healing
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When your fearless leader hasn't played your class
Back when I first started tanking 5-mans, there was a particular hunter who pulled off me with irritating regularity. This was partly because the early Druid tanking set at 70 is itemized more for mitigation than threat generation, but partly because he was a young guy, he was good dps, and he knew it. MM-specced Hunters actually do have a lot of control over mobs that get pulled off the tank, and I suspect on some level he made a game out of seeing just how long he could lock something down while the exasperated tank turned her attention elsewhere, usually after bellowing at him in party chat to "DISENGAGE! FEIGN DEATH! DISENGAGE!"Not having played a Hunter at that point, I had a fuzzy notion that Disengage somehow reduced threat and was highly affronted at any hunter with aggro spikes who wasn't using Feign Death over and over again. After starting to level a hunter alt, it quickly became apparent that: a). Disengage was a melee-only skill that still had to "hit" the mob, and b). Feign Death wasn't exactly a spammable ability and could be resisted no matter what you did. I am by no means an expert hunter player, but I have at least learned to bellow, "FEIGN DEATH ON COOLDOWN!" if they're not trapping (and just minding my own business if they are).I am still occasionally reminded of my days as a backseat hunter, and never more so than while listening to my GM trying to figure out what's gone wrong in a raid.
A moment of thanks for our healers
Do you have a friend (or friends, if you're really lucky) in your MMO of choice that choose to play healer? If so, do you thank them every once in a while for their continued efforts in nothing more than keeping you and everyone else alive? Or are you the type of player that endlessly jabs those who would chose to do nothing but heal for not keeping you alive every single encounter? If your answer was "yes" to any of those questions, then it would be worth your time to head on over to Rock, Paper, Shotgun and read through a wonderfully written article concerning healers and gratitude.For as long as men and women have been shooting magical missiles or wielding swords and shields there have been other men and women behind them keeping them alive. Be it World of Warcraft or Everquest, the role of healer has always been one of mixed blessings. So we'd like to take this moment to thank our healers, because without you guys we'd all be dead, dying or at the very least un-buffed.
Leatherworking loot, too!
Continuing our crafting parade for patch 2.4 is Leatherworking. Leatherworkers get a total of four sets, covering a myriad of class/spec combinations. There is a physical DPS set for both Leather and Mail, as well as a healing set for both of those.The -of the Sun and the Sun-Drenched sets cover healing. The -of the Pheonix set covers the Mail DPS, while the Gloves of Immortal Dark and Carapace of Sun and Shadow handle Leather DPS. A couple of those are quite a mouthful!As with the other tradeskills, the gloves of these sets require Sunmotes and the breastplates require Primal Nethers, so be ready to put some effort into acquiring these pieces. A lot of Wind Scales and Heavy Knothide Leather goes into these as well, so you may want to get a head start on those. Most of these pieces are very heavy with red sockets accompanied by relatively useful socket bonuses, which is ideal for most of the classes these are aimed for, though not all. For the classes that love their reds, this is a pretty sweet deal. For everyone else? It's not like you need those bonuses, this gear is impressive without them.If you have any interest in these sets, hop on across the jump! Once again, my thanks goes out to Boubouille of MMO Champion for these images.
Spiritual Guidance: Level 1 to 5 on your new Priest
So you're rolling your first character... or perhaps rolling the latest in a series of alts. And for some crazy reason you've picked a Priest. Maybe you just like being blamed for every instance wipe in every group you'll be in. Maybe you enjoy being yelled at for not healing in a battleground when you're at the top of the DPS chart. Maybe you enjoy leveling at an insanely slow pace (at least until you get in the level 40 range). (Okay, it's really not all that bad -- at least not all the time. After all, I've leveled two priests to level 60 and beyond and I'm a perfectly rational, sane individual. Right?) I couldn't say why you rolled a priest -- I'm only here to help you along the way. So read on as we discuss the journey from level 1 to level 15. If this sounds like fun to you but you haven't yet rolled your priest, check out the last episode of Spiritual Guidance, where we talk more realistically about whether Priest is the class for you and cover picking the right race for your newbie-to-be.
Spiritual Guidance: So, you want to play a Priest...
Every Saturday, Eliah or Elizabeth will bring you their thoughts on the Priest class with Spiritual Guidance. Whether it's keeping your fellow players alive or melting their faces, you can read about it here!There are lots of reasons you might want to play a Priest. Perhaps you like the idea of smiting your enemies (sure, you can pick fights with any class, but you have to be a Priest to do any literal smiting). Perhaps you want to melt faces (no class does it better!). Perhaps you want to help your groupmates by providing healing (Vampiric Embrace is healing, right?). Or maybe you enjoy the god-like feeling of being completely in control of which members of your party live or die. Before we talk about the best way to level a new Priest, however, let's talk about what Priests can do -- and whether the class is right for you. Then, if you're really convinced a Priest is the way to go, we'll talk about picking the right race (with race-specific class skills, this can be an important choice for a Priest) and getting started.
Fixing healing in BGs with daily quests
Reader James sent along this shot as an example after he saw my post a while back on how bad the state of healing in the BGs is, but actually, I think it's an improvement-- sure, most of that Paladin healing was probably on themselves, and especially the second Paladin was spending just as much time doing damage as he was healing, but really, this isn't too bad-- you've got at least two Pallys and two Priests who are casting heals the BG.I think that certain people are healing in BGs than when I wrote that post back in October-- I've been in AB quite a bit lately, and I've seen more healing Paladins in there than ever. But I do think that Blizzard could still stand to offer some rewards to players for doing the right things (including healing) in the BGs, and I am convinced, as we've said on the podcast, that daily quests are the way to do it. Blizzard should offer daily quest bounties for doing x amount of healing, standing a few meters from an objective while it's captured (to encourage people to fight on the flags), and for doing all the other things that people really should do in BGs but don't do as much.They shouldn't offer a quest for doing damage or making flag captures (because everyone already does that). But Blizzard should go out of their way to incentivize stuff that's less heralded like this-- the more reward they place on healing fellow players, the more people will step up to do it.
I am healer: breaking healing's spell
Imagine a fantasy MMO that completely shirked the idea of healers, healing potions, and healing in general. Instead of dedicating hundreds of player hours to perfecting these combat crutches, why don't game designers finally throw aside the long-cliche notion of healing, and design their games more like real life? This is the question at the heart of a recent blog post by Kendricke over at Clockwork Gamer. If you follow Kendricke's line of reasoning - the heroes in most major forms of media survive not by having one of their cohorts plant themselves in the back of the room and lob magic spells that regenerate cleaved flesh, they simply avoid damage. Wouldn't this make a more exciting product for players in the long-run, and free developers from the "tank/healing/dps" trap that has held them for so long?The answer, naturally, is that of course it would be an improvement, but only if the developer gave the idea due diligence. EVE Online is an example of a game that doesn't rely on the healing crutch, but it was something that was really built into the foundation of its gameplay mechanics and lore. Warhammer Online's approach to having combat healers is slightly more suspect, because it seems like they're trying to have their cake and eat it too; how long will it really be before these healing/damage hybrids become completely co-opted for healing? Kendricke's take on the subject is definitely worth checking out, even if you're not typically the guy who gets suckered into healing as some of us do.
Raid Rx: Pigeon-holing healers
Raid Rx is designed to encapsulate and cure the shock and horror that is 25-man raid healing. Ok, so it's mostly horror... Anyways, if you're a big fan of X-TREME Whack-A-Mole (or are being forced into it against your will) this is the column for you. In the spirit of pigeons, the picture to the right reminded me of the old adage "It's more efficient to rez you." There are 9 classes that can dps, but only 4 that can heal. Warrior bandage sets don't count, sorry! While the raid damage doers are all about "providing massive quantities of steady and sustained DPS", you can often go it alone for the most part, assuming you know your place on the threat meter. Healers, on the other hand, have to work together as a team from the first pull to the last. Why? Because dps's damage stacks, while healing can cancel each other out. Gone are the days of Mana Conserve. /sniff sniff Compounding the issue is most healers have only played their class into end game content. If you were crazy like me and rerolled a second healer when your guild was already on Morogrim, more power to you! But if you say anything that starts with "Back when my other healer ran <insert Pre-BC raid>..." then you prolly got my Mana Conserve reference, but your actual raiding experience of the current class design is low at best. Instead you're stuck reading the EJ forums and other references for classes you don't play. See Anonymous39857? That's me trying to read up on Resto Shamans. So what does that all mean? You have 7 people with 4 different classes that have to work together while only ever played one class at their current content level. They might have the book smarts of what's going on around them, but no shoes that can be walked in. (Swapping chars is baaad for you and the raid, plus you'll go to Blizz jail.) Lots of commenters for my previous posts have offered their opinions on which class should be doing what and on whom. With all the interest in this particular subject, I wanted to put together something concise.
On battleground belittlers
There's a growing list of things that aren't cool in battleground chatting: Whining and complaining about how your faction and everyone in it is a noob. Getting depressed about how you lose all the time Belittling other players for not being perfect. This last one is particularly not cool in the case of healers, who tend to get the most unfair blame (whereas a rogue, for example, can just stealth about the map avoiding combat for the most part, and no one says anything). Too often I see one player, who inevitably thinks he really knows his WoW inside and out, berating the healer because of one mistake: "Why didn't you heal me? You suck! Get out of the BGs!" Seriously, battlegrounds have a lack of healers to begin with, and any healer willing to do sincerely his or her best is better than no healers at all. They have a lot of responsibility in PvP; the last thing they need is for their teammates to belittle them in front of everyone -- even if they really do need some improvement. The whole idea of a team is that its members cooperate with one another, and cooperative language is generally a lot more productive in any case: "Hey, I appreciate your healing in here. Next time I'm carrying the flag, though, could you and I team up with you focusing on healing me in particular? Thanks!" Some people can't take any suggestion or advice whatsoever, but chances are that the healer actually wants to cooperate and help his or her team succeed. They just even be happy to accept a polite request. And if not, spewing all manner of insults just makes the insulter look like the bigger idiot anyway.
Totem Talk: Personally
Totem Talk is the column for Shamans. Matthew Rossi plays two shamans, a level 70 horde resto shaman and a level 70 alliance enhancement shaman. Actually, he specced his orc enhancement last night, but he'll be resto again by tonight's raid, it's just a lark.Yes, that's my healing shaman in the back there, wearing enhancement gear. I went and respecced him to enhancement after the raid was over, knowing full well that I'd be resto again by tonight, because by the end of the raid I was literally vibrating with suppressed tension. Not because it had gone poorly, not at all, we one shot everything we saw. (Go Vees!) But on several occasions we lost one or two players on a boss, or even on a trash pull, and I realized something about myself as a healer last night.I take it personally when anyone dies.I really hate when I let the DPS die. Especially when it's melee DPS, because those guys are usually right next to the tank, which means it feels like it's my fault for not getting my chain heals off in time, or not targeting the right people fast enough. I get worked up when I see people drop, especially when I was casting a heal and then it fails because they died before I finished casting. This is one of the worst feelings in the world to me.So I specced enhancement, picked up a couple of decent green fist weapons with 2.6 speed, and went out to beat on some things. I got lucky and picked up a set of Beastmaw Pauldrons last night (no other mail in the raid) so while my punchers weren't very good, the rest of my gear is fairly nice, with a couple of purples and solid blues otherwise. And I went out and I beat on things until I felt better about it. Yes, I realize this was a ridiculous thing to do. Yes, I went out in the game and did something to relieve the stress I'd accumulated playing the game. But hey, it worked, and tonight I'll be back on the healing log.
Adventures from the Back Row: World of Warcraft priestly resources
It would be a shame for December to end with just one chance to talk about what it's like to put your heal down. My technical problems have put a temporary hold on my series on healing in Tabula Rasa, but there's no reason we can't turn to the web for succor.I'm guessing a lot of you play World of Warcraft, right? Well, healing in WoW is just as hard as it is anywhere else. At the high end, the hoops you have to jump through ... well, you'd almost think that you'd need some sort of advanced strategy. Perhaps people could even make a hobby out of commenting on what it's like to play a priest?What do you know, both of those things are out there? Today's Adventures from the Back Row will try to offer up a few reliable resources for channeling the Light (or Shadow) in Azeroth. I'm also going to point out some bloggers who make it their business to channel the divine. Whether they're professional or kwai, upbeat or uber-cynical, everyone who wears the halo in World of Warcraft has one thing in common: idiot groupmates delusions of grandeur not enough mana.
Raid Rx: Basic healer raid design
Raid Rx is designed to encapsulate and cure the shock and horror that is 25-man raid healing. Ok, so it's mostly horror... Anyways, if you're a big fan of X-TREME Whack-A-Mole (or are being forced into it against your will) this is the column for you. Last week I promised you pink tutu's and syncronized healing moves. See that picture? That's all you're getting. Merry Christmas. Being a healer is about living with dissapointment (at the dps), ok? So anyways... You have 25-people chomping at the bit to see more than just Karahzan/ZA. W00t! But from a healing standpoint, who do you invite and how many? I'm here to help. Basic Raid DesignYou have 25 slots. About 6-8 of them will be healers, which is roughly the same ratio that you had in Karahzan and even old school 40-mans, if you can remember back that far. The rest of the raid will be a couple of tanks, some off-tanks, and loads of dps. On average, you'll have 7 healers, so that's going to be my basis. The key to Burning Crusade raiding is variety. Straight off, you're going to need one of each of the healing classes like I've said before. No joke. If you are missing a class, you're missing their utility. Yes, of course you can fake it for a while, but trust me - you will hit trick fights where each class becomes the critical one. /cough Hydross /end cough Start recruiting now to fill any gaps. Well, that's easy. Slap 4 people in raid slots and you're 57.1% done. The real question becomes what to do with the remaining 3 slots? Well, I'm not just here to look pretty in a pink skirt. Let's examine each healing class and what balance you should aim for.
Raid Rx: Transitioning to 25-man raiding
Raid Rx is designed to encapsulate and cure the shock and horror that is 25-man raid healing. Ok, so it's mostly horror... Anyways, if you're a big fan of X-TREME Whack-A-Mole (or are being forced into it against your will) this is the column for you. More often than not, when your guild is about to work on a new boss, everyone reads the same strat covering the same information. There are handy diagrams, complete with colored ovals for where the masses are to stand, run, or more often, die. If you're lucky, you'll get a paragraph at the end that says something like "Healers: Keep the raid alive. Watch for spike damage on the tanks." Not always useful... My goal with this column is to explore what it is to be part of a 25-man raid healing team and tips to be successful at it. Much of what I'll cover will be from a healing lead's perspective, but the more everyone knows about the healing big picture, the better. I'm going to discuss what I have found through experience, so if you have Illidan questions, please give me couple of months (or more, silly holidays!) and I'll get back to you. Transitioning to 25-Man RaidingBeing my first post, I figured the best place to start is at the beginning. You have finished off most if not all of Karahzan. ZA looks cool, but you're just not that into trolls or wooden armor. (If you've already beaten it, +50DKP!) Plus, at least 24 other people you know are chomping at the bit to down them some High King Maulgar. So what do you need to do to make that happen? Here are some basics to get you started:
Adventures From the Back Row - the Technician of Biology
Once again we return to that special place in the adventuring party, the back row. The thin line between disaster and success, the party healer is the glue that binds a crew together. This column is a testament to everyone that puts their heart and soul into the supporting role of the online gaming world.Last week we talked a bit about the Tabula Rasa tier 2 healing class, the Specialist. That class sets out the basics of healing in the game, using tools and the leech gun to assist the more militant members of the AFS in their duties against the Bane. This week we'll move on to the tier 3 class, the Biotechnician. Gaining another class-specific weapon and our first Logos healing power, we're faced with a number of thorny choices as to how to develop just within the powers we have available to us now.And, as always is the case in new games, there are still a number of best practice choices still to make. The forums are still very much abuzz with the possibilities of the the healing classes. Let's see if we can work out some of the best choices for AFS healers-in-training, and we'll talk about a few issues newly introduced to TR's supporting cast. In the meantime, what do the Biotechs think? Hazmat or Bio Body Armor?
Adventures From the Back Row: the Specialist and her tools
Given that Tabula Rasa is still so new, I'm going to focus for the time being on getting my fellow healbots up to speed. Unlike other games that have dedicated class systems, the tiered system in TR requires that you 'want it'; you have to choose the right class and specifically allocate skill points in order to keep your fellow soldiers on their feet. Today we'll start slow, by going over the basics of the Specialist class. We'll talk about her tools of the trade, and begin running down some of the particular challenges of being a healer in Tabula Rasa. If you're an AFS healer, speak up in the comments, because I want to know: how the heck do you keep your teammates targetted?
Collection of Shaman Healing Gear
Draezele over at Resto4Now has recently finished her compilation of all available Shaman healing gear, as ranked by HEP (Healing Equivalent Points). This is a rather exhaustive collection, spanning several posts on her blog, but she has created a handy Table of Contents for quick access so you can find what you're looking for in no time.If you are looking for a comprehensive, all inclusive list of healing gear for your Shaman, I definitely suggest checking it out. She's even included a copy of the spreadsheet she used for her calculations!
Adventures From the Back Row: The cost of healing
The healer gets a bad rap. In guild drama stories the healer is always some emo kid with a divisive personality. They're loot whores who sell their services to the highest bidder. They're fickle, unreliable showboaters who delay raids by hours while they shop for spells at the broker. And, of course, there is some truth to that.Most healers I know, though, are the kind of folks who don't look for any of that kind of attention. The art of healing in most Massively Multiplayer games puts you at the back of the party. There, you can shine without being the star of the show. You can contribute without having to compete for the top of the DPS chart, and it's highly unlikely anyone will yell at you for pulling an unwanted mob.For a lot of people that role in the back row is counter-intuitive to the reason they play Massive games. Seeing the big numbers appear above the heads of monsters is the ultimate goal of those hours of grinding, and anything that detracts from that is of secondary concern. The most extreme examples of that philosophy make for legendary pick-up group stories, the folks who say thing like 'gtg, cat's on fire' or 'gtg, mom died.'
AddOn Spotlight: Visual Heal
In a recent addon-updating frenzy, I ran across a new addition to my regular stable of toys: Visual Heal. Visual Heal is, obviously, a UI mod for healers -- so the rest of you can just go on about your regular schedule. What us healer-folk are going to be discussing will probably bore you to tears. Because, really, when you consider the mana efficiency of Greater Heal rank 4 over Greater Heal rank 7, my healing per mana increases by 5.9%, which allows me to.......okay, now that we've run them off, we can talk. Just you and me, healer to healer. Visual Heal isn't what I'd call a must-have addon, but it does provide useful visual cues that I've found found helpful on more than one occasion. With Visual Heal installed, whenever you cast a heal, an additional health bar comes up near your cast bar showing your target's current health and your target's estimated health after the heal has been cast. As you can see in the image above, the green bar under my cast bar is Visual Heal. The green section is my current health -- full -- and the red portion is the amount the heal I'm casting will land for. (Color-coded red because it's all overhealing.) For me, it means instead of looking back and forth from my cast bar to my target's health, all I have to keep an eye on is Visual Heal, which is nice, since I've yet to be able to train my eyes to watch both bars at once.While it's a nice toy to have in single-healer situations, it starts to shine in larger groups. If multiple healers in a group all have Visual Heal installed, the Visual Heal bar will show not only your heals on a target, but others' heals -- allowing for, potentially, much better cooperation on your healing team.If you're interested in giving it a try, you can download Visual Heal from the WoW Ace Wiki, just scroll down to the bottom of their downloads page to pick up the latest version.
Age of Conan interview on Uberguild podcast
In the latest episode of Uberguild's "Grenade" podcast, the boys sit down for a chat with Age of Conan designer Jason Stone. While we were prepared for a bit of a puff piece, you'll be happy to know that they actually take Mr. Stone to task, taking listener questions and generally raking Stone over the coals for specifics about the hotly-anticipated title. Of particular interest was Stone's discussion about Funcom's choice to de-emphasize the role of healing classes in the traditional sense, moving away from the chain-healing prevalent in games like World of Warcraft. Their plan to achieve this involves proliferating cheap, readily-available healing potions, and giving the game's hybrid healing classes more heal over time abilities instead of spam heals. They also go into depth about the guilds, large-scale PvP, the siege system, and more. If you're anticipating AoC as much as we are, it's probably worth throwing on the iPod.
The Light and How to Swing It: Pre-epic plate healing gear, part 3
Hmm, this list of pre-epic plate healing gear is becoming quite epic in itself. After we covered the upper body and lower body, it's time to discuss things that are not, technically, made of plate: cloaks, trinkets, weapons, shields and librams. Although I would totally like to have a cloak made of plate (or of PLATES!), and sort of wonder why there aren't armor classes on cloaks. It would keep all those pesky clothies away from our +healing and +spell crit cloaks. Mwahahaha! Anyway, on to the list, and I promise this is the end of the listiness. The column two weeks from now is going to be "A Field Guide To Bad Paladins", so please, save your eggs and tomatoes for that one.
