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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.
WoW Moviewatch: (Holy) Priest
It's like it's song week here on WoW Moviewatch, but today's entry is something I know many of our readers have probably been eagerly anticipating. Nyhm has released his new video, titled (Holy) Priest. (It's a take-off of Notorious B.I.G.'s Hypnotize, if you don't recognize the music.) He dedicates this piece to what he calls one of the most underappreciated, but most needed, classes in the game. And, of course, he's sure to thank them in that dedication also.The video itself is pretty standard Nyhm work, thematically. It has some creative music video shots of himself and Summergale as they sing. (Well, shots of their avatar personas.) The tricks Nyhm uses to create a variety of dance moves and poses are always impressive, and his work really brings the Blood Elf and Troll models to life. While this genre of music isn't my cup of tea, Nyhm uses creative cadence and lyrics to morph the lines of B.I.G.'s song into a great song about the struggles of healing in WoW. There's praise, jokes, complaints, and a little bit of everything else thrown into the song. Check it out, and enjoy!If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
Shifting Perspectives: Gearing your Restoration Druid at 80
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week we take a look at how to gear a PvE Restoration Druid at level 80, in the hopes of preventing other trees from suffering our fate during our first 10-man Naxx run, which -- no, no, it's too painful even to think about. Pass the schnapps. EDIT: This guide has been updated for patch 3.3 and Icecrown content. Please click here for a guide on gearing a new restoration druid as of May 2010. Greetings readers, and welcome to Wrath Gear-A-Palooza 2009. We'll be running one of these for each Druid spec. I'm not going to "rank" gear numerically, because I think that's a fairly unhelpful means of organizing items when your access to all of them as a fresh 80 may be very limited. Generally you're going to have access to quest rewards and faction gear before you get access to badge pieces or oft-uncooperative heroic drops, so I've organized the list by where you can get particular drops. It's generally safe to assume that a heroic drop is better than a blue you're using from an Icecrown quest, but not always. If you're starting to move into higher levels of gear, I found the following links to be incredibly helpful, and I hope you do too: HoTsTree's gear list Resto4Life's post on Wowhead filters and pre-raid gear in the main slots Elitist Jerks post on Restoration Itemization and PvE Healing as a Druid Otherwise, assuming a proper spec, gems, and enchants, you can successfully heal any of the game's 5-man or raid content (10-man or 25-man) with a healing set derived from the following list. That's a promise. This list assumes that you do not have access to 10- or 25-man raids for the time being and are gearing up primarily through questing, 5-mans, and heroics.
The healer shortage and how to fix it
The Tank Shortage is a topic that's come up a few times before, though thankfully, since the release of Wrath, Death Knights have more or less solved the situation. But the issue facing us now is just as dire: a Healer Shortage. Ghostcrawler acknowledges that there may be such a shortage on the forums, and he gives two reasons: first, lots of people are still working their way up to level 80, and the majority of healers may still be leveling through Northrend. And second, they've beefed up and changed a lot of DPS builds lately, so many pre-Wrath healers may have respecced DPS to try it or to level a bit, and haven't gone back yet.Later, he backpedals a bit -- not everyone is experiencing a healer shortage, and while he's already told us Blizzard is working on ways to make healing more "fun," he also points out that some people enjoy the whack-a-mole game. Still, just because a problem isn't affecting everyone doesn't mean it's a problem: it's true that lots of groups are having trouble finding healers, and lots of healers would rather not watch health bars all day.We're very curious to see what changes Blizzard might have in mind for healing -- we discussed quite a few on the healer podcast a while back, including making healing spells a little less attention-intensive, and giving healers some UI ways to keep their eyes on the fight rather than their party members. And of course, if the rumors are true, we'll hopefully have a new healer Hero class to come and fill in the blanks. GC says this isn't a matter of tweaking things in one patch, so we are definitely a few patches away, but there is hope for healers on the horizon.
Spiritual Guidance: 17 trinkets for healing raiders
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. 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. How do you feel about trinkets? This week Matticus will examine a wide variety of trinkets in the game obtainable in Northrend for healers! Trinkets are interesting items. They have different abilities and uses best suited for the situation at hand. Here is the majority of trinkets that I believe us healers would be interested in the most and my initial thoughts on them. I've even recommended a few of them for us Priests!
The Daily Grind: Tank, DPS, Healer, or other?
The small group gameplay in many of today's MMORPGs is about the interplay of several archetypes that each offer something different to the dynamic -- tanks absorb damage so weaker classes don't have to, DPS classes dish out massive damage in short amounts of time, healers reverse or prevent damage done to party members altogether, and then there are a myriad of other classes that fill various other roles like crowd control.Seems a lot of folks fall comfortably into one role or another -- some even stick to just one through multiple games, always playing healers, for example. Do you have a strong preference for one particular group role, or do you try to vary your play experience? In either case, which role is most comfortable for you, and why? We're always interested to learn more about the psychology behind these games, so we're eager to see what you've got!
Shifting Perspectives: State of the class, part 1 - Balance
Every Tuesday, or possibly Thursday when the writer votes on Tuesday and spends Wednesday screaming and beating her laptop over formatting errors, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week Allison Robert steals John Patricelli's column once again, secure in the knowledge that she will never be forced to atone for her crime as long as she writes something nice about ferals and keeps a respectful distance from Dan O'Halloran's whip.I hate Tauren cat form.Good. I got that out of my system and can write something productive. Although, believe me, if I could get away with it, an entire Shifting Perspectives would be devoted to just how much I hate Tauren cat form. I mean, just look at it! Look at the angle on the horns! The cat can't bite anything! Christ, I just -- hi, Dan. Yes, I'm totally writing the column! Look at me go!This week, mindful as always of American election-year politicking, I'm going to borrow a page from presidential duties and write a little something I like to call "State of the Class." Druids have undergone a number of changes in the transition to Wrath of the Lich King, and will acquire even more as they level to 80. We are one of Blizzard's primary targets for both gear and role consolidation, which raises a few questions over how comfortably we're going to scale in relation to pure classes and what we can realistically expect on the march to a new level cap.The TL:DR version of this article -- I believe our future is generally bright, the Druid community continues to have a few concerns over certain aspects of the class, our focus in PvP seems to be changing the most, and I hate Tauren cat form. This is a three-part post, so let's get started with balance. However, if you want to jump ahead to feral, you'll find that here; and the third part, restoration, is here.
Meet Tenris Mirkblood, a new Kara boss, possibly for the Scourge event
Our friend Boubouille over at MMO Champion has done some more digging in the datafiles of the beta realms, and pulled out a brand new boss in Karazhan of all places. Meet Prince Tenris Mirkblood of the San'layn, a group of elven princes aligned with none other than The Lich King himself. He's not live on active servers at all -- again, Boubouille dug this up from beta realm files, so we may never actually see Tenris in game.But there are a few quests surrounding the boss as well -- for more on how he might be included in the game during the world event (including possible spoilers), hit the link below.
Breakfast Topic: How hybrid DPS could still get screwed in Wrath
Recently a bunch of the writers here were talking about all the changes we're seeing to various hybrid DPS specs. Retribution in the beta is known to bring some serious pain, cat DPS has been given some pretty sweet buffs, and Shamans...well, Shamans seem to be in a state of flux, but when is that not true? With tank AoE threat buffed, the need for crowd control may also be a thing of the past, thus eliminating one of the more annoying roadblocks to hybrid desirability in 5-man groups. For 5-mans, at least, hybrid DPS should encounter significantly less difficulty (we hope) getting a slot.However, it was my contention that, for the purpose of raiding, it doesn't ultimately matter how much these specs get buffed. They could do amazing DPS, bring incredible buffs, have any number of raid-saving abilities, and fart gold on every crit -- but you're still not going to see a lot of hybrid DPS running around Wrath raids for one very simple reason: someone has to tank and heal, and neither job is sufficiently attractive to allow most hybrid players to come as DPS. When it's a choice between respeccing resto or the raid never getting off the ground, most players will respec resto -- and decisions like that tend to be fairly hard to escape. The next night rolls around and -- um, do you mind coming as resto again?
Tips for new Death Knights from a fellow tank, part 2
Dear corpsified bundles of beautifully-armored joy (but more particularly those who tank Azjol Nerub while wearing Expedition Bracers of the Bandit),We had a little bit of controversy in the first installment, so I'm just going to state this as baldly as possible; if you hated what I wrote last time, there's a good chance you'll walk away from this one thinking I eat babies. Delicious, delicious babies. While I never mean to offend people, I reserve the right to tell them the truth, or at the very least a highly entertaining and plausible lie.Truth, she be at times an ugly mistress. And she ain't gettin' any prettier as we move from DPS to tanking.Tanks have significantly more responsibility, both in groups and raids, and they face the competing directives of maximizing mitigation (to keep their healers happy) and maximizing threat production (to keep their DPS happy). I've healed dozens of Death Knight tanks at this point, and while the average pugged DK tank has gotten noticeably better, there are still a few trends you'd want to be aware of as a healer. The problems in beta right now are made worse by Blizzard unintentionally overselling the ease of tanking on a Death Knight in 5-man runs. Many people seem to have interpreted the statement that they should be able to tank well with Blood, Frost, or Unholy specs as being tantamount to saying they can tank well regardless of how their talent points are spent in those trees.Any experienced tank can tell you right now that this is not true, but people believing that it is is how you wind up with 11K-life Death Knights taking 7-8K enraged hits from Keristasza in the Nexus. If you've never tanked before but you're interested in tanking on a Death Knight -- or pragmatic enough to know you'll probably wind up tanking a certain number of 5-mans on your DPS Death Knight -- I hope this article helps you avoid what I went through in May 2007 when I started tanking and sucked at it.I came to the beta to slowly lose my mind trying to heal insane tank damage and gulp Extra Strength Tylenol. And I'm all out of Extra Strength Tylenol.
First impressions: 5-man healing in the beta
I specced resto in the beta the other week to try out the new talents and abilities Druids are getting in Wrath, and decided to brave the horrors of LFG and scribble some notes for your sake, dear readers. By the way, the aspect of beta that I will miss most? The 1 copper respec fee. Can we keep this?Please note that this is written from the perspective of a 70 Restoration Druid, so unfortunately I can't comment on whether Priests, Shamans, or Paladins might have had an easier or harder time healing the instances. I have a good but not jaw-dropping resto set, and on the live realms clock in around +1998 to +2100 healing unbuffed. If your gear's better or worse, then just adjust the potential difficulty level as needed. And even if you're not a healer, you still might find something useful here:
Breakfast Topic: Class vs. content
Responding to a shared blogging topic over on Blog Azeroth, Aendi from the roleplaying blog Voodoo Ventures recently wrote an entry on how to choose a class. This is certainly a subject that's gotten a lot of play in the WoW community, but Aendi's is an unusually thoughtful look at the problem that results when a player's poured a lot of time and effort into a class that might be a bad choice given the player's goals in the endgame. In one of most succinct and painfully accurate points I've seen on the subject, Aendi asks -- is seeing endgame content so important to you that you're willing to play a class you enjoy less, or is the class you play so important that you're willing to sacrifice a possible shot at content?It's no secret that classes and specs are not the same when it comes to the likelihood of getting Gladiator or raiding all the way to Kil'Jaeden. You may love your Hunter, but arena's not that kind to them at present. Your Warlock might be endless fun to play, but the guilds on your realm are probably swimming in them. And if you've ever cruised past the recruitment forums, you've probably noticed that they all seem to want the same thing: healers (and lots of 'em). If you were the sort of person who sat down, looked at the content in the game that you wanted to see more than anything else, and picked your class and spec solely with that goal in mind, your path forward would be fairly clear...but you might also become one of those people who logs off their primary toon as fast as they can after raid, or after their 10 games for the week, and goes to play the alt they'd secretly love to be playing as a main.Ideally we get the perfect intersection of a class we love to play that's able to accomplish its goals in content we want to experience, but it doesn't always happen -- and if you have to choose, the decision is a pretty personal one. So I ask you: class or content?
Oh, the cleverness of me!
I'm not in the beta. I'm kind of uncomfortable with the notion of spoiling myself completely, and I'm a terrible leveler. I have the lurking feeling that leveling my main to 80 before Wrath actually went live would wreck a leveling pace that might otherwise have been driven by exploration and discovery. I want Wrath to be a fantastic new experience that will recapture the sense of wonder I felt leveling my first toon in a strange new world. Also I never got a key, but the other reasons are more important and influential.Yeah, even I don't believe me.While I'm certain I'll never make a Death Knight my main, I'm sure I'll enjoy leveling one. I'm sure I'm not going to enjoy trying to level one alongside 50,000 other people and their cousins and their friends and their friends' dogs and their friends' dogs' fleas leveling a Death Knight. So it's occurred to me that, OK as I am with the notion of waiting a few months to get started on my bouncing baby bundle of risen-corpsified merriment, I can capitalize on the coming rush of Death Knights in a completely different fashion simply by exercising a little foresight. All Death Knights are melee, right? None of them can really heal, right? People are already noticing un peu problem in the beta in this vein, right? And I can't level an alt worth beans, right right? Right. What's the one buff that makes all melee salivate, provided by an excellent healing class, during a time in which healers will never have to worry about finding a group or a tank?Bingo. I'm getting a resto Shaman to 58 and parking him in Eastern Plaguelands to twiddle his thumbs in anticipation of the descent of the Death Knight legion come Wrath's release. See you there!
The 10 people you need to know in WoW
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/10_MMO_Players_You_Need_to_Know'; One of my favorite people to read online is a fellow by the name of Pjammer on Livejournal. He's smart, funny, and a gifted writer, and if you are not sobbing by the end of "King of Masochists" then you are pretty much a terrible person. But another great entry is "The 16 Essential People In Your Life," which lists such valuable acquaintances as the Computer Security Guru, the Wolf, the Consigliere, and (most importantly) the Best Friend. Pjammer, quoting Harvey Mackay, correctly notes that 2 am is a bad time to make new friends. These are the kind of people you want in your life as early as possible, and to exercise a positive influence on its course. My realm's seen a number of guild instability issues of late, which is something most of us have come to expect with an upcoming expansion. I've found reason to mull over how the virtual world differs from the real world with respect to friendship, backstabbing, greed, betrayal, honor, and how people choose to handle their problems. In my considered opinion it doesn't differ at all, and your experience ingame is largely determined by the network of players assembled around you, whether that alliance is a recognized one in the form of a guild or simply a more informal group of friends.So, from my own experience and with a hat tip to Pjammer, these are the people you want in your posse for the best possible experience in the game:
Hybrid Theory: Yet another spell power discussion
Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart. Last week we talked a bit about gear and spell power, and various related things. I mostly approached it as supplying my personal experiences, but a lot of people wanted numbers. Specifically, how your current gear will translate into the new spell power mechanic.A kind fellow named Dan helped us out with a little bit of that in the comments section last week, so let's expand upon it somewhat. Again, this will focus mostly on the Healer and Caster aspects of the Hybrids. You Melee guys don't really need to worry about how spell power will change your gear.Alright, so the question is this: If you have a choice between taking +Damage gear or +Healing gear in the current game right now, which would be a better choice for taking with you into Wrath of the Lich King leveling? Let's make liberal use of Wowhead, shall we?
Healer strife reaches Age of Conan
It's the kind of scenario you wake up from in a cold sweat, reaching for the comforting bulk of the axe under your bed: the healer wars. City of Heroes arguably had it worst, but other games haven't escaped, and now Age of Conan is getting it. The row centers upon that archetypal figure of MMO gaming, the healer; and the argument, in essence, is 'Healers aren't supposed to do damage, so just shut up and heal, noob'. In the case of Age of Conan, one player made a guide for Priests of Mitra, a powerful healing class. In that guide, he treated the issue of PoMs doing damage with the simple words 'You don't.' This wasn't all he said, but it was enough to cause a firestorm, particularly when one of the visiting moderators saw fit to sticky the post - which was seen as endorsing a 'you're just healbots' mentality. It seems to be a particular curse of support-type classes that everyone you group with has a better idea of what you should be doing than you do yourself. We'd like to know, from those who've played such characters: have you ever been told to 'just heal'? Do you care whether you can do DPS or not? Would you willingly give up all offensive abilities to help a team survive better? Or, in a barbarous world like Hyboria, should everyone be dangerous in combat?
Druids may be getting a res in Wrath
A healer in WoW basically has one job: keep people from being dead. Ideally, you would keep people from ever becoming dead in the first place by healing them, but sometimes people do die and you have to resurrect them. WoW has four classes that can heal, Druid, Paladin, Priest, and Shaman, and three out of those four have more or less the same spell to bring people back to life, whether it's called Resurrection, Redemption, or Ancestral Spirit. There are slight variations in mana cost and the amount of HP and mana the target resurrects with, but they're all 10-second casts and all only work outside of combat. Then there is the Druid's resurrection spell, Rebirth. This spell is often known as "combat res" or "battle res," since it is the only targettable resurrection spell that can be cast during combat (Shamans can also self-res in or out of combat with Reincarnation). It's a great spell, but it has a 20-minute cooldown, meaning that if you're in a 5-man with a Druid healer and no other resurrecting player, and people die more often than one every 20 minutes (which happens frequently in heroics), they're not all going to be able to be ressed. This is not enough to keep me from wanting to run instances with only a Druid healing - I still love trees. But it is an obvious hole in a the Resto Druid's spell lineup. Fortunately, it looks like this hole may be closed in Wrath of the Lich King. According to the newly-relocated Wrath alpha wiki, Druids will be receiving a regular, no-cooldown, out-of-combat resurrection spell, entitled Revive. It has a 10-second cast time, and seems to bring targets up with about the same amount of HP and MP as Priest Resurrection. No word on mana cost yet. All I can say is "it's about time." Sure, it does homogenize the healing classes a little bit more, but Druids really ought to be able to fully serve as sole healers, and that means both keeping people from dying and bringing them back up if they do fall. Spell not found :(
The Daily Grind: Do guild relationships transfer between games?
When you have the right group of people, everything is just easier. When your guild members communicate well with each other, and each person knows her role and responsibilities, there isn't anything you can't overcome. At least, in that particular game. But what happens when you try to transfer that guild to a different game?Although many MMOs have similar classes and structures, it isn't always a one-to-one correlation. Your tank might suddenly find himself with a much more challenging job than in the previous game. Your healer could see a new class and decide he's done with his old job and wants to try something new. Maybe the functions of the group just don't work in the new game. When your guild wants to tackle the challenges of a new MMO, how do you go about settling in? If it isn't happening, how do you fix it?
WoW Moviewatch: Healer parody
Before there was Nyhm, there was a guy, sk3uled, and his Avril Lavigne CD. What did he come up with? A parody video, Healer, to her song, Girlfriend. You can thank (or curse!) Baron Soosdon for this submission. At least it wasn't a Sir Mixalot Rickroll.The lyrics are probably the best thing about the video. The "singing" is monotone and the aspect ratio isn't consistent. Believe it or not, this is the better version. His previous attempt, made over a year ago, was recorded with a bad microphone and what looks like a bunch of pictures thrown into a slideshow program.If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
Spiritual Guidance: An Introduction to the Art of War (Part 1)
Our Priest column is back! Every Sunday, Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is now Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus, and this week he's going to help you survive like Gloria Gaynor - so you don't end up singing the song that Too Many Annas was singing not too long ago. If you're not a big fan of PvP, chances are you probably rolled on a PvE server! But for the rest of us Priests who have rolled on PvP servers, Priests have a long and illustrious history of being the first to get targeted and the first to get taken down. Seeing as we don't do anything much other than healing and supporting our mates, it's a given that we come under heavy fire first. Outside of battlegrounds and arenas, world PvP is still an integral part of the game, so travelling outside the sanctuary of Shattrath City has become a dangerous place. When your raiding guild is being deployed to Serpentshrine Cavern, Caverns of Time, Tempest Keep or any other places, you just might find yourself having to defend the Summoning Stone due to a lack of neutral guards. After all, the guild that possesses the stone has the ability to summon reinforcements quickly. Although Warlocks can now summon stragglers inside instances, it still pays for a Priest to know how to defend themselves in open combat. Today, we'll start with the basics: talents and gear.
