PvP: The love-hate relationship

PvP for healers can be a great deal of fun, it can also suck more than a high school cheerleader on a Friday night after a bottle of crack daniels.

There is a lot of variety in what you're doing. Can you heal yourself without letting someone else die? Can you take the time to heal DPS A without losing DPS B? Can you heal A and B while under fire from a hordie and not dying yourself? It's an adrenaline rush and the perfect occupation for one with a deathwish. If you're a squishbot like myself, the answer to that last question is more than likely no btw.

Nukeage. One word, two syllables. Learn it, hate it, embrace it because there ain't a damn thing you can do about it. You have to survive, and chances are you'll have to do it yourself, most of the time dps would rather bitch about heals rather than spend 10 seconds keeping said heals alive. Question is how do you stay alive? The answer: Instant Casts!!!111oneone11!! /trumpetfanfare Why instant casts? Cause they can'ts be interrupteded, and if you get a school shutdown(i.e. Kick, Pummel, Earth Shock, Counterspell, Spell Lock) during a spell with cast time you are gonna die,

Lets break it down by class:

Squishbot! aka Priest: You are in luck, to offset our inherent squishiness we has some tasty instant casts. Put them up in this order and you ought to survive a few more seconds at least.
-Psychic Scream makes things run away... maybe, unless they have the PvP trinket, or are undead, or a warrior, or resist or have a fear ward, or don't feel like it /yay ... kinda
-Prayer of Mending is quite possibly the most useful tool ever, a heal that waits till something swats you to do its job, Fantastic! Plus it might bounce to someone nearby that could use it. Shazzam, nuff said.
-Power Word: Shield means not taking damage, it's instant, awesomesauce
-Renew is your last instant cast unless you are a dorf (like me /preen) or a human, if you've taken any damage before the shield it'll take care of a bit of it, and it's more healing that wrog/MS warrior/minion of doom will have to work through
-Time to pull out the racials, not race card /backoffJesse, racials. You've been playing long enough to know what they are, use them. If not I will explain more later.
-After all this it's time to take the risk of casting if you're still under fire, Flash and Binding heal /gogo! and pray that shield or prayer of mending comes back up soon. Rinse and repeat and hope to dear god you don't go oom.

Tree! aka Druid: You has the instant casts. You haz Tree form, which decreases damage taken, but slows you down, so if you can't get away it's great, if you can /Fthat! humanoid and travelform all the way.
-Lifebloom, the sooner it goes up, the sooner that final heal goes off and the longer you get that HoT
-Rejuvenation is awesome, renew on crack /jealousy
-Moar Lifebloom! Strengthen that HoT. Doo Eet
-Swiftmend to get the direct heal off the Rejuv without casting yay!
-Reup rejuv, really, you know you want to
-Natures Switness: Use it on a healing touch, but save this because two instants =2 gcds which = moar time getting whacked
-Risk time: you can either go bear and bash and try for a direct heal, go travel form and try to get away to use a direct heal, or you can just sit there and try to heal through and hope for no interrupts.
-Now you have to use Regrowth or go for the Oh Sh!t button aka Tranquility
- Hope something else is hitting what's hitting you and spam moonfire /gogo

Shamamanamans or Shaman if you prefer: Earth Shield, basically the crack baby of Prayer of Mending and Power Word : Shield, we hates you /shakingfist and Totemz to boot /sulk
-Earthshield: put this on yourself and you've given yourself a little while in which to get away.
-FRAWSTSHAWK!!11oneone1!!: Run Forest Run!
-Earthbind for more slowy goodness
-Kite that jerk like Ben Franklin in a thunderstorm
-When you have to make a stand start off with Healing Stream, Grounding, Searing, and Tremor, substitute when applicable for Earth and Air depending on what you're facing. Switch to Mana Tide and Mana Stream when you encounter mana drain effects or just get low
-If it's desperate use your Elementals if you can
-Racials may or not be applicable, use your best judgement
-Natures Swiftness is your oh Sh!t button, save it till you've got no other choice
-Cast time, ick. Stick with lesser healing wave, trolls can use beserking to speed it up a bit, thats about it. Good Luck and Kite, Kite Kite

Plateface or Paladins or as I prefer "tasty Priest snacks": PvP used to be your bag, you guys still survive a bit, but Bubble being dispellable takes the wind out of your sail a bit eh?
-You haz no instant casts besides bubbles /cry
-Highspeed Big heals and super efficient 1.5 sec heals to boot. The envy of instance healers, not of PvP healers, but they help
-Flash your face off and bubble as soon as you can and hope that a priest like me doesn't come along and tear you a new one
-Under the bubble drop those long bombs and hope they come fast enough
-You can run! ... sorta. Blessing of Freedom will let you run like a girl for 15 seconds before letting those mean ole dpsers slow you down again
-You can fight back! ... kinda. Holy Shock and Hammer of Wrath can knock out a DPS with low health, but you have to get lucky
-Hammer of Justice /shazzam ... /resistedagainwtf? My buddy is a holy pally and he swears this spell has a 400% resist chance
-You can melee, as silly as it sounds, Seal of Justice has a Stun proc that goes off fairly often, give that maces wrog a taste of his own medicine. /mmmm schnosberries
-That's kinda it, you get interrupted/locked and you are boned, also beware the manaburn! Priests be 3v1l, I knows I am one.

That, so far, is the Healers PvP Compendium according to Vid. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. You tell me.