If you're on emps but spend 50 on a ZG clear you need to do something drastic. I suggest no BWL until Emps are dead, as they're actually great practice.

Some great suggestions in here. From my experience, SW_Stats is brilliant as a tool for pointing out an issue; not for rewarding behavior. As an example, if someone is #1 in overhealing and also #10 in effective healing, it's easy to point out that if they were to cut that overhealing down, they'd shoot up the effective healing charts.

Now, instead of making it all about being simply #1 on effective healing, you make the general point that being high on the effective chart simply corresponds to an ability to conserve mana while focusing on your job: healing people.

As someone else said, at the end of the day it's about killing bosses (or trash...what have you). Still, I get the best results out of healers by motivating them to lower their overheal % (I've made the general marker of "good performance" to be anything below 30% overhealing) and be top 5 on the effective healing charts.

It's amazing how focused everyone gets...on trash practically no one dies and we cruise...

We also focus on who does the most decursing (for pallies/mages)...after making a point of praising folks who made it high onto the decurse charts, I noticed a visible difference on takedowns of Luci/Gehennas/Shazz.

I don't think many of us EJ healers use any heal mods, I find myself heal 2'ing a lot more after I flash/gheal all my mana away.

A few clears ago we had some weird twisted AQ group with 4 priests and like 8-10 mages. It went suprisingly well really, moreso than gurg and us all really thought it would. Tons o' dps meant we didn't have to heal for so long and packs died fast. Anyhow just a thought that you don't always need a healer heavy raid to clear through emps, if your dps class players rock anyways.

From my monitoring of DM, we overheal...alot. Well I do anyways, Gurg is always pretty high too, on Twin Emps no overheal means people die, better to overheal and keep tank/lock up then have a SWEET 8% OVERHEAL...oh but the raid wiped. Heal rank 2 is sweet...oh I love heal rank 2. I think it was Werebeef that parsed all us priests once and noticed quite a bit of variances between how we heal, some heal rank 2 a lot, some heal max, some gheal lower ranks, we are really all the hell over the board.

I continue to learn quite a bit by parsing our other priests, seeing what they heal with, and rethinking my strat. For instance, I noticed I didn't renew much compared to other priests. Well why wasn't I casting it as much? I mean it's a great heal and I thought I was casting it alot! But comparing myself to our other top healers, I was barely casting it at all! So I consciously began to think about renewing more and that carried through to how I now heal. Shielding is important too, it should be in your playbook for keeping mages/rogues up on pack clears in BWL/AQ, well AQ moreso heh.

Ok, if you're a GM/Raid Leader/Officer and they are telling you this then that is 97% of your problem. If its mostly coming from one or two people then they need to be dealt with (probably kicked as painful as that might be). If its coming from the whole class you have a real epidemic. Nothing pisses me off more as a GM then people who do not listen to criticism.

My guilds the same way, I very depending on the encounter, and who else is healing the MT with me (especially on emps) If I have another priest with 8/8 trans i'll break the 8 peice and wear some more +healing / regen peices, and just spam heal 2 the entire fight. Pretty much impossible to go OOM from spamming heal rank 2. I think I love heal2 just as much as you lol.

Overheal has dropped off the scale on importance for me. If i'm having mana problems (Which I haven't in a very long time) I'd look into reducing my overheal, however as stated above, overheal isn't always bad, better to be safe than sorry. Especially if it's not a detrament to your longevity. Only way for a raid equipped priest to run oom currently is by not using consumables, not wisely choosing the spells to use and when to use them, not maximixing regen time (TNE_FiveSec Mod is helpful for maximizing regen), or my favorite pulling to much weight in the raid.

Threads like this kill my friend Murren too often :(

the two things i try to stress for my priests is that there is no "best" path and to know your class. Priests have so much flexibility in their base class. I get asked too many times by new apps what the "trick" is, the secret path to ez-mode healing. I try to explain that you need to understand your class, understand the fight your on, and understand your place in the raid. If you are missing any of these pieces, then the puzzle just wont fit. the ability to adapt and react quickly to me is the hallmark of a good priest and good raider in general.

my biggest peeve as a healer are those who use an excessive amount of mods that automate the decision making progress. i view it as sloppy and a bad sign of skill if you cannot decide which rank , for example, to use on your own quickly. it shows a lack of knowledge imo of both the fight and your class. myself, i have tried and experimented with a lot of mods for healers but at the end of the day I use CTRA, a Click Casting mod, a range check plugin for CTRA and a few macros. Quick fingers, paying attention, and experience are my main tools though.

Another important thing that your healers have to figure out on their own is that if everyone has the same style of healing - things will end up not pretty. There is nothing wrong with the High Rank gheal/cancel flash when its oh shit style - and it works really well with HR2 spam. Healers need to compliment eachother to ensure tanks don't die - not all assimilate to one style. That, along with keeping HoT's up on the MT helps a bunch too :).