One of the hardest parts about healing these days is mana management. There are some things you can do to control your mana, some to increase your mana, and some to just avoid spending mana. It is very important that we use all/any of these to ensure enough mana to finish fights.
First, it is worth noting that at current gear level, all stats are low (by design) and therefore into the future these problems will diminish themselves. In the meantime, we must pay very close attention to gemming and enchanting things. I maintain a sense of balance here, where possible. For example, if you overstack Haste, you will OOM yourself, and if you overstack Spirit, you will waste mana regen (by waste I mean: your mana is already full and you are regen'ing mana). A nice haste:spirit balance is the way to go, in my book. For druid, the way I see it, I want it balanced so I can cast Nourish (my cheap, efficient heal, also my most cast heal) all day and never go under 98% mana. So balance mana regen/mana cost with cast time, it takes me the same amount of time to regen the mana cost of the Nourish as it does to cast the Nourish. This thinking has come in handy toward the end of fights where you are nearly OOM and have to keep your tank alive. I overbalance a hair toward the spirit side, so that in an OOM situation, I can continue to cast Nourish and actually gain mana (albeit at a very slow rate). So, watching stats carefully is step one to managing your mana, it's also your mana pool management.
In most cases Int>all stats, so general gemming practice is as follows: Meet your meta requirement using 1/2 Int 1/2 spirit(for blue)/haste(for yellow) split gems. You can strategically place these couple split gems in sockets across your gear to get a socket bonus or two, if possible. Then, gem straight Int gems in the rest of your gear, ignoring any and all socket bonuses that are less than 20 Int. Int so far outweighs any other stat in most cases that socket bonuses are irrelevant. Some gear will have a +20 Int socket bonus, you can put in one of your meta req split gems here and take double advantage (ie: same as a 40 int gem, plus the 20 spirit/haste from the split).
Enchanting is pretty straightforward for healers now too. Int>all still, so Int wherever you can, and wherever you can't Int, Haste. There is either Int or Haste chants for almost every slot. Some argument comes into the weapon enchant. You will get maximum benefit from a 1H weapon and an offhand as a healer, simply from an enchanting standpoint (obviously individual cases will vary, get your calculator out and add up your stats). There is now an Int enchant for offhand slot, nuff said. For the weapon itself, there are 3 schools of thinking: Hurricane (haste proc); Heartsong (spirit proc), my personal choice; and Power Torrent (int proc), which should be and will later be the obvious choice, but this early in the expansion the materials for this chant are rediculously expensive and unless you're the Bill Gates of WoW, not worth it, imo.
Mana Cooldowns! Use that Innervate, use it early, use it often. Mana Tide, Hymn of Hope, whatever you got, use it. If it restores 30% of your mana, then cast it when you get to 75%, so it will be ready when you need it later. Common sense I know, but you have to remind yourself to use these sometimes, if you don't, you wont have the mana to finish the fight. Don't get cought out without mana and your cooldown is still up.
So we've covered stats, now onto the number one way to conserve mana: cast the right spells! You have to pay attention now more than ever to the mana cost vs. heals done vs. situation. Every healing class has different spells, I would exhaust my brain to even think of working them all together, and probably exhaust your brain to even explain the druid spells here, so I won't get all specific (hopefully). Generally speaking, you want to use your lowest MpH spells (mana per heal) to get maximum mana efficiency. But as all you healers know, healing is reactive, not proactive, so you can only hope for the best, you have to plan for the worst. Your lowest MpH spell is almost always a long cast time, slow/big heal, so you can see why it is a great choice, but sometimes you need something faster, or something bigger. Most classes will have a bigger, more expensive heal that is at or near the same cast time as your regular heal, so there's your bigger option. Most classes also have a faster, more expensive heal that is at or near the same amount healed as your regular heal, so theres your faster option. Some classes will proc instant or free heals, some have cooldowns to get guaranteed critical heals or haste bonuses to certain spells, and various cooldowns to increase healing during tough times, while ensuring you will still have mana for the end of the fight. With this in mind, I'll pull out the old addage: lrn2(insert class name here), the more familiar you are with your class the better you will heal, period. Knowing your limits/strengths/weaknesses is half the battle. Plenty of resources out there to help you become more familiar, for the basic and the more in-depth theorhetical (*sp?) healing strategies for your class, one of my favorites is Elitist Jerks. But most importantly, take some time to really study your spec and your spellbook, and really think about how your heals work.
Every situation has it's different demands on healers, and every different healer combo will have different demands on specific healers within that combo. Step 1: (and I cannot say this with enough emphasis) You have to be able to trust the other healers you are with. Super important that you all play to your strengths and cover eachother's weaknesses to ensure no player deaths in any given encounter. Here it benefits you to learn (at least a little) about other healing classes, if only to assess strengths and weaknesses and see where you can help/expect help. Communicate with your heal team, get them aside before or after a raid, or during if it's an emergency, and give them a chance to speak up about where they're having a problem, it could be an easy fix. Working together is key, and it starts with trust, don't get cought out healing the raid and let your tank die, keep your eyes on your main objective, and help where/if needed. Often your 'helping' other healers with their assignments will lead to both of you overhealing, and overhealing = bad (duh).
Which leads me into another important area (my favorite, if you know me...) monitoring your heals. It is important for healers to have (and silly for them not to have) some kind of meter addon to monitor healing. My flavor of the month as far as meters go is Skada, but Recount is the more popular choice and still pretty good. As with most addons in my view, these are tools, to be used by you to better your (and your heal team's) performance. Use these to monitor Overheals, Healing Done, Overhealing Done, you can see who's healing what and what spells they are using, you can even go in an analyze how many of your heal's were crit vs. normal, all kinds of data can be gleaned from perusal of your meter, "it's not the tool, it's how you use it". Getting/monitoring this data is half the battle, interpreting it and putting it to use is the rest. Communicate to your team with the results of your meter when you're having noticeable healing problems, nothing wrong with saying "hey I noticed you were healing my tank alot there, and it drove my overheals through the roof" or telling your raid healer "hey I noticed you were healing a tank alot, that may be why the overall raid health was so low", just don't be a dick about it and I'm sure your healing team will respond well and in most cases be able to fix the problem, to the end of a better outcome in fights. Most importantly, use the meter to assess your own performance, drive down your overheals and your mana will love you for it.
Lastly, but not leastly, I want to go over consumables. Food, Flask, Potions, should be staples in your inventory, always. Your stat weight will carry over here, so in most cases (int being > all) you will want 90 Int food buff and your Int flask (Draconic Mind), these should be obvious choices. The potions I want to go a little bit further with. There are 2 kinds of mana potions I carry with me and use, each one has it's place. I'll start with the one I use the least, the Mythical Mana Potion. It gives you 10k mana instantly, I use it as kinda the "oh shit" pot, or in cases where there is knockbacks/interrupts (read on to see why). The other potion I use is Potion of Concentration. This will give you 22k mana over 10sec, *I think* it ticks for 2200 mana/sec. But here's the catch: you have to sit still (if you get knockbacked, it will interrupt it), no casting, no moving, just chill out and get your 22k mana over 10sec. Now, since you can only use one pot per fight, you need to choose wisely. Obviously the 22k is > the 10k, duh, but if you can't let it tick for 5sec, you get less than a mythical would give you, so plan it out for a slow time, make sure there's not any mechanics that are gonna knockback/interrupt you, in some cases tell your tank "hey, I'm sitting down for mana for 10sec" if you have to, so they can watch for if they have to use a cooldown, refresh your HoT, and sit. Usually you can find more than one place where you can break for 10sec (it's almost as if they designed it that way),
It all boils down to knowing the fights, knowing your class, knowing your team, controlling yourself, and paying attention. There are so many factors that you have to account as a healer, it's no wonder it's such a PITA.
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