Very sorry about the lack of updates. I’ve been overwhelmed with school. It’s only the first week and I’ve already been hit with several assignments! But it’s okay, because everything is fine now. I’ve gotten my time back from the hecticness of school. After perusing my daily dosage of blogs from my fellow Priests, here’s one that I want to share.
Ego provides an excellent overview of what to do when you pull a lot of mobs towards you without needing to. Her first rule in a nutshell? Don’t move, don’t worry, and most importantly don’t panic. In a party, getting aggro at worst will wipe the entire group. In a raid, getting aggro at worst will wipe the entire raid, rack up hundreds of gold in repair bills, and lose precious time in an instance. I want to provide you a list of actions that I execute whenever I gain aggro. If you see my spec, you’ll notice that I have zero points in Silent Resolve. That means it is quite likely and possible that I will pull aggro. Usually, I don’t but lets say for the sake of argument that I have. Most of these have already been repeated in Ego’s post, so I’ll touch on it briefly and add one more final step that many players overlook.
If you’ve taken any kind of logic and reasoning course or if you’re into computer programming, it’s kind of the same way.
If things go to hell, do this
else just heal the main tank.
I know that’s probably wrong, but I hope you get the idea. Here’s my sequence:
1st Option is Fade: Lowers your aggro temporarily. Problem? It’s on a 30 second cooldown. So if the mobs are out for healer blood, you have to live at least that long.
2nd Option is PW: Shield: Damage prevention. While you do this, run towards the tank. Don’t make them run after you.
3rd Option is Desperate Prayer: Granted, not all of you Priests have access to such a glorious spell. It is the ultimate Oh $#@& button. Take a few blows, then slam it to shoot yourself back to full. If you don’t have the ability to cast this spell, then…
4th Option is Prayer of Mending: It’s similar to a low cost PW: Shield. On your next hit, you gain this much health. Most of the time, mobs will hit you for under 1000. This spell guarantees that you will survive that one extra hit.
5th Option is to Die: This is slightly different in context but is still worth mentioning. This happened to us the other day. It wasn’t our best raid night, but we were in Voidreaver’s Room clearing out trash. One of our casters got caught facing the wrong way and got punted into another group. Instead of running towards the raid group and bringing extra mobs, he did the right thing and ran towards them and sacrificed himself to preserve the raid knowing that we were still under pressure from the initial mobs. In a raid environment, your first duty is to your raid. I cannot emphasize or stress this enough. There is only one main tank. There maybe 2 or 3 additional off tanks depending on the encounter, but there is only one main tank. Typically, there are 7 – 9 healers. If you go down it is not the end of the world. Let the others pick up the slack. So again, I will remind you. If you accidentally pull aggro from another group when your raid is not prepared, unequip your weapons and your wand and sacrifice yourself.
My panic buttons on my keyboard:
PW: Shield: 1
Fade: 2
Desperate Prayer: 3
Prayer of Mending: Ctrl+1
I usually never bother with binding heal. I almost never use it because I never find the right situation for it. Or I just forget and drop two flash heals instead. I suppose I should start using that more often. But it just feels so… weird.
I’ll have another large update tonight after the raid. I have lots of screens and it’s all sorted. Now I just need to upload them. Time for us to do some potential Priest theorycrafting and analysis.
I so need to add “DIE” to my list of options, that was fabulous.
It’s an important step. A lot of people don’t consider it. Generally should be used as a last resort. But again, it depends if you’re in a five man or a 25 man group.
Otherwise live could be a better option.
We have one person in our guild, who tends to run off half-cocked more often than is good for him, or us. But at least he DOES know, when he makes a …blunder… to holler over Skype, “My bad–just let me die!” Generally, that’s not a problem. 😉
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Hrm, don’t think that last comment saved correctly.
I love Binding Heal…especially on Morogrim.
Yes, binding heal is good. But sadly, I never utilize it as often as I should mostly because I bind it to a key that I never remember. Either that, or I forget to use it.
“I usually never bother with binding heal. I almost never use it because I never find the right situation for it.”
I actually find this spell to be VERY useful and for the most part provides no excuse for the priest to die from AOE damage. You obviously have to be smart about when to use it ie. I maybe wouldn’t use it if I was healing a tank who was at very low health but it’s very useful if you look like you’re about to keel over.