Back in the old EQ days I ran a Cleric for a long time and thought I would pass on a few of the things we did during long boss fights. This can apply to any caster group, which I will become apparent as I go. 

Basic Idea: 

Using private chat channels (FSE-Priest for example) create pooled chat channels for various activities and output from Macros to alert the next caster in line that they need to begin a macro and continue the casting loop. 


The Setup: 

MT chain heal example: 

Requirements: Priests would be assigned heal positions. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Macros would be created for each healer to use that read something like (I don't know the macro formula so bear with me) 

Priest 1: 
-&gt; say in priest channel: &quot;Priest 2 begin casting&quot; 
-&gt; cast heal spell 

Priest 2: 
(mash macro when mesasge appears..which with human reaction time/chat lag would be a couple of seconds after priest 1 mashed macro giving a 2-3 second overlap on a 4 second spell...we can fine tune this as we experiment) 
-&gt; say in priest channel: &quot;Priest 3 begin casting&quot; (priest 1 if only 2 priests) 
-&gt; cast heal spell 

(rinse and repeat) 

This would end up with very little overlap of heals and even out aggro gained between the parties casting. 

The application of this type of strategy would work for mages/locks/any dmg casting class as well and would (in a long fight) even out aggro due to no single caster mashing faster then anyone else. 

Now obviously boss fights vary and augmentation would be needed for those variations but it was a clean way to make sure that mistakes or overlapping heals (ie. waisted mana) were reduced during long fights when mana becomes precious. 

Almost every guild I was in had a method similiar to this for approaching epic battles. Whether this strategy can be used in WoW needs to be determined but I wanted to table it for discussion at the least.