Ramp

In healing gameplay, a ramp is a process where healing buff effects are applied at a precise timing, which leads to the potential for a large amount of burst healing. Usually, a cast sequence is used to ensure exact and reliable timing of the application of these healing buffs and also generate some sort of buff extension. In some cases, once the damage has been received from the boss, then a second cast sequence may be used to activate the healing of these buffs, converting or otherwise making use of the buff to generate healing throughput. In short, most ramps involve healing buffs being applied, extended, and then activated by some other throughput ability.

Healing ramps are a key part of the Discipline priest, Mistweaver monk, Restoration druid and Preservation evoker playstyles. A list of these specializations and some examples of their key abilities or talents during a ramp follows (not an exhaustive list of all options):

Spec	Buff	Application	Extension	Throughput
Discipline	[Atonement]	[Power Word: Radiance] [Rapture]	[Evangelism]	Damage (eg [Mind Blast])
Mistweaver	[Renewing Mist]	[Rapid Diffusion]	[Rising Mist] [Thunder Focus Tea]	[Vivify] (via [Invigorating Mists])
Restoration Druid	[Rejuvenation]	[Luxuriant Soil]	[Flourish]	[Regrowth](via [Abundance])
Preservation	[Echo]	[Resonating Sphere]	[Stasis]	[Lifebind] [Emerald Communion] [Spiritbloom]

Holy priests, Holy paladins, and Restoration shamans are generally not considered ramp healers, as their abilities generally do not require an exact cast sequence to be timed leading up to a damage event. This does not necessarily mean that non-ramp healers cannot do burst healing. However, the mechanism by which those specializations perform it will be different to that of the ramp specializations.

Ramps tended to come into their modern forms around Legion. For example, this was the introduction of [Power Word: Radiance] which more rapidly applied [Atonement] to more targets than previous options.