Circle of Healing

Welcome to my Circle of Healing questionnaire answers. This was someting started a few years back by Miss Medicina (source) and seems to be popular among the Warcraft healing community at the moment and being a sheep I thought I'd join in.

Q) What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer? 

A) Evlyxx, Discipline Priest with Holy tendencies.

Q) What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

A) 10 man raiding although this has only been since Cataclysm, prior to this I was in 40 and 25 man raid groups.

Q) What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why? 

A) Atonement, because it is such a unique way to heal and extremely efficient. It heals for more than Heal and has less cast time and because Smite/Holy Fire generates Evangelism it is just as mana efficient despite the extra mana cost.

Q) What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?  

A) Until very recently it was Flash Heal it was just too expensive to cast but with new content I always find it harder to heal using Atonement until I am comfortable with positioning and knowing the incoming damage and  Heal just doesn't cut the mustard anymore, its too weak and too slow so I have replaced it with Flash Heal, so right now the least used spell is Heal.

Q) What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why? 

A) Flexibility, 2 healing specs give us all kinds of options and both specs are awesome as either tank healing or raid healing.

Q) What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why? 

A) That we don't have a real specialization in healing. Pallies are great tank healers and shaman and druids are awesome raid healers. Priests do both very well but we are not the go to class for either which is a curse of our strength.

Q) In a 10 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you? 

A) To be honest it depends what classes I'm healing with. Normally I heal with a Shaman and a resto druid and there I tend to be one of the tank healers and always choose the tank that has the melee group around him so I can heal with atonement for as much of the fight as the incoming damage allows This is because Cork my resto druid buddy is just a freaking God at raid healing and Jibba tha Shaman just loves to tank heal. When Cork vanishes (he works on a boat at sea for weeks at a time) I often end up with  Phöenix, a pally and then I switch to raid healing.

Q) What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

A) Druids would be my number one class to heal with especially now the shaman totem has been nerfed because they make my job so much easier with all them hots bouncing around.

Q) What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

A) In 10 man the worst class is another priest who has played Discipline, simply because even as Holy spec their instant reaction to seeing someone in trouble is to shield them which really should be left to the disc priest but other than that it is druids, cos they make me look bad on the meters!

Q) What is your worst habit as a healer? 

A) Believe it or not as a Disc Priest it is not shielding enough. I think 25 man raiding in Wrath made me hate the spell so much because I did little more than spam bubbles, especially on P1 of the Lich King I now prefer NOT to use it. Blizzard also didn't help by increasing its mana cost and halving the up-time of it too.

Q) What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing? 

A) People either squealing for heals or saying that X person needs heals. If you can't trust your healers judgement then either the healing team is bad or you trust nobody.

Q) Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing? 

A) Yes, extremely well balanced, as stated before we are masters of nothing but good enough at the lot.

Q) What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

A) The initial check is raid deaths and could they have been avoided if I had healed them and Skada for helping make that decision mid-fight outside the game World of Logs is priceless.

Q) What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?  

A) That Holy priests can't tank heal and that Disc priests can't raid heal.

Q) What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn? 

A) Mana conservation. The game until you hit 85 is a breeze on mana and allows the formation of bad habits with Flash Heal and Binding Heal

Q) If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?  
A) I always worry about my healing output and apart from that the other pattern is that I do not use Prayer of Mending enough.

Q) Haste or Crit or Mastery and why?

A) Haste to soft cap then crit. The haste is purely for the extra renew tick and the crit is good now for the Divine Aegis procs and the extra healing now we got 200% from crits.

Q) What healing class do you feel you understand least?  

A) Shaman, I haven't played the resto spec enough and I'm sure there is more to them now than just Chain Heal. I just can't get the time to devote to learning it at the moment. Maybe I should try harder I know.

Q) What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing? 
A) Most of my main heal bar is mouseover macros and my favorite is the one I use for Healing and Smiting with:

/castsequence reset=combat [@mouseover,harm,nodead]Holy Fire, Smite, Smite, Smite, Smite, Smite;[@mouseover,help,nodead][@player]Heal

I use a lot of addons, but my favorites have to be Clique, Grid (inc many modules) and GTFO. Clique just make healing so much easier and is really something Blizzard should build into the game, why they haven't is beyond me. Grid is great for raid frames, the Blizzard ones are getting close to replacing it but it is not quite there yet. GTFO is great especially when in healer tunnel vision mode, I have blogged about its awesomeness so won't bore you again, just get it and never worry about standing in the fire again!

Q) Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
A) I like to get enough spirit until I'm happy I can heal stuff without panicing about being OOM halfway through a fight then stack Intellect in order to get more mana and bigger heals/shields