Guide to Healing, Leading, and Progressing in WoW Raids
Healing advice and suggestions for in game encounters.
Did a quick Skill Mastery: Guardian Spirit writeup based on the various experiences I had from a raiding stand point (Find it on WoW Insider). Check it out! Would love to encourage some more discussion from non-betaers and betaers.
At school, can’t write much now. WTB powerpoint lecture slides that don’t suck.
Loatheb looks slightly complicated but after a few tries becomes easy to understand. It requires people to look outwards and pay attention. You only need to have one tank on him for the entire encounter.
Gimmicks
Everyone gets a 16 second debuff that reduces healing by 100%. After that, you have a 4 second window to heal players up before the debuff gets reapplied.
Secondly, something else that makes this fight that much easier is a different debuff called Fungal Creep. There are going to be periodic mobs called Spores that will spawn. When you destroy them, they give 5 players the Fungal Creep debuff. It increases your critical chance by 50% and your spells cause no threat. The Spores die relatively quick and should take no more than 4 spells before they spontaneously combust.
Positioning
Set up shop on the central platform.
Healing Makeup
Matt’s group:
You’ll definitely want an AoE healer for this fight. Try to time your heal around the warnings that appear. We tasked the Paladin to do nothing but heal the main tank on this fight. The Resto Shaman would heal group 2 while I was parked in group 1. The mechanics to Chain Heal has changed slightly so that if you target the initial player with the spell, it will only jump to other party members instead of going raid wide. With the Glyph, it will bounce to 4 targets total.
3 seconds before the debuff wears off, light up a Prayer of Healing. You want to time your heal so that it lands just as it wears off and it sets you up for 2 or even 3 Circle of Healing taps on the 2nd group.
What about the debuff phase?
At this stage, all you need to worry about is wanding and doing DPS. Keep an eye on your mana. Be sure you don’t DPS more than you have to. Your Power Word: Shield will still work. Don’t hesitate to throw that up there whenever you get the chance on your tank.
Changelog
9/23/08 – Original post
Just in case you missed it, here’s the blue post.
Great improvement, in my opinion! I’m writing a WI Skill Mastery post later on about this tacky spell after getting used to it in the various Wrath raids. I’ll place a link here later on when it’s up and live for you to take a gander at.
I woke up this morning to a crisp chill and a great question posted on Twitter by @Knurd (of Raid Hunter).
@patyomatt What makes you think we are headed back to flash heal spamming?
Granted he answered his own question after doing a bit more reading, but I’m still going to explore the topic in a little more detail (because Twitter is EXCELLENT post fodder).
In my previous post, I mentioned that I’ve started to Flash Heal more often than Greater Heal. Until I’m proven otherwise, I firmly believe that Priests will be trending towards Flash Heal and here’s why:
Down ranking gone: The current technique right now is that we use down ranked heals to minimize spell impact on our mana pool and to reduce over healing. We’ll use a rank 3 Greater Heal to restore the same amount of health as a near max rank Flash Heal. We save a couple of hundred mana at the cost of 1 extra second of cast time.
With down ranking removed, we can no longer utilize this technique. A Greater Heal costs 1000~ mana with the appropriate talents in place. A Flash Heal costs 600~ mana. It’s no longer a question of efficieny or bang for buck. It’s a question of what’s cheaper, which is Flash Heal.
High health tanks: Tank buffer has increased by a ridiculous amount. Their health has increased by 50% which turns them into pseudo-raid bosses. At the same time, they won’t be taking massive hits on some encounters. There’s no reason to bust out the massive 10000~ Greater Heal to restore 5000~ health unless they drop dangerously low. But by then, you’re going to be praying to the RNG gods that the mobs miss or they parry or something so that your bomb heal lasts. Might be better off getting the heals off quickly instead of going for the bomb heal. Leave the bomb healing to the Paladins.
Overhealing: It sort of ties into my last point, but 80% of the Greater Heals you cast will result in massive over healing because that crafty Resto Shaman next to you blew his Nature’s Swiftness Chain Heal, or the Paladin manages to Holy Shock crit, or the Druid happens to… do his Druid thing.
Mana Management more important than ever: If you have a hard time handling your mana resource now as a player, you’re going to be in for it in the expansion. During my forays into Naxxramus, I was hitting the floor with my mana pool. It was getting dangerously low while the bosses were in the single digit percents. I had to learn really fast when to burst heal and when to ease off the pedal to restore my mana.
Obviously, we do have access to our specialized heals. This is just a comparison between our direct heals based on my beta experience. I have no doubt another Priest will come along and come up with new ideas for Wrath.
Keep the mind open and let the healologists do their work. Now is not the time to shoot down ideas. It’s time to generate them.
Image credits: ckgd2
I’ve kept myself mum on this topic for quite a while. You’re aware of Wyn’s thoughts and no doubt others have expressed their opinion around the community. It’s my turn to tell you what how I feel about being a Holy Priest and healing.
Before I do that, I want to make one thing clear:
I AM NOT A THEORYCRAFTER
Got that? Good. The opinions and thoughts I’m about to tell you are my honest, unbiased feelings about the subject. I’m not going to hide behind math or spellpower theory because I don’t know much about it all. If I were to list my one weakness, it’s the lack of mathematical Matticus power. I can’t begin to tell you the coefficients relative to the modifiers based on the exponential percentage of the sum off of this spell which is affected by the Earth’s tangent to the Sun (I don’t think that last sentence made any kind of sense).
I can’t theorycraft to save my life, but I just creamed a bunch of bosses in Naxx with 2 other healers and a group that’s sporting the same level of gear as I am. No ounce of theorying would’ve helped.
But in this case, it’s a good thing.
Because I just knocked out 7 bosses in Naxxramus in one night on my Holy Priest in PvP gear without knowing anything about what I was getting in to.
There’s a point I’m trying to make here. I participated in a successful raid with less than optimal gear in a class that’s supposed to be rendered extinct due to poor design choices by the class designers.
My fellow clerics, let me reassure you that not all is lost. We lose our unique racials, yes. We lose the ability to downrank, yes. We get slapped left and right, back and forth with the giant nerf bat with no end in sight, yes.
Yet we still heal. It’s our duty. Don’t lose sight of that. They remove our powers and abilities and empower us with new ones. Raiding mechanics have changed. The entire gamescape has changed. This isn’t World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade. This is Wrath. The encounters are being tuned to suit what we can do and open up the number of options we have in terms of classes.
What has changed exactly? I said it before, and I’m going to say it again. And this time I really mean it. Whatever you learned before Wrath, throw it out of the window. It’s no longer relevant or important.
Biggest change thus far?
I’ve cast Flash Heal more times than Greater Heal which goes against every Priest handbook in the game. Let me paint you the circumstances. My Flash Heal lands for 4500. The typical tank will have approximately 28000 health or higher. Greater Heal will do over well 9000 (and this isn’t just a cheesy Dragon Ball Z reference). Tanks are taking damage between 2000 – 5000. Instead of simply spamming downranked Greater Heals, I have to actually pay attention and Flash or Greater accordingly.
I guess this is going to cut into my hockey time.
Let me bust your objections so I can save you some time from voicing them.
Everyone’s on equal footing because I’m doing this on the Murmur Beta server (say hi to Miyone!). The vast majority of players are playing on premade characters relying on PvP blues and a few PvP epics. I have more mana regen right now on my level 70 T6 Priest then I do on my level 80 PvP T0.5 set sporting Priest.
I worked alongside a Resto Shaman and a Holy Paladin. Weren’t people complaining that all the healing classes were getting nerfed? So by that logic, if all the healer classes get nerfed, then aren’t we all then at the same level? Are they going to bring in Rogues and Hunters to heal for us now? Healers will always be in high demand. It’s not like our raid size got nuked from 40 to 25 again.
Let’s not go there. I am not the best Priest in this game. There are other way better Priests than I and one of them happens to also contribute to this blog (and this is the ONLY time I’ll ever admit that ;)). So what makes me so special? I’m always present at raid times. I read up on strategy ahead of time. I do whatever I can to make my character the best it can possibly be in terms of augments (enchants, gems, and now glyphs) and consumables. I’m ruthlessly efficient and don’t like to waste time. I understand and follow directions like a 6 year old dying to go to a bathroom. That’s what makes me so special.
Would I consider my class expendable? You could make that argument. I wouldn’t know how to argue against it anyway because I’m not a theorycrafter. I’m a valuable asset not because of my class. I’m a valuable asset because of who I am as a player not because of what my class can do. If you’re working hard right now in BC raiding, there is no reason for you to feel threatened in Wrath.
Everyone is going to have to relearn how to play their class. Your skill is going to be affected by how openly you embrace and learn what needs to be learned in the expansion.
I’m using a flawed instance as an example because it’s way too entry level. You’re right, I am because it’s all I’ve done so far. Right now, we stack Shamans and CoH Priests for Sunwell because it helps ease the burden we have doing it. There’s no sense in thinking too far ahead in Wrath and being worried about actual end end game healing. Go with what we have now and have faith that we can do what we need to do as we progress up the ladder.
I’m thankful I don’t have to learn about how to use HoTs, AoE Heal, or other forms of specialized target healing. I didn’t get a lot of new toys to play with this year from Santa? Good. Less of a learning curve for me and I can spend more time on important things such as learning how to heal raids in post Wrath.
If you think I’m full of crap, by all means I understand. Either a) You know a lot more than I do in theory or b) You’re a really pessimistic player whose looking for an excuse to quit the game. But before you start ripping into me about theory, proofs, and other technical stuff, all I ask is that you run a level 80 raid first. Because that’s what I’m basing my experience, my opinions, and my thoughts on Priest healing from.
And honestly? It’s not that bad.
Image credits: just4you
PS, expect to see some Naxx healer guides really shortly.