Circle of Healing, first thoughts
Posted 03/19/08 at 1:31 PM by Tanilin
As per an earlier post, I've been going back and forth on whether I ought to drop Improved Divine Spirit and switch to Circle of Healing. At the moment, I decided to stay with Divine Spirit -- unfortunately, this week one of my 100% attendance CoH priests is out of town, so just for this week's raids I went CoH.
And so far, I think I hate it.
I'm not really sure why - I might be just getting used to it, or I might not have good "enough" gear (2k +heal, ~290 mp5 while casting, none of the good CoH trinkets), or I might just be bad at it. But last night was a terrible terrible raid experience -- we one shot all the bosses (well, 2 shot Gorefiend) but wiped on trash 9-10 times and had a lot of incidental deaths. I feel responsible, since I was having a hard time deciding when I should be CoHing groups and when I should be sticking to my tanks and/or flash healing individuals.
Some overall thoughts on CoH:
I'll see how Thursday's raid goes, but so far I'm not sure I'll keep this spec.
And so far, I think I hate it.
I'm not really sure why - I might be just getting used to it, or I might not have good "enough" gear (2k +heal, ~290 mp5 while casting, none of the good CoH trinkets), or I might just be bad at it. But last night was a terrible terrible raid experience -- we one shot all the bosses (well, 2 shot Gorefiend) but wiped on trash 9-10 times and had a lot of incidental deaths. I feel responsible, since I was having a hard time deciding when I should be CoHing groups and when I should be sticking to my tanks and/or flash healing individuals.
Some overall thoughts on CoH:
- It's only going to heal the group for 1000 (or so). If people are spiking low quickly, you should consider something more individually specific -- healing everyone for 1k then watching them all die anyway isn't as useful as saving at least one of them.
- Steady AE damage, as we see in a fair number of trash fights, is a good use of CoH, but make sure you're actually hitting enough people for it to matter. I noticed a couple of times I was trying to heal my party but was only actually healing 2 of us. Oops!
- I used the following macro to get success: "/cast [target=mouseover,exists][] Circle of Healing", and then bound that to mouse wheel up. Put your pointer over the group you want to heal and scroll for the win.
- Lastly, despite the fact that I felt like I needed to do this for this week (primarily for RoS and Gurtogg tomorrow), I should have found time in the months past to try this spec out when we had a more solid healing crew that could cover for my mistakes.
I'll see how Thursday's raid goes, but so far I'm not sure I'll keep this spec.
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Generally speaking, a CoH priest should be given the freedom to just raid heal during trash- eliminating the question of focusing on tanks. The druids/paladins should generally be able to keep the tanks up with the occasional splash from shamans/CoH priests. I don't ignore the tanks- I trust my fellow healers to take care of their general maintenence and only step in if one of them dies or if it looks like a tank is suffering from low hp and a lack of incoming heals.
As for range- that's a matter of experience and comfort. After several months of CoH duty, I can make an informed guess as to how close party mates are likely to be. A pure melee group will almost always be together- a group with ferals and hunters takes the damage falling in a specific fashion... some specific casters tend to always stand on the outside of the crowd- some tend to stand in the pile or forward... tanks are likely to be spread out- but you might be able to center on the one in the middle and reach multiples. I know them well enough to pick out the right person out of a given group to center the circle on most of the time. Most of the time if there's damage that will cause a heavy spike randomly- it should be covered by a specific healer and yep, CoH isn't going to be ideal. Twins is the one that comes to mind- I use heavy haste gear and a gheal until raid damage swarms up enough to make CoH more HPS. Even if it's only healing for 1000- if you're hitting 3 people, that's 3k in 1.5. CoH is high HPS to the raid in general but low individually. Very splashy. That said, I can't think of any damage in trash in BT that really fits the high spike profile. Think of CoH like Lifebloom. Individually it's not going to keep up folks while spiking, but it is a major stabilizer that gives folks the breathing room to fix any critical spikes- instead of on tanks- on the raid as a whole. Just my 2c =) |
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I agree with Bekah ... when I switched over I loved CoH and I am still a CoH priest... it is a matter of getting to know what it does and how to use it. CoH may not heal the whole party 100% back to health but in order for CoH to be useful the healer needs to be 2200+ healing otherwise you may find it not so easy on your mana and what not and not very useful ... CoH is also only useful for SSC/TK on up .. but mostly for BT/H
When I use CoH I know it heals for more than 1000k and what CoH provides is safty for your raid so when those spikes hit and you start spaming away that CoH and shamans with CH you are saving lives as the other healers top them off ... you as Bekah says are giving them breathing room! Does this mean all priests need to be a CoH healer? Of course not be cause you still need yout non-CoH priests for their individual and group heals and spirit buffs as well .. Paladins/Durids/non-CoH Priests are your MT healers and raid back up healers (not so much your paladins). |
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Recent Blog Entries by Tanilin
- Circle of Healing, first thoughts (03/19/08)
- To CoH or not? (03/14/08)
- Plagarism is the sincerest form of flattery! (03/14/08)
- RoS and Gurtogg (03/14/08)
