I guess I'm still stuck on my old Burning Crusade mindset where I'd see the other healers in my Black Temple or Sunwell raids go on and on about how great their HPS and overall healing on meters were. Yet a little digging would show a vast majority of that was overhealing. They'd still let their assigned targets die because they couldn't be asked to do something other than spam Chain Heal/CoH/etc so they'd get the huge numbers to stay on top of the charts. It got ingrained into my mind that healers who were caught up with meters usually turned out to be too focused on churning out big numbers like DPS at the expense of healing intelligently. They thought that topping meters meant they were good healers, despite the fact that they weren't managing it well.

That was a long time ago, however, and I'm sure times have changed. I do agree that, just as you said, meters should be used to identify if someone isn't pulling their weight and staying in the general vicinity of the rest of the healer crew. That was about the extent of my use for it, however.

The main point I wanted to make was just as you put it: meters are not the be all, end all for healers like they tend to be for DPS. It's a double-edged sword. They can be very useful for finding the most effective and efficient way to keep your targets alive. Just don't get caught up with a competitive desire to top the meters at the cost of your raid's health.

In terms of evaluating healers, WoL and other parses are so dramatically superior that the only reason I look at healing meters at all, is to make sure my guild mates aren't carrying me through a fight. Personally, I would love to see more posts on how to better use WoL parses and dig out information about the various aspects of priest healing. As far as I can tell, I can't find anything in the WoL that shows PW Barrier. Any way for us to know what some of the unknown limits on Barrier are? (i.e. is there a target limit? Does the interrupt immunity extend to boss abilities i.e. Al-Akir?)

The following is is a brief aside about druid healing, but it highlights the importance of digging a little deeper with the meters and critically evaluating the information they provide. On the whole, it's hard to tell by a simple number if the overhealing was the result of a poor decision. Regardless of healing assignments, Lifebloom will generally always be on a tank, as it not only helps with the tank healing, but many druids spec into Malfurion's Gift which gives them an extra 4% chance to proc Clearcasting each tick of LB. Many druids also put Rejuv on a tank, but this is a bit more situational depending how much damage the tank is taking or if they're using it to prime a Swiftmend for Efflorescence. So between those two spells, some amount of overhealing is almost a guarantee.

Also, Rejuv is one of the most efficient heals a druid has if all of it actually goes to healing the player. It will be common to place it on a fairly injured target that is not in immediate danger of dying. That being said, another healer could top that player off after the fact, which would make the remaining ticks of Rejuv go to overhealing even though it was the correct decision at the time. Finally, when Omen of Clarity does proc it will usually be used on Healing Touch or Regrowth (possibly Swiftmend depending on what's happening at the time). Since the Clearcasting buff only lasts for 8 seconds the player will want to use it before their free mana cast goes away so they may slightly overheal with Healing Touch or have the HoT from Regrowth go to overhealing.


TL;DR: My main point is that overhealing with a druid is not the same as overhealing with a priest. This issue highlights the importance of two things: #1, critically evaluating what the meter numbers actually mean and #2, communication between your different healer classes.

A very valid post indeed, I myself would also appreciate this. However I would suggest we leave this to a new thread entirely before de-railing this from its true purpose.

Pretty sure it's been this way for a very long time.

If you MC a mob, by design it is has more aggro towards you than had you just cast a regular spell on it. It's also coded to resist being MC'd again I believe.

Also because you are channeling mind control it can break at any point throughout the length of the channel, this is intended also. Landing an MC does not guarantee it'll last it's full length.

Looking at Cata, and while leveling up, I kind of scoffed Inner Will as a pvp talent. Of course at 85 when I finally understood the new mana constraints, I find myself in Inner Will pretty much all the time.

I understand IW helps for mana conservation and mobility, and Inner Fire obviously boost throughput. Also, I know if I ask "When is a good time to start using IW less and IF more?" most people will say when I am comfortable with my mana regen.

So my question is, in your raid experience (which I am finally coming up on now), when did you find you were able to use IF for bigger heals. in regards to mana pool size, spirit, raid comp, etc? Or is it best to us Will all the time, regardless of mana regen?

Personally, I've always stayed with Inner Fire. I find the spellpower boost vastly outweighs the small mana saving as Discipline. I look at the fact the only real instant cast I use frequently is Power Word: Shield, occasionaly during heavy AoE or whilst on the move I will use Prayer of Mending. I can't really say I use renew as discipline very much either.

Take into consideration the spells you use, do you use many instant cast spells or do you do more cast time spells, and then decide from there which will benefit you more.

Inner Will is good for Archaeology and running back from wipes. That is, it is useful outside of combat, but not as much during combat.

It could possibly be useful during the airphase on blind dragon. I'll defer to others' thoughts on this, as my Priest is not my raiding main.

On Atramedes, my experience is that Inner Fire is still better (from a healing perspective). As a disc priest, my instants are kind of crappy, and I've chosen not to take the CD reduction on PW:S, so I'm really only able to use Renew during the air-phase, since there's not much time to stand and cast (more noticeable since I avoid haste where possible). Since my throughput in that phase is pretty bad, the Spell Power from Inner Fire is very useful to help make my meagre Renews hit that bit harder.

I've only been targeted by the air-phase breath thing once, and I did find the movement speed increase to be useful there. Other places I've found it to be useful are for Magmaw when moving, since getting to my 'stand and cast' spot quicker is useful; Valiona and Theralion when I get the lightning rod debuff thing that needs me to move away from everyone; and Twilight Ascendant Council in P2, when I need to get the correct buff and it's a fair distance away.

So from my perspective, I see it as purely a movement speed increase buff - the mana savings are of no benefit to me at all, and I almost never OoM in fights anyway, so saving mana for the sake of it is kind of pointless.

That's not really a fair comparison. Int provides a lot more than the raw spellpower from IF. If I had to put a (very) rough value on it, I'd say about half the value of Int is the SP.

With that said, I haven't really used Inner Will much either. Renew still makes up a significant portion of my healing on many fights, but a lot of that is free ticks from Heal Chakra extensions. The bulk of my casts are PoH, Heal, GH and BH; none of which benefit from IW.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the runspeed boot enchant does not stack with IW either.

Since the buff of Blessed resilience to 30% healing received (hotfixed), I've decided to test the effectiveness of Blessed Resilience in PvE, and I'm surprised there is very little accurate information on what makes the buff appear. The wording is unclear on what is considered an "attack" and what is not.

On Magmaw, it seems to proc from :
Massive crash
Pillar of flame
melee hits

It does not proc from
Magma spit
Lava spew
Parasitic infection
Infectious vomit

From this small sample, I wonder what separates "attacks" from "damage that is not an attack for the talent". Is there any information from Blizzard about it ? Is "attack" intended to mean "avoidable damage" in PvE ?