Guide to Healing, Leading, and Progressing in WoW Raids
Matticus I stayed up late last night assembling a quick healer’s guide to Lord Marrowgar. You can find it over on WoW.com. Today’s going to be a very busy day for many guilds as they’ll be coming out of temporary retirement.
Remember, you have a multitude of options today:
If ICC is deemed too unstable, we’re going to fall back to options 2 or 3. Happy patch day!
Last week, I made a limited time offer to write a guest for any blogger who was interested. I’ve been hard at work since then and it’s been such a surreal experience. My main intent was to give myself a jumpstart and to help give back to the community.
When I was working on guest posts, there’s a few things that needed to be done. The first step is to analyze the blog and the comments in order to get a feel for what kind of readers that will be on there. I tried to tailor the post towards the audience of the site. The people that read Larisa’s Pink Pig Tail Inn are going to be vastly different than the people who read Zemalf’s Trek in the Blogosphere.
The thing when writing for other people, no matter who they are or what their blog size, is that you really want to put your best work forward. It’s like going to a friend’s house for dinner. You want to look presentable. Comb your hair (add a bit of gel, if you’re me). Dress nice. Be courteous because they’re the host and you don’t want to offend them. Find different ways to spice up your post. Write it as if it was going to be the last post you’d ever do and you wanted to go out with a bang.
Of course, if you really want to go the distance, you look up their code and find out what the width of their site is and send them pre-sized images without having to ask in advance thereby saving them the trouble of doing any cropping work. Look up what their commonly used headers are within posts and use those accordingly.
Anyway, here’s what I have so far.
Don’t worry, there’s still more to come. I do intend on honoring my commitments and I will make sure I get those posts out to you (those that made a request) by the end of the month.<
I figured I’d take the time here and now to clear the air.
When I was asked to take the position a year and some months ago, I felt I was the right person for the job and could do what they asked me to do. Some time later on, they were discussing the notion of reactivating Raid Rx (a column specifically about healing in raids). My workload had essentially doubled. Now the players that have read and followed along with my blog know that I am always going to be a team player. It doesn’t matter if it’s work related or gaming related. If I don’t think someone’s the right person for the job in a raid, I’ll ask them to step out for someone who I think can do better.
Hell, I voluntarily stepped out of healing a Tribute to Insanity run this week because I didn’t think I could pull it off without more time and practice.
With regards to Spiritual Guidance though, I was getting to the point where I was questioning my own work. In short, I didn’t think I could uphold the quality and content demands that the site – nay, the readers deserved. It’s difficult to come up with new and unique ideas on a weekly basis. Writing for WoW.com came with an added sense of pressure for me because I was always questioning my work and it’s relevance (you should see my recycle bin with all the crumpled papers and rejected ideas).
The problem is compounded further when the Priest writer isn’t as well versed in PvP or Shadow.
In short, I ran out of steam and I notified the editors before of this.
It’s time for someone else to come in and breathe new life to the column. I know the successor will do a better job then I. They’ll be joining a great crew of writers and personalities. I won’t be leaving as I’m still continuing Raid Rx along with other news stuff as it comes. This does help free up more time for me to work on other projects. Some players seem to forget that:
Of course, Modern Warfare 2 and Dragon Age might play an impact in there somewhere as well.
By the way, if you’re one of the many people that are applying for the position, feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions. I’m more than willing to set aside some time to have a quick chat about what to expect and other details.
But uh, do me a favour? Could you pull a Kanye on the new guy when he gets in? *wink*
This is a great question asked by Nibuca on Twitter which was brought to my attention by Gnomeaggedon.
Guild websites can be a great tool for communications between guild members and detailing raid accomplishments. You can use it to hold information for prospective recruits, keep track of loot that has been awarded and set up forums for active discussion between your players.
So here’s today’s questions for you all. I’m actually in the midst of writing a long post about guild website essentials, so consider this a research post designed to see if I’m on the right track.
Does your guild have a website? Do you use it or not, and why? What features would you consider important or expendable?
This was a post I’ve been debating myself repeatedly on whether or not to trash because I wasn’t sure if it was worth it. Comments from the recent survey asked for more case studies and as a result, I’ve decided to revisit and polish this up some more.
Note: This post was written several weeks ago so the time context may be off.
Quite frankly, Anub’arak 10 scares the crap out of me.
Tonight, we were planning to zip through ToGC 10 and get it down in order to acquire additional gear and tokens. Up to this point, we had been running with 3 healers: 2 Resto Druids and myself on my Priest.
Heading into the fight, we knew we’d have to drop down to 2 healers for the extra DPS on the boss. We drew straws. Syd and I lost (actually, of the 3 healers, our DPS alternates weren’t as good compared to his). This was the first time either of us would be healing this encounter.
The first several attempts were designed to get our feet wet with managing surface phases and burrow phases. I decided to give this fight a crack with me opening as Discipline. I would cover the tanks and Syd would take the rest of the raid. We both cover Penetrating Cold between my shields and her HoTs.
Both of the tanks I kept alive through a combination of Shields and Improved Renews. Yes, a Discipline Priest who uses Renew is a rarity, but I wasn’t going to debate on right or wrong ways. I had a job that involved keeping up 2 tanks alive at all costs. When that happens, you use every spell in the book regardless of your spec. Penetrating Cold seemed to hit me more often than not. I was reminded why Binding Heal was in the game.
Syd and I stood on the tail end of Anub for most of the night. Made the job easier for our tank if the Burrowers locked onto us before he could get to them. If I had the opportunity (which was rare), I’d sneak in a Shadow Word: Pain or Death once in a while.
The basic game plan was to overpower the initial 70%. If we hit two burrow phases, it would be game over.
At 5 seconds to burrow, we’d yank Anub from his ice patch and drag him off to the side. This way, if melee players get focused while beating on ads, they’d have enough clearance to jet to point 1 (actually, any player that gets focused goes to point 1). The next person that gets it shoots up to way point 2. The last person heads down to way point 3.
If the timer isn’t up by then, we play it by ear and bring down another orb.
Meanwhile, our players were kiting Anub to his designated spot. Players being pursued by scarabs were shielded and renew’d immediately. In the event I had nothing to do, I’d chip on scarabs with a Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death nuke (just like Arena).
I remember one time watching Anub getting perilously close to Syd and she managed to break into Cat form and sprint, which brought us a few precious seconds before he resurfaced.
The second surface phase was a basic repeat of the first. Once we tipped him over, everything changed and this is where it got really interesting.
Note: This is where you want to start reading
My mana was at the point where it was time to break out the Shadowfiend. How convenient Heroism was used after he had spawned! I made sure the tanks were properly shielded and HoTTed at all times. Penance, Greater Heal and Flash Heal were cycled among the two tanks. I heard the distinctive cue of Tranquility firing off. I did my best to balance shields on Penetrating Cold targets as well.
Try as I might, I couldn’t do it. Our Anub tank died while the beetle was at 17% or so.
The next attempts were more of the same.
Main tank dead at 12%.
Main tank dead at 15%.
This was true triage.
Whatever I was doing, it wasn’t enough. Frustration, anger, you name it, I felt it. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the Disc Priest class.
There was something wrong with me.
Syd, with her uncanny knack of detecting my mood (must be a girl thing) suggested the brilliant idea of me going Holy and her looking after tanks instead.
Before I forget, I wanted to mention that we became more disciplined in our cooldown use. We decided to script our cooldowns in advance. We had a Prot Paladin, 2 Druids (Boomkin and Resto) and a Priest. In other words, we had 3 outs. The Druids were placed in separate groups for Tranquility.
We had no troubles adjusting to surface or submerged phases. We hit the 30% mark again and it was do or die time.
For group healing, I kept a hasted Prayer of Healing ready for the second group while a glyphed Holy Nova was reserved for mine.
The players were lowered to 50-60% ranges before firing off heals. Empowered Renews were placed on Penetrating Cold targets at all times and the tanks if they were getting too low. We were all within close proximity of each other. Surge of Light activations were held for sudden Penetrating Cold victims (like if they were at medium health and gained the debuff).
Once I felt we were about to get overwhelmed, I called out for a Tranquility. Syd lit hers while our Boomkin shifted out and casted his well.
I started to run low on mana. I brought everyone back up before a Divine Sacrifice was called and gambled Hymn of Hope. In hindsight, I should have Hymned during the Tranquilities (again, learn from my mistakes).
It must have felt like an eternity. I wasn’t sure how much further we could go. I shot off an Inner Focused Divine Hymn in desperation on the final stretch. We had nothing else left. Heal after heal was cycled while I was inwardly praying for him to fall over. Last ditch Desperate Prayer saved me after another nasty Penetrating Cold.
Our Mage died. It looked like the raid was about to buckle, but Anub managed to fall over first before we did.
In recent weeks, we’ve used two groups to successfully bring down Anub that featured Holy Paladin/Resto Shaman and Disc Priest/Resto Shaman healers. I hope you’ve taken something away from the post and I’ll see if I can do more case studies in the future.