Yeah, you read that right. Threat is now being slightly changed. As it stands right now, Prayer of Mending when activated generates threat for the player it is on. This change now means that every time we cast Prayer of Mending and it activates, threat is generated for us.
The same effect applies to Lifebloom and Earth Shield for their respective classes. Wonder what the Paladin equivalent is.
PS, the life of a blogger. One window open on an RSS feed for blue posts, one open in GMail for contacts, one open in Twitter for breaking news and one on course notes for my exam Monday :(.
EDIT: And one messenger window open for my favorite enhancement shammy to fast track me interesting stuff!
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:
Resto Shaman
Holy Paladin
CoH Priest (me!)
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.
EDIT: Nevermind! It’s been brought to my attention that there *is* in fact an all healer community in existence that’s been around under my nose for the longest time. Light Natured forums appear at first glance to be what I’ve been looking for. The community forum’s been broken down by class and has some extra sections devoted to general discussion and UI’s and such. How I’ve never found this place, I will have no idea. Obviously I didn’t look hard enough =). They need to do a better marketing and promotion job. I guess I’ll have to flex my blogging and WoW Insider muscle and raise some awareness. I do seem to be suffering some performance issues on the forums. They do take a while to get into the different sub sections.
This is one of the few pleasures I get from blogging. My interaction with readers sparks ideas. Sometimes they’re bad, sometimes they’re good, and sometimes I come up with a “EUREKA” of an idea that would’ve done ArchimondeArchimedes proud.
Tonight I had a discussion with neutralise as we were discussing the impact of a raid wide Prayer of Healing. Somehow, my brain went off on a tangent. I wondered if there was a community or forum specifically devoted to Holy Priests who would discuss their trade (similar akin to the Shadow Priest.com forums). After some quick searching, Twittering, and general asking around, I was amazed to discover that there wasn’t a community already in place.
Not only that, there doesn’t seem to be places for Resto Druids, Holy Paladins, or Resto Shamans specifically either.
The only place that I know of that represents anything close is the Elitist Jerks forums. I’m not going to lie. Every time I go there, I feel fairly intimidated. There’s also a lot of information to wade through to get an answer you’re looking for.
My vision
Seeing as there doesn’t seem be a local healer community, I thought to myself why not start a healer community?
Financing is not a problem. One of the reasons I run affiliate advertising on my blog is so that I can take what I earn and invest it directly back into the community. Heh, like it or not, money makes this world go round.
I’m picturing a discussion board where healers of all shapes, sizes and progression levels can:
Exchange ideas and tips amongst individual classes
Ask for help and advice during PvE content
Discuss upcoming healer changes
Interact with other healers overall
Come for early advice and support on getting started with end game
I’d handle the maintenance and logistics of the project myself including hosting, software and such. The design and structure would be an interesting challenge to undergo.
My obstacles
Moderation – It’s a no brainer that a community like this would most likely attract some big time morons. As much as I’d like to, there’s not a chance in hell that I’d be able to completely police the place. I’d have to realistically turn to volunteers that have proven themselves fair and in possession of a back bone.
Structure – Organization of this community would have to be done properly. Like boss fights, it’s one thing to know what to do. It all comes down to execution. If I can pull it off right, I have no doubt it would be a great community. Done incorrectly, and it would just be another failed startup project. Razorbax suggested a Forum/Wiki combination but I have my reservations about that. I could go forums first and then “immortalize” epic posts after into its own Wiki for easier navigation and access.
By the way, that quote Razorbax listed? Not me.
I swear.
Name – You guys might think this is silly, but the name is important. I don’t simply want to create forums and slap World of Matticus forums on it. A day might come where I won’t be around and it’d be nice for this community to be able to stand on its own. I’d sponsor and support it, but it should have a distinct brand of its own. The challenge here is to think of a name that’s catchy, easy to remember, and isn’t already registered on the WHOIS database.
Interest – But right now, I’m getting ahead of myself. What’s the point of establishing a community if there’s no one interested in it? I ran it by the night owls still awake in BA chat, and they seemed receptive and encouraging of the idea. Still, I’d rather ask you the community in general and get your thoughts.
Any ideas, feedback, questions, or comments would be welcome. But do answer the poll first below =).
Would you participate and be interested in a community aimed for healers?
People choose the paths that gain them the greatest rewards for the least amount of effort. That’s the law of nature." Dr. Gregory House
I wanted to highlight another one of my oh-so-important thought processes today on why I decide to do some things one way and not another. My debut column at WoW Insider generated fairly positive responses. Obviously I didn’t escape much in the way of scrutiny. I clearly spelled Naxx incorrectly and my eyes are literally glued to my raid frames that are 2 inches in from the left side.
It does make eating rice rather difficult when raiding. But that’s an entirely different story.
A number of comments here and there mentioned golden fishsticks as their delicacy of choice when raiding.
Before the most recent patch, I was a bigger fan of the sporefish than the fish sticks as well, Ego writes. With the new changes to mana regen, I have yet to test the various kinds of food.
And I am very much in the same boat. The patch did bring about several important formulaic changes. I can’t even make my own calculations about the different bonuses and the like (and yes, mathematically challenged Asians are a rarity).
Here you have your Golden Fish Sticks and your Blackened Sporefish. Below you can see an image comparison of where you can acquire these yummy fish from. I won’t get into details about which fish is better than the other. Suffice it to say, Golden Fish Sticks reign supreme in the post 2.4 world. But here’s why I will continue using Sporefish.
Affordable opportunity-cost
What I mean about opportunity cost here is the fact that the overall effort required to catch Sporefish is easier than Fish Sticks. There’s a large difference in fishing skill required to fish between the two areas. It takes longer for me to empty out a Highland Fishing pool than a Sporefish pool. Couple that with the fact that it’s easier for me to kill a level 61 hydra as opposed to a level 71 water elemental.
Maybe it’s karma from all the sushi I’ve been eating recently.
PvP Problems
I play on a PvP server. I’m also a Priest in a marked guild. A holy priest sitting in Skettis with nothing but a fishing pole equipped may as well just be holding a large neon pink "GANK ME NOW" sign. It is tough competition especially when the pools are scarce enough as is.
Quantity
Zangarmarsh has four large lakes which have numerous fishing pools. There’s a lot more potential Sporefish pools out there. There are only 3 mid-sized lakes to fish from. I’m not disciplined enough to fly around all three Terrokar lakes to get said fish.
By the way, as a follow up, my Guild has retrieved the lost Hearts of Darkness and epic gems from the perpetrator. According to the GM, that player has had "justice served".
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
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