Welcome to Episode 14 of The Matticast. This week Borsk, Matt, Kat, Chase and Brian discuss:
– Healing Add-Ons
– What to look for in an guild application
– Listener Call/Email on multiple raid group concerns
Don’t forget you can send us your questions or topics or tweet us with the hashtag #matticast
The most efficient way of healing regardless of what frame you are using is mouse-over macros activated by you one hand and targets selected by the other. Each hand uses a different side of the brain and if you work on it enough you will able to do two different tasks at the same time (ie, target selection and heal selection).
Here is why-
http://www.autodeskresearch.com/pdf/2005GIBimanuaCurveManipulation.pdf
If you are using MouseOver Macros then you should not be having to select your target with one hand and healing with the other. The whole purpose is to have it select your target and heal them with one button press, simply by hovering over them.
I started healing in late BC and picked up Healbot. I tried Grid but the learning curve to simply set up the mod too much for me at the time. The BC era grid interface was terrible. I remember it having dozens of menus and sub-menus with esoteric variables. Plus you needed clique and 5 or 6 extra grid add ons. Healbot worked right “out of the box”.
If you are using Mouseover Macros (which you should be as a healer) then you do not need Clique. Matt talked about the difficulty of setting up Grid and not liking having to use a ton of plugins to customize it, which is why he uses Vuhdo because it also works out of the box.
+1 Vudho! It is ridiculously customizable but what I’ve loved the most is that it very noticeably updates faster than Grid. When playing at a constant 150+ms latency, Vudho out performed Grid for me every time. Couldn’t live without PowerAuras and ForteXorcist has become a must for me as well.
#applications Grammar is important…but it can also be a petty hangup. As a guild master who raids at a time that has drawn people from around the world from many cultures, English is not the first language for more than half the people in the guild. Sometimes it was almost impossible to bridge the written language barrier but we gave someone a chance and they proved themselves rather pro. Only real thing that turns me off on an app from a grammar perspective is more than one “lol”. Otherwise, I love how you boiled down to “the WHY is better than the WHAT”. Great general guideline! The cultural reference thing I’m not sure if you were 100% serious or not but that is pretty isolated to Americans/Canadians and can exclude many persons who grew up in other cultures/countries that are amazing players. The EU WoW system does not contain localized pop culture reference from countries like France/Germany/Italy/Spain/etc. It seems trivial because I question what a cultural reference has anything to do with being a pro player. Of course it is in relation to what their individual personality contributes to the overall personality of the guild outside of raiding but diversity is the strength of humanity.
One thing you guys didn’t talk about was the other side of what a guild member can be: some people don’t necessarily want to make some kind of emotional connection to those they are playing with. That is not to say they don’t enjoy the ‘multiplayer’ social parts of an MMO, just that they may approach things a bit more “business” as opposed to finding online/virtual “friends”. Some of the best guild members I’ve ever had and played with didn’t have an emotional need to be friends with people within the guild. They engaged with the guild where needed and perform in raids–which is ultimately all they care about and because they don’t cause any issues, it is all I care about for them individually as well. There are different levels of personal engagement within a guild and so long as someone is fulfilling their responsibility in raiding and not causing any issues, it doesn’t really matter if they are out to make close friends or not (so long as they aren’t making enemies, either :-p).
I think the reason behind the grammar pet peeve is it usually indicates laziness. If you can’t be bothered to proofread your app, then it gives an indication of what kind of player you are.
As far as the cultural barrier, most people who are not native speakers will indicate so, and that is more than enough for me. IMO at least I am more worried about the leet speak, WTFOMGBBQ rubbish, and just lazy writing.
I think if you go back and reread what you wrote about the culture of the guild you will see we are saying the same thing. If someone gets down to business, doesn’t rock the boat, gets along with others, they are effectively the type of raider we were discussing. We did not say we wanted everyone to make cookies and want to be our best friend. We just wanted quality characters with the attributes you described.
Hi
I don’t normally comment but after listening to your latest podcast especially about healing addons I was upset at you poopooing of healbot.
I use healbot and find it is great and alot of healers do to, if you are going discuss addons you need to discuss Healbot too don’t be uninformed with your comments just because you haven’t used it very poor.
I just listened to our section on Healbot again before replying and I think saying we poopoo’d it is a bit overstating.
We all mentioned specifically that we hadn’t used it recently because we have grown accustomed to our specific setups that did not include Healbot, and AT THE TIME we had used it, there were things about it we didn’t like. We made no comments about the current state of the mod, nor did we tell people not to use it. So I am not sure what you mean by uninformed comments. Everything we said was prefaced by saying it was based on past experiences, and if it is working for you and you are comfortable with it then by all means use what works for you, which is a stance we also stated.
We avoided it specifically because we didn’t have current experience with it. If you want to give listeners the benefits of using Healbot we will gladly share it on the show. But choosing to not comment on the mod due to not using it is much different than making uninformed comments. Had we said it we didnt like it for x reason so it must still suck, or make false statements about its current capabilities than I would see your point.
Sorry for the rants but on every podcast I listen to that does a segment on addons I look forward to the discussion and all I hear is how grid & Vuhdo is great and Healbot …well haven’t used it for years was crap then, dunno if it got better.
As I said a large number of players use it How about getting someone on that can give some of their tips & tricks.
Neil: Sad to say it, but Healbot is stuck with that stigma. It works for some players and not for others. Bottom line, use whatever healing addons help you do your job effectively and efficiently. We were asked for our recommendations and endorsements on what we currently use.
I could go out on a limb and recommend Pitbull, XPerl, Vuhdo, Grid, Blizzard Default Raid frames, and HealBot. But that wouldn’t really answer the question and it defeats the purpose. We each have our own individual tastes and styles. HealBot just isn’t one of them. I don’t have anything against the creator or against the addon itself. I just prefer something else.
I’m pretty sure I started using Healbot PreBC trying it out in trash runs in ZG and used it until last August, I had tried Vuhdo when I first heard about it and couldn’t bring myself to go through all the customisation to really familiarise myself with it (I found it a little overwhelming).
In August I broke my wrist and was no longer able to use modifier keys, I had to do everything with my mouse so I had to modify how I healed. I read somewhere that Vuhdo could be set for mouse wheel scrolling so I sucked it up and made it work for me.
I love the mouse wheel scrolling and couldn’t live without it now although I haven’t gotten into the habit of using Vuhdo for dispelling as I used to with Healbot /fail
I would really like to start using mouseover macros but I think I am just too stuck in my ways, I tried a couple and completely messed it up, would help if I practised in heroics except I don’t tend to do any. Maybe levelling my Pally to heal will help 😀
I once accidentally cut and equipped a tanking gem for myself instead of int/spirit, thankfully I checked myself on armoury soon after and very quickly fixed it!
/cry… I could only remember Oprah n Paris
I hope you watched Arrested Development Matt 😀
Vuh’Do is lovely and I recommend it to any of the healers that ask about healer addons, however I cannot use it myself.
I heal by keypress from a keypad to trigger a mouseover macro in order to heal. It isn’t possible for me to use mouseclicks plus modifier keys to heal. Unfortunately it isn’t possible to heal in this way using Vuh’Do, but I can write my own mouseover macros to use with Grid.
I guess in the end its what works for you and feels instinctive.