dark spot in the corner

A tank’s blog, mostly…

Welcome to a bit of theorycrafting, my dear fellow priests. I won’t do any number-crunching, i leave this for people who like it.

Today we want to talk about the five-second rule, or short the 5SR. Its a nice thing and every mana-aware Priest should know about it. In essence it comes down to this:

For five seconds after spending mana on a spell, the normal spirit-based mana regeneration will be nulled.

This means that spending mana on a spell, makes you loose mana in two ways:

• The spell you have just cast costs mana, which is substracted from your mana pool.
• Your mana regeneration will drop for the next five seconds, resulting in less mana gained.

Since loosing mana is a bad thing, you should try to work around the 5SR whenever possible. There are a few tricks to do this:

1. Cast your Spells in bursts…
   Try to squeeze your healing spells together, so that your time between casts may stretch out a bit, allowing more mana-ticks outside the 5SR.
   Top off your tank, throw him an additional HoT and finish with a PoM if there is some more damage going round. Then step back and wait until you need to heal again.
2. Only heal when your heal is needed…
   Don’t spam heals unless it is absolutely neccessary. Start your spellcasts and interrupt them if the target does not need any healing halfway through your cast. Then start a new cast immediately, even if your target is topped of.
3. Cast your spells for free whenever possible…
   This is the tricky part. A priest, if properly specced, has two abilities at his/her disposal that allow him/her to cast spells for free. Since those clearcasts don’t cost mana, they will not trigger the dreary 5SR.
   • Inner Focus
     This ability has a 3 minute cooldown and is found at the 3rd tier in the discipline talent tree. It makes your next spell cost no mana and increases it’s critical strike chance by 25%.
     Inner Focus is most effective when stringed together with other clearcasting abilities. This enables you to put out some healing while not straining your mana pool. The longer you are able to evade the 5SR, the better.
   • Holy Concentration
     This is a passive ability that, when maxed (and you should max it!), will give you a 6% chance to enter a clearcasting state after casting a Flash Heal, Binding Heal or Greater Heal.
     The clearcasting state lasts for 15 seconds, so you should cast a spell within this timeframe to gain a benefit from it. Do this, even if your target is topped, since the spell can proc of itself and, if lucky, can lead to a string of free heals.
     If your Inner Focus cooldown is up, i suggest you to use it right after you exit the clearcasting stance from Holy Concentration. This ensures you more consecutive time outside the 5SR, which is very good.

I’m just trying to clarify some things here. I’m sure pretty many of you out there know this stuff already.

If you have some tips and tricks around the 5SR of Doom, post em ‘here. They are most welcome.

Welcome to my blog. This thing will be about World of Warcraft, coding and life itself.