News and Opinion

General news and opinion about WoW.

Special Delivery: Rounding Of This Week’s Best WoW Posts

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So has everyone recovered from the New Year? I’m guessing you’re getting stuck into the wealth of new and changed features that Blizzard showered on us just before Christmas, then. I’ve read all kinds of reactions in the past week or so – people saying the raiding’s hard (but good!), people saying it’s hard argharghargh and folks not knowing which way is up with the new healing model. And let’s not talk about the subtle effects of Cataclysm’s new guild structure on guilds themselves.

Or maybe we will. I’ve gathered up some of the best healing, leading and guild-related posts from the blogosphere over the past week. You might remember from before Christmas that curating the blogosphere and sharing it with you is what I do, both here and over at MMO Melting Pot. Mind you, you might not remember… depends on your dark iron ale intake over the holidays I guess! Either way, let’s kick off 2011 with the first roundup from the blogosphere – which, suitably, has felt like its had a fresh injection of lifebloom…

  • Healing Tips For Magmaw – if you’re raiding Blackwing Descent and eyeing up the optional boss Magmaw, Tzufit’s got all you need to know. It’s a detailed post going through the everything from the Bad that your whole raid wants to avoid and the tricks the boss has up his sleeve. Throughout the post Tzufit includes little tips, like a chunk for healers on how to keep the tank alive while he’s being chomped, a trick for druids to help the raid move on time and along with it, a warning about what can go wrong.
  • Raiding Strategy, Redux – Analogue over at Looking for More has written up her guild’s policies and goals – primarily for her raidgroup, but she’s shared it with the rest of us too. The post covers everything from attendance and performance, raid composition, in raid behaviour and loot. All for a 10 man progression guild. Thought provoking post, and might be useful for guilds in similar positions.
  • The state Of Play; Resto Shaman 4.0.6 Preview Edition – The definitive article on how resto shamans are performing right now and how they’re likely to do in the near future. Vixsin opens up with a detailed look at resto shaman performance in all major group content – heroics, normal raids and heroic raids – and accompanies the review with some strong opinions on healing in general. She goes on to examine the incoming big changes to mana tide and what questions still remain unanswered as the patch looms.
  • Healer Evaluations – Kurn’s recently appraised her healing team and has ended up sharing the process with us. But she didn’t pick one of her healing team to be her example: she’s evaluated her own performance to give us an idea of how she handles healer performance evaluations. Her take on herself goes through various categories from attendence to being awesome and gives scores out of 5, along with brief commentary. At the end she tots the scores up and gives a summary of how she thinks things are going for the healer (e.g. herself, here) and what they should improve. Interesting reference for raid and healing leads.
  • Patch 4.0.6 PTR Resto Druid PvP Thoughts – not often we see articles on PvP healing, right? Bit of a change, then. Oom over at Oombulance has taken the patch notes and gone through them all with an eye how to how they’ll affect resto druid PvP play. He takes us through anything related, giving brief thoughts on how and why it’ll affect druid healers in PvP compared to how it is pre-patch.
  • Spirit/Intellect Relationship, evaluating gear choice – Jar’s breaking out the math and equations to work out gear/stat priorities for resto druids. If maths isn’t your thing, don’t worry – it’s still possible to get some useful information if the maths goes right over your head, as it did me. To tie it all up at the end Jar takes his findings and uses two trinkets as an example comparison to get you started.
  • And a quick shout out to Windsoar over at Jaded Alt, who’s been busy posting up great guides for some of the normal mode raid bosses this week. And she shows no sign of slowing down. Find them over on her homepage, and if what you’re looking for isn’t there yet – give a quick poke. I’m sure she’s either got it in the pipeline or can point you in the right direction.

That’s it for this week – was there something there for you, or are you looking for a topic the blogosphere didn’t cover?

Are run speed enchants still necessary?

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**Image of RoadRunner and Wile E. Cyote courtesy of Warner Brothers**

Do runspeed enhancements matter in raids?

  • Yes (61%, 207 Votes)
  • Murloc (26%, 87 Votes)
  • No (14%, 47 Votes)

Total Voters: 341

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Interesting topic that has come up over the course of the last few days. In Wrath it was mandatory for every raider I know to have some form of run speed enhancement either in the form of a boot enchant, talent that increased speed, or a meta gem that increased your run speed. In many cases if you didn’t have one, you didn’t raid.

A couple days ago, while auditing the profiles of our soon to be raiders, the question came up as to whether or not we really need the running enhancement anymore. The thought that sparked this was basically that with the unforgiving mechanics of Cataclysm in full effect, will that little extra run speed actually matter? Take Magmaw for example, he has two abilities that the raid needs to get away from. His little volcanic eruption that summoned parasites, and will throw you into the air high enough to cause falling damage on top of the initial fire damage. The other ability boils half the room alive, causing massive damage.

In the recent 10 mans I’ve run, I noticed that the vast majority of people did not have any form of increased run speed. Shockingly enough, the only deaths we had were some tank deaths resulting from learning the healing of a new encounter, and well, that’s pretty much it. No one died to parasites, explosions or being boiled alive. Now before you say anything, while I love my guildies and raiders, some of those in attendance have what I like to call “shiny object syndrome” and even they were able to avoid “standing in the bad”. Now I have also seen many people even with the run speed boost die to something that was telegraphed because they didn’t move early enough, leaving the run speed boost doing nothing.

There’s no question about it, the game is much more punishing than it was before. Part of this is due to the new raid and boss designs, the other part is that healers can’t compensate like we used to. Before, if you got caught in the bad, the faster you got out of it, the more likely we could power heal through it. Now though, if you get caught in the bad, even for a few short seconds, you’re pretty much likely to be much raid-kill.

So that leads us to today’s question. Is the run speed enhancement really necessary anymore? Do you think it outweighs the other bonuses you can use in place of it whether it is +Haste or +Mastery to boots? How about talents? Not only do we have the lovely poll at the top, but I’m looking forward to your comments on this one.

It Came From the PUG: Could you turn that macro off?

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Recently, Mike Sacco wrote about how kindness in a PUG pays off. In truth it does, quite a bit. Taking a little time to explain fights, and explain CC and such to new players is always a good idea. After all, we were all noobs once right? Let me give you an example from my recent travels.

I’ve been leveling my hunter now that I’ve started raiding on the Shaman. Lodur is Justice Point capped, and there’s nothing more for him to buy or really do except the daily heroic for Valor Points. I queue for a random dungeon on the hunter with a guildie while I’m questing, and after about 30 minutes, we get Vortex Pinnacle. The tank, the healer and the other DPS are all from different servers. As we start the instance, the tank asks us if we’ve been here before, because he has not. Before we even make the first pull he asks what we can CC in the group, and what marks everyone wants as their own personal CC marker. The healer admits he’s never been here before and asks that we keep him apprised of any surprises before we encounter them.

I’m floored at this point. Weeks of PUGs have left me slightly jaded with tanks careening in ignoring or breaking CC, and just leaving me awful messes to clean up. The communication in this group was absolutely flawless. We walked the paladin healer through the encounters, and the tank’s main was actually a holy pally so he spent some time explaining spells and stats for the healer. It was honestly the most informative, and best communicating group I’d been in to date. Because there were clear lines of communication and education, the run was smooth, having zero wipes, and was truly just enjoyable. My other guildie commented to me at the end of the run that it was the “Best damn group” he had had since Cataclysm’s release.

Now, while being patient and communicating is always a good thing, there comes times you have to draw a line in the ground so to speak. Take for an example a daily heroic I did with Lodur just recently. I was set to heal, and was able to pull three DPS from the guild, but no tank. We queue up in the LDG tool and get Heroic SFK as our instance, and a tank that had very, very low health. To put this into perspective, fully buffed Lodur sports around 115-116k health. This tank, a warrior, had 119k health fully buffed. Now, I honestly gave this guy a chance. I already know he juked the system to be able to queue for heroics, but hey, maybe he’s actually good right?

We set our CC marker out, and shackles go out, stuns hit home, and the tank charges right in and breaks all CC. He promptly dies. We run out, reset, come back in. He hasn’t even released. I res him up, and we politely explain that he needs to not break CC or he will die. He says he understands, but low and behold on the very same pull he charges in and breaks CC. I try one last time to explain to him about CC and he just leaves group. We re-queue and get another tank, this time we get a DK tank with 160k HP. Already looking better, he’s got the requisite tank gear and looks like he should have a handle on what’s going on.

We go in, and make it to the first boss. First boss goes down, and we start making our way to the second boss through the courtyard. The pulls go very well until right before entering the kitchen. The tank decides he’s going to pull the adds on him into the kitchen, aggroing the pack of servant, the cooks and everything in between. Needless to say it’s a wipe. We explain to him he’s got to slow down a little and watch what he pulls giving CC time to go off and healing time to situate. His only reply is to go careening back into the packs. At this point either the person is just very dense, or being an ass on purpose. We kick him from the group and the last one makes it all the way through.

Another good example of how patience pays off also takes place in heroic SFK. Me and a guildie queue up for a random, get SFK and the tank is a warrior, who looks right about where they should be on health and gear. Before we start the pulls the warrior says “Hey I’m a little rusty at tanking so any help will be appreciated.” We start our pulls and everything goes really well. We explain the first and second boss and make our way to the third boss of the instance. Most people hate that boss, it is arguably one of the hardest to manage in all of the heroics right now. There’s just a lot going on. We explain the fight and the mechanics and mark the adds. We explain what to avoid and how to move around it etc. Full run down. First pull winds up in a wipe, tank gets smeared and we release and run back in. Tank asks what went wrong and how he can improve it. We go over what happened and find out he can’t see the desecration. We walk him through enabling projected textures, and pull again. This pull goes way way better, and we get the boss to about half before the adds start running wild. After we recover from the wipe, the tank asks again what he can do to fix the problem. We develop a strategy that has the tank running from door to door picking up adds. After the boss dies on the third attempt, I’m ecstatic, and the tank is ridiculously happy.

Right there, simple communication and patience beat the hardest boss in the zone. So there’s a moral to this story, next time someone is doing something wrong, or maybe doing it in a way that isn’t the ideal way, take a minute or two and try explaining to them calmly and clearly how to do it or offer suggestions to improve the outcomes. Be constructive in your criticism and pay attention to how you say it to them. A little patience and kindness can lead to a smoother run. Now if they wont listen or are just jerks well… there is a kick button for a reason.

As an added bonus, I’ve begun livestreaming my exploits in the LFG system late night, and early on Sundays and Mondays. Check my Twitter for when the streams start, or periodically swing by my Livestream Channel.

It came from the PUG: Tanks but no tanks.

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The life of a healer in Cataclysm is new, exciting, and often times terrifying. The new expansion does something quite well, it makes healing really really hard. Since hitting level 85, I quickly geared up for healing and DPS just in case a guild group had a DPS slot available. Guild groups have been an absolute delight. Coordinating CC, figuring out new mechanics, and having a blast in new content and trying for achievements. Random groups however have been, to be honest here, full of suck.

This is mostly due not to the new healing mechanics, but to the new requirements in CC management and smart tanking. Over the course of the last week, I have queued for random heroics as a healer at least three times a day. This endeavor has met with slightly less mixed results than I would have anticipated. In the vast majority of cases the tank has been the problem. Not waiting for CC assignments or for the CC to go off. Breaking CC early, or to be perfectly honest here, pulling like a jack-ass. Now what I mean by this is that the tank is either pulling multiple groups, not waiting for the healer to have mana, not conserving mitigation cooldowns for when they are needed and generally ignoring any sort of logic or strategic approach. This is what I like to call the “Wrath Tanking Mentality”, which will be referred to from this point on in the post as WTM.

What is WTM you may be asking. Well, it’s the idea that heroics are stupidly easy, and require no forward thinking. That as soon as you reach maximum level, you are ENTITLED to the loot contained therein, and the actual running of the dungeon is merely a formality. This honestly wasn’t a problem the first few days as Blizzard instituted a gear requirement before even allowing people to queue randomly for the dungeons, but as players figured out how to raise their GS early the queues began to get worse and worse. In Wrath it wasn’t uncommon for a healer to just say “go ahead and pull 1/2 of the zone, I’ll be just fine.” or some variation therein. Honestly as a fresh 80 running heroics, very few reports of having difficulty healing existed. In Cataclysm though, it’s all about conserving mana, using the right heal for the job, and having a group that avoids all unnecessary damage while following CC assignments. As a healer you may have experienced this, but WTM is very very strong right now. I fear that the learning curve may actually be too steep for some people. I fear this, because inevitably what these people do is cry the loudest for dungeons to be nerfed, and they are very very quick to blame healers. Let me share with you some lovely examples from this week.

Day 1 of heroic ready healer

Throne of Tides: First boss

The tank was a warrior with LESS hit-points than my healer. My healer clocks in at 106k health right now, the tank only had 105k This was red flag number 1. I would have vote kicked him on the spot for that, but he had a voting block with two other guildies with him. We make it to the first boss through all the trash and it feels like a miracle. The tank seems to be made of paper, until I inspect them and see they are still wearing some ilvl 251 gear mixed in with sub-par greens. How this person got into the instance is a mystery to me at the time, but I go along with it. After all I’m a shaman and made of infinite win right? The first boss has a couple abilities that will tax a healer, and outright kill a stupid DPS. One of these abilities is a geyser that she casts beneath a player. You have ample time to move out of it, but if you don’t it will deal enough damage that it will one shot you. Funny thing here is, the first time she casts it even after being warned what it was, the tank does NOT move out of it and dies. That’s right folks, the tank. His comment “You suck healer you should have healed me through that.” I calmly explain that it is an instant kill and he needs to move off of it, and luckily one of his guildies backs me up on this. He drops the matter. The boss also has a phase where she summons three adds, two casters and a melee. The mage polymorphs one caster and I hex the other, which is pretty much standard operating procedure at this point. The tank, tags ALL three adds breaking the polymorph and the hex. The tank proceeds to die, and I am promptly vote-kicked from the group. Clearly both wipes were my fault. I write it off, tack myself to a guild group and a call it a night.

Day 2 of heroic ready healer

Halls of Origination: First Pull

The tank was much better off than the first one. Also a warrior he had a considerably larger health total, and his gear looked to be on par for heroic content. I was feeling optimistic about this run right until the first pull. This pull consists of five mobs that all do many different things. Usually the group marks 2-3 for CC and burns down the two biggest threats fast while pulling out of line of sight. The tank for this run however, rushed blindly in. No CC went out, and we had none besides my hex that could withstand damage so it was a wipe. Second attempt, someone in the group explains what we need to do, and this time we get our CC’s off . The tank however goes rushing in and dies a fiery death as he runs out of my healing range. Third attempt, the tank rushes in, and drops group as soon as everything is angry with us. Right gear, wrong mentality. I do some random heroics with guildies, call it a night.

Day 3 of heroic ready healer

Grim Batol: First boss

Interestingly enough, I got in this one as DPS. I forgot to uncheck DPS from the previous night’s heroic runs with the guild. We get to the first boss easy enough, I explain the fight on heroic and we engage. The healer, a holy priest, is doing a kick ass job and things are going great. Umbriss kicks into high gear and smears the tank pretty good. We wipe, go back in, tank drops group. We get a second tank and the same thing happens. I ask if he’s saving mitigation cooldowns (which I already know the answer to thanks to oRA3) and the only response I get is that the tank drops group. We get a third tank and the same thing happens. oRA3 in all cases shows me that the tank is just blowing tanking cooldowns at odd times. Times when healing isn’t tight and damage is manageable. This bothers me quite a bit and after three more failed tanks all doing the same exact thing I just call it a night and go to bed.

This continues on for what seems like many, many days. Now, not every experience was bad and there was some shinning hope here.

Day 5 of heroic ready healer

Heroic Deadmines

This was the first time that the group was all from random servers and guilds. No repeats of anything. The composition was a druid tank, me healing, a hunter a mage and a warlock for DPS. A lot of viable CC in this group, and best of all, they all listened. We worked together through the whole instance. For every one of us it was the first time setting foot in it since the change. We looked up encounters, made up our own strategies and fought all the way to the end. The druid was an amazing tank watching my mana closely and knowing when it was safe to pull and when it was time to sit back and take a break. Honestly I was impressed with the way the group was communicating without voice chat and getting along. Through normal conversation I find out that the group is made up entirely of players from the vanilla days who used to raid 40 man content. This is new and exciting to me as recently I’ve been running with “wrath babies” so it was good to reminisce about the good old days. We get to the end, figure out the cookie fight without looking it up, earn a few achievements and then begin the VanCleef event. I call it an event because, well, it is very much so an event and not a boss fight (coincidently, Kudos to you on this one Blizzard, A plus all the way on this fight). We get through a few wipes and then we realize it’s already 5 am and we just can’t keep going anymore. We drop group, but it was seriously the best healing experience I’ve had so far in a heroic, and one that hasn’t been replicated yet.

Long journey, but here’s the short of it. Healing is much harder than it was before. Most healers in my experience are making the transition pretty well thanks to the strong healing community feeding information into the media. Tanking and smart DPS is an entirely different story now. I don’t say this a lot, but right now the fail boat has a lot of passengers. I know there will always be a string of bad runs, or players that haven’t been keeping up on every change, but it feels as though we really do have a lot of players behind the curve.

Is the tanking learning curve too steep? Is WTM too strong after having used it for two years? What experiences have you had as a healer in the LFG system? Have you encountered the WTM a

That’s it for now, I’m going to head back in to the LFD tool with my head up and my mana potions stacked high. I’ll be sure to bring you back some awesome, and awful stories. Until next time, happy healing and may your mana be plentiful.

Post-Cataclysm Survival Roundup For Healers, Leaders and Guilds

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So, Cataclysm hit this week. We all know what that means: most of us got less sleep than we should have and consumed our body weight in caffeine. And around now you might be starting to look at the actual playstyle of the game rather than all the pretty shiny quests and graphics and going “so wait, what? How do I do…. ahhhh!”

Well, the blogosphere has some answers. The blogosphere itself has been a bit quiet this week – not a huge surprise, given that everyone’s been playing their hearts out. But over at MMO Melting Pot I’ve been doing special Cataclysm posts rounding up all the interesting post-Cataclysm articles from the blogosphere, and am rounding the week off doing just the same sort of post for you guys. Holy priests are really well spoken for this week, and the rest of us don’t have it too bad either. So, get a chunk of caek and a brandy (it’s the time of year dontchaknow) and have a gander while your WoW loads up in the background.

  • 10 Tips For Cata Healing on a Pally – an absolutely fantastic post for holy paladins in 5 mans by Aunna over at Bandage Spec. She’s got ten top tips on how to heal as a holy paladin in Heroics – and each of them sounds like a lifesaver. Whether you’re having trouble in dungeons or not, her post might well give you an extra edge. It’s certainly prodding me towards my holy pally.
  • Getting ready for… – if you’re heading into raids this may well be useful for you whether or not you use Grid. Beruthiel’s guides on getting Grid ready for the Throne of the Four Winds, Twilight Bastion and Blackwing Descent are all detailed posts on what debuffs go around during boss fights in each raid instance. These posts may have a slight lean towards those using Grid but they’re useful for any healer preparing themselves for the raid challenges ahead! As an added bonus if you’re a resto druid you might also check out her pre-raid gear post.
  • New Tools In The Priestly Arsenal – Harpy’s taking a look at the new spells you’re likely to pick up as a healing priestie in Cataclysm. She’s looking at it mostly from a holy perspective but I’m betting disc can get some thoughts from it too. A useful post, and I was impressed with her thoughts on the usefulness of your latest DPS spell.
  • Constructive Criticism – are you in a guild getting ready for raiding? Well, it’s new content. Harder. Faster. More fun. Well, maybe – anyway, it’s common for some players to get to grips with the new stuff more slowly. So if you see that happen in your guild and figure that someone needs to help or talk to those players, have a read of Malevica’s post: it’s a great resource for knowing how best to approach someone constructively, and aim for a solution that everyone’s happy with. She also has some musings on how a guild’s leadership setup can subconsciously affect the rest of the guild for better – or worse.
  • Choices in the Holy Tree or Lack Thereof – Zelmaru’s taking a look at the holy tree and deflating a little. She says holy’s excellent to play now, but the talents are a bit lacklustre. Which ones? Well, she says what she’s not taken and what went right out the window on day one. She also has a look ahead to 85 and her possible spec then. Holy priests have it really good this week, as Zinn over at Jinxed Thoughts has also gone through the holy priest talent tree and looked at the main talents each in turn.
  • Guild Leveling – Numbers – a really useful introduction to the whole guilds-can-now-level shenanigans for anyone. If you’re not new to the concept it’s worth a read anyway, as Psynister has done the maths and worked out roughly how long it’ll take a fairly active guild to hit the maximum guild level. He also explains what activities count towards getting your guild experience.

And with that there’s not much more to be said by this owl other than “squaaaaaawk!” Which roughly translates to HAPPY HOLIDAYS! I know it’s a little early but due to complicated Christmas plans this will be my last post here at WoM until the New Year. So have a good one, folks – see you when we’ve all recovered from eating too much turkey and mince pies.

But for the meantime, the whole crew at WoM would really like to know one thing. What do you want for Yuletide? That is – what would you like to read from us during the holidays?