Raid Rx: Tell your raid to stand in glowing circles
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. If you're looking for more healing advice, check out the Plus Heal community.
Seriously. I've seen it happen several times now where priests drop Holy Word: Sanctuary or something and people just reflexively move out of it. Granted, that type of automated movement comes from years of standing out of Void Zones and other such nasty effects. Now we have to train the rest of the raid to recognize these new AoEs and stand on it to benefit.
To be honest, I don't know how else we can help other players "get it". I only have two ideas and they're just painfully obvious.
In case you haven't seen them yet, scroll down to see what friendly circle is beneficial to you. Standing in them provides extended life! They're all virtually the same. What will vary from spell to spell is stuff like cast time or mana, but people standing in will get gradually healed up.
Holy Word: Sanctuary
It looks like a big glowing white disc. Very hard to miss Holy Word: Sanctuary. Available only to Holy Priests but they need to have the Prayer of Healing Chakra activated.
Power Word: Barrier
On one hand, any damage dealt to players that stands inside it will get absorbed. On the other hand, with the glyph, it increases the amount of healing done to players standing inside it. I wrote some thoughts about it wondering if it was better served for players to stand within it absorbing the impact of a spell or for the barrier to go up after a major attack buying time for healers to heal up.
Healing Rain
A majority of players will not have seen it yet. You can see a preview of it above. It's a giant blue circle! Healing Rain won't be available until shamans hit level 83. Unlike Holy Word: Sanctuary, it takes 2 seconds for it to cast with a 10 second cooldown.
Efflorescence
Efflorescence will only activate after Swiftmend is used. The issue with this is that the bed of flora will appear on the person who you placed Swiftmend on. It doesn't give you a lot of flexibility for spell placement (which is the only real knock I have against it).
What about paladins?
Although paladins do have AoE healing spells at their disposal, their spells aren't exactly something players can stand in.
Now, what can we do to help players stand in the good mojo?
Solution 1: Just cast it directly on players
It is the easiest solution! However, that means that most of the time, melee players will benefit the most. If you think about it, they're rarely going to move on typical encounters since they're at point blank range of the boss anyway. If the boss needs to get kited around or something, then that might not work so well.
The problem is with players at range. I've seen people who actively move out of them. They're not trying to dodge an incoming missile or spell either.
Solution 2: Repetition, repetition, repetition
I don't even know if this will work. Perhaps with repeated exposure, players will see it and realize that they're not taking damage from it. Maybe constantly telling them that they're allowed to stand in it will help. I don't know if encouragement will actually work but I can't think of anything better. If only we could put a little treasure chest in the middle of it.
I'm actually at a loss here. What can we do to train players to stand in glowing circles?
Need advice on working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered. Send your questions about raid healing to matticus@wow.com. For less healer-centric raiding advice, visit Ready Check, and don't miss our strategy guides to Icecrown Citadel and Halion/the Ruby Sanctum.
