1st healing post EVAR

Not really sure why I've never made a healing post yet. Maybe because I just don't have much to say about it that is interesting, until I made a couple observations last night on my way to honing my healing skills.I've played a healer lots over the years, but mostly dps roles.

My WoW healing experience extends to healing instances specced enhance while levelling in BC (I gear for sta/mana when levelling so running OOM was not a problem ever) Then when I began raiding Kara I collected a decent healing offset and consistently competed for top healing spot on the charts with another shaman I used to raid with lots. ( I know, healing meters dont mean much, but they do tell you something)

These days I heal when there are no healers or we are short. I've healed most of the heroics, and most of the naxx fights.I've got mostly Naxx gear (10 and 25) for my healing set, although I am still rocking a couple blues and a titansteel crafted mace. Fully buffed with food and flasks I'm rockin about 2450SP 28%crit and 650mp5 (lower while casting of course, I forget how much though) so I've got decent gear but I worry about falling far behind as our healing team is mostly in all 25man naxx and 25 Ulduar gear. I figure I am about 80-90% as well geared as the other healers. It's not a big worry but I wanted to see some numbers to determine where I can improve, and how I stack up next to the "real healers", other than gearwise. I ran Recount last night while we learned the Iron Council encounter (read-wipefest)

Here is a couple general observations, from a healing melee's perspective.

It's friggin difficult to Stay-Out-Of-The-Fucking-Fire when you are staring at health bars.
It was like watching hummingbirds on crack play tennis, my eyes had to flit back and forth from health bars to checking where I was standing to keep in range and out of the fucking fire every second (on GCDs of course) Nonetheless, I did stay out of the fucking fire, except on our last attempt, I turned to run, lagged graphically and instead wound up turning a full 360 and ran back into the fucking fire. DOH!!

I can healz!
I was consistently middle of the pack for total heals on each fight, and bottom 3 for overheals. The overheals doesnt mean much because I was on raid heals, but it was still nice to see. I was pretty much white-knuckling my mouse in focus to make sure Earthshield never dropped and that I always had Riptide up on someone. I realized I need to check out PowerAuras addon or something to keep track of CDs for me on riptide, mana totem and nature's swiftness.

1 healer makes the difference.
Usually I've been going heals if we have a rough time on Ignis. Everytime I do everything goes much more smoothly. Same thing last night too on the Iron COuncil, we were running it with 22 or 23 people, another healer logged on and our healing team had a much easier time.I know it seems redundant and overly obvious to observe what a difference 1 more healer makes, I just never appreciated it so much until I was on the heal team and we got 1 more in there to help, I've always been that 1 more guy to join and help.

Good Healers Heal Themselves.
Without exception, on every boss fight, every healer had themselves as their 2nd or 3rd most healed target. Each also had a tank as the most healed target even if they were on raid heals.I guess at face value it could seem selfish for healers to look out for Numero Uno and heal themselves first, but it's the first reaction I suppose. It's also the quickest way for healers to keep themselves alive, and thereby keep the raid alive.


Peace Out! (I'm so gangsta)