Blizzard considering removal of downgraded spells, later mage boosters

[Mudd]

Please explain how downranking helps a priest be more viable. I don't know what you've healed, but this isn't standard in any 25 man raids to downrank. Priests aren't meant to roll HOTs or single target, they are meant to do a bit of everything and be pretty good at anything. No one else can do that.

You probably just proved my point. Its not standard for a priest to heal this way, and most priests don't but you will find that lots of priests do. You are right that priests can do everything, but there is a difference between doing everything, and doing everything well. The latter requires little tweaks and tricks that the 'standard' person doesnt do. As a poster above me said, its about squeezing getting 110% out of your class.

Rather than spamming low rank flash heals for 1k, how about get some greater heals for 5-8k every 2.5 seconds?

I think my rank 5 or 6 does 5-8k that, and I like having the option to use it if only 5-8k needed. Sure some encounters have spike damage which could use a 7.5-10k gheal, and when you learn the encounter you know when that will happen. Not every heal needs to land at max rank, but of course some do.

I use max rank flash for emergencies, down ranked for touch ups (based on health deficit). I don't need a max rank heal for 90% of the raid healing. Once again the decision is based on your knowledge of the encounter. If someone has a 3k health deficit and you know that they will not get hit again and you can afford the cast time, use a rank 1 gheal instead of a max rank flash and you just saved 100 mana (or 200 back in the T5 era!).

No one other than a tank rarely needs a max rank renew. I use rank 10 renew on warlocks who are low on mana so they can lifetap, or on raiders who are low on health and not at risk of dying and don't justify a 2.5 second cast.

Downranking is for mana efficiency. I use lower ranks whenever I can without compromising healing, and when shit hits the fan I have a larger mana pool to do those sexy big max rank heals while the others are begging for innervates and out of cooldowns. My rough guess would be that I gain ~30-40% effective mana by aggresively downranking without sacrificing any effective healing.

I've raided in top server/faction guilds from MC -> SW without the aid of ez-mode nerfs, when your kara progression team had the best blue gear on the server, when T5 was all you had going into hyjal/bt, before the ridiculous 2.3 regen buff, and quite often without a shadow priest. I'm not interested in your money, but thanks.