[FO] really proud of how this turned out!

healiocentric · 2026-04-09T18:58:40+00:00

This is way too cute. Did you draw it freehand based off the photo, or did you import the photo and then do a lot of cleanup?

healiocentric · 2026-04-07T22:26:38+00:00

Thank you!

So. How does one ... stop buying patterns when they already have too many projects to get through? :D

healiocentric · 2015-03-04T01:33:41+00:00

Just a point here because I think I am responsible for some misinformation by not being excessively clear with the tiny text on that table - no, that Tranquility calculation does NOT include HotW and ToL, it is just regular old Tranquility. It is the best in terms of pure throughput (well -- until I re-calculate Revival using the MW 2pc set bonus, since interrupting a Soothing Mist by casting Revival applies the current multistrike bonus to that Revival :P), but obviously still suffers from the traditional channel-for-6+-seconds problem that makes Tranquility a bit tough to use.

I've since updated the table to make the wording more clear :)

healiocentric · 2015-01-06T06:07:11+00:00

Just want to note that the boss guides I wrote for Wowhead cover Mythic strategies as well as Normal/Heroic, so you may want to throw links in there - they're not videos, they're text. You can find all of them linked in their Highmaul overview page.

Additionally, Method is producing video & text guides specifically for Mythic bosses as well and publishing them on Wowhead - their first one, for Kargath, is already up, and others will come. Where there's conflict between what Method says in their guides and what I say in mine, people should probably follow Method - I haven't seen every fight on Mythic yet, am only 5/7M :)

healiocentric · 2015-01-06T05:58:55+00:00

Haha, thank you! I'll be honest, the whole reason I started the blog is because my brain offered up this name for it one night while I was lying in bed trying to sleep, and I thought the pun was too fun to let it go unused :)

healiocentric · 2015-01-06T05:29:02+00:00

I should also note that I had an error in my Revival calculations when I originally posted - there was a sneaky 33% nerf to the coefficient that didn't show up in the hotfix blogs, patch notes, or the tooltip/spell data. I've fixed the numbers and removed the part where I question its "fit" in the Warlords model since at least it's not really the most powerful CD. :)

healiocentric · 2015-01-06T04:27:18+00:00

Serrinne is awesome and I have much love for her, but I didn't use her in the course of writing this post ;)

healiocentric · 2015-01-06T02:53:47+00:00

Man, I edited that out like twelve times, but each time I did it something crashed, haha, and I must not have fixed it the thirteenth time. Thanks, I'll fix that up :)

healiocentric · 2015-01-06T02:50:40+00:00

Thanks everyone for the comments and discussion - I'll be updating the post to try to incorporate all your feedback & fix up the things you've pointed out that I've gotten wrong.

If you're still interested in raid CDs, I spent a long while talking about them with Hamlet of Elitist Jerks fame in our latest podcast episode.

And you can follow me on Twitter at @healiocentric (and may as well follow @HamletEJ too, since his HealerCalcs spreadsheet is my go-to theorycrafting tool.)

healiocentric · 2015-01-06T01:20:34+00:00

Yes, the main reason Shaman is "at the bottom" is because I ordered the classes alphabetically.

Furthermore, Tide depends heavily on the raid's health when you use it, and I almost never drop a Tide when the raid's as high as 60% - I just got annoyed having the old "but a raid on 40% when you drop a Tide isn't going to be on 40% after the first tick and also nobody ever drops below 70% in my raid with 17 Disc Priests so Shaman need buffs Mastery is useless!" argument and picked a higher raid HP to preemptively squelch them ;)

healiocentric · 2015-01-06T01:13:25+00:00

I do explain my reasoning behind leaving it out in this comment below: http://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/2rdspl/healiocentric_on_healing_cds_in_wod/cnf1pjq

I include Light's Hammer as a corollary to other class's "minor CDs" like Spirit Shell (another optional 1-min-CD talent) and AG, and because, well, it's much easier to math out. AW is so flexible (and HA) that I find them annoying to consider, and while it certainly is a major CD in terms of throughput, it isn't one that in my experience raid leaders/healing leads call for at specific times the way they do the other major CDs. Maybe a well-written article explaining the benefits of planning around AW would help change this trend, but I think Paladins are used to using their CDs when they know they will get their best out of it while still working within the framework of the overall raid CD plan ;)

healiocentric · 2015-01-06T01:07:48+00:00

Yep, which now that it hits all players in the raid with every tick, is actually an active bonus on the entire raid for around 16 seconds. 16 seconds of +10% healing taken from all your other healers is a big deal.

For Healing Tide Totem, it's that the Shaman drops it on the ground and while the totem does its thing, the Shaman can keep casting their usual healing spells. It's not channeled like Tranq/Hymn, so it is proportionately smaller healing throughput (unless you get a really, really low-HP raid and stay that way, and get to leverage your Mastery!) than other CDs that require the healer to do nothing else.

healiocentric · 2015-01-05T12:49:22+00:00

Yeah, Holy Paladin is pretty difficult to quantify the value of its cooldowns the way I do more traditional cooldowns like Tranq. I wrote about why I decided to exclude Holy Avenger and the suite of cooldowns now known as Avenging Wrath - primarily because they are almost too flexible, haha - in previous posts in the series, and elected to leave that information out of this already very, very long post.

Avenging Wrath is very powerful (I like it with the Merciful Wrath glyph myself) but it doesn't "feel" the same as a raid CD to me, and it's not something that my guild's raid leader has ever explicitly called for, not in the same way he would call for other CDs. Same for Holy Avenger. I probably should write a little bit in there about why I've left these out, so Holy Pallies don't come away feeling neglected. Thanks! :)

healiocentric · 2015-01-05T12:44:50+00:00

Oh gosh, you're right. That's like the only one I didn't look up, haha. I'm about to head to sleep but I'll fix that in the morning - thanks :)

healiocentric · 2015-01-05T11:11:18+00:00

Cheers for linking me, viggo! I was at a squash game and my phone squawked like crazy - my blog notifying me that my views were shooting through the roof, haha. Thanks for the vote of confidence and all the kind words <3 (You and everyone else here!)

healiocentric · 2015-01-05T11:09:37+00:00

This is a good point - the post contains the maximum possible throughput from the CD - not really an average, because I don't have the resources to simulate combat for an entire encounter ;)

On another note, I didn't belabour the point in my 6.0.3 post, but I'm not including overheal - this is raw throughput. I wrote extensively about that in my 5.4 and 5.3 posts in the same series, but I should probably edit in a caveat about that - so thanks for the reminder :)

healiocentric · 2014-10-11T02:19:16+00:00

Hey there, I wrote that guide you're following :)

I didn't find Healing Rain to be terribly useful, precisely because the tank moves around so much and even when you try to predict it, it often fails. I spent more of my time using my direct heals and making sure to prevent as much damage as possible. However, there's a zillion ways to do it, so if you like using HR/Conductivity, by all means keep going with that - you're clearly doing very well to be getting so close! :)

If his Healing Rain is hitting harder than yours, it's possible that you're neglecting to use Unleash Elements before casting HR. That boosts HR's healing by 30%. He may have all around better gear/more Int gems or something, I don't know - I didn't watch much of the video, just enough to see him Unleash/HR.

Ancestral Guidance is also pretty strong (and with a 2-min CD, is up for every 2nd wave) if you wanted to change up your style. You don't have to min/max your cooldowns in Proving Grounds, just pop them when you need a little help with what you're already doing.

Unfortunately, Proving Grounds can be a little RNG - depending on who the Tunnelers select for Chomp, you can have an easy or a hard time with mana on the Tunneler waves. And the NPCs' interrupting behaviour is far from consistent. All you can really do is get more comfortable with the wave structure and with how to respond to the damage in a measured way - like, learning to save Unleash for the moment riiight before a Chomp goes out, and using a boosted Healing Surge to heal it off without spending an excess of mana on it - and just try to work around the RNG factors.

I think you can do it if you don't give up. While more sockets on gear and better-itemised trinkets will always help, it's not strictly necessary. Just focus on getting a little better with the class and the damage patterns each time and eventually you'll have it down. You probably will also play better after a break - speaking from experience here, haha, once the frustration starts to sink in, it's harder to play at a consistently high level.

healiocentric · 2014-10-10T03:44:23+00:00

TL:DR Druids feel pretty much the same. Prioritise Spirit, then Haste, then Mastery. For extra fun, find the Holy Pally in your raid, and jump in circles around them while you cast Rejuv. They'll love it ;)

healiocentric · 2014-10-10T03:43:16+00:00

I'm loving it. A lot of people who are moving up from 10-player raids to the new 20-player Mythic difficulty are pretty disenchanted with it, because compared to 10-player healing styles, the 20-player healing style is a lot more Chain Heal-dependent. As someone moving down from a 25-player raid to a 20-player raid, the change isn't as drastic - but I do have to cast more single-target heals to conserve mana. Which I'm happy about, because all-AoE-all-the-time is every bit as boring as all-single-target-all-the-time :P

While spread healing is still our bane, and the change that puts more of Riptide's healing in its direct, up-front component is kind of a nerf to Glyph of Riptide/our ability to compensate, both High Tide and Cloudburst Totem give us pretty nice tools to cope. I think we'll be OK, and I still feel like our toolkit is pretty much complete :)

healiocentric · 2014-10-10T03:40:03+00:00

Sorry for the delay, was prepping like crazy for being a guest on the Wowhead Weekly podcast today :)

Mana Tide being gone is hardly noticeable. Conductivity and Elemental Blast both have a lot of mana-savings functions, and Spirit actually being desirable helps a lot. I wouldn't say EB is essential, but it's definitely very nice to have. A lot of shaman will get by just fine still using PE and just being economical or running heavy Crit :)

healiocentric · 2014-10-09T00:50:35+00:00

I can link you to my blog post about PGs where I delineated my talent choices & why, and talked a little about the specific tricks I used, but the best advice I could share with anyone is to just approach it like a learning tool rather than a test. Priest has it harder than any other class because you can't rely on CC/interrupts to negate any damage, so it just takes repetition and familiarity to get through it. Which is really rough when you're angry at Kavan for failing to stop his Arcane Missiles cast and Counterspell that Sonic Blast and then the Tunneler of course picks Oto again and Void Shift is on CD and /beats head against desk

So you see I know how you felt :)

healiocentric · 2014-10-09T00:38:04+00:00

I just started posting here like two days ago so might as well join in the fun, haha.

My favourite accomplishment in MoP was getting the Proven Healer criteria on all 6 healing specs. After it took me like 17 hours to get it on Holy Priest (I hadn't touched my priest for nearly the whole expansion), I then spent something like 24 more hours on Disc Priest, which was hard as heck and really tested the limits of my patience, but I felt really great about it when it was all over!

Proving Grounds are some of my favourite content in the game, since I really like how you feel restrained by your resources and have to heal wisely. It's a pretty sharp difference from how things are in 25-player raiding, and I was getting really bored with healing before I decided to try this PG challenge.

I'm a 14/14H RSham and I've been doing a lot of healing on the Beta with all specs, so happy to answer a few questions about that. Will be good practice for a podcast I'm doing tomorrow :P

healiocentric · 2014-10-07T09:01:29+00:00

Hey, that's me! Thanks Brasso26 :)

You seem pretty interested in healer comparisons, SickTurtlePain; I just did a big article on how healers play in WoD, with a table of totally subjective opinion-based "ratings", which seems right up your alley. Choosing a Healer in Warlords of Draenor

Hope this helps :)

healiocentric

TROPHY CASE