Guide to Healing, Leading, and Progressing in WoW Raids
Matticus I finished my 3rd exam today. I have one more tomorrow. I’ll be back in full swing after that!
For the time being, you may amuse yourself with my freshly implemented poll.
Wish me luck!
P.S. I don’t like this python scripting language. It makes my head hurt.
Matticus’ Note: This is a guest post from a friend of who has no blogging experience whatsoever but still did a great job nonetheless. I have another exam in about an hour. Thanks Brendan! Post has been edited for clarity and such.
First off, let me say I’m not a writer/blogger in any way, shape or form. I’m writing this because an idea popped into my head, and I’m tired of studying for finals. This blogging stuff is a nice change from the 17 credits of math I have this semester that engineers are supposed to know.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but my view of PUGs (Pick-Up Groups) has gone downhill since BC came out. It started out fine, pugging some people to get some experience while exploring the new instances in outlands. As a druid, and usually feral to boot, I wanted to get exalted with Cenarion Expedition ASAP to pick up my Earthwarden (best tanking weapon until SSC trash). I was in a small guild at the time and there were only a handful of us hitting 70 at the same time. It wasn’t easy to get a group to grind out Steam Vaults a dozen times a day for the required rep. I would turn to PUGs to accomplish this. For the most part, this went the same way to get revered with most of the factions. Even with quested items and random greens in most people’s gear, normal mode was still fairly easy. Subsequently, after doing countless runs of instances for rep, people would replace their greens with decent blues and fill out their dungeon 3 sets. More importantly, people would learn the instances, know what bosses/mobs did what, who to CC, where to go and such. By the time the rep was obtained to be able to hit up the heroics, people had knowledge/gear to stand a chance, and knew how to play their class.
This is all well and good, but then comes 2.3 and heroic keys only require honored. With pretty much any faction, you can obtain honored by doing their quests and 1-2 clears of each of their instances (sometimes even less than that!). What does that mean? People try to get into heroics still wearing their quested blues/greens, and not knowing what the heck is going on. It used to be a reasonable bet that when you pugged for a heroic, the people you got were somewhat decent, because they had done the run on normal at least a dozen or so times, and had decent gear. Now, you don’t get that confidence.
I’ve heard many stories (and experienced a few) in guild chat, of people pugging a couple slots for whatever heroic when there weren’t quite enough people online from the guild to do it with. There have been melee hunters that shoot their own traps, priests that only used flash heal (“lol greater heal takes too long”), tanks that can’t hold aggro on a single mob, mages who don’t know what a sheep is, pally tanks who consecrate on top of all the CC, and multitudes of other things. Even if you don’t get these kinds of people, there are simply people that don’t have the gear and they will get destroyed by the trash. In some instances, groups will not have enough DPS to burn down adds on bosses, making heroics all but impossible. Then there’s the issues of ninjas, people leaving unexpectedly, “know-it-alls” saying that their strat works and that t4/t5 group leader doesn’t know what he’s talking about… but those are just general PUG rarities that can happen anytime.
Now, this may sound like just a gripe with the heroic key rep change. It’s great for people trying to gear alts who don’t want to grind out the reputation to do the instances, and usually can be carried through by decent guildies. But that’s an entirely different story. The issues mentioned are more adamant to happen with PUG groups. And at least with people you know, usually there is some sort of voice communication being used, which lessens the pain of inexperience in one or two group members.
All in all, I tend to stay away from PUGs. For the most part, it’s just a repair bill waiting to happen. One of my friends who would accept a PUG invite on his main to anything from RFK to heroic Shattered Halls (one of my least favorite instances w/o a well geared Paly tank, or 2 Druid tanks), now thinks twice before pugging anything past normal difficulty. I refuse to do them, and I get at least a couple of tells a day asking to tank or heal PUGs. I usually let them down nicely, saying I’m not the spec they want (people go away so fast when I tell them I’m balance), or that I’m logging soon (which is usually the case).
This wasn’t really an informative post, just my personal gripes with heroic PUGs, which I’m sure more than a few people can relate to. Hopefully at least a couple of you agree with what I wrote, and it wasn’t an entire waste of time reading. But if not, I’ll go back to my horrendous amounts of number crunching engineering stuff and leave the blogging to the bloggers.
When Brendan’s not busy crunching numbers, he plays a horde Feral druid on… some server. I can’t remember. But thanks for the heroic insight!
“First off i have to commend you for your hard work at making your blog the only one i have ever read. World of Matticus has almost all of the priest information i could hope to read and I have put to use many of the tips found therein. But i can’t find anything about the debate of Staff vs Mace+Offhand (healingwise). Is there a certain point where a staff would be better than the duel wielding combo? Is a mace-offhand settup always better? Please let me know what you think. Thank you for your limited time.”
That was an email I received from a player last night. Incidentally enough, I had a post about this already lined up. What excellent timing!
Back before Burning Crusade, there was one weapon that truly defined a Priest. Those who had it were idolized by Priests everywhere. When you saw it on the back of a Priest in front of you, immediately you would feel an aura of safety. I am referring to [item]Benediction[/item]. Oh how times have changed.
I’m going to present argument from two different sides: The best possible Priest approach and the team Priest approach.
Do you want to be THE Priest? Do you want to have so much healing and MP5 that you can bring back Elvis? Then this is the setup for you. From what I’ve noticed, a Priest with an MH/OH combo will have slightly higher healing bonuses and a little more mana regeneration than a player with a Staff. But staves aren’t completely useless in their own right. They might lose a bit of +healing when compared to to the MH/OH, but there’s a lot more stats (stamina, intellect, etc). Therefore, if you care that much about min/maxing your Priest (in other words, making it as best as possible), then grabbing an MH/OH is the best way to go. But you have to realize that you’re not the only class that is able to use it.
You’ll be in direct competition with Paladins and Shamans (maybe Druids).
You don’t want to be the best Priest possible. You know that all the maces are being greedily eyed upon by the other healers because they are way more powerful. You also know that your fellow healers won’t give that awesome healing staff a chance and that it will get sharded. I have seen this happen far too many times. Healers are passing on items that help them in favour of getting an even better item. You may or may not know of my thoughts about this. Precious loot should not be wasted because you never know for sure when you will get the weapon that you want. I never once saw Light’s Justice or Shard of the Virtuous on my Priest.
I hope you can understand my main argument here. I’m not arguing from the perspective of being the super best healer. I’m arguing from the perspective of a healer who wants to contribute to the best of his or her ability with the tools they have.
By accepting the staff, you remove yourself from competing against the Shammies and the Pallies. Let them fight over the mace and spend their precious DKP. A simple minimum bid just gave you nearly the same amount of healing at half the price. Again, this is dependent on your Guild and the style of loot distribution that you have.
Think about your raid healer setup.
In Carnage, we have:
The Paladins and Shamans are going to go after 1H’s because they want something to complement their Shields. The other holy Priest doesn’t like staves. That leaves me to obtain loot at half price because these turkeys aren’t going to use it anyway! By taking it, I benefit the raid as a whole because it increases my healing and speeds up the gearing process.
I even save a little DKP because I don’t have to bid on both a mace and an offhand. I don’t have to wait for 2 bosses to drop the 2 items that I need. I only need to kill 1 boss repeatedly.
I am sacrificing my potential to be the best possible Priest later to help the raid now.
Whatever weapon you choose to go with is affected by different factors.
Just understand that arguments can be made for either class. I don’t view myself as a selfish raider. I want to get to the end of the game as fast as possible and if I have to lose 30 healing over it, then I can sleep soundly with no problems. Besides, the extra stamina means I’ll live just a bit longer then Paulina Priest over there.
That’s why I opted for my new staff instead of waiting on Vasj to drop her mace.
What weapon do you use?
Total Voters: 34
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I am now packing some serious heat. Well, no not really. But my healing has gone up slightly. Before, my main weapon was the [item]Crystalheart Pulse-Staff[/item] which dropped from Mag. Now I have the [item]Ethereum Life-Staff[/item] which drops from Solarian in Tempest Keep. Actually, they both look the same. The Crystalheart is the same model except the crystals on either end are red.
Anyway, let’s compare the stats. For raid simulation (and the fact that I still had the buffs going from Tempest Keep), I consumed the three main Priest consumables:
I applied the mana oil to both of my staves just so I could save myself the trouble of having to do math. I can keep Mallet suspended until I raid with him again on Thursday anyway. Remember, I do not have any raid buffs on other than consumables. Take a look at the following shot:
First, let’s keep in mind that my Crystalheart Pulse-Staff has a +81 Healing enchant on it whereas my Ethereum Life-Staff has no enchants on it. I lost a small piece of healing crit chance, but I’m not worried about that too much. I also see a decrease in my healing by 30 points.
The above shot is the Crystalheart and the below shot is that of the Ethereum.
Comparison
The stat points were fairly marginal at best. I gained 1 stamina and lost 6 intellect (10 health, 60 mana). But look at the amount of Spirit that I gained. I picked up a whopping 62 spirit. A quick glance on the tooltip on the side shows that I lose 4 mp5 while casting, but I gain 23 mp5 while not casting.
So herein lies the dilemma. My original intent was to use one staff as my main healing staff and the other one to regenerate mana. Now I’m wondering which one to use for which.
I’m seriously considering putting Spellsurge on the Ethereum because I want to help my party out a bit more. I’m almost positive I can guarantee the effect to proc when the hidden cooldown is up.
Most raiding encounters are endurance based. They depend on how long you can keep your assigned tanks alive instead of how much you can keep them alive for. Since I already have 81 Healing on my Crystalheart, it seems kind of weird (AND STUPIDLY EXPENSIVE) to re-enchant it again with Spellsurge and put 81 Healing on my new Ethereum.
I lose the nice 4 MP5 while casting with the new staff. As a raiding Priest, I’m not going to be idling. I’m going to be using my global cooldown fairly often by tossing renews and PoMs everywhere. I will rarely, if ever, get chances to sit and just regen my mana. No one in my Guild uses Spellsurge at the moment. But maybe I can influence them to create a Spellsurge mana endurance group.
It looks so easy when you’re comparing enchants on 1 weapon. When you’re working with 2, it makes it a little more difficult because now you have to start planning for different scenarios.
How much mana do I gain as I’m casting spells?
How much mana do I gain when I’m not?
How much healing do I lose?
Is the decrease in healing worth the extra longevity?
How much mana do I gain back if I were to be innervated?
What will benefit my healing the most?
What will benefit my raid the most?
Even now it’s not an easy question for me to answer. Everything looked so simple the first time when I compared 81 Healing with Spellsurge. But there’s a lot more to take into account when you are a raiding Priest.
Any healers out there? Discussion of any kind would help. Maybe there’s a point that I’ve forgotten.
Matt’s Note: Today’s guest post comes from a friend and colleague of mine from Curse. Thanks to Indelible for his help! You may or may not find it… disturbing and/or depressing. I finished exam #2 yesterday. 2 down, 2 to go and it concludes Saturday afternoon. Then I’ll go back to my daily routine of a near post-a-day rate.
It’s Sunday. It’s 12.45. It’s that time of day when you’ve just got out of bed and the air around you feels fresh and exciting. It’s damn cold as well and I want to go back to sleep. I can’t however as I was asked by Matticus to provide him with a guest blog about something wholesome and interesting…
I have however, run in to one major problem…
What exactly is there left to talk about? We’ve had our token PvP and PvE blogs. We’ve got our class blogs and our spec blogs. We’ve even got our blogs about other blogs. The blogging world is just a sphere of repetativness. What one blogger covers one week, is another bloggers gold mine the next and we end up going round in these viscious circles that claim the lives of many a blogger.
I guess that is what I shall talk about then. To hell with TheoryCraft and, “How To…” guides. To hell with Top 5 lists and, “You should try…” blogs. I’m going to talk about… something.
I’ll think of something in a second…
I’m not an expert. I don’t know who started the very first blog. I don’t know much about the political side of blogging. All I know is that blogs have gone from being an obscure entity deeply hidden in the depths of the Internet, much like forums and Paris Hilton, to one of the single largest outlets of moronic and arrogant point making. They are sometimes opinionated, sometimes interesting and fullfilling, mostly painfull and anger-inducing; probably one of the most testing media arms in the known World, closely followed by Sky News.
Sounds like the perfect place to succeed, right?
Wrong. Blogging has to be one of the single most time consuming and effort involved activities you could ever undertake as a passtime. On average, I spend about 1 to 2 hours a day on my varying blogging efforts, and that doesn’t include side projects I am exploring and moderation duties at Curse so blogging really does b(l)og me down…….
I’m sorry. I’m in one of those moods.
Now, this neatly leads on to why you are all here (because I’ve finally thought about something to talk about properly). Well, it does in my head. I don’t actually think any of the above has any relevance to what I am going to be discussing but I’ve had a long day (despite the fact that I only just woke up) and you’ll have to sift through the crap to find the good bits… like with meat and… stuff. You are all here to get your daily WoW fix. I know that I have started off poorly and it is getting worse. You are worried you will be seeing pink Tauren’ if I don’t hurry up with the WoW-speak, right? Well, you are in luck as that is about to start now as we compare…
I can only think of one thing in the world worst than reading a blog or worse than writing a blog when you have major writers block.
Blogging – ’tis an art form.
Grinding – ’tis horrid. I hate it. I hate you for putting up with it. I hate me for hating you for putting up with it as I put up with it and put up with you putting up with it. Meh.
Both blogging and grinding are evil. Pure unaltered evil. They are fonts of the most sinister and horrid evil you will ever come across. They make the Devil look like one of the Teletubbies. Stand Illidan next to the personification of blogging and Illidan will cry like a baby. The personification of grinding is a stereotype and we all know what stereotype that is (you can see the fat man from South Park too :o) so I feel no need to add wit to my point.
They are both evil. There is no doubt of that. My girlfriend thinks I’m sad for playing PC games all the time. She thinks I’m even more sad for writing about those PC games. Mostly, she takes pity upon me. Both blogging and grinding are the evils that destroy social lives around the world but which one is more evil?
Grinding.
An Example… sort of
Oh this is fun. I want this flask, right? I need 25 Glowing Bits of Leaf (?) and 600 Roots of Lesser Drop Chance. I need them by next Wednesday. You’d think that was a fairly respectable amount of time to have to get yours stuff together, right? Well, you’ve never played Lifeless Gaming Online have you? I can tell you that Roots of Lesser Drop Chance only drop off Mobs of Lesser Spawning and, as the name suggests, it takes hours to find the things… and we haven’t even started on the Glowing Bits of Leaf yet.
All in all, grinding sucks. I needed 200 stacks of Netherweave Cloth. That doesn’t sound like a lot when you think about how many mobs drop Netherweave but I’m one of these people who finds the act of grinding hard to swallow. Let me put it this way…
Day 1
I woke up this morning – ’twas a nice day. The sun was shining. The birds were chirping. Even the old woman out back waved to me as I stared like a lifeless, mindless automaton out of my bedroom window.
So I went downstairs, got a cup of Coffee, admired the back of my hand for a while and then…
Spent the next 7 hours of my life on Ventrillo, talking to the rest of my 5 man guild group. We’d arranged to go Netherweave farming in Netherstorm.
Good times.
Day 5
The sun wasn’t shining today. There were no birds.
I’ve installed sound proofing. The constant chirping was breaking my concentration. The black out curtains have limited the glare on my monitor. I was finding it hard to see the goddamn drops.
My girlfriend’s told me to get a job. I’ve looked around but no one wants to sponsor me to play WoW. She says that isn’t what she meant. I don’t know what she means.
Today is once again Netherweave day. We’ve all (25 man raid groups ftw) decided to go to Netherstorm again and make a day of it. Mark is taking his picnic set. Jack is bringing the fireworks. It should be fun, especially with the Leather Ball Sally crafted last night.
Good times.
Day 15
She left me. We were sitting in Orgrimmar chatting and she said she met a Nelf called MoreManly who had taken her heart away from me. I sobbed. She rofl’d.
She left me too. She said that a job wasn’t just going to walk through the door. I said that I was looking for sponsors but all the good ones had been taken. She said that that was the only reason she got with me. She took the kids.
We’re off to Shadowmoon to farm Primals. I have enough Netherweave for my Frozen Shadoweave Robe but Johnny needs my Shadowcloth for guild tailoring so I’m going to have to spend all of today farming Primals and Netherweave.
Good times.
And so on and so forth.
It is tragic; when your life is reduced to grinding. Your girlfriends leaves you and your kids disown you and yet the most immediate thing on your mind is Shadowmoon Valley.
The first part of this entry was really a look into my mind and the way I blog – chaotically with no clear purpose. The second part was almost entertaining and informative but was, mostly, High School humour.
I apologize.
It has been a long day but I would like to thank Matticus for allowing me to infest his blog with this poison. I’ve had fun.