Guide to Healing, Leading, and Progressing in WoW Raids
Matticus Matt’s note: Not WoW Related. Can mark as read.
I had just finished class and was on my way home. I’m waiting at one of the university bus loops and I see an ad taped to the glass pane on the bus shelter. I told a friend of mine to take a picture of it and send it to me later. You can’t say he hasn’t attracted interest though. It looks like he’s got at least 3 takers. I wonder if this method actually works.
Photo courtesy of Kiefer-Rocks
I’m into the whole action hero counter-terrorism deal. I read a lot of Tom Clancy (Rainbow Six) when I was younger. I like to play special forces oriented shooters when I’m not playing Warcraft. I check out 24 every so often when it’s showing on TV. Jack Bauer is one of my favourite fictional characters. Hell, if I could have the guy as my Guild leader, I’d be all over it. I mean sure he’s a little intimidating, but if you can look beyond his torturing and his willingness to kill, he seems like a nice guy that gets things done.
He’d roll a Warrior, I bet.
There’s a lot of important lessons you can find from his quotes throughout the years and I feel that raiders would benefit from it. Potential new raiders would also benefit from the wisdom of Jack Bauer. So what is he trying to tell you? What is he trying to say? I will do my utmost to translate his words into something you can understand and interpret.
[to Audrey, who was held by the Chinese for a few months]
Jack Bauer: I know what it’s like to feel like it’s never going to end.
Welcome to raiding. It’s a huge time investment. You almost never know when it’s going to end. After a while, you’re going to wish that it will end especially on marathon nights when Guild leaders are in their "just one more attempt" mood. There will be nights where you will wipe repeatedly for a long time and it really is going to feel like it’s never going to end.
But hey, Jack Bauer was in a Chinese prison for 20 months. You’ve only had to wipe on Kael for 6 hours. Suck it up and move on, soldier.
[from Season 5 preview]
Jack Bauer: If you don’t tell me what I want to know, then it’ll just be a question of how much you want it to hurt.
At the top of my blog, there is a banner with five glowing words that encompass the overall principle that I hold dear not just in Warcraft but in life: Power Through Knowledge and Reason. Only with knowledge can one understand power. But only with reason can that power be used wisely. There are some things that players must know when raiding. There are gimmicks, traps, toys, and other random garbage being thrown our way. We have to know what they are. If we don’t know it, then we can’t prepare ourselves for it. If we don’t have a clear understanding of what we need to know, then it will hurt us big time.
Jack Bauer knows just about everything. If there’s something Jack Bauer doesn’t know, he’ll torture someone until he finds out. You just have to get off the couch and do a bit of reading and watch some videos.
Nina Myers: You’re lying.
Jack Bauer: Yes I am. But you’re still going to have to trust me.
Trust is a hard thing to do in a raid. No one likes to trust their fate on the ability of other players. If you’re like me, you’re a control freak and you want to be the only factor that affects your own fate. We don’t have that luxury in raids. I don’t deliver my promises all the time, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t trust my ability as a healer. Could you imagine what raiding would be like if no one trusted each other? Tanks would constantly break CC targets because they didn’t trust hunters to control them. Priests would bust fears on nearby mobs. Mages would blow ice block and blink cooldowns because they wouldn’t trust healers to keep them up. Nothing would get done! Sometimes you have to place your e-life in the hands of others to get what you want: phat lewt.
Of course, Jack Bauer doesn’t trust anybody. He doesn’t trust his friends, coworkers or his own government. Unfortunately, none of us are skilled as Jack Bauer when it comes to getting things done.
Jack Bauer: That’s the problem with people like you, George. You want results, but you never want to get your hands dirty. I’d start rolling up your sleeves.
Raiding has some seriously enticing rewards especially to those that want to be the best. But you can’t just waltz in there and expect to get things handed to you. You have get down there and do the work on your own. Skill and talent or hard work and effort? I’d rather take the latter, personally. You can’t expect to stand there and spam one button to do the job, unless you’re a Resto Shaman. Going AFK isn’t going to cut it either. Raiding means that you have to seriously raid and work hard. Often times, it isn’t the most glorious of roles but someone has to do it.
From this, we learn that Jack Bauer is like most people. He rolls his sleeves up. Except when he rolls his sleeves up, it’s because he doesn’t want to get blood on his shirt.
Jack Bauer: I like working with you, Chase; you’re a nice kid. But don’t you ever come into my office and talk to me like that again, do you understand me?
There’s a certain kind of unspoken rule that needs to be followed when raiding. You should never openly question your raid leader. If he asks for help or suggestions, that’s okay. But never, ever override or tell others to do something else that the raid leader has already committed the raiders to do. That is a big giant no-no. You don’t talk to him in a condescending or disrespectful manner either. Because at the end of the day, he’s still your superior. If you want to continue raiding with the Guild you’re in, you better be able to follow those rules or else you won’t be in that Guild much longer.
Jack Bauer doesn’t take crap from anybody.
Uber Priest blogger Ego has converted from WordPress.com to a self-hosted WordPress. Congratulations on the move =)!
Don’t forget to update your bookmarks and your RSS reader.
She now has her own corner of the Internet at egotisticalpriestdotcom.
At first glance, most players might not recognize what that is. As Shamans, we have a huge variety of tools at our disposal to deal with buffs and spellcasts. Jin was sporting a spiffy addon throughout WSG weekend and I had to ask him about it. It’s called Shaman Friend. Basically, it outputs selection actions into party chat, raid chat, say chat, or raid warning.
Totally handy for PvP action. I wonder if there’s something like that for Priests.
I pulled this list right from the Curse description.
– Alert if no Elemental Shield is present in combat
– Alert if no Weapon Enchant is present in combat
– Show total Windfury damage on screen with crits/misses
– Show buffs removed by Purge and/or broadcast the buffs to the chat window
– Show spell interrupted by Earth Shock and/or broadcast it to the chat window
– Show a message when Lightning Overload procs
– Show how the duration of Frost Shock on your target are affected by Dimnishing Return and showing when Diminishing Return goes off.
– Show when your Grounding Totem absorbs a spell
– Show when one of your T5 bonuses procs
– Option to select which sound to use when notified (or turn it off completely)
– Can print messages in MSBT, SCT, Parrot and a few others.
– Show a message whenever you cast Bloodlust/Heroism or Mana Tide
– Separate frame allowing for easy Earth Shield tracking and recast
So what’re you waiting for? Go grab it now!
We killed Gorefiend a week or two back. In the next two weeks, I picked up an Amice of Brilliant Light, Angelista’s Sash, Boots of the Divine Light, and a Cowl of Benevolence. Those are big stamina upgrades for me. I rotated out my wings in favour of chain heads on my shoulders. With the exception of the Amice, the boots and cowl have been gemmed and enchanted to provide an additional boost of stamina in the event that extra health is needed in favor of healing. Now I’ve got two sets at my disposal depending on the circumstances.
Picked up Vindicator boots for my Ret. Paladin. This brings up my hit rating to 97. Think that’s a bit much? I’ll have to find someone with the Surefooted enchant to place on them boots. No point in putting on Boar’s Speed or Cat’s Swiftness since I already have the talent speed increase.
I’m working on a new version of my blogroll that I mentioned yesterday. Maybe just some more cosmetic changes and I’ll leave it at that. I’m at a complete loss as to how to even organize the entire thing.
Oh, and I apparently hit the 500 post plateau a few days ago. Here’s to more posts for the rest of the year =)!
My 5 part series for this month looks at the problems that new raid healers may come across.
The week before, I interviewed the blogging queen herself, TJ. Last week, Kestrel flipped it around and interviewed me.
Past columns I have written that still hold true to this day.
