About dedralie
I started playing World of Warcraft in 2005, primarily because I was tired of watching my boyfriend play it without me. My first character was a Demonology Warlock, and while I enjoyed the playstyle well enough, I didn’t realise how fun the game could be until I made my Shaman and was asked to heal in a Blackrock Depths group. I threw out that first Chain Heal, and my face lit up with a (green and yellow) glow of excitement. I was no longer just a player … I was a healer.
But what makes me qualified to speak for healers? Well, truthfully, my WoW résumé is nothing too terribly special. I’m not a top-100-guild raider, I hardly have any ranking parses on World of Logs, and I haven’t pushed any envelopes. What I do have is sheer enthusiasm, and an honest love for the avocation of healing. I also have a bunch of experience – I play one of each healing class, competitively, through multiple tiers of raiding. You can check out my characters in the “My Healer Line-up” links on the side-bar if you’re curious!
About healiocentric
So why blog about healing if I know I’m not the world’s greatest healer?
Frankly, I spend way too much of my time thinking about healing to not blog about it! But what sparked my interest in sharing these thoughts with others was my Annual Pass and its Mists of Pandaria Beta access. Suddenly there was so much more to think about! And it was clear from reading the Beta forums that there was a dearth of rationally-expressed, factually-based, comparative information about the mechanics and aesthetics of the various healing classes. I’m no theorycrafter, but at the very least, I’m not biased towards any one class to the exclusion or detriment of the others. (Except Rogues. Fortunately, Recuperate doesn’t qualify them as a healing class :D)
I hope to amuse, inform, entertain, and perhaps even inspire, some of my fellow healers through my musings and analysis in this blog. And I’ll spend a great deal of effort in reaching out to new healers, making the healing trade more accessible and hopefully more fun for the beginners. Finally, by putting all these thoughts down on the virtual page, I hope to force myself to learn more, push harder, and heal smarter – and to that aim, I’m looking forward to hearing from the rest of the healing community.
healiocentric 
/facepalm
/headdesk?
On the Venn diagram of WoW the circles of “Blizzard Forums” and “Rationally-expressed” don’t intersect at all 😉
Welcome to the blogosphere!
Happy Birthday. =)
Hello Dedralie. I found your blog via Wowhead. Firstly, I very like your blog. We using same themes. 😀 Secondly, I want to ask something about Table of Contents. How you creating ToC? Can you tell me codes? Or this is special to custom design?
Hi Edoach, I’d be happy to help you with the code for the table of contents – it should be doable on any wordpress site whether you have paid to customise it or not – but it’s a bit messy and off-topic to post as a comment here. Is the e-mail address that you have linked to this account valid? If so I’ll e-mail a sample table of contents code to you.
Thanks for reading! 🙂
Yes, it’s valid. 🙂
Hey Dedralie,
I found your blog looking for more resto shaman content, seem Binkenstein may be calling it quits and Vixsin can post fast enough to satisfy my appetite for content. I was on Therya’s site, Shaman Nebula, and your site was one of the links. While nosing through your armory I noticed your guild and said to myself, hey I know that guild. I also play on whisperwind but horde side. Skytotems Whisperwind eleven.
I see you went heavy mastery and your guild is deep in heroics, do you tank heal or raid heal if you don’t mind me asking. I’m new to shaman healing and I’m trying to get better by looking at other shaman as see how they heal.
Thanks for your time and the blog
Skytotem
Hi Skytotem, fellow Whisperwinder! (I only moved to this server for the start of MoP so I think you are the first person who is not in my guild who I have ever spoken to, lol.)
I don’t really put a lot of weight on the conventional wisdom of “haste to breakpoint, mastery to 50%, everything else into crit”. I view my role, with the tools that Blizzard have given us, as a safety net; my powerful throughput cooldowns will save the raid when it is low, and between those hectic phases, what throughput I do is going to be overhealing anyway when compared to the speed, smartness, and throughput of the other healers in my raid, so my stats don’t really matter much outside of there. I tend to focus on Mastery because it is the best throughput stat when the raid is low, and that is all that I care about.
Now, that ends up with me looking terrible on meters for farm content, or when we are overhealing, but for an actual progression encounter, while my HPS may not be up there with a disc priest or a holy paladin, I know that popping that powerful cooldown is literally saving the raid from wiping, and that is the most valuable thing I can do. I don’t worry about the meters at all; my job is to save the raid and in between I volunteer for utility jobs (slowing adds, dispelling, interrupting, etc.) or sling lightning bolts.
While that’s how I do it, I don’t claim to be an expert or for my advice to be applicable to everyone, especially if you raid a different format or difficulty to me (or if your raid isn’t full of absorption/smart-heal healers). To be honest, Resto Shaman stats give such similar benefit that it almost doesn’t matter. Spell selection, knowledge of the encounter, synergy with your fellow raiders, well-timed cooldown usage, and your raid’s willingness to work with the class’s limitations (by spreading out in chain heal range, or standing in healing rain) are going to make a much bigger difference in your apparent throughput.
Whether I am tank healing or raid healing depends on the fight, but I tend to use the same stat priority for both jobs. I would say I tank heal and raid heal pretty evenly this tier.
If you want to become a better shaman healer, I may not be your best role model! I’m not terribly confident, myself 🙂 I’d strongly recommend learning how to use World of Logs to get information on what other Shamans are doing – specifically, Shamans who are working on the same kind of content that you are working in. And of course, always always always have Unleash Elements-boosted Healing Rain down. Blackmail your raiders to stand in it if you must. 🙂
I just have to say that I positively love your site – I found it when looking for healer tips in SoO (Yes, it was the pun in the title that made me click the link google threw up 😛 )
Same goes for me.
I was healing from the very beginning of WoW as a Holy Paladin. Then suddenly in Cata Holy changed so much that i couldn’t find any joy in healing anymore, and gone Ret.
Couple of months ago I made monk, and I found here some good tips on how-to with Mistweaver.
Today I’ve thought- maybe it’s time to say “I’m sorry” to my Holy spec? And here I’m once again.
Great site for all the healing lovers.
/heal five
Dedralie,
As a fellow healiholic who has all the healing toons (have all 11 classes really, but most interested in healing), I simply love your blog. Your healing guide is the place I go to for tips and insights on all the raid encounters. Keep up the great works!
– Bunny
Bubblebunny – disc priest
Medihare – holy pally
Spiritbunny – resto shammy
Shrubunny – tree
Crouchyrabit – mistwalker
Hi Bunny, and thank you for the kind words. All 11 classes, wow!
Completely unrelated, I have an RL friend who names all his online characters *bunny as well. He’s a pretty cool dude so I assume that you are also pretty cool 🙂
Hi Dedralie,
Love your SOO detailed guide with pictures for spells & effects, totally saved my day.
Would love to know if there’s any guide on the difference & meter padding for 10/25 H SOO?
Appreciate your effort & looking forward to your WOD guides.
Vesper~~
At this point I don’t have plans to do Heroic guides, because … well … for the past year I’ve been saying “I’ll totally do Heroic guides soon guys!” and I still haven’t. I figure that’s a pretty good sign I should just give up on the idea 🙂
Hopefully will go a little better in WoD – going to try to do something a little more streamlined so that Mythic guides don’t feel so daunting.
Thanks for the kind words and for reading! ❤
I read some of your posts, they are very informative. Currently trying to see if the conversion rate for stats to percentages are somewhere (specifically for mistweavers). I am trying to create a spreadsheet for something.
Hi Ashe, thanks 🙂 If you go to “What’s New in MoP” > “Introducing the Monk” > “Extra for Experts” there is a link to download my spreadsheet, which does contain that information for MoP.
If you are after WoD info, I can reply with that too when I am back at my computer 🙂
Dedralie
Thanks for the blog site. I found this looking for WoW change fealings. I am a relatively new player (18 months) but I am hooked. My main was a warlock but I am liking my holy priest more and more. I didnt level her up but through ranks as I did a buy after level 60 (mainly for guild perk leveling). As I leveled her up I went to three dungeons and the crew there kept out running me and not allowing me to keep up. When I told them I was new they tossed me out. So at that point I found that I hated any PUG into dungeons since I seemed to only get the kind that didnt want to enjoy the game, just go through it for points or drops.
Anyway I now give away my healing skills on TI farming for rep. Those that I team up with seem to like how well I keep them healed so I cant be too bad. I learned a lot healing in Tol’barad battles.
So I guess I should say that I found that same feeling you had when you pushed out Chain Heal, when I cast my first cascade. I was hooked on healing. I am going to keep your blog in my favorites and will read all the new stuff you put out. I would love to see what we will need to do as healers in WoD. I don’t know how fast I will embark on levelling ot 100 because I still have so much older content to go through that I havent seen yet.
Hi Myssuunda, and welcome! Always nice to meet other people passionate about healing 🙂
I’m sorry you had some bad experiences in the leveling dungeons. I think it is a problem with the pacing of leveling, and that most people who are leveling have done this stuff a dozen times before and are sick of it by now. 😦 I hope it doesn’t scare you away from trying dungeons in Warlords, because – while the dungeons are hard, and *everyone* is going to wipe until they get used to the idea that they have to go slowly and use crowd control sometimes – they are freaking beautiful and awesome!
Hello. Not sure whether you’re open to answering random questions from random people, but I was hoping for some advice on blogging, would you be willing to answer a few questions for me?
Sure, but I’m not sure I’m the best person to be giving advice on blogging. Might be kind of awkward here, is the email address that you provided for this comment an appropriate way to contact you?
It is, yes. I think you’re uniquely qualified.
Just found your blog through WoW head and wish I had found it sooner. It was watching a Shaman heal through the normal level BC dungeons that inspired me to create, level, and still love my Shaman main.
Your blog reminds me of why I play the way I do through ups and downs.
Aww gosh, that’s incredibly nice to hear. Welcome to the site, I hope you’ll find some useful information here … if I ever get around to writing any again 😉
I just learned the word “avocation”. Thanks! 😀