RaidRx
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Raid Rx: How to read healing parses (or meters)
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a new WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related. Need help reading healing meters and parses? Don't know where to begin? Let's see what I can do! "Are healing meters supposed to measure your ability or their inability (to stand in fires)?" That's a great quote I saw on the Plus Heal forums. I wish I bookmarked the thread. I can't remember who said it. Reading meters is not for the faint hearted. There is often an overwhelming amount of information that needs to be dissected. Unlike damage meters, healing meters are extremely subjective to various fights.
Raid Rx: 5 Heroics to help toughen your healers
Raid Rx has returned from retirement! Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week we look at which heroic encounters will help strengthen your new healers and why! A question I get asked from healers is how can I prepare myself for raiding? On the other side of the spectrum, guild leaders ask me how can they judge or measure a healer in other areas other than healing output. Let's knock out two birds with one well timed stone.
Raid Rx: 3 steps to assigning healing roles
Raid Rx has returned from retirement! Every Thursday (usually), Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week we're going to cover the steps in figuring out who heals who! Last week I looked at addons for the healing lead. I suggested using a combination of macros and addons like Surgeon General. But what about the actual logic and process of assigning healers themselves? As in deciding who covers who? That's a much more trickier process that comes with time and experience. I'll share some of the basic mindsets here. This week's Raid Rx is inspired by a topic from Plusheal. When assigning healers, I try to have a general idea of what the players and the classes excel at. I keep that in mind when picking out the healers and tanks.
Raid Rx: Addons for the healing lead
Raid Rx has returned from retirement! Every Thursday (usually, unless there's a PTR soon), Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week it's all about the tools of communication! You've just been promoted. You've been granted supreme authority over the rest of the healers in the guild. Your guild leader has placed you in charge and made it clear that you are responsible for quarterbacking the healers in the raids. Your healers start looking to you relieved that someone who has a general understanding of the different strengths of the healer classes will be instructing them on what to do. So now what? Assigning healers can be a huge headache. I know I've done it and I keep some pain relievers on hand. We haven't gotten to the multiphasic-switch-healing fights yet. We're still waiting on Ulduar for that. This is a great time to get acquainted with different addons and methods for healing assignments.
Raid Rx: Will dual spec affect your healing squads?
Raid Rx has returned from retirement! Every Thursday (usually), Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week I explore dual specs and the effects it will have. The dual spec Q&A was posted earlier in the week and Mike's got a nice summary listed. Let's get right down to it. How does dual spec capability affect raid healing?
Raid Rx: Are you ready to be the healer leader?
Raid Rx has returned from retirement! Every Thursday (usually), Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Today, it is all about the healing leader and what you need to know if want to do it. Organizing healers is often difficult (and sometimes) a thankless job. Having a healing leader to quarterback and direct the efforts of the other healers in your raid increases the overall survivability of the raid instead of just having healers on free for all healing. I've handled healing assignments in no less than 4 different guilds and it becomes a new experience every time.
The drums of progress
Anyone watching Nihilum's recent achievement closely would notice a few odd things. It was notable that the kill was achieved without a single Rogue, or more appropriately, melee DPS class in the raid. Nihilum guild leader Kungen is renowned for his traditional views on class roles, although he is open to off-specs and has even taken a Retribution Paladin on a progression kill. But there's always a simple explanation behind each of their actions (no melee classes were on, can't have all Paladins specced Holy for this boss, etc.). Interestingly, my armory-trolling cousin pointed out something curious that a close inspection of Nihilum's raid make-up would reveal: only three members (including Kungen) aren't Leatherworkers. You read that right, that means even cloth classes dropped old professions in favor of Leatherworking. The thing is, this trend isn't restricted to Nihilum. The most dedicated, progressive guilds in the game have many of their members going for Leatherworking.The explanation is simple: drums. In particular, the Drums of Battle, which increases melee, ranged, and spell haste. In an exclusive interview with WoW Insider last March, Neg of Nihilum remarked that the one thing that impressed him (and presumably Nihilum and their raid planning) was the effectiveness of haste. Haste is a statistic that became extremely prevalent in Patch 2.4, with many new items containing haste, including spell (currently AWOL) haste gems. Our raid specialist Marcie Knox wrote thoroughly about haste in a series of articles under her column RaidRX. It's a lesson that the top raiding guilds seem to know by heart. Nihilum was so impressed by haste that most of their core raid members leveled Leatherworking to be able to use drums, because it benefits the raid more than the individual unlike other professions like, say, Tailoring.Before Patch 2.4 dropped, many members of the game's top guilds furiously leveled Leatherworking. With almost all raid members carrying the Drums of Battle, a raid can have an almost permanent haste buff that stacks with Heroism/Bloodlust. Having all your raid members level Leatherworking -- and basically for one item -- for raid progress is a masterstroke that shows the lengths that hardcore raiders will go to push the envelope. Clearly, it isn't the only reason Nihilum beat the Eredar Twins, but with a 6-minute enrage timer breathing down on every raid group doing the encounter, it certainly helps.
