Things your healer wants you to stand in
This post is, once again, adapted from a guide I put up on my guild’s forums. Hopefully it will help you and your raid clear up any lingering confusion about what all those colorful circles on the ground are.
Cataclysm has brought several new spells into all of our spellbooks and has given each class of healer some new tools for group healing. Unfortunately, many of these spells display as visual effects on the ground, which can make things a little complicated. (As pro raiders, I know that none of us ever stands in fire, so retraining yourself to actually run into ground effects may feel a little backwards at first.)
To help, I’ve taken some screenshots to show you what each of the AoE healing spells looks like.
Holy Word: Sanctuary, Holy Priests
This one is simple: Stand in it, get healed.
Lightwell, Holy Priests
Lightwell’s getting much more use in Holy specs since Cata and you may see it in upcoming raids. The lightwell can be right-clicked to give you a pretty powerful HoT. It starts out with 10 charges and can be glyphed to have 5 more. Click it when you take damage to help out your healers!
Power Word: Barrier, Discipline Priests
Barrier reduces your damage taken by 30% and prevents your spellcasting from being interrupted if you take damage. If you see this go up, you probably want to be inside of it.
Efflorescence, Resto Druids
Just like Holy Word: Sanctuary, this one is easy. Stand in it, get healed. It’s also arguably the most difficult to spot of all the new AoE healing spells. We are extremely used to green things on the ground being very bad to stand in. Look for the little floating leaves as a cue to know that, in this case, green is a good thing.
Healing Rain, all Shaman
Same as above. Stand in, get healed. Healing Rain is the level 83 Shaman ability – no talent points necessary – so you may see it even if you do not have a Resto Shaman in your group.
Light of Dawn, Holy Paladins
Paladins always have to be special flowers, don’t they? The Holy paladin AoE effect to look for is not going to be on the ground. Light of Dawn shoots out in a 30 yard frontal cone. It’s not something you’re likely to be able to run into after it’s cast, but it is a good reason to be standing in front of your raid’s healadin, rather than behind him.
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Tree Heals Go Woosh 
This post is AWESOME! I had no idea what healing rain looked like. It’s a bit faint, eh? Druid stuff looks like things you should NOT be standing in, unfortunately.
Thank you! 🙂
I agree – Healing Rain is definitely the hardest for me to see. When I was taking screenshots, I had to find a background dark enough that it would really show up at all.
And, yes, Efflorescence does look entirely too much like something that’s going to 2-shot you if you stand in it. When running heroics with the guild, I’ve occasionally had to call out in vent when I’m dropping that and when the green on the ground is actually something from the boss (think Commander Springvale’s Desecration in SFK).
Brilliant post, reposting on guild forums 🙂
Thanks very much, Keeva! 🙂
Holy cow, Keeva posted on your blog!!
Um, besides that- yes, this is an excellent post! Thank you for taking screenies of the holy priest thingie; I haven’t been running with any priests lately.
Also, Healing Rain is the -best-. Seriously, listen to it as you stand in it. You can come visit me on Wyrmrest Accord and I’ll cast it on your lowbie. :3
Oh I know! It’s like these delicate little windchimes all around you. 🙂 (I have a lot of healy alts – each of those pictures is one of my toons casting the spells except for Light of Dawn. That happens to be Chalda making a cameo.)
Unfortunately, that screen shot of Healing Rain doesn’t really convey the fact that the spell actually makes it rain inside of the blue circle. Quite possibly my favorite spell in the game right now.
Great post! You did forget something, though.
Paladins also have Holy Radiance. It’s also difficult to see, because it’s centric to the paladin casting it and as far as I’m aware, there’s no circular visual to indicate its range.
One other thing, I sometimes see a white circle on the ground, which looks a bit like something frosty. I’m not sure what it is, nor if it is a healing spell or anything. Do you know which spell I’m talking about? If so, please clarify 🙂
I’m wondering if you’re thinking of the new level 83 mage ability, Ring of Frost?
You forgot about druid’s Tranquility
As I mentioned in the introduction to this post, I was covering new spells for Cataclysm. Druids have had Tranquility for a while now. Also, Tranquility has a 30 yard range, so it’s extremely unlikely that anyone in your raid isn’t going to get ticks from it when you channel it. I was focusing on things that your raid may be unaware that they need to run into and Tranquility doesn’t really apply. 😉
Additionally, Tranquility isn’t really a targeted AoE spell. It affects the 5 targets with the lowest health within 30 yards. There’s no way anyone in your raid could intentionally be healed by Tranquility – aside from maybe purposefully taking a bunch of damage while you’re channeling it. 😛
if you could do more with different aoe ill be so thankfull i wanna draw some of the circles
pweese do more with different circles os i can draw dem *-*