Raid healing

[Twist]

Ok as most of you know my shaman is 70 and restoration and so far so good.  I try to watch my over healing and i have a mod that shows me what my targets health will be after my heal. But what i am worried about is over healing in kara and such.  How do you all coordinate it? My worst fear as a healer is running out of mana and over healing is wasted mana.  I normally dont use my highest rank healing wave (rank 12) unless someone is really low.  And i know down ranking was nerfed some but its still more efficient than lesser healing wave.  So any tips would be great.  I am sure i will be using chain heal a decent amount.  Heh and i typed all of this on my cellphone. Lol

[voctovian]

Couple of comments:

Overhealing:
The only time this is very bad is when all the healers are OOM later in the fight.  I use healbot 2.26 to help track overhealing, but I dont worry about it.  (This is a nice mod if all healers use it).  If I am spamming heals on the MT for instance, if he dodges an attack and doesnt take damage, my spam heal is entirely overhealing.  However, if I interrupt and he gets a crit, crushing blow or AOE attack (especially when the interupted heal would have healed him), I may have to use a large heal (at four times the mana) to bring him back to full health.  You will find that when you run with the same set of tanks and healers, the coordination between the two will make healing much easier.  The tank may pop the Moroes trinket or shield wall.  If the healer can anticipate this, they can take the time to use mana efficient spells to restore the tanks health.

Downranking:
It is not necessarily true that downranking is bad.  Yes, you incur a penalty to your +healing, but it is still necessary in some cases.  For my current gear, almost all ranks of Holy Light are similar mana efficiency (about 4.8 healing per mana).  However, that does not mean that I should not downrank.  I needed a spell that could heal more than my mana efficient spell (1400 healing, 180 mana, 1.5sec cast) but not as much as my big heal (4000 healing, 840 mana, 2sec cast).  By downranking, I use a spell that gives 2300 healing, same cast time as a big heal, but only ~460 mana.  That improved my mana efficiency quite a bit.

Chain/AOE heals
With more than one target (2 tanks or multiple Melee DPS) in range, this can be great.  Be very careful of the aggro that this can draw though.  The best aggro generating ability is probably Tranquility

Shammy healing
Shammies seem to be relatively mana inefficient.  The restro shammy I have run with has a much bigger mana pool than me (almost 14k) but runs oom halfway through some fights.  This might be because he is dropping totems, purging, etc, but you will want to look for items with lots of int and MP5.. that seems to be most important for shammies

[Air]

Usually healing assignments would be setup.  In the past we usually would have a priest main heal a tank with a druid or paladin as a 2nd healer.  If my designated tank wasn't taking to much damage, I would toss a few heals to other people. 

Paladins and druids would raid heal.  Druids make good raid healers, since their hot's can get the full effect.  If a person is not taking direct damage, then tossing a hot on them is far more efficient.  With shamans in the mix now, having them spam chain heal on melee dps and ranged dps, would probably be the most efficient use.

Down ranking was especially helpful on my priest.  I rarely ever used my max rank.  I had about 3 ranks of gheal on my bar, rank 5 being the highest at the time.  I usually had rank 3,4,and 5 on my bar.  I generally would use rank 4 or maybe rank 3, down ranking nerf wasn't as big as I thought it would be.  Generally you can down rank a couple of ranks and still get the full effect.  I never down ranked my flash heal or renew.  The only time I ever down ranked for those spells was for a specific fight, razorgore.  That was because we would have serious issues with pulling aggro.

I always watch my overhealing when I was healing.  Using sw stats and mik's battle text mod, I could see what heals are going for, and if there was any overhealing.  The thing with overhealing is sometimes it's a bad thing but other times it ca be a good thing.  At times a tank can be taking so much damage that the only way to handle it is to overheal. 

With raid healing, your tank can die in a matter of seconds.  They could be at full health, blink and their dead.  I have a feeling will be seeing that soon with Maulgar fight in Gruul's lair.

Like what Voc said, mp5 is the best stat for shamans.  Mana regen is pretty bad for shamans. Should still expect to chug mana potions like crazy though.

Best advice is get experience in healing.  I know I read up a lot on healing, but it wasn't until I started healing in groups and raids where I really got a feel for it.  I Always expect more from myself as a healer and tried to learn from my mistakes.  Eventually you'll become confident in your healing.  Growing a thick skin will help to.

[Arcdelad]

hey...lets not talk about tanks dropping health quick in gruuls lair okay? lol

[Twist]

thanks for all the advice guys.  yesterday I healed heroic slave pens.  That was an eye opener but we actually never wiped due to lack of healing.  There were a couple of times when the tank was taking lots of damage and while I was healing him someone would get twoshotted but overall I think I did okay, most of the wipes were due to CC breaking and the CCed mob killing me lol.  And I actually think I hold my mana pool up decently.  mana spring is a 37.5mp5 boost, I have 100mp5 and I take a potion for 16 more mp5.  Granted it could be better, but I'm still in some greens and level 65ish quest rewards =P