Cataclysm: My Views on Healing

Cork, our resto druid in Halls of Origination, yes they let me DPS sometimes too

Blizzard seem to have the healing thing rightish but not perfect, The main flaw is my heal size compared to tank health pool and the damage coming in, it simply is not in balance. Lets define a few things here. 

Blizzards goal: Healing should not be a spamfest but rather a triage approach;

Tank HP: 150,000

Stad Boss damage: 25,000 every 2 seconds

Heal = my econo heal: 8,000 every 2.3 seconds

Flash Heal = my fast heal: 17,000 every 1.4 seconds

Greater Heal = my big heal: 22,000 every 2.3 seconds

Renew = my HoT: 3,000 every 3 secondsm

Power Word: Shield: absorbs 10,000 damage every 15 seconds;

Prayer of Mending: a heal in advance approx 5,000 every 6 seconds

To cope with the incoming damage there are 3 choices:

1) Keep my renew, PW: Shield and PoM up on the tank and pray the tank avoids 2 of every 3 boss attacks and spam my heal;

2) Keep my renew, PW: Shield and PoM up on the tank and pray the tank avoids 2 of every 3 boss attacks and my hit the tank with a Greater Heal when his HP needs topping up;

3) Keep my renew, PW: Shield and PoM up on the tank, spam my heal and throw in a Flash Heal or Greater Heal depending on the speed I need to play catch up;

All 3 are viable solutions but they all rely on DPS either not taking damage or applying self heals and either the tank avoiding a lot of damage and applying some self heals and if 3 is applied I end up out of mana real quick and even using potions, the Hymn of Hope and Shadowfiend really provide very little returns. Although I did /cheer when the mana regen hotfix got applied on December 15th and it did make a noticeable difference.

The big point for me though is that I am having to throw out a heal every Global Cooldown (GCD) which goes against the Blizzard goal. To add to the frustration any movement I need to make is a huge risk as it is a few GCDs without heals going out to either the tank or the DPS and either the fight mechanics are designed really intelligently or I'm on the end of bad luck as the times I always need to move are those clutch situations where I really need to be casting big heals.

The major plus point for me is that I have become a better healer and begun to blow cooldowns Pain Suppression, Divine Hymn and Hymn of Hope much more freely than ever before. Well I was always liberal in my use of pain suppression but never the hymns.

Also, the guys from SKF have begun to realise that I will let them die if it is a choice between them or the tank and have begun to move faster from the fires or using any self heal abilities. 2 weeks ago I was offended when Dixxie, my pally tank (yes he belongs to me not the guild) was healing himself with his Word of Glory as I took it as a failure on my part, now I love it and treat it as an intelligent "oh shit" feature.

All told the new heroics are just that, heroic. They are really like 5 man raids and for that Blizzard must be applauded. The players that want to get better will get better by running these heroics and those that QQ about them being to tough, to long and needing too much strategy will either quit or just get by running normals until their gear is maxed out with 333 loot, rep rewards upto 359 and all the heroic badge gear their class can get from Justice Points that they are able to pug heroics at a reasonable pace. 

Finally a plea to Blizzard, please, please, please do not nerf these heroics not now, not ever. Infact, when the next tier of raiding comes out could you buff them so the mobs hit a little harder and have more HP so we don't start over gearing them.