I’m not sure if it was intended to be a workshop on how to heal properly but the basics are there. Most good healers and all great healers already knew this but, it was a shortcut and with old mechanics a necessity to downrank and try to cut the system off by not having to worry as much.
Everybody in the raid having leatherworking or stacking 5 shaman isn’t good raiding, I won’t show any love for those kinds of groups. Now though I’m glad that those kinds of gameplay practices are going to be more work than just itemizing well and paying better attention. I’ve met some freaking incredible healers in my time, they’re easy to spot and set aside from the rest.
Ghostcrawler on mana management
We do want mana management to be a part of the game. The right way to play, especially for healers, is not to spam all your heals as fast as you can and then go out of mana. Instead, we want to reward players who can rely on hots, limit overhealing, coordinate with other healers so they aren’t double healing the same target, and knowing when a fight is won so you can take a break and start mana regeneration. If healers don’t ever go OOM, then the only way to ever lose a fight is for the bosses to hit so hard that sometimes you just get bad luck, to have strict enrage timers so you have to learn to maximize your dps, or make the fights so complicated that they take a lot of explanation and practice. In the good old days, one of the best gear checks was could you keep the tank (and to a lesser extent the group) up without going out of mana. (src)
Mana management is really not as hard as it sounds. I have NEVER downranked heals and have been the last healer with mana on several boss fights. The tricks lie in knowing how to stop cast. Knowing how much you heal for so that you know when to time your heals to land. Understanding your cooldowns and trinkets and knowing when to blow them. And using mana pots effectively, like using them early in a fight if you know you’re going to have to chain chug.
I have always valued spirit and mp5 (prior to spirit changes) in much higher regards than +heal. The way I figure a healer with 1600 bonus heal and mana is better than a healer with 2200 bonus heal and no mana. It’s all about balance.
Double healing is simply coordinating with your other healers as to who is healing who and who covers if a healer goes down. That just takes something simple caled communication.