Because you can’t make it thru a longer boss encounter using only max rank heals without going oom long before the fight ends. Max rank heals simply just cost too much mana to be your only source of healing (especially if you’re raid healing instead of tank healing).
However, downranking is almost exclusively a raid thing, and not necessarily worth it if your +Healing is low. The more you gear, the better it gets.
No. Tooltip values do not dynamically update with your gear (unless you have an addon like TheoryCraft). That change wasn’t actually made until Cataclysm surprisingly.
Does everyone have to be at 100% HP 100% of the time, though? Or can you safely let them get lower then cast a heal that will bring them to full HP?
Most of the fights in the game, your DPS shouldn’t really be taking that much damage, leaving just your tank who you should have a good feel for a couple pulls in, and if it’s someone you run with regularly, you know exactly how they take damage.
You downrank once you get enough +healing. You probably think it doesn’t really seem necessary because you havent been in a raid where fights are really drawn out. When I raid and heal dungeons, I use rank 5 healing touch (around 900 hp heal due to good gear) and rank 7 (about 1.1 or 1.2k). Trust me it prevents overhealing and you save a ton of mana. Its vital on shamans especially.
Generally no, but it really depends on the encounter, the raid damage going out, and how much health your raid actually has (ex. low geared mages/priests have very low total health making aoe more dangerous for them).
You don’t need to throw your most powerful heal every time. Save time and mana and learn to downrank.
Same with downranking attack spells, if you can finish the mob with a level one spell, why waste the mana and time to cast a bigger one?
I use downranked heals all the time in dungeons. It’s significantly more efficient for topping off DPS. You should also be juggling a bit of +heal all throughout the game to make them better.
As far as the tank goes. I actually like to pop off a max rank after initial damage, then immediately throw him a couple more quick rank 1’s to get my healing way maxed out. It’ll make my highest rank healing waves 18% better for very little mana used right out of the gate. You can also spam rank 1’s to get a ancestral healing to proc if you have the time and a fairly full mana bar. Of course this is presupposing someone leveling as resto though, which is pretty uncommon lol.
Also, not really related. But every Shaman worth their salt who runs dungeons NEEDS to have a rank 1 Earth Shock on their cast bar for a low threat interrupt.
Because you can drink between pulls
But if you can cut the amount of drinking you have to do it’s all better for you and everyone.
We all have better things to do than wait for things to die because the entire raid decided to drop down to rank 1 damage casts.
I’m not suggesting a delay.
I am however, suggesting that you don’t always need your most powerful spell to finish a dying mob off.
Common sense.
Lets say you are a 60 paladin with 300 healing.
Flash of light rank 2 costs like 50 mana. It also heals a base of ~100 so an actual heal does 100+(300x(1.5/3.5)) for roughly 225ish healing. This is a mana efficiency of 4.1 healing per mana
Flash of light rank6 heals for 350 base at 140 mana. An actual heal would do
350+300x(1.5/3.5) 475 healing. This is a mana efficiency of 3.7ish.
Down ranking would be about 10-15% more mana efficienct then max rank healing and it takes away alot of risk of overheal.