Oh! The dreaded 5 second rule!

The 5 second rule is what healers have been doing in order to maintain a decent amount of mana throughout trash runs and on boss fights. The idea is to exploit the fact that your normal Spirit based mp5 does not kick in until 5 seconds after your last mana costing spell has been cast. This does not include clearcasts, Inner Focus, or trinket abilities.

Basically, if you are tank healing, you use a series of ‘stop casts’ to avoid overhealing due to cross healing and to ensure that a tank gets a heal when it is needed. This is a pretty simple process- Start casting…before it completes- Do they really need this heal? If yes, complete it, if no, stop casting by hitting esc, jumping, or moving. You save tons of mana and stay within your happy area of mana regen, allowing you to be available the entire fight, or, in the case of trash, able to do several trash pulls without having to stop and drink.

When your clearcasting procs (this comes from the talent- Holy Concentration) you are granted a ‘free’ heal. Using this clearcast still counts as if you weren’t casting at all. The same goes for clicking on Inner Focus and using a trinket like the SSO rep reward. Clearcasts are my best friend. I generally use them on a trigger happy DPSer.

For raid healing, the 5 second rule isn’t exactly the most efficient thing to use. If you are so absorbed in not casting for 5 seconds, you are not healing for 5 seconds. For 5 mans, this generally isn’t an issue because there isn’t a lot of group damage and your main focus is the tank, and occasionally yourself. In 10 and 25 mans, when there are only a limited number of healers it can be. Currently (BC), there is a ton of raid damage and if you choose to not heal, people will die. The raid is willing to allow you to drink on occasion, and, there are other healers that can pick up your slack when you oom. Just let the raid know, and it should be fine.