Every now and then I check up on the World of Raids website.This morning, whilst mindless scrolling down through the Blue Posts I came across...this.

On Current Healing Difficulty:
You are welcome to disagree with out decisions, but I do not recommend coming onto our boards with the intention of insulting us. This is not constructive feedback and will get you banned.

I am sympathetic if you find healing too difficult. Many players do not and are clamoring for more of a challenge. There are many ways we challenge players in PvE, including complex encounters, short enrage timers and high damage. When mana management, or healing in general, are too easy then certain encounters become too easy. Furthermore, the game mechanics as designed don't work -- Spirit and mp5 become stats players aren't interested in. Choosing efficiency vs. throughput is not a meaningful decision. Healers in general are marginalized because raids can get by with fewer of them.

When you claim we are dumb for thinking healing is too easy, you are disagreeing with a lot of other players who post on these boards. Your conclusion must be that they are dumb too and we should design the game just to support your playstyle. Above all I am constantly encouraging the community to read what other players are saying. They are not always going to agree with what may be blindingly obvious to you. Does that mean they are wrong? Does that mean you are wrong? Of course not. All it means is the WoW community is large and diverse.

We have structured the game in such a way that you can find a difficulty level you are comfortable with. Naxxramas is one of the easiest raids we have ever done. Malygos gets a little more difficult, and Sartharion with multiple drakes is fairly difficult. Going into the future we will keep adding even more challenging and hardcore encounters while still making sure players who just aren't into that can still enter raids. The game has difficulty levels. If you are finding things so difficult that they aren't fun then by definition you probably aren't a cutting-edge raider. That's cool. We want to make sure you still have plenty of interesting things you can do, even within a raiding environment.

Replenishment and Mana Regen:

We consider Replenishment mandatory. What I mean by that is we assume that you have Replenishment available to your raid. It is technically possible to go without it, but you will need to overgear the instance or otherwise compensate for it in other ways.

That doesn't mean we will or will not nerf Replenishment. But we don't want it to feel optional (assuming you are in reasonably challenging content) and nerfing it too much might have that effect.

More on Replenishment:

From our POV, we assume you have Replenishment just like we assume you have a tank. You can get by without it, but it will be challenging (assuming you're on content that actually challenges you). Bloodlust is below that. It's very nice to have, but not mandatory most of the time. If you are learning brand new content or hard modes then I would definitely recommend bringing a shaman.

Keep in mind that Bloodlust's benefit is currently overweighted because the fights are so short. On a 2 min Patchwerk fight, you can have Bloodlust up 33% of the time. If that was a 5 minute fight, it goes down to 13% of the time (and the cooldown prevents you from keeping it up more).

These are all forum responses posted by Ghostcrawler, and wonderful posts they are. Healing? Difficult? I wouldn't say it's anymore difficult than it was in BC. Yes, when we first began raiding again I did have mana issues. It's just one of those things that you have to keep in mind when you enter an encounter, you can't go in spamming Flash Heal x1000 and not expect to oom. So, am I saying that healing is easy and boring and needs to be harder now that we're all decently geared and hovering around 500 mp5 raid buffed? No. Some fights, like Patchwerk and Maexxna and all the rest, even, have their own special little quirks that require you to pay attention. You chose to roll a healer for a reason, and if you want to be able to walk away from your computer to read a magazine in the middle of a boss fight you should rethink that reason.

My raids generally don't have a Replenishment buff. I know. It's crazy and sad and terrible but we do just fine without it. We stick the Shaman with the casters, our Druids have the Innervate glyph, etc., etc.. Sometimes it's hard. But we get through it. Should Replenishment be nerfed? I don't really think so. When we do have the buff, things are easier, and it's great. But they're still not absolutely so easy that we can sit back and nuke the entire time. The encounters still require a healers attention, and if we aren't focussed the entire thing falls apart.

Apologies for the long wall of text post. Just wanted to toss in my two cents =]

♥Fae

A long while back, around the time they introduced to the PTR the CoH and Wild Growth nerf, I made a post called CoH QQ Moar.

Now that the patch has finally been released and these nerfs had actually been put into play, I can smugly smile at myself- for I was right.

We went into 25 Naxx a few days ago and one of the Priest's in the raid said something along the lines of "Ugh, god. I'm so mad they nerfed CoH. I have to completely change how I heal now, I suuuck at raid healing..crycry...QQ..." I almost laughed. Almost. Because at the same time, I was so sad. At the end of the night we had cleared Plague, Arachnid, and Military and stopped because it was getting late for some folks. The WWS was linked, Recount was announced, and I noticed the two other Priest's healing output was waaaaaay below where it usually was. Their boss fight healing was just fine but trash heals were...kinda terrible. I talked to them a bit about it and they said that they just weren't used to not having CoH to rely on for raid damage.

CoH served as a crutch for many a Priest. Once that crutch was taken away, they fell. Depending on how flexible they are, it'll either take a few raids, or many many many raids for them to be able to get back up again.

My advice to those of you suffering through this nerf- watch your raid bars. Know how much your heals do. Use Prayer of Mending every time it's up. Unless you've specced out of it, CoH is still there! You can still use it! Just, not as often. Flash Heal is quick, Prayer of Healing gets you're entire group up. You have tons of options to choose from, you're a Priest! It's kinda....what we do. Jack of all trades...master of... um...er...PoM is a Priest only mechanic, right? Maybe...


♥Fae

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.