Assigning Healing Strategy – Part 4: Addons to Make Raid Life Easy

Welcome to the fourth in a 5 part series here on World of Matticus. For the next several weeks, I?ll be covering the rare topic of assigning raid heals. No one really wants to do it but it?s the most important job in the raid and I?ll provide a basic overview of the process and some advanced tips!

In case you missed it:

1. Week 1: Recognizing Class Strengths
2. Week 2: Double Shifting Your Healers
3. Week 3: The Pivot Healer

Yeah I slacked off for two weeks. Bad thing to do when writing a series. But I have an excuse! We’ve called our raids until the start of the school year and I couldn’t very well post healing assignment stuff without actual screenies now could I?

When it comes to raiding addons, players will typically use one or the other. Most players would never dream of mixing and matching addons because it feels redundant, it’s a waste of system resources, and it would add to the overall general clutter of the screen.

For assigning healing, we are blessed with a wide variety of addons to make our life easier than healing a full T6 Prot Warrior with the Bulwark of Azzinoth carrying the flag in Warsong Gulch.

Anyway, there’s a multitude of healing assignment addons that we can use to help quarterback and direct our healers in raids.

But who says we’re restricted to only using 1?

Why not use more than 1 for different parts of the raid?

Before the days of addons and mods and all these funky gadgets that make our life easier, healing QBs used to rely on the tried and true method of pen and paper in order to organized their thoughts. After they’d come to a satisfactory list of who-heals-who, it would then be painstakingly macro’d and transmitted in game in WoW.

Thankfully, we don’t have to do that anymore. And now, onto the choices!

Heal Assign

Source: Curse

Pros

• Lets healers assign themselves
• Also allows raid leaders and assistants to assign healers accordingly

Cons

• Requires everyone to download the addon
• Command line interface, no GUI

Healing Assigner

Source: Curse

Pros

• Really easy point and click interface
• Assignments are saved in case of disconnect
• Exports to Raid, Guild, Party, and custom channels
• Can assign the same healers to multiple targets

Cons

• Can be a bit tedious due to constant switching between bosses
• Only 10 assignments can be dealt

Heal Organizer

Source: Curse

Pros

• Drag and drop interface is a nice touch
• Syncs with MT targets
• Can assign Dispels if needed
• Can save healing instructions for later recall
• Allows people to whisper the heal QB if they forget their assignments (for shame)

Cons

• Doesn’t seem to be able to handle multiple assignments for 1 healer
• Requires MT targets
• Up to 8 targets
• Maximum of 4 healers per tank

Putting it to use

I did try using Heal Assign for a while but I quickly shelved it in favor of using Healing Assigner and Heal Organizer.

The two-addon method is especially effective in multi-stage encounters like Illidan and Leo. There are times when you have to change up the tanks or the tanks healers to adapt to the different parts of the fight.

If the bosses have been on farm for a while, then I’ll set up Heal Organizer for trash healing orders really quick. Note how Heal Organizer automatically pulls the list of tanks from the MT list. It saves you the effort of having to pick out specific targets. Each tank is limited to 4 healers. It doesn’t appear to be possible to assign crosshealers . For example, I am not able to assign myself (Mallet) onto Kimbo, Inscrutiable and Artillery.

The raid that this shot was taken in was a Gruul’s Lair pug. The total amount of possible healers we have 13. This is incorrect as we were packing 6 (or it might have been 7). The addon does not  differentiate between specs. In other words, you might end up having Ret or Prot Paladins as well as Feral Druids and Enhancement Shamans clogging up the list. You need to be aware of the individual specs that these players are in order to be effective otherwise your raid will be in a world of hurt (and surprise) when that Feral Druid is assigned to healing.

The Gruul’s Lair example

Now that we get to the actual boss, things become a little more complexicated. I have to make sure there’s enough heals to go around. I need to make sure that the right tanks get the heals that are proportional to the amount of damage they take. I’ll end up stacking 2 – 3 healers on the MT (2 direct healers, and a HoT class). In this case, I picked a Priest and a Paladin to take care of our main tank (Kimbo).

The Shaman was going to be kited by 2 Hunters. Remember the Shaman boss only focuses on one target before he Polys the guy and peels off to another one. I assigned one Paladin to heal both Hunters (Khalis).

Our Mage tank, Sheeptoucher, would be healed by Stupyd, one of our other stronger healers. The rest were filled out accordingly.

The thing about using this mod is that you have to physically click and target members within the raid. Pick the healer first then press Set. Pick their assignment, then click assign. If no one is selected, it will default to either ‘Unassigned’ or ‘raid’. Between this and Heal Organizer, I use this mod more frequently as I’m given much more flexibility and control in what I need to do.

The inability for it to save certain profiles means I have to reconstruct from memory who I assigned to whom last week. That’s the one main criticism I have. It’ll end up taking me 3 – 5 minutes at a time per boss fight.

Tip: Start setting up your healers on the boss about 2-3 trash pulls before you get to the boss.

Raid chat

Here’s what the 2 mods look like when echoed in raid chat.

Heal Organizer Includes a built in responder. When someone whispers you ‘heal’, it’ll automatically respond back with who they are supposed to heal. Warning: Feature may be subject to abuse by Huntards.	Healing Assigner A lot more straight forward, Healing Assigner will simply spit whatever you throw in there out into raid. If someone forgets, you’ll have to hit the “Report” button to repeat their job again.