I went over the benefits of Surge of Light for the smite priest the other day, but there’s the other talent that’s smack in the middle of the Discipline tree that’s almost as quintessential: Power Infusion. It’s also a boon for the straight Discipline healing priest.

There are standard uses forPower Infusion, like when you’re chucking out your Smite spells or trying to get a fast ninja heal in. I’m not going to go over those. Instead, I thought I would point out four uncommon and yet beneficial uses of Power Infusion:

1. Mana Burn. Let Power Infusion speed up your Mana Burn rate in PvP.
2. Another DPS. Unless I’m in an epeen war while smiting, I find that dropping Power Infusion on another DPS caster is the best way to go. It’s saved me before from close-call enrage timers.
3. Another healer. Paladin healers that are cranking out the single target heals on a tank benefit from Power Infusion and will love you forever. Sometimes it’s best to hand it to them if you’re HoTing.
4. With Divine Hymn. Divine Hymn does a great job by itself, but if you throw Power Infusion on it, the healing rate is nothing short of ridiculous. You’ll be awed at your HPS during that time.

What are some of your favorite situations for Power Infusion? A couple weeks ago, we had a mage that two Discipline priests were alternating Power Infusion on — along with Heroism — and he doubled DPS in comparison to the rest of the raid. Score!

Enjoy your Power Infusion!

Or maybe you’re not an agitated healer. Most of us are fed up at some point though and have had about enough of 80 levels of whiners telling you they didn’t get healed before they dropped for reasons rather obvious to you. You wish you could take these players and throw them into your chair for a second to see how ridiculous they look from your end.

Fear not! Johannah the Smite Priest is going to equip you with the best comeback for any heal-fail occasion. Here are thirty different comebacks for healers that find themselves in these situations, for stress relief reading if nothing else.

“I didn’t get heals!”

Response:

1. “That tends to happen when you try to mage tank something besides Gruul.”
2. “Sorry, I was AFK looking at penguin porn.”
3. “Next time you’ll scream ‘Heal [Name]‘ instead of ‘Heal me.’”
4. “I’m confident enough in my healing abilities to know that you pushed a fail button.”
5. “Don’t stand in colored shit.”
6. “You frightened me when you screamed ‘Heal me’ in vent.”
7. “Tends to happen when you let me tank [mobs / adds] the whole fight.”
8. “And I didn’t get biscuits. What’s the problem?”
9. “Funny thing that blue fire doesn’t heal you.”
10. “Let me find the link for the Heals Flochart for you…”
11. “Your mom didn’t get heals either.”
12. “Hit F to see the tank’s target next time. There’s a reason it’s that letter.”
13. “At least you scored A+ on dying?”
14. “Yes you did. Then I figured out you weren’t the tank.”
15. “I was petting my cat.”
16. “The tank told me not to heal you.”
17. “WTF. L2B indestructible!”
18. “My bad. I was too busy inspecting your marvelous gear.”
19. “THAT’S A 50 DKP MINUS.”
20. “That’s because [name of member that randomly flew out of range] pulled a crapload of whelps and I screamed like a girl.”
21. “I’m [spec], I can’t heal.” (There’s a lot of debate about this one, and it happens often. See forum post.)
22. “Maybe if you lived more than half a second…”
23. “I couldn’t find my Heal-While-Stunned button. Whoops!”
24. “I have a healing priority. You should really be nicer to me.” (This one riles people up even though I actually just mash half-empty boxes; I memorize where tanks are on Grid and that’s about it! Well. Most of the time.)
25. “Golden Rule: If a tank dies, it’s the healer’s fault. If the healer dies, it’s the tank’s fault. If the DPS dies, it’s their own damned fault.” (This makes a /chuckle macro for PUGs, even though it’s not always true…)
26. “It was either you or me.”
27. “I’m sensing a pattern.”
28. “El-oh-ess.”
29. “I had a keyboard aneurysm.”
30. “Remember that time you rolled on my dungeon set pants for your boomkin…”

What is your favorite “I didn’t get heals!” comeback?

I listed the five best items for Discipline and Holy healing priests yesterday, and one of them was the Ephemeral Snowflake. When I first got this drop though, the last thing that went through my mind was, “What a beautiful treasure!” My initial reaction was more along the lines of: “Wtf is this?” My spider senses tingled though, and so I took the trinket home from the world of random dungeon-land.

Then I did research.

Since Holy and Discipline healing are wildly different, I’m going to explain why this trinket is a win from both angles. First though, there’s some basic things you should know about your new (or desired) mana regen toy:

• It has an internal cooldown of ~0.33 seconds.
• If you activate it’s use constantly, it grants a 2.4% haste rating.
• If you proc it constantly, it grants ~165 mp5. (Theorycrafter needs evidence? Check out the source.)

So how do you use it constantly? Take your favorite spell–Penance is great for Discipline Priests and Circle of Healing works for Holy priests–and macro it so that you have it /use 13. My macro (which uses mouseover heals for Grid) looks like this:

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover][] Penance
/use 13

Okay, now you have your Ephemeral Snowflake’s use interlaced into your healing rotation without having to think much of it. Let’s look at how to get it to proc constantly.

Procing the Ephemeral Snowflake as a Holy Priest

You want to make sure you’re healing, somehow, once every 1/3 a second. Sound crazy? It’s not that hard, actually.

Every time your Renew ticks (except the initial tick from Empowered Renew), you’ll be getting 11 mana back. If you’re raid healing, your HoTs will be all over the place, ticking for you while you’re doing other things. Then, of course, there’s the other HoT; Prayer of Healing’s glyph. Equipped with Serendipity and Healing Prayers, a Holy priest can easily have five different HoTs going off at once to push the internal cooldown of this trinket to its limit.

But you’re not done yet. When you cast Circle of Healing (glyphed, of course), you’ll be getting another 5 unique procs off. Your Prayer of Mending will also be healing people without your supervision (that naughty spell!) By exploiting all of your instant casts and HoTs in addition to your big spells, you can really push the proc to its limit and make sure it’s working even when your cast bar is tending to bigger things.

Procing the Ephemeral Snowflake as a Discipline Priest

This is a little bit harder. You’re glyphed so that your Power Word: Shield heals people, naturally, giving you the ability to get some of the procs of your insta-bubbles. Penance ticks pretty fast too, and you have Renew, even if it’s not spec’d. Your Prayer of Mending is working full-time, but your spec doesn’t let you get it out as fast, and it’s more expensive when you do. In short, you need to work out a better rotation.

Here’s how I found it worked the best:

1. Get the spare room for a Prayer of Healing glyph.
2. Instead of saying you’re a “tank healer,” volunteer to take care of the group your tank is in. Maybe throw all the tanks in group one.

Once you’re ready to start your endless Ephemeral Snowflake proc rotation, do this:

1. Renew the tank.
2. PW:S the tank for Borrowed Time.
3. Prayer of Healing the group. Hope the two HoTs are ticking totally off-beat with one another.
4. For six seconds, do all the bubbles and Penances you need to do. This should be getting the last third of the second, while Renew and PoH are picking up the other two-thirds of the second. Get a final PW:S off right before 6 seconds are up for another Borrowed Time.
5. PoH the tank again.
6. Refresh Renew as necessary, rinsing and repeating PoH every 6 seconds.

It’ll be a tighter squeeze than Holy healing, but it will work.

Is the Ephemeral Snowflake good for other classes?

Druids love this trinket, and for obvious HoT-gasm reasons.

Restoration shamans? Well, they can proc it with Riptide, but not with Earth Shield or the healing totem. Chain Heal also seems to give it a proc every bounce, though the bounces happen all at once, so you’re yet again looking at a restriction with the 0.33 second cooldown. In short, shammies are more questionable.

I don’t have enough experience with Holy paladins to assess that angle, but they have their own positive remarks on WoWHead, so something must be working. I’d be curious to hear a paladin’s opinion on it.

Where do I get one!?

Like what you’ve read? Then go get your very own Ephemeral Snowflake off Marwyn in Halls of Reflection! It works beautifully with a Darkmoon Card: Greatness for mana hogs like myself.