General WoW Gaming

Not restricted to healing, but PvE and PvP discussion on alts or non-healing specs.

Why I Stopped Caring About Healing Meters

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When it comes to healing, in my eyes there is only one true goal: Keep your targets alive. Use whatever means necessary within reason. Sometimes a Dispel or a Cleanse is the better way to go instead of trying to out heal the damage sustained over a period of time. As the healing captain, I take the information received about healing in meters during raids with a grain of salt. They don’t mean much to me at all, and here’s why:

Inaccurate measure

While it’s true that these tools are great for measuring the overall output that a player contributes, is it being spent wisely? It also doesn’t accurately account for players that are on full time dispel duty. AoE healers will have an edge over single target healers like Paladins on fights where the raid sustains major damage. It’s hard to compete against players with the ability to heal 5 players simultaneously as a Paladin. Therefore, even though a player’s heal output seems lower, it doesn’t mean they’re any less valuable.

Does it really matter?

You’ll find out early on in your WoW raiding career that it takes 25 players to down a boss. The ones that slack off in DPS, tanking, or healing weed themselves out fairly quickly. You’ll reach an equilibrium at some point where your healers will be able to keep the raid alive long enough to down a boss. That’s your results right there: A dead raid boss.

Different jobs, different heals

Healing is an art. It can come in many different forms. Assigning heals is a delicate balancing act to ensure that you don’t overload too many players on one person. The consequences of doing so means that another player in a different part of the raid isn’t getting enough. It’s common to have multiple healers stack up on the main tanks. No encounters in the game are built the same (hey that rhymes). You end up having your healers working on targets that they’re better suited to heal, anyway.

So in conclusion, healing meters are useful. But in the end, they don’t really matter to me. All I care about most is my people surviving. I don’t care how much mana is expended doing so or what resources were needed to pull it off. I trust my healers to use their smarts and judgments to keep their guys alive at all costs. If they can do that, then meters are just another resource hog.

Going All In on the Crystal Spire of Karabor

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Poker is one of my favourite non-WoW activities and I know I’m not the only one. One of the cardinal skills you pick up as you play the cards is knowing when to go all in. My guild utilizes a DKP system (chips) and now that we’ve started to work on Illidan in order to take him out and get his phat loot (pot).

One of the items Illidan drops is the infamous Crystal Spire of Karabor.

Seeing as I know next to nothing about the supremeness of this mace, I’ve had to turn to my newest mentor, Wynthea, and ask several questions

Why is this weapon so good?

Basic Stats:

15 Int
22 Stam
486 Healing
6 Mp5

The stats would make it a good, well-rounded main-hand for any healing class, but nothing special. It’s roughly comparable to the Lightfathom Scepter (Vashj), Dark Blessing (Zul’jin), or the Gavel of Naaru Blessings (150 Badges from the 2.4 vendor). What gives this mace "Holy Grail" status is its additional effect:

If your target is below 50% heath, your direct healing spells will cause your target to be healed for an additional 180 to 220 health. 

I’ve always been adamant about using staves because I’ve wanted to spread the healing loot around as much as possible to the Paladins, Shamans, and Druids. I’ll make an exception here, however.

For a Paladin single-targeting a Main Tank, an extra 200 health points when their health is below half is nice, but not awe-inspiring. However, if you’re a priest charged with raid healing, an additional 200 health to each recipient of your Prayer of Healing or Circle of Healing when they need it the MOST is tremendous.

Bear with me for a short explanation (warning: MATH!):

The impact of bonus healing on the amount of output for a particular heal is not random. If you have 2000 bonus healing, it doesn’t mean that a Greater Heal with a base healing amount of 500 will heal for 2500. It also doesn’t get a random number up to 2500; there’s a coefficient.

This is where I grab an Asprin. But it’s because I’m mathematically challenged.

For Circle of Healing, that coefficient is 21.4% per target. At rank 5, CoH heals for a "base amount" of 409-451. So, if a priest has about 2300 bonus Healing, fully buffed, the equation looks like: 2300*21.4 + (random number between 409 & 451).

So, their CoH on a non-crit will heal for around 900-1000 per target. (CoH gets 492.2 from 2300 bonus healing) With the Crystal Spire, a target below 50% health would now be healed for 1080-1200 for a non-crit. It would     take around 3300 bonus healing to get that result without the spire, (x*21.4 + (random number from 409-451) = 1150. Solve for X) so the use-effect is worth around 1000 +healing in that situation. When it crits, it’ll hit for around 1500-plus. Just for comparison, that’s like 5 people getting instantly flash-of-lighted by a paladin all for less than 400 mana.

The effect is slightly less dramatic with Prayer of Healing, because Prayer gets a higher benefit from bonus healing – so the fact that the Spire contributes raw health points is a little less critical. That said, it’s still worth around 460 +healing.

Which classes benefit the most?

Shamans do benefit from the Spire, since Chain Heal qualifies as a direct heal, and hits 3 targets. Both healing waves would also receive the benefit to their single targets, which could help in certain situations. Most shamans I know, however, find more benefit from simply casting Chain Heal faster and opt. for Dark Blessing, from Zul’jin in ZA.

Great, so Shamans get overpowered again. It’s a good thing I have a higher chip stack than my Resto Shaman.

Paladins would see the increase to their properly-timed Flash of Lights or Holy Lights, but since Paladins are the work-horse single-target healers, they would see less advantage to equipping this mace than the bonus to spell crit given by the Hammer of Atonement Kazrogal drops in Mt. Hyjal. This is mostly due to the fact that Paladins are usually assigned to main tank healing. Given a single-target with something like 20k health, 200 additional points when they’re already below half and receiving damage hits in excess of 5 or 10k is not wholly worthless, but just an inefficient use of resources: a priest with the same mace in the same raid can get that SAME 200 extra health points to the Main Tank and everyone else in their group at the same time.

Hah. It’s no Benediction, but it’ll do.

For Druids, the extra bonus is almost completely worthless; it stipulates that it can only be triggered by a direct-heal, so Rejuvination and Lifebloom, need not apply. Swiftmend would get the benefit, but because of its cooldown, just doesn’t have the same utility as an always-available direct heal.

However, seeing as we are non Druids, we may not be correct in this assumption. Might there be a Druid of Restoness that would be willing to shed some light?

Priests see gains to Flash Heal or Greater Heal, as well as Binding Heal, CoH, and ProH. Prayer of Mending and Renew are NOT considered direct heals – although there is some question of whether a ProM bouncing off the priest with the Crystal Spire equipped would.

The idea here, though, is not what impact 200 HP might have on one single heal, but how much can we eek out of that 200 HP bonus. The answer is simply get as much use out of it as possible by hitting the highest number of targets that are below half health as quickly as possible. Priests, with a good ProH-CoH combo can hit 15 people with this proc in the space of 4.5 seconds or less.

Clearly, the mace was designed with the CoH priest in mind. Gimme. It also looks BADASS with our T6 gear.

What offhands can it be paired with?

Currently, the best healing off-hand in the game is the Scepter of Purification from Archimonde in Hyjal. Fortunately, though, the 35-badge Voodoo Shaker is comparable, and arguably 2nd-best in slot. There is no reason to NOT take the mace on the supposition that a weak off-hand would compromise its value in comparison with a staff.

Other good off-hands include:

Touch of Inspiration (Reliquary of Souls, Black Temple)

Talisman of the Sun-King (A’lar, Tempest Keep)

So after all that, it appears as though there is an item in the game worth going all in for. But I do know my Guildies read this.

On the other hand, I could be bluffing.

Improv Healing on the Fly (and Anything Else for that Matter)

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Improv comedians Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood. Photo © David Bergman / www.DavidBergman.net

Last Sunday, we took down Reliquary of Souls but it was not without it’s challenges. Bosses come in multiple flavors. If you take a step back and examine it from a wider angle, you start spotting patterns. Blizzard starts recycling certain mechanics and everything becomes more apparent.

In the case of RoS, identify with the fact that it is a 3-stage process.

Now, the typical step for a raiding Guild when working through a multi stage process is to attack each phase individually. Our Guild explains the strategy and plan of attack for the first phase, then we go in and grind our way through it until the 1st phase is relatively mastered (minimal losses).

We expect wipes.

Once we get the initial step done, we outline the second phase and conduct a differential of our own: Identify the abilities of the boss, and how to counteract them. Now we have the information we need to battle through phases 1 and 2.

But the unexpected happens

What do you do in the unlikely event that the phases go through flawlessly and you’re left walking into phase 3 completely blind?

This is the raiding version of the hail Mary for healers, their coordinators, and the raid leader. If executed, you will look brilliant. If you fail, you have nothing to lose because you can claim you didn’t know what to expect.

How do you handle the unexpected?

I can only think of 2 cases where you can go into an encounter healer blind.

  1. The raid hasn’t been briefed
  2. You’ve sustained losses but there are enough healers or utility players to deliver a serious attempt

I don’t care what your title is. You can be the raid leader, the healing leader, coordinator, administrator, class leader, or whatever. Personally, I’ve assumed the title of Grand Master Matticus of Healonomics, 1st class.

But you share one common trait: The organization and setup of your healers.

Here are the facts

Since you’re reading this, you will have more time to make a decision than I will. I had exactly 2 seconds to issue instructions but I knew the following facts:

  • Paladin tank is main tanking
  • All healers are alive and accounted for
  • Healer loadout consists of 1 Resto Druid, 1 Resto Shaman, 3 Holy Paladins, 2 Holy Priests (1 CoH, 1 Imp. DS)
  • Group 3 consists of Shadow Priest, 2 Holy Paladins, and the 2 Holy Priests
  • Resto Druid in MT’s group
  • Gradually increasing shadow damage to the raid over time
  • 3 players randomly chosen will take nature damage spikes of ~7000 periodically
  • Forgot to buff Shadow Resist

Our raid group never even discussed the possibility of entering phase 3 at this point but no players were dead at this point.

The thought process

As healers, you know what the first priority of the raid is: The main tank. I don’t know what kind of damage our Prot. Pally was going to take so I fell back to tried and true methods. I assigned the Resto Druid and 2 Holy Pallies onto the main tank.

Second order of business is to ensure that the supply of life to the raid doesn’t get cut off. Since both Holy Priests were in group 3, it would make sense for the Imp. DS Priest to use their downranked Prayer of Healing before switching to the bigger guns. Doing that ensures the healer group stays alive because all they are doing is spamming Prayers.

The last job is the rest of the raid. I had 1 Paladin, myself, and a Resto Shaman left over and assigned them to the raid. Circle of Healing and Chain Heal tag team pretty well. Whatever CoH misses, Chain Heal latches on to.

The orders ensue

That entire step of recognizing the jobs that need to be done and figuring out which healers should take no more than a few seconds.

The trick here is to stay firm and don’t change anything. Don’t second guess yourself. Once you’ve decided on a course of action, stay true to it.

I barked out over vent quite clearly and named healers individually and their targets. Make sure you don’t rush and babble and risk your players not being able to understand what you are saying. Be loud. It’s important to assert everyone’s attention as this is a critical moment. There is no time to type this stuff out and spam it in your healer chat. Once you go into a situation like this, you’re on the clock.

So how did I do?

On this particular attempt, I failed. Our first try at the third phase of RoS resulted in a 3% wipe.

Because I forgot to buff Shadow Resist.

But you learn something from every failure and every success. You learn what worked and what didn’t. I used the exact same setup on the subsequent attempt resulting in the first kill. Build upon your previous results. If it’s not broke, don’t try and fix it and muddle it further.

5 Raid Saving Lessons From Dr House

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house

 

Today is April 28th. Does anyone know the significance of such a date? If you can’t figure it out, today is when all episodes of House begin airing! So who is House anyway? Here’s a quick excerpt courtesy of Wikipedia.

Gregory House, M.D., is a maverick medical genius, who heads a team of young diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey. Most episodes start with a cold open somewhere outside the hospital, showing the events leading to the onset of symptoms for that episode’s main patient. The episode follows the team in their attempts to diagnose and treat the patient’s illness.

I can’t help but draw several parallels between House’s quotes and beliefs along with raid healing in WoW that I wanted to share with you.

"Everybody lies."

This is one of House’s mantras. When raiding, some raiders can lie. Whether they’re aware of it or not isn’t that important. For healers, it is absolutely crucial for us to find out why they died, how they died, where they died, and what we can do to stop it from happening again. For this reason, we turn to useful tools like WWS, Recount (which isn’t working right now), or the new death tracking replacement mod called Expiration (Note that the latest versions are always at the bottom).

Remember that these addons and such explain to us objectively how the player died and they only tell us part of the story. The other half is circumstantial. What were they doing leading up to their death? If you can figure out the answer to that question, then you can stop it from happening again. Sometimes the solution can be as simple as moving a few yards to the right or as extreme as player substitution.

"You can think I’m wrong, but that’s no reason to quit thinking."

If you don’t believe that a particular strategy or role isn’t going to work, that’s fine. I’ve been known to disagree with the way healing is done and my guild colleagues are like that with me as well. The beauty about WoW is that it forces people to think critically if they want to succeed. If something doesn’t feel right or if you think your talents are better off suited to doing something else, file it away mentally and then address the issue when the opportunity presents itself.

"Read less, more TV."

Reading boss guides are good. But they can only do so much. They’re best used for knowing the mechanics of an encounter. Now videos, on the other hand, are much more exciting. Watching videos shaves some learning time off of fights. You have a better idea of what to expect when you go into an encounter.

But nothing beats good ol’ fashioned experience.

"If we were to care about every person suffering on this planet, life would shut down."

You can’t heal everybody. If you try, you’re going to lose everybody. You get to play god in a video game and decide who gets the heals first. It’s up to the raid to pray that you make the right call. The wrong leads to a wipe and the right one leads to a clutch raid saving performance.

"Everybody does stupid things, it shouldn’t cost them everything they want in life."

Mistakes happen. I trust by now that everyone has played this game long enough to understand that sooner or later, someone is going to screw up. That doesn’t mean they should get ejected from the raid or from the guild just yet. Obviously if the same errors are repeated, you’re free to exercise your own judgment. The only way to reduce the chances of mistakes happening again is constant training and practice.

10 Answers for the Clueless 2.4 Raiding Holy Priest

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In order to become an effective Holy Priest, you have to understand the situation you are in. You have to be able to assess the threat to you, your raid, and your tanks. You have to be able to make sense of all the information that is coming in and prioritize it without even thinking about it. Any hesitation could kill your raid.

With that in mind, I wanted to prepare for you a list of questions that you might have as a new Priest looking to take their first step into the world of raiding. Remember that healers will always be scanning and checking to make sure that everyone is in tip top shape. I guess you could apply this to any healer, but it’s specifically meant for Priests.

How should I spec my Priest?

I believe that a raid should utilize a Priest with Improved Divine Spirit in their talents to help increase raid caster DPS. Subsequent Priests should then switch to Circle of Healing.

Circle of Healing is not as effective in Tier 4 instances (Karazhan, Gruul’s Lair, Magtheridon) as compared to certain Tier 5 encounters (Tempest Keep, Serpentshrine Cavern) but it is an absolute beast in Tier 6 and higher (Mount Hyjal, Black Temple).

Should I grab Lightwell?

Not really. I don’t. Sure it has it’s uses but I can think of better talents to spend points on.

Should I down rank my healing spells?

Yes. The 2 piece Tier 5 set bonus is absolutely perfect for this. A rank 1 Greater Heal for a Priest just finishing Tier 5 content will hit for about 2700+ which costs 214 mana (properly talented). Although the spell itself takes 314 mana, the set bonus returns a solid 100 mana back. I spend most of my raid doing nothing more than stopcast spamming Greater Heals. If it lands, it doesn’t adversely affect my mana pool. It’s definitely an affordable spell.

How do I handle main tank healing?

Maintain your Renew at all time. Keep Rank 1 and Rank 7 Greater Heals ready. In fact, they should always be in the casting bar. Feel free to light your tank with Prayer of Mending to boost their threat. Do your homework on the boss that you’re fighting. Know their abilities and what they will do. Eyeball the amount of health they lose in a typical swing. For example, Archimonde frequently strikes my MT for approximately 9000 health. My tank has 21000 health. It’s going to take about three solid hits without any heals before he dies. By being able to gauge the amount of incoming damage they take, you know how to react to it appropriately.

Do not be afraid to use your Flash Heal to get your players up in the event your other instant spells are on cooldown. Efficiency is always outweighed by keeping your team alive.

How do I handle raid healing?

Again, like main tank healing, if you know what’s hitting the raid then you can act on it accordingly. For example, if a boss has an AoE type spell that strikes every 20 seconds like clockwork, then you know that the players who get initially hit by them do not need your full and complete attention. Simply dropping renews or downranked Greater Heals on the affected players will get them to full strength before the next AoE hit. Circle of Healing is ultimately the best AoE healing spell in the game when you have enough of a bonus. Chain Heal is a close second but it is unfortunately not instant nor is it able to hit 5 players simultaneously.

What priority should I be healing my raid in?

If you’re tasked with healing a raid during a special gimmick encounter, it’s going to largely depend on the boss. I have noticed that there are two types of raid damage being dealt.

1: Lots of damage concentrated on a few players in the raid

Hydross is an excellent example of this situation. His tomb strikes a couple of players throughout the raid encasing them and dealing a hefty punch. It’s all about timing in this situation. Bosskillers and WoWWiki tell you the approximate damage being done. Use the appropriate sized heal for the response.

Let me use Rage Winterchill here. Like Hydross, he will encase one random player in a raid (Icebolt) which does ~5000 initial damage and locks them in place. That player takes 2500 damage per second for 4 seconds. So you’re looking at 15000 damage within a short amount of time. Slap a shield on the player if you like and then proceed with with the flash heal spamming. Keeping a player alive is the priority. It’s way more important than being efficient.

2: Damage that can be anticipated spread out over the raid

In these situations, your endurance will be tested. You do not want to be burning Flash Heals as quick as you can. Here it is all about mana management.

Najentus is one such boss who consistently hammers the raid with spines being thrown out. His needle spine targets 3 players in the raid and they take ~3700 damage along with an additional ~2500 damage to everyone that is nearby. When his shield goes up, he is immune to all damage. To break it, you have to hurl a spine back at him which shatters the shield which deals exactly 8500 damage to the entire raid. This happens every 60 seconds.

The biggest question that should always be asked is how long does this person have before they take too much damage and die?

  • Is everyone above 40% health?
    If there are a few players that are below, those players are your priority. Drop a downranked Greater or tap your Circle of Healing once or twice if you notice that group is low. Focus on these players first because a random spine could kill them. Feel free to use Flash Heal if you don’t think you have the time.
  • Is everyone above 70% heath?
    This is your next level. Get anyone below 70% back up to full strength. You have to be able to prioritize who needs heals now and who can wait 5 seconds.

Otherwise, you will have to experience a few wipes to get a general ‘feel’ for how the encounter goes.

How should I gem my gear?

The 2.4 patch revamped the way our Spirit worked. Here’s what I suggest:

Rare gems

  • Blue: Purified Shadow Pearl or Royal Nightseye
  • Yellow: Luminous Noble Topaz
  • Red: Teardrop Living Ruby or Royal Nightseye

Epic gems

I’m a true believer in Spirit now.

What consumables should I use?

Food: Golden Fish Sticks or Blackened Sporefish (But you know my thoughts on the subject).
Flask: Flask of Distilled Wisdom or the cheaper Flask of Mighty Restoration.
Oils: Superior Mana Oil (Brilliant Mana Oil is cool too).
Elixirs: If you want to skimp on flasks, try combining Elixir of Draenic Wisdom and Elixir of Healing Power

Is overhealing bad?

Let me put it this way. Would you rather overheal your target and waste 500 mana on a 6000 heal or underheal your target and risk his death? The fact of the matter is that any healer who is on a tank should always be casting a heal spell and then stopcasting it or letting it complete. It’s common to see tanks face crushing blows of over 9000+ damage. It’s better to have a heal on the way then wait your 2.5 seconds for the heal cast time and pray he avoids the next weapon swing from the boss.

What about haste?

You know, that’s a really good question. Honestly, I haven’t placed too much thought into it but here’s my logic. Our mana regeneration rates have improved a lot and there are various methods for us to get mana back. I noticed that a majority of the time, my mana is above 80% on trash. I can afford to bag a few pieces of regeneration gear in favour of haste gear. I figure lowering my global cooldown rate to 1 second could be a good thing. The faster my spells go off, the more heals I land. I can land more heals this way because mana regeneration is not a limiting factor.

And there you have it! You are now ready to face the perils of 25 man raiding. Good luck and good hunting! When in doubt, simply ask yourself: What would Matticus do?