sure the green stuff doesn't entirely dissapear. I name this the whack-a-health game, namely 'whacking' each health bar as it is emptied. It's more whacking with direct heals than with various heal over times and heal on demands, but the idea still stands.

Now, let's make an assumption. We now assume all the healers have the tools for the job, given acceptable working conditions. You're not expected to be able to keep up the stupid DPS who doesn't move out of/away from [insert some dangerous mob ability here]. Various healing spells' efficiency and throughput is now what I want to discuss right now. Besides, Elitist Jerks is probably the best place to look for those sort of theorycrafting discussions.

No, what I want to discuss are other aspects of the healing role.

Support, anyone?

Now, usually, when you bring along a healer, you're not only bringing just the whack-a-health part of it. Imagine the annoyances to the rest of the group having a priest who ignores every suggestions to shackle, a shaman that never drops a totem, a druid that doesn't buff or res, or a paladin that doesn't bless. While you can argue that a healer's ability to keep others alive is what matters most, I'd like to argue that a healer's skill is also reflected in the ability to use supporting spells. Further, while the healing spells plays a big role, these supporting abilities is actually the biggest difference in playstyle when you're logging on to another healer.

My first-hand experience is limited to druid, priest and shaman. I have healed as paladin, but pre-40 is a bit different from healing at 70. I don't have experience healing 80-heroics yet, but I think no class changed very vastly those 10 levels. A new spell to compliment the playstyle here and there, but basically the same idea.

The idea here is to focus on the four aspects of the healing role playstyle of each healing class.

The Keeping-stuff-up aspect

All healer classes have abilities which need to be kept up to be 100% effective. I'm now talking primarily about abilities that either have a short duration (2 min or less) or abilities that needs to be refreshened on demand. For example, while you as a priest need to make sure you've got Prayer of Fortitude buffed on the party, with a 1 hour duration it's not like you need to worry about keeping it up. Fire and forget, baby.

I'm only including abilities which affect allies here, and omitting some that will come in the next section.

Priests aren't so bad:

• Prayer of Mending: This is very special. On one hand, it lasts 30 sec after each jump, but what does it help if it's just stuck on some dps that never takes damage? Sometimes, you'll want to use it on every cooldown. Other times, it's better to leave it where it is because you expect some AoE sooner or later. Special note that you also need to watch when you have it yourself, because you can bump it off you with Shadow Word: Death. Bonus points for being the in my opinion coolest healing spells in the game, and spell that I really miss when I'm on the other healers. Not because it's so darn powerful (which it is, but other classes also got powerful stuff), but because it's so darn fun.


• Inner Fire: Post-70 this is a spellpower buff as well as armor. Most of the time, it lasts 10 minutes. But, since it has charges, I often find that I don't notice when it's down after having taken some minor AoE damage here and there. Improved Inner Fire helps. On the other hand, in heroics it's less of a problem... if you're taking hits, you're usually dead long before you need to refresh this.

Druids have only one (unless I've forgotten something), but it's painful:

• Lifebloom-stack on the tank. Has a base duration of 7 sec, but can reach as high as 10 seconds with Nature's Splendor (no-brainer) and the glyph (not so no-brainer, as there are other useful glyphs out there as well). My experience from 70-heroics is that it was a major pain. If I lost the stack, I'd have to spend 3 gcds to rebuild it on the tank. On the other hand, refreshen it too often, and you never dropped out of the 5-sec rule, in addition to the fact that you lost ticks of the last, and thereby mana efficiency. But just a single stun or other problem, and the stack was gone. This was what caused me to end my career as a druid healer for a while. I'm very happy with the new duration, not to mention Gift of the Earthmother to lessen the pain of rebuilding it.


• Honorable mention: Thorns. This is possibly the buffing spell I forget most often to keep up. It shouldn't really be on the list, since it has a duration of 10 minutes.

Shamans have several abilities that needs to be kept up:

• Earth Shield: Since it has charges (up to 8 with Improved Earth Shield) you need to refreshen it as it runs out. If the tank is hammered, it takes in my experience about 30-40 seconds. Not too painful.


• Totems. Usually, these run for five minutes. However, there's two restrictions. First, it's the range. At 30 yards for most totems, it's painfully shorter than the healing range of 40 yards. Further, if the fight is moving in some way, you have to redrop the totems closer. The second restriction is in fights with spawns or adds of some kind. These will very often target a totem and destroy it, forcing you to replanting it. Totems can be pretty frustrating to work with sometimes, and it sure takes a bit of practice.


• Water Shield: If you don't have any talents and don't get hit, it's a simple once every ten minute refreshening. When you start taking a bit of damage, it's more often. And if you've taken Improved Water Shield and cast anything but Chain Heal, you'll need to refreshen it very often. Refresh time between 10 and 30 seconds.

Paladins didn't need to keep up so much eaerlier... well, actually, they did. 5-minute blessings was probably a pain I've never experienced. But in BC, it wasn't so bad. WotLK, however, brings a bunch to keep in mind.

• Sacred Shield: Their new 80 ability is pretty... special. To me, it seems like they worked hard to make an ability that could only reduce incoming damage, never leaving the target with more health than they started with, and never absorbing all damage. There is little reason not to keep it up on the tank all the time, especially so if you can benefit from the increased critical rate on Flash of Light. But ... 50% increased crit? What were they smoking? Paired with the +13% crit chance from talents they can pick up, and a good deal of crit rate on gear, attaining a 100% crit rate doesn't seem impossible. Anyway, needs to be refreshed every 30 sec.


• Beacon of Light: For some reason I can't resist hearing Bacon of Light all the time. You know, what you get when you fry pork in light. Ehem. Anyway, for any fight that involves AoE damage, this is handy, as it can potentially double the healing throughput of Holy Light. Of course, it only "copies" effective healing, not including overhealing. Since paladins lack a true AoE heal, this is as close as they come. 1 min duration.


• You might want to keep up Judgement of the Pure, meaning you need to judge at least every minute. Possibly more often, because of the actual benefit derived from the judgement. And to judge, you need to have a seal up, which needs to be refreshened every 2 min. Speaking of seals...


• ... there's also the glyphs to consider. Namely Glyph of Seal of Wisdom or Glyph of Seal of Light. I'd consider it a rather strange choice to pick both, but each to his own taste. Pretty good glyphs too. The Seal of Light one adds throughput and mana efficiency, the wisdom one only adds efficiency... but more of it. And if the seal of light one only adds over healing, it's wasted, whereas the wisdom one will aid every single heal. I'm not trying to get into a big discussion which is better to use, as I don't have a high level pally.

Bottom line: Choose your poison. Each class has abilities which needs to be kept up. Personally, I hate the lifebloom-rolling aspect of a druid, but I know many others love it. Than 3.0 I now have a choice: I can choose other healing styles as a druid than pure lifebloom-rolling. I'd say priests have the "easiest" time keeping stuff up, with mostly long-lasting buffs.

Addons can make the job easier to live with for all classes. Cheating? Crutch? Nescessary? I'm not making any judgements. Each to their own taste.

The whack-a-debuff game

In addition to health, there's also the debuffs to take care of. Well, the debuffs the healer in question can remove. The ones they can't heal, they have to heal through. That also means that every healer have the potential to heal through all of it, but it's a lot harder.

Priest:

• Cure/Abolish disease: Usually enough to keep diseases at bay.


• Dispel Magic: Since it eats two magic debuffs on each cast, it means they can usually keep their party free of magic debuffs.


• Mass dispel: If they can anticipate an AoE magic debuff, this can potentially clean it up easily. I've noticed as a priest that a lot of AoE magic debuffs, for example, only last 5 seconds. There are a few times it's worth to dispel, though. I personally like to keep my pally tanks silence-free, as that tend to keep the enemies out of my face. But mass dispel to keep all the other melee'ers silence-free? Nah.

Druid:

• Cure/Abolish Poison: Poisons? Can't see'em, sir. Poisons that hit several allies can still be annoying, though.


• Remove curse: Curses aren't usually spammed, so this takes good enough care of them. If they were, though, this'd be a problem.

Shaman:

• Cleanse Spirit: Poison, disease and curse in one go. Nice. In fact, completely replaces Cure Disease and Cure Poison.


• Poison/Disease Cleansing Totem: The peak of debuff removal (in my opinion), this means you can pretty much ignore poisons/diseases on the entire party. I believe this sports a 40 yard range, despite what wowhead tooltip, and contrary to the normal 30 yard range for totems. The downside is that using this prevents you from using Mana Spring, Mana Tide or my usual preference, Healing Stream Totem. In some cases, I'm not sure if it's a better benefit to using Poison/Disease cleansing totem over Healing Stream and just remove the debuffs with Cleanse Spirit on the tank. Depends on what kind of diseases and poisons there are.


• Tremor totem: This falls into two categories, both this and the next. The special thing about fear is that while you can remove it on a teammate, you can't remove it on yourself. I think I read that this has a 40 yard range somewhere, despite the tooltip. Wouldn't depend on it without testing it, though.

Paladin:

• Cleanse: Handy for all kinds of stuff except curses. However, paladins lack both a group version, something that keeps cleaning, and a more effective direct version (like Dispel Magic killing two magic debuffs), meaning they might need to spend a lot of GCDs on this. So many, in fact, that they can't always keep up. Poor pallies. Major annoyance, am I right?

Conclusion: More of an observation, really: every healer has their own set of debuffs they can remove, the rest they have to work around. That means debuffs can't be so powerful that it's impossible to heal through them.

The enemy-watching aspect

This is the aspect that took me the longest to learn. I know that I'm not the only healer that have a tendency to suddenly attain a complete tunnel-vision regarding the party health bars when I'm healing. In many encounters, I hardly ever saw the enemy before it was dead. However, as I wrote in an earlier post, situational awareness is really what makes you a great player. If you're not watching the enemy, you're wasting potential.

First, let me be portrait what I'm not discussing. Many boss abilities affect the entire raid. Most of them force you to move or suffer. These kind of abilities aren't healer-spesific, and they're more about learning the encounter. The primary healer-spesific issue are abilities which hurt the tank a lot, meaning you need to be on your toes, possibly blow cooldowns, make sure the tank is at 100% right before the ability hit and so on. Those are also about learning the encounter. Some mobs also got a vulnerability time, in which they need to be hurt as much as possible, including by the healer. Again, encounter-spesific, and not my goal right now.

The issues I'm interested in, are the ones that separate the different healer classes. What do you need to as a to minimize incoming damage? There are, generally, two parts of this. One, the preemptive. Second, the reactive.

The preemptive part includes using abilities which will counter enemy abilities, partly or competely, but that needs to be applied in advance. The reactive part includes abilities which needs to be applied on demand. Many abilities can fit into both categories.

Priest have some abilities, but outside of Shackle, I find that I can largely ignore the enemies and just focus on bars and it all works out fine.

• Shackle Undead: Crowd control always demands that you watch your target. A good CCer will refresh the CC before it runs out, immidiately re-CC upon accidental breaking, try to maintain a position that makes the risk of wandering into AoE relatively low and worry that the target might resist the reshackle.


• Fear Ward: Preemptive. On the other hand, this can be thought of as a fire-and-forget buff. Just as long as you make sure to refresh it on cooldown.


• Shadow Protection: Preemptive. For lazy priests, with the glyph you can just rebuff your party with Prayer of Shadow Protection every 30 min and forget about it otherwise.


• Offensively Dispel: Reactive. Some abilities enemies have can really make a difference. However, dispelling is a toll on the mana bar, and should be limited to buffs that actually do some harm.

Druids have little offensive utility to speak of, except for their crowd control which is rather superior. Then again, there's a severe disadvantage:

• Various crowd control: Entangling Roots, Cyclone and Hibernate. Different uses. On the paper, it looks like this should make druids the royal kings of CCing among the healers. However, there's a problem: They're not available in the primary healing form, Tree of Life. Shifting to Tree of Life costs mana, which any healer should be careful to just toss around. (Improved) Tree of Life provides mana efficiency (-20% mana cost on HoTs), improved healing (+6% healing done aura), more improved healing (15% of spirit as healing spellpower) and armor (+100% contribution from items). So druids are left with a choice: Better healing or crowd control. A skilled druid healer should know when to drop Tree of Life and use their other spells as well. What does all the healing throughput in the world help if you're dead? You can keep at least two CCable enemies at bay for quite some time (Entangling roots, move, Cyclone and re-cyclone). One disadvantage with Cyclone: It might occasionally make the mob hard to pick up by the tank, as they're immune to taunt as well.


• Faerie Fire: Armor debuff. But it's low priority and costs precious mana, so I see no reason to not just leave it alone on the action bar.

Now we're getting somewhere. Shamans have quite a lot of reason to watch their enemies.

• Tremor totem: This was in the last section as well. But you can't use it reactively to remove fear if you're being feared. That makes it a preemptive measure, and since you sacrifice some other earth totem to keep it up (most likely Strength of Earth or perhaps Stoneskin), you can't just keep it up all the time. Solution: Watch enemies, or just remember encounters. Mostly the last one, I guess.


• Wind Shock: For two reasons. Reactively interrupting spellcasting is always good, but unfortunately many mobs are immune to it. But don't disregard it until you've tried. Take Grand Magus Telstra in the Nexus. While her normal form is immune to interrupts, the clones that appear aren't. There's quite a lot of damage that can be prevented there. The second part is to reduce aggro. Unlike Fade, however, the aggro reduction is permanent, though it's limited to one person and a limited amount. However, it can be used sort of preemptively, wind shocking before you actually have aggro. Since your threat level was reduced, it'll then take more threat than earlier for the mob to break contact with the tank. Now we're talking useful. I'm pretty sure I've survived by this only a few times, where the aggro have been all over the place.


• Grounding Totem: This is golden. This will absorb any one single target spell against a party member. Since it doesn't really affect a mob (ony the spell he/she cast), it can be even be used to absorb boss abilities. No risk of resisting, missing and all other sorts of bad stuff. Of course, the disadvantage aside from cooldown is that this is mutually exclusive with Windfury or Wrath of Air Totem, to name the most commonly used by myself. Juggling those totems is a possibility, but costly. With good timing it can really make a difference, without it's just wasted mana.


• Resistance totems: Preemptive, to reduce incoming elemental damage on the party. However, that means you can't use any other totem associated with the same element. The resistances are a bit random, after all. I must admit I'm rather notorious on forgetting to use the various resistance totems, and I'm not sure how much diffence it would've made. Trying to remember to use them.


• Purge: Like a priest, except that shamans can only remove enemy buffs.


• Hex: Starting at lvl 80, quality crowd control. While it has it's own disadvantages (range, shorter duration than cooldown, limited types of mobs it works on), it doesn't have the disadvantage of the druid CC, namely that you need to drop your "healing" form. Besides, you can then Wind Shock the mob to reduce the chances that he'll charge you the moment Hex brakes, without worrying about breaking Hex yourself.

Paladins have a few, but not a lot reasons to watch enemies. Their primary reason being to judge regulary for the judgement effect itself (most notably Judgement of Life) and the Judgements of the Pure buff, but I must admit it's not much of watching included. Just toss it on the tank's target, and keep healing. In other words, I don't include that.

• Resistance auras: Similar to resistance totems. The difference is that instead of stopping you from using the same associated totem, it will instead stop you from using Devotion Aura, meaning the tank (and everyone else) will take more physical damage and less magic damage of the chosen type. I'm not sure how much difference it makes.


• Hammer of Justice: Especially now that it is garantueed to interrupt spells. On stunnable mobs, there's a lot of damage to prevent. Stunning the whirlwinding mob, for example, will possibly save a lot of healing.


• Turn Undead: Rather circuimstancal, but Turn Undead can be used as crowd control. But since it has all the disadvantages of fear-based CC, it's probably not a good idea.


• Judgement of Justice: Prevent runners, if there's a risk.

Here's my personal conclusion: I can't speak for pallies, but as a druid and priest, I could pretty much just ignore whatever the enemies did short of stuff everyone had to watch out for, and only focus on the green bars. On a shammy, I feel I have a lot more reason to watch enemies, and in that way a higher skillcap for the healing role. With that said, there's more skill involved in the art of staying out of the 5-sec rule as a priest or druid. To a shaman or paladin, that matters less.

The oh-shit-aspect

This the last aspect I'd like to look at. Let's now say bad stuff happens. A double (or even triple) pull. A patrol walks in on your skirmish. Or the adds on the boss are all over the place. What difference can each class make?

It might be argued that mana-gaining effects might help, as running out of mana is a sure group-wiper. I've chosen not to include them, as every healer class has a way of restoring mana mid-battle.

Priests... ehm... pray? Seriously, though, it doesn't feel like they're able to do a lot to prevent a wipe. At least at 70, but there's a new spell to play with now.

• Psychic Scream: Sometimes this comes in handy to give yourself a breather. In most cases, I find that while it does give me a breather of about 10 seconds, as soon as the mobs reach me again I'm dead. It's hard for a tank to pick up mobs running all over the place. Especially annoying for a pally tank, probably, since their taunt relies on the enemy to have you a as a target, and while they're running around they don't have a target at all. That, and the fact that it's often bound to make a bad situation worse by not only having the mobs return to you, but they'll also bring along their grandmothers, neighbors, carpenters, sons-in-law and who knows what.


• Pain Suprresion/Guardian Spirit: You'd be a rather unusual priest healer these days if you don't have one of these. Slightly different uses, but the main purpose is to extend the life of a single target for the duration of the buff. Will sometimes keep yourself alive for the same period. Neither makes you invulnerable, most heroic mobs will just tear through it in a second or three extra.


• Fade: Not an emergency spell per se, but it has it's place. It can't be resisted (unlike Wind Shock) and works on all mobs. However, since the threat reduction is temporarily, I've found that this sometimes will give me and the tank a false sense of security, resulting in a very hard wipe when the mobs suddenly stroll back to me.


• Spirit of Redemption: For a holy priest; It's nice that you still can be useful after you're dead. But it's hardly wipe preventing unless you've got a second healer along for the ride, as the 15 seconds of limitless healing fades rather fast, in my experience.


• Lightwell: In combination with Spirit of Redemption, it *might* prevent a complete wipe. I'm not holding my breath, though.


• Power Infusion: While it's nice in a crisis-situation, I think it's a bad idea to wait that long with using it. Better to use it as often as possible, for the mana-saving effect. After all, you can end up in a homemade crisis situation if you run out of mana.


• Desperate Prayer: Very useful in PVP. In PVE, though, it doesn't heal for enough to really save the day and at the same time costs mana. Binding Heal is usually a much better way to attempt to prevent a wipe.


• Divine Hymn: Now we're talking. This is an emergency spell if I ever saw one. Crowd control + healing in one package, long cooldown. I'm so looking forward to testing it in AV when the alliance is trying to kill Drek'Thar.

My personal experience is that druids have slightly more emergency tools to work with than a priest. However, they have their limitations.

• Tranquility: One of my all-time favorite spells. Phaelia describes it as an ability used to reset an encounter. Tranquility probably have the highest throughput of any heal in the game if you count all the targets. If you have Improved Tranquility, it's a fantastic wipe-preventer, as long as you don't have too many heroic mobs hitting you when you activate the spell. Without the talent, it's a bit more unreliable. If you want to use it, it usually means that people are taking more damage than you normally can handle, often combined with a messy pull, adds or something similar. And since it then will heal for quite a lot, chances are rather high that plenty of the mobs will break for you. Despite serious throughput, it can't outheal several heroic mobs beating on you. Besides, since it only lasts at best 8 seconds, you're often taking a lot more damage than you can handle as soon as the channeling ends.


• Barkskin: A bit of personal preference here, I guess. Some would wait for an emergency before activating it, others would use it as soon as they're going to take damage or have some dots running on themselves. It's not a real wipe-preventer, though.


• Nature's Swiftness: Handy. Usually paired with trinkets, and an unglyphed Healing Touch or Regrowth. Can also be paired with some crowd control, like Entangling Roots or Cyclone. Handy, but not usually enough to prevent a wipe. Can also be paired with...


• Rebirth: This, on the other hand, is a real wipe preventer. Battle res the tank, for example, and you might still succeed. It can also be used as a wipe recovery, battle ressing another resser and having him or her wait until everyone is dead to accept the res.

Shamans... now, in my mind, they've got some extremely powerful tools, and most of them doesn't even require a talent.

• Earth Elemental Totem, also known as tank-in-a-can. The best part is that it does an AoE taunt as it's dropped. Have saved my hide several times. It has rather good mitigation, but not too much health, so it can be a bit hard to keep up. Even more so on heroic. On the other hand, even if it dies after 10 seconds, it might've done it's job already, namely given the tank time to build threat on the mobs again. Since it's not very intelligent, it won't nescessarily pick up every mob if some dps with aggro have strayed too far away, but ... I love it for what it does.


• Fire Elemental Totem: Very different use, namely as extra dps. Has occasionaly made the difference between life and wipe, when we've lost too much dps but the tank and myself are still alive. Very handy that it packs and dies with it's own threat. Mutually exclusive with Flametongue Totem, so it's a tradeoff. It sees a lot less use in instances than while soloing.


• Bloodlust: Not really an emergency spell per se, but since I often save it for bosses, it's very often available when I need it for an emergency. Results in extra throughput on the healing, more threat on the tank, more dps... very handy. The only thing to watch out for is that it triggers the global cooldown on start, which is different from every other haste-effect and trinket I've encountered. The increased dps helps a lot if some of the dpsers are already dead.


• Nature's Swiftness + Tidal Force + Blood Fury (if you're an orc like me) + any trinkets + Healing Wave = big heal. Not nescessarily as big as the druid variant, though. Can also be paired with Hex if it's off cooldown, for some emergency crowd control. Like the druid counterpart, helps, but not nescessarily enough to prevent a wipe.


• Reincarnation: This is always a hard judgement; Wipe recovery or (attempted) wipe prevention? If I die while the tank is still alive, this can often be used to prevent wipes, provided I have enough mana to heal through the rest of the encounter. Improved Reincarnation helps, as does having Mana Tide Totem off cooldown. Since you're dead, you're out of combat, and thus you can also spend a Mana Potion provided it's one minute since you quaffed the last one. The downside if you try to use it as wipe prevention and fail, is that aside from being unable to use it as wipe recovery, you'll have lost 10% durability twice. Otherwise, it's an excellent wipe recovery, provided you died far enough away from any mobs still alive afterwards.

Paladins, like shamans, have some extremely powerful tools which doesn't require talents. In fact, I believe they're so powerful it explains why pallies don't have additional emergency buttons as talents.

• Divine Shield, aka the infamous bubble. In addition to the obvious effect of making you invulnerable, it also temporarily removes all threat. Incredibly handy. But wait, there's more!


• Rightous Defense: Slightly risky move, but you can taunt while invulnerable, and it'll cause the mobs to be forced to attack you, while you're invulnerable. I believe it forces them to attack you for 3 seconds, after that they move on to another target. But those seconds might make the difference between giving the tank time to build aggro and a wipe. The risky part is that it increases your threat to be equal to the highest treat target on the list, if that wasn't yourself, thus you're more likely to pull aggro after the bubble fades. It's a gamble, but a calculated one.


• Lay on Hands: Unless you've totally ignored stamina on your gear, this is an insanely powerful, instant, mana free heal. Also returns mana, if you use it on yourself or have the Glyph of Divinity, even more with the Glyph of Lay on Hands, which is even minor for additional fun. Add Improved Lay on Hands to increase the chances that the target survives for a bit more. Phew, how I envy this spell in PVP sometimes.


• Divine Intervention: Provided you have a second resser in the group, a fantastic wipe recovery. The fantastic part about it is that the paladin who uses this doesn't loose durability. I can't friggin' understand why I've never seen a single paladin (except for myself) use this in any 5-man. Okay, I have a theory. It's because being a healer myself, I don't often have a pally healer in my group, protection pallies can't use this because they *might* survive if they don't use it and thus save the entire wipe, and retribution pallies are just good at earning their name retrinoobs/rettards/whatever.

My opinion: Priests really needed an emergency button. Since I haven't really tested it, I don't know how good it is. Personally, though, I feel I can really make a big difference as a shammy, where there's less options available to a druid and priest.

Conclusion

As expected, choose your poison. Each class packs their advantages, disadvantages, and playstyles. While I often envy other healer's abilities, I may have found a match to my playstyle in the shaman way. Half a year back, I switched between my druid and priest all the time because I often banged my head into the limitations with each class. I encourage every healer that have felt something similar to try the other healers. While you love healing, perhaps another healer class might suit your playstyle better?

Having a playstyle that suits you is a hell of a lot more important than having a healer that theorycraftingwise is better.