11 Excuses: How to Tell the Real Life Professions of Your Healers

The people that play World of Warcraft come from all manner of job backgrounds and disciplines. Many of us are students. Some of us work in the office. No doubt there are players who come from military backgrounds. But did you know you can tell what kind of job your healer has when you put him on the spot? It’s true! It might not be relevant, but you might find it interesting to know what supports the fix of the WoW playing healer! I guarantee you that someone out there has uttered these words*!

*Note: Not a real guarantee.

Lawyer

"Do you have any evidence with which to base your claim on that it was, in fact, my lack of heals that cause my client, this tank, to lose health and subsequently die?"

Politician

"Think of the big picture. Our cause is just. I believe we have to stay the course. There is a concept known as acceptable casualties. The loss of a tank, in this case, certainly falls under that. As long as we complete our mission, then everything is perfectly alright."

Forensics

"Judging by the position of the tank relative to me and taking into account the time of death, I do not believe that I was the cause of the death of this player. I was within 40 yards and the heals were coming out. There is no logical reason as to why I let him die."

Doctor

"We don’t know what his cause of death is just yet. Blame cannot be issued until we establish how the player died. Pull up WoW Web Stats. I want combat logs of the last 5 players who interacted with the dead player."

Coach

"Let’s see the replay tapes again. I want a play by play break down. If you watch it, it helps prove that his dying had nothing to do with me at all!"

Accountant

"The numbers don’t properly add up. My heals more than made up the difference between that and the damage taken."

Psychic

"Your death was foretold. I was merely allowing the prophecy to come to pass."

Teacher

teacher

"You did not follow proper tanking instructions. You get an F in tanking. "

Marketing

"It’s a terrible tragedy that you died in a raid. This is an excellent example of why you should buy my Flask of Fortification! It boosts your stamina by 30! More stamina means you live longer, right? With the right mix of herbs and a small fee of, you can have 500 additional health and higher defense rating! If you act now, I’ll even throw in a free Spicy Crawdad! Limited time only, act now!"

Mafia

mafia

"3000 gold and half a dozen Crimson Spinels says that I didn’t cause the raid to wipe. Capice?"

Computer Technician

"Go restart your computer. That will solve most problems 99% of the time including tank deaths. There is no reason to blame anybody."

On a completely different note, there appear to be no photos of psychics anywhere.

+81 Healing vs Spellsurge

A special big worldofmatticus.com shoutout to Netherlord who was kind enough to give me the recipe for Spellsurge at no cost at all. Thank you VERY much sir and welcome to Carnage!

Here is an important question that needs to be answered. You’ve hit 70 and you just got that ultimate 1H mace or that ultimate healing staff. What enchant do I put on it? Do I want an additional +81 Healing or Spellsurge? Neither of them are cheap to begin with but both will really benefit healers. But, let the analysis begin.

81 Healing

This enchant increases the amount of healing you can potentially do by 81. It’s sold by a vendor (Almaador, at the center of town) and requires you to be revered to learn how to perform the enchant.

Spellsurge

This enchant offers a unique mechanic in that it does not offer a constant benefit like 81 Healing does. It’s a random world drop so you might have a better chance of winning the lottery instead of getting it. The tooltip suggests that it has a 3% chance of proccing the effect which provides 100 mana over a period of 10 seconds to your entire party. But for the effect to occur, your party members need to be within 30 yards of each other.

Analysis

So which is the better one to get? 81 Healing will increase your healing by that amount. Assuming you heal for 1000 points without any modifiers, then 1000 casts of that same flash heal will net about 1,081,000 healed. But Spellsurge restores mana over time. Furthermore the effect stacks from multiple players who have that enchant on their weapon. So, if 5 players had it and all 5 procced, you’re looking at 500 mana over 10 seconds to everybody in the party. I’ve seen on the WoW Forums as well as WoWWiki that the actual proc percentage is approximately 15%. If you’re in the raid environment, it wouldn’t work if all 25 players had it. It applies strictly to your party within the raid. It’s important to keep in mind that Spellsurge has a hidden cooldown of approximately 50 seconds. That means that if you kept spamming any kind of spell, the Spellsurge effect can only happen once every 50 seconds assuming it does proc.

Ideally, I’d be able to test this in a lab setting with three groups: An experimental group with all 81 healing, an experimental group with all Spellsurge, and control group. But alas, I don’t have access to such resources.

The Argument for 81 Healing

If you don’t see yourself raiding very often or if you are placed in a group that does not have a whole lot of other casters in it, then you will want to augment your own heals and add that extra power. Who needs Spellsurge if you’re going to be the poor guy who has to sacrifice 81 healing so that everyone else in your party can get that extra mana back?

The Argument for Spellsurge

On the other hand, as you progress through the game you will begin to encounter bosses that will test your endurance. If you can work with four other spellcasters and agree to get this enchant, your longevity will increase by a lot. You will see a lot of mana returned. More mana means you last longer, right? Utilitarianism is the the concept of the day.

The Middle Ground

Get both. All you really need is two weapons. Don’t forget that you can switch weapons while in combat. So slap Spellsurge on a mace that as mp5 or Spirit or something that helps you regenerate mana. Keep your 81 Healing on the weapon that you use most of the time. If you start running out of gas, switch from your Healing mace to your Spellsurge mace and let the rest of the group know. Now if you really want to be fancy, pick up another mace or staff which has high intellect and put 30 Int on it. Equip it before the encounter so you have a high starting mana pool. Once you get a spell or two off, switch back to your healing mace. You will essentially be getting an extra flash heal or two. That’s my personal opinion. Be flexible, adapt your enchants to your needs.

Anyways, back to Fathomlord now. We were able to take down the Shaman and the Priest. Pretty good progress… 3 more hours left. I love my macbook. It lets me blog and raid at the same time. Doing it in windowed mode will lag. I’m tempted to install WoW on it and see how it performs, but I purchased my Macbook purely for academic reasons.