War-Crafting

Game mechanics, add-ons, play styles, guides, explanations and how-to’s.

Addon: Don’t Be a Friend, be a Shaman Friend!

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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.

Features

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!

5 Barriers of a Raid Healer – Part 4: Overconfidence

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Image courtesy of bewinca

Each Saturday for the next five weeks, I will be writing about one barrier of the raid healer. Healers are often overshadowed and looked over since we are expected to simply know what to do. With luck, this five part series will help you to become a better raid healer whether you are a varsity or a freshman.

So far, I have covered:

Barrier 4: Confidence

“The arrogance of the young is a direct result of not having known enough consequences. The turkey that every day greedily approaches the farmer who tosses him grain is not wrong. It is just that no one ever told him about Thanksgiving.”
Harry Golden

At an end game level, raiding becomes as much of a mental game as it does pressing keys. You as a healer need to take care that you don’t overstep your bounds.

Overconfidence

There are some Guilds that suffer from players who do too little. They don’t bring 100% of their game. They consistently underperform. But then you look at the other end of the spectrum. There are players that exist (like me) who bite off way more than the can chew. I’d like to think that I can heal it all and if I didn’t have a global cooldown, I probably could. The problem is that this is not always the case.

There’s going to be fights in the game where you MUST have more than one healer on one target. Get used to it.

I’ve wiped my share of raids where I thought I could keep a player up, but I discovered quickly that they were taking more damage then I could mitigate and heal through. Even during raid healing, I find that I overextend myself by dropping heals on the main tank, the off tank, AND the hunter that’s tanking the bow in Kael’s room. It helps to swallow your pride once in a while and say that you need an extra set of hands on that one target. .

Tips

Sad to say, there’s not much in terms of advice that I can offer on the subject. It all boils down to you as a player to determine the strength of your own ability. If you know for a fact that you can handle healing, then there’s no problem. But if you’re unsure, it’s best to ask for another healer on your assignment until you can mentally gauge the amount of health that you can restore. If there appears to be no problem, then you’re golden. If there is a problem, at least you have an extra cushion to help you out.

5 Barriers of a Raid Healer – Part 3: Tunnel Vision

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Image courtesy of liquid008

Each Saturday for the next five weeks, I will be writing about one barrier of the raid healer. Healers are often overshadowed and looked over since we are expected to simply know what to do. With luck, this five part series will help you to become a better raid healer whether you are a varsity or a freshman.

So far, I have covered:

Barrier 3: Tunnel Vision

“Focus is a matter of deciding what things you’re not going to do.”
John Carmack

Even the best healers suffer from tunnel vision. Their eyes are deeply glued to the raid windows and often miss a Doomfire heading towards them (or a Spout). As healers, we are often frozen in place due to our responsibility as combat medics. Unlike our leafy limbed brethren, Shamans, Paladins, and Priests need to stay still in order to get their spells off. As a result, us healers spend precious seconds having to heal in a stationary position knowing we could go at any moment if we concentrate too much on the raid.

Responsibility

Every raider has a responsibility to stay alive. Just because we healers have methods to bring our health back up, doesn’t mean it’s the best way. Moving 3 steps right and 2 steps up can save precious mana and our own e-lives.

Just last night, I participated in a Zul’Aman run which went relatively smooth. We suffered 2 under 10% wipes on Zul’Jin. In fact, we went into Phase 5 with all 10 players alive. But alas, we wiped due to those flame geyser things. I died to them twice and I make no excuse for my own failings. I guess the blogging God saw it ironic that I would be writing about tunnel vision and decided to collaborate with the raid God to screw me over. On my part, there is absolutely no excuse. If I’m going to die, then I will die for reasons beyond my control. Total and utter shame on me. A lot of players will play the blame game because no one wants to take responsibility for it.

Not me. I screwed up, I know why, and I’m going to not make that mistake again.

Except I did *faceplant*. I wonder if there’s something in the DSM about that.

Tips

When (and I do mean when and not if) you get past the Karazhans and the Gruuls and start your trek into the SSC’s and the TK’s, the encounters get much more interesting. All the practices from “cave ins” and “shatters” should be a good start for build your situational awareness. Here’s a few extra tips and exercises that I do:

  • Maximize white space. White space is a term I use to refer to blank space or open areas. Unlike some tanks and DPS classes, we need to have our raid frames open at all times. This contributes to the clutter on our screen. One way to maximize white space is to reduce your UI scale. This can be done in your options -> video settings. If you’ve got the dough, opt for a bigger monitor. I raid on a 22″ monitor with the frames neatly tucked into the side. You can see various shots of my UI here.
  • Minimize down time. I don’t mean downtime in a in between trash pull setting. I mean downtime as in lapse of actions. Always be doing something whether it’s moving, trinketing, or something. Don’t simply stand there. Action is almost always better than inaction and it will help train you to become faster. I like to randomly move back and forth and side to side during raids where I’m allowed. Sometimes you have to in order to keep up with your tanks and it’s a good skill to pick up. When you’re moving, you need to concentrate on what’s immediately around you, therefore you need to switch from your frames to your windows. Eventually, you’ll develop a practice where you just “know” where you are in relation to the things and players around you. Your movements will no longer be random, they’ll be focus and fluid. Every keystroke, every step, every screen swivel will have a purpose. Playing RTS games help. Not only do you need to command your units in the field, you have to manage your economy and unit production simultaneously. I used to be decent at Command and Conquer (NOD) but then they nerfed tanks which completely wrecked my Crane -> Double Refinery (sell 1) -> Plant/Factory -> Factory/Refinery -> 8 tank rush -> WIN strat. While my units were moving towards the opposition base, I made sure every credit was being spent on upgrades, more factories, or more tanks (no such thing as too few tanks). Call it time management, if you will. Same thing in WoW. Boss fights are typically ten minutes. WoW isn’t just about resource (mana) management, it’s also about time management.
  • Work on your peripheral vision. When I was younger, I had a fascination with espionage practice and spying. One of the little exercises they had helped increase your ability to use your peripheral vision. The next time you’re walking home, try looking straight ahead and see if you can read house numbers without turning towards it. If you think you have it, check to see if you’re correct. I believe the reasoning was so that intelligence agents could observe their subjects without their subjects knowing they were being observed (He can’t be looking at me, so I must be safe). In WoW, having excellent peripheral vision can help increase your chance of survivability because out of the corner of your eye you can see that jet of water heading your way or some curled up flaming turkey from the sky.

Other Resources

Ego wrote an excellent piece a little over a month ago on a concept she referred to as tiered healing. It’s a great read and it offers a bit more of a detailed process in regards to prioritizing healing targets. As a Priest, I’m not as good as a Paladin for MT healing or a Shaman for raid healing. But I can switch between the 2 as needed at any time in case we get a man down.

Black Temple Fun – The Supremus Lottery Game

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Is your Supremus raid getting stagnant and boring? Are you one shotting it like crazy since there’s no challenge? Why not liven it up a bit with a lottery system?

Credit goes to the goons at the Blue Moon guild for this idea.

The Premise: Picking whoever dies during Supremus’ Volcano Phase (phase 2)

Buy in: Whatever amount you want (5G’s a nice number)

The Rules: Set one arbitrary player that everyone in the Guild knows and trusts. This is all based on the honor system. He’s going to be in charge of the gold and the picks. Let’s call him the master.

Before first pull, everyone who wants in whispers the master who they think will be the first person to die on Supremus and gives the master the 5g.

For the picks to be valid, the boss has to die. Everyone should be trying their best to live and survive. No one should be "rigging" the match, so to speak. We had an instance today where a Paladin bubbled, and Supremus went onto our mage who promptly died (for some puzzling reason no one picked him). That’s considered fair game because the Pally had to do what was necessary to survive. The mage, unfortunately died (unfortunate because I didn’t have him as a pick).

Remember deaths only count during volcanoes.

After Supremus is dead, winner takes all. If there’s multiple winners, then the winnings are divided.

In the event no one dies or if the players picked did not die, the gold should be rolled over to next week to further increase the pot.