Elemental Healing in Heroics

[Orcbert]

So, this is a question I thought I would throw out there. As my gear gets better from badge grinding (as well as some heavily overgeared tanks) I find I'm tossing out more and more lightning bolts and standing there watching earth shield proc.

So, I was wondering, on most heroics (as in anyone other then TotC or the ICC ones) would it be horrible to queue healing, just dps elemental, and toss out an occasional heal to the tank for most fights? I figure it would net us a much faster run.

[torny]

Try it, ive done it a couple of times with guildy's even as enhancement.. so it shouldnt be a problem rlly.

[Orcbert]

I was going to make a few macros to help me out with this. Basically, I wanted a stop casting macro to shut down whatever elemental nuttyness I'm up to and lay down a heal. My question is how do I make it spammable?

for instance, a lesser healing wave...

/stopcasting
/cast Lesser Healing Wave

Is there a way to make this somewhat spammable, IE if i try and lay off another right after it, I don't want to cancel the current heal. Also, can I macro a heal onto my focus (the tank) without changing targets off what I'm dps'ing?

[biturbo]

I've healed as resto when the healer was afk or dropped or whatever - in most cases Elemental does wonderfully in that role. It could get a little dicey in ToC and the ICC instances though, especially if you are running with a tank that is either undergeared or merely appropriately geared for the instance.

[foyton]

get healbot
or grid and clique

i usually have clique up when i roll dungeons as dps, can be useful and easier to set up than some macros

[pomop]

Ive been having fun. Ill be a healer and just spam riptide when people take damage. (Earthshield tank)
Its pretty entertaining. Although when i have to actually heal because people take damage, ill toss out some chain heals.

[Temples]

I was going to make a few macros to help me out with this. Basically, I wanted a stop casting macro to shut down whatever elemental nuttyness I'm up to and lay down a heal. My question is how do I make it spammable?

for instance, a lesser healing wave...

/stopcasting
/cast Lesser Healing Wave

Is there a way to make this somewhat spammable, IE if i try and lay off another right after it, I don't want to cancel the current heal. Also, can I macro a heal onto my focus (the tank) without changing targets off what I'm dps'ing?

You could just have a separate bind for the stopcasting macro and just use them subsequently when you need to and else just heal like you always do. As for the focus part, I always preferred to just click on the tank (or any other member) in the raid window (after initiating the cast). At least that's what I did when I healed as elemental in 10man 3drake sarth (when it was still hard ). I hardly ever healed as ele besides that.

[fuknfreak]

Since I'm always unlucky with good geared tanks, I always queue as resto, unless I have my guildie with me, which I queue as elemental and never throw a heal on him... he has ~65k hp with buffs... druids ftw...

[Baron01]

I believe you should always have healing spec on when queuing as healer. If you see tank being grossly overgeared, you can switch to dps OS--wheter you should ask beforehand or not I leave up to you.

I have found out that I prefer to stay as resto anyway because losing ES and Riptide is just too much--these 2 tools make healing HCs so trivial that losing them suddenly forces you to cast more to keep tank. I stay resto and spam damage spells while maintaining resto power and flexibility. I usually add 1-2k DPS based on how much mana I feel comfortable to spend.

[gringo]

Depends solely on the tank. Geared Druids and Blood DKs manage to keep themselves topped fairly well. The occasional LHW should be enough here.

I usually check the Tank and respec to Ele when I fall asleep while healing^^

[Izuria]

It's perfectly doable. I often do 4-5k+ while healing.
However, you should be aware that some instances are not really suitable for elemental-healing - especially not in pugs... Examples could be the 3.3 ones, nearly impossible to heal as elemental when people stand in the fucking fire.

[evan_s]

I've healed a few Heroics in my Enhancement gear and spec. I don't do it too often just because I'm generally just doing my 1 random daily for frost badges now and can only half pay attention while healing as resto. Healing as enhance requires paying a bit more attention. Elemental should be easily doable in most instances with a well geared tank. I wouldn't queue as a healer unless you actually have a healing spec/gear or are queuing with a tank you know can handle it. You never know when you are going to end up with a fresh tank and a group that is struggling to do 2k dps total making healing actually a challenge.

[Titanz]

I´m "healing" as Elemental for a long time now, if the Tank is decent geared (with proper spec) and the instance isn't a ilvl 232 one (FoS, PoS or HoR).
I have a proper Restoration Set and Spec, if that is absolutely necessary (like, if I get the instances mentioined before). But I like the way how it speeds up the run and I gonna tell you... Most of the time, due to the bad DPS that the LFG Tool group me with, I´m the top damage (like 95%+).

If all conditions are good, during a boss fight, the group is very likely to drop the boss down before any heal is absolutely necessary (people in a danger % of HP), or sometimes i thow a chain heal here or there. Most of the "healing" is done after the boss is dead... during those couple seconds when people are looting, doing nothing. Also, most of the damage is done by Chain Lightning and Magma/Fire Nova.

[fakestreet]

When I que for random dungeon, I usually gets assigned as a healer. When healing, I always keep Ele spec with some gear switched around (most notably, 2 Int trinkets + Resto helm for the meta) and throw on EL weapon. The regen provided from US and TS is amazing when healing as Ele and the fact that mobs will die 4-5s sooner means you can just top off people when the mob is almost dead.

IMO, healing while DPSing is more fun because it adds an additional level of play. It makes you pay attention to raid's HP while DPS'ing instead of tunnel-visioning the mob. It also lets you play around with gauging incoming damage (i.e. do I finish this LB cast first or /stopcasting and throw a heal?).

As stated, the only time I would switch to a full (or in my case my PvP Resto spec) is for the ICC dungeons. The amount of raid damage in those instances is enough such that you won't have the time to DPS anyway so might as well make it easy to heal.

re: Tank's gear
I don't usually look (or care) about the tank's gear. To date, I've healed a 26k buffed HP Pally through an easier instance (AN) without any problem while still maintaining a decent DPS. The trick really is to alternate between DPS spell + LHW and knowing incoming damage vs outgoing heal (it really helps if you know approximately how much % of the tank's HP your LHW will fill up).

[jontaxe]

I was going to make a few macros to help me out with this. Basically, I wanted a stop casting macro to shut down whatever elemental nuttyness I'm up to and lay down a heal. My question is how do I make it spammable?

for instance, a lesser healing wave...

/stopcasting
/cast Lesser Healing Wave

Is there a way to make this somewhat spammable, IE if i try and lay off another right after it, I don't want to cancel the current heal. Also, can I macro a heal onto my focus (the tank) without changing targets off what I'm dps'ing?

I don't think you can make it spammable with a /stopcasting. ie, you want stopcasting to interrupt a lightning bolt, but not a LHW. Don't think that is possible. You can easily make a target=focus macro for LHW, HW, Cheal, though. It would work, but might I suggest just downloading healbot (or grid+clique, but healbot takes 0 setup time right out of the box) instead. A lot easier.

An elemental spec LB is what? 1.5s cast? If you have enough slack in healing demand to do it as offspec, then you have enough slack in healing demanded to wait out the lightning bolt cast.

[Durakghar]

Healing as elemental really hasn't been a problem for me. Even if it's just an average group it is very doable. If you manage the incoming damage and understand where possible spikes will be, you can be on top of the damage as well as keeping the group topped off.

The key is making sure everything dies fast enough and going with 4 dpsers never really puts your tank in much danger.

[PollyO]

I go resto and heal with my ele gear lol

[Sonofsunder]

Also, can I macro a heal onto my focus (the tank) without changing targets off what I'm dps'ing?

/target focus

[gringo]

/target focus

wrong...

try this:
#showtooltip
/cast [@focus] Lesser Healing Wave

[Sarlac]

I always queue as resto and run full elem gear / spec. With the way most people outgear heroics, its not a problem. I'm also in 245 / 264 gear so will be the top dps in the run too. Really want to 2man a few heroics just to try it out - things blow up so fast now. Basically go elem -- the tanks love running with 4dps and everyone loves getting done faster.

However I will switch to my resto OS if I get one of the ICC 5mans or if the group is bunch of alts / fresh 80s.