Mouseover and healing....a new paradigm!

On a rare occasion, I get a good enough connection to play a few heroics on Smoogee. Today, that happened to be in the laundry building, of all places!

Since I’ve been relearning the priest class in general, I decided I would also start paying attention to the methods good healers are using now. In the original WoW, I never even experimented with mouseover macros…I’m honestly not sure that function was built into the game. But now, I have to say…

MOUSEOVER IS FASTER.

Does it make much of a difference on an extremely laggy connection…no…because in that situation you have all day to select a spell and a target anyways. However, a slow connection IS a wonderful way to practice new procedures.

A good parallel is this: if you come back to an airframe after having flown something different or sat at a desk for a long time, the AF will typically send you through training. This is an opportunity to re-familiarize yourself with the aircraft or learn a new one altogether. The best pilots keep their good habits, but intentionally learn new systems and develop new “flows” to be proficient at their new job. For instance, I have 3 qualifications currently: E model, H1 model, and H3 model C-130s. To some extent for each of those, I had to learn or relearn procedures such as checklists, emergency procedures, boldface, and even instrument crosscheck. Healing is a lot like that, with every new class or major expansion patch change. Our dynamics changed so much, so why not our approach to healing in general?

Here are some examples of mouseover macros that are working in 4.0.6

• /stopcasting
• /cast [target=mouseover,help,nodead] Pain Suppression

• /stopcasting
• /cast Chakra
• /cast [target=mouseover,help,nodead] Prayer of Mending]

• /cast Chakra
• /cast Inner Focus
• /cast [target=mouseover,exists] Greater Heal

• /cast [target=mouseover,exists] Circle of Healing

Etc…

The point is, I have Vudho set up with my party bars to the right of my character, and whichever I mouseover is the one that my healing spell will cast on. You might not think this makes much of a difference, but my hunch is that it increases my spell throughput by about 20%! That is a HUGE difference over what I did for over 5 years.

The days of selecting a target and then casting are OVER.

The only drawback is when you are in a situation that requires a lot of movement and you are the kind of person that relies on right mouse for dynamic movement. I have no answer to that, except to say that EVERY single fight has the built-in requirement that at some point you have time to stop and heal. In every single normal and heroic instance I’ve healed, the benefits of mouseover are greater than those of my previous method.

I have held on to good habits of selecting appropriate heals, using my cooldowns often (even on trash), prioritizing healing needs, and positioning tactically. I just added a new technique, which is actually almost instantly procedure once you start. I no longer pay much attention to a target or player frame, because those are included in the 5 party bars. This, of course, would change in a raid healing situation, but the potential for target locking is so great here and I can’t wait to try it out.

Btw, you can also mouseover an actual player and get the same result, which would have made me a healing GOD during the old C’Thun fights where you are dynamic in your positioning around a very large room.