healers

11 Excuses: How to Tell the Real Life Professions of Your Healers

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The people that play World of Warcraft come from all manner of job backgrounds and disciplines. Many of us are students. Some of us work in the office. No doubt there are players who come from military backgrounds. But did you know you can tell what kind of job your healer has when you put him on the spot? It’s true! It might not be relevant, but you might find it interesting to know what supports the fix of the WoW playing healer! I guarantee you that someone out there has uttered these words*!

*Note: Not a real guarantee.

Lawyer

"Do you have any evidence with which to base your claim on that it was, in fact, my lack of heals that cause my client, this tank, to lose health and subsequently die?"

Politician

"Think of the big picture. Our cause is just. I believe we have to stay the course. There is a concept known as acceptable casualties. The loss of a tank, in this case, certainly falls under that. As long as we complete our mission, then everything is perfectly alright."

Forensics

"Judging by the position of the tank relative to me and taking into account the time of death, I do not believe that I was the cause of the death of this player. I was within 40 yards and the heals were coming out. There is no logical reason as to why I let him die."

Doctor

"We don’t know what his cause of death is just yet. Blame cannot be issued until we establish how the player died. Pull up WoW Web Stats. I want combat logs of the last 5 players who interacted with the dead player."

Coach

"Let’s see the replay tapes again. I want a play by play break down. If you watch it, it helps prove that his dying had nothing to do with me at all!"

Accountant

"The numbers don’t properly add up. My heals more than made up the difference between that and the damage taken."

Psychic

"Your death was foretold. I was merely allowing the prophecy to come to pass."

Teacher

teacher

"You did not follow proper tanking instructions. You get an F in tanking. "

Marketing

"It’s a terrible tragedy that you died in a raid. This is an excellent example of why you should buy my Flask of Fortification! It boosts your stamina by 30! More stamina means you live longer, right? With the right mix of herbs and a small fee of, you can have 500 additional health and higher defense rating! If you act now, I’ll even throw in a free Spicy Crawdad! Limited time only, act now!"

Mafia

mafia

"3000 gold and half a dozen Crimson Spinels says that I didn’t cause the raid to wipe. Capice?"

Computer Technician

"Go restart your computer. That will solve most problems 99% of the time including tank deaths. There is no reason to blame anybody."

On a completely different note, there appear to be no photos of psychics anywhere.

Healers Spill: White Lies we Tell Tanks All the Time

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Wiping sucks. It’s going to happen to any Guild of any size at any point. But there are good wipes and then there are bad wipes. I’ve caused my share of bad wipes (but not in my current Guild, obviously, because I know some of them read my blog). Tanks are delicate creatures and have to be treated in a certain way. Even though some tanks might be shall we say aggro challenged, it is better if we merely nod and admit fault even though it isn’t really ours so that the run can be finished. I’ve seen tanks get emo when their ability is questioned and leave the group hanging. Then the group spends a good hour in LFG trying to find a tank to finish out Heroic Slave Pens. Sheesh!

Anyways, I know I’m safe because I don’t think a lot of tanks read my blog (I think).

“Sorry, lag”

It happens sometimes. Our connections do hiccup and we go offline. As healers, we often blame our ISP. Every so often, it isn’t the ISPs fault. You see, there’s this new file sharing technology called bittorrent that we as healers might have forgotten to turn off…

“It’s not you, it’s me”

The tank happens to take about 18000 damage within a space of 2 seconds. There’s nothing we can do about it. 2 seconds is enough time for 1 spell. Sometimes we just can’t keep up with the damage with 1 healer. You just absorb so much punishment that you NEED 2 extra bodies to keep you alive and going. There’s no way around it. On the other hand, maybe I forgot to use my max rank heals.

“It happens to a lot of tanks”

Tanks are used to dying you say? Well, yeah. All tanks are used to it. They’ve died many times and they’ve got the durability loss to prove it. So what if you died? It’s no big deal. Nos Staminitus is a common affliction that affects many tanks. But don’t worry, there’s a special cure. There’s tons of consumables in the markets designed to help get you up. Er, your health that that is.

“Oh your gear is fine”

You look great! Honest! Even though you can’t seem to withstand several crits or crushings in a row, at least your armor is all shiny and stuff! I guess I’ll have to actually work up a sweat to keep you alive.

“You’re the best tank ever!”

I’ve had to say this on more then one occasion. I swear, some tanks seem to have the largest egos in the world. I guess it’s because they’re needed so often. There are some players in the world who have top end gear and top end weapons. But holy cow they just can’t seem to deliver! And I’m not talking about Taurens, either!

Have you ever lied to your tank? Or even your raid/party? Why and what was the situation?

Special thanks to Trackhoof and others who requested to remain anonymous for their input

Top Comments this Week: DPS CC, Heal Organizer, and Fitness Tips for WoW

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Sometimes I wonder why I bother writing a blog. Looking at some of these comments over the past several days reminded me that there’s always someone WAY more brilliant then you are. Why they don’t have a blog of their own, I have no idea. I doubt a good number of you even read comments (or know that they exist) so I’ve decided to share a couple of them with you.

That and I have an exam in a few hours so this is my cop out post of the month >:).

Noplace like Gnome (Best gname of the year, IMO) said in Minimum Requirements for Karazhan:

The reason why folks are talking about ret pallys, or arms warriors, or demon locks, etc. is because they are most interested in PvP or solo-ing than being with a group. Seriously.

A ret pally or arms warrior is not going to touch the DPS numbers of a similiarly geared mage, rogue, or lock. But the second part of DPS is CC. Whenever I’m looking for a group to hit heroics/raid- I look for real healer (holy priest/holy pally/resto druid), a real tank (prot warrior/prot pally/feral druid), and the rest DPS and CC. Notice the ‘and’.

If you are just a DPS, then that slot could be used for someone that does the same damage you do, plus can take a mob out of the picture. As long as there are two CC folks in the group, its great having them. Less than that, they become a liability. The healer has to then heal THREE off tanks, and that usually spells disaster.

I have a holy priest and a afflock. I picked these specs so that I can help out whatever group I’m in. And my play style has always been for whatever is best for the group. I’ll give up my big dam curse (CoA) and suffer the DPS loss- if my Malediction buffed Curse of Elements or Shadow means more DPS overall by debuffing for others. Sometimes that person picking who goes on the raid is looking at what else you bring to the party.

Birkin said in Healers: Simplify Your Tank Targets:

I am the healing leader for our raids and I have been doing something similar for quite some time now. We are just now making the 25 man transition, so I don’t have any SSC/TK experience, but we’ve been farming kara for the past 4 months and have been working our way through ZA.

There are two specific examples that come to mind: Netherspite and Nalorakk. On Netherspite, it is a lot easier to assign healers to “Red Beam” and “Blue Beam” duty, then assign them to heal Tank 1 and Tank 2 (depending on who is tanking) and heal Warlock A and SPriest B (depending on the Blue Beam extra damage soaker). This way, it also promotes raid awareness and your healers are paying attention to what is going on around them. They will need to pay attention to see where these beams spawn and which person is going to be in them. The other example is for the Bear boss in ZA (simpler version). This one isn’t very hard to figure out, but you need some serious heals on Nalorakk and 1 healer per tank won’t cut it. So the solution: Heal the tank with aggro at the time.

Also, if you are the healing leader in your raids, I hope you are using a mod called Heal Organizer. This mod will give you an interface window with all the healing/dispelling/decursing/abolish poisoning/hybrid classes in your raid. You can then assign them healing duties (or dispelling duties) by dragging them and dropping them into many different customizable sections whose headers you can change. You can then click one button to have it broadcast in the channel of your choice (/ra, /rw, /). You can also save your setups for future use. Another handy option is that you can check a box to have it whisper everyone that has an assignment so that you know your healers specifically got it. And to top it all off, anyone can send you a tell with the word “heal” (/t Birkin heal) and it will automatically send them a reply with their assignment. (Although lots of my DPS buddies think it’s funny to spam my chat during Kara by sending me a tell with “heal” and getting “You are not assigned” messages spammed back… over and over… haha) Oh, I almost forgot that for Heal Organizer, to get the interface menu, you have to type a “/” command. (I’m at work now and can’t look it up) Instead of memorizing this and typing it every time you want to change assignments around, it’s much easier to put that “/” command into a macro and throw it on one of your extra bars so it is just a button click away.

Teazone said in 6 Signs You Masturbate Too Much:

If you want a weight free exercise then consider using your own body weight. Simple exercises like push up, or dips(with your chair) is a simple solution working out your arms. Also as push ups become more easy, you can vary the distances of your arms or prop your legs up on the chair for more of your body weight.

Keep in mind that you need to work out your biceps and triceps equally to have better improvements over all. So alternate your push ups and dips during those long flights to tanaris or something.

Simple weights free leg work outs are lunges, great thing about lunges is that it works out just about all of your leg muscles.

And don’t forget about those epix six-packs thats hidden under that layer of fat! Body planks are a easy way of working out your core muscle groups like your abs oblique and back muscles. Body planks are simply getting on your elbows and holding your body up like in a push up position.

Be careful as to not let your body sag as it might injure you.

To work on the side abs simply rotate your body over while still on either one of your elbows.

To work on your back roll over another time so your belly is upward and both elbows are behind you to prop yourself up. This will strengthen that pesky lower back that always aches when you sit and raid for too long.

Always to remember to stretch out before and after any work out to prevent injuries and know your limits! If you do these simple exercises during downtime i guarantee you’ll see improvements in your body after many weeks of raiding.

That last comment’s really good to know. Recently I’ve been having some lower back issues. I’m almost positive it comes from sitting on my ass too long. During the spring and summer months, I’d go out and play some street hockey. Since it’s winter, that isn’t much of an option. And no, I don’t know how to skate.

Actually that’s not accurate. I don’t know how to stop without the assistance of a wall.

Anyways, something of substance will come up later today after the exam, I hope. But I tell you, there’s something to be said for conquering whole galaxies. That’s also been eating up my precious time as well.

Not… really a nightmare?

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Turns out my response to Leiandra’s post garnered a whole slew of responses of my own. I remain vigilantly aware of Blizzard’s upcoming changes to our class. Our class evolution has gone from Grand Master Healer to a support medic on the front lines. That’s all we are really… a support class. Sure we’ve got all of our awesome tools at our disposal. When’s the last time anyone’s really used Holy Nova on a tactically beneficial level? Last time I spammed Holy Nova was against a certain red dragon in Blackwing Lair. But that’s when mana was infinite. Pwyff’s comments were bang on when summarizing the strength of each healing class.

If we truly were the end all and be all of all healers, there would be no need for hybrid healers like Paladins, Shamans, and Druids. All raids would be filled with nothing but Priests. The reason why there is a sort of parity along the healing classes is because Blizzard wanted to make raiding flexible for a large amount of players. If all a raid needed were Priests, then the other healers would sit out and be unused. There had to be some kind of equality so that classes could be kind of interchangeable.

Anyone like problem solving? I love problem solving. Chances are, if you’re playing WoW, you like problem solving. If you think about it, WoW is a big giant puzzle that’s meant to be solved. This is one of the assignments I had for homework in my cognitive science class. So here’s a puzzle for you:

The scenario

Three Human Priests and three Orcs arrive at Menethil Harbor, and they all wish to cross to Kalimdor. Fortunately, there is a boat, but unfortunately, the boat can only hold two creatures at one time. Orcs are vicious creatures, and whenever there are more orcs than Priests on one side of the river, the orcs will immediately attack the Priests and slaughter them. You must be certain that you never leave more orcs than Priests on any side of the maelstrom. How should the problem be solved? The foul orcs can be trusted to bring the boat back safely. There must be one creature in the boat to pilot it. If the Kalimdor shore has an Orc, and there is an inbound Orc and a Priest, the Priest will be ripped to shreds even though they’re on the boat.

Note: Each time you cross the river, it is considered one step.

The problem is solvable with a minimum of 11 steps. I’ll post a solution later. If you solve it, don’t spit out the solution in comments yet, but DO say that you figured it out.