Dispelling

I’ve been having a look back over my posts over the last few weeks and it struck me I’ve not mentioned my primary topic; priests, nothing, nada, not a drop.  Possibly something to do with priestly ways being done to death by the blogsphere until the next patch drops, and possibly something to do with me playing alts more, and being generally slack…. so in an attempt to redress the balance a little, here we go, a post on dispelling for Shadow (and any other) Priests.

Dispelling (and decursing or curing poison etc. I’ve decided I’m going to use dispel from now on to cover every generic kind of ‘remove something’ simply for my sanity, don’t come whining to me ok… deal with it) like interrupts have made a bit of a resurgence since Cata, yes they were used in previous versions of WOW, but I can’t ever remember an occasion when they were needed so heavily.  Yes, back in the days of Molten Core and Lucifron as a mage(which I was at the time) you’d find yourself decursing 40 people.  Back when decursive was ‘legal’ you simply mashed the button 40 times and carried on.  Then it was outlawed and there was uproar; dispelling classes would have to do more than just mash keys, oh the pain!! to placate people (I assume, or perhapse they realised that, actually, selectively dispelling tens of people was quite hard, and actually VERY dull).  Blizzard introduced mass descurse/spell/poison Prior to Cata there was the occasional boss fight which required this, but it was occasional, and it was generally restricted to raids, not 5 mans, and you’d generally have a designated mass dispeller who did nothing but dispel.  In Cata, as a healing priest, I constantly find myself dispelling nasty crap, even on trash, to mitigate healing needs, there’s some quite nasty stuff which gets thrown about.  In Grim Batol, Throngus really needs to be dispelled, the end boss, Asaad, in Vortex Pinacle is one example who requires the use of mass dispel, and a whole host of others.

Gone are the days when dispelling was the sole responsibility of one unfortunate in a raid, and gone are the days when only the healers are responsible for dispelling.  I still occasionally see the ‘we always used to do it that way’ from the DPS, but I’ve found more and more that when I’m shadow, I need to dispel to help my healer out.  It’s quite polarising actually, the good DPS players tend to be those ones who know how to use their classes secondary abilities like interrupt, dispel, and to some extent crowd control (though most classes have had some form of crowd control for years so are generally quite comfortable with it).

I use healbot when I’m healing, binding my most used healing spells to direct mouse clicks, my lesser used spells with a shift-click and my dispel abilities an alt-click.  I replicate this across my alts, so on my druid my most usual heal is the left click, my ‘panic’ heal is shift right click, my dispel mechanic is alt-click and so on, this really helps (I find) with the muscle memory.  I used to disable healbot when I was playing DPS to give me more screen space, but recently I’ve kept it active so I can see when people need dispelling; if the healer is doing it (and not struggling) I’ll ignore them and melt away.  If we’re having problems then theres an easy indication both because the debuffs are highlighted and I can see peoples health bars more clearly. 
I’ve actually since re-skinned healbot so it’s not so big when I’m playing DPS, I still have all of the same keys bound so I can not only dispel, but also drop out of shadow form and start healing if I’m needed.
More generally, I’m not a big fan of mass dispel (in heroics) there’s for the bosses like Asad in Vortex Pinnacle where several classes can get out themselves, and anyone with any nouse is able to jump to avoid the debuff in the first place so dispel is simply used to pick up the stragglers.  In most other scenarios its simply a case of knowing the debufs that mobs dish out on knowing whether they’re worth getting rid of; for instance a melee speed debuf on a caster can be left.  This has got me wondering if there's any intelligence built in to healbot (or any other mod) or any other add to tell you if you really need to dispel someone.  I’ll have to break Google out when I get home.  Clearly in raids it’s a different story, its a case of choosing the most efficient method, be it mass or point dispelling. 

I think my point is, as a class who can dispel, you should always look to dispel, if possible, (and beneficial) whether you’re the healer or DPS; don’t assume someone else will do it, they’re probably assuming you will.  Know your debuffs too! know what might be coming, and be ready to deal with it.  Oh and when some muppet spams the DPS meter at you, spam the interrupt / dispel count back at them.

Fostering Performance

I read a blog on Bossy Pally earlier in the week about constructive criticism, what it is, why it's a good thing, and specifically why it's not a bad thing. This post was spurred by another great blog post by Rhii on the novel approach her guild deals with criticism (incidentally another blog which mentions llamas and has no supporting pictures whatsoever). I've always been one to actively seek constructive criticism in work and sport – I'd far rather the person I'm asking tell me what I'm doing wrong and how to improve on it than highlight the good stuff, I can't improve if I don't know I'm doing it wrong – if I knew I was doing it wrong I'd be doing something about it. This approach often raises eyebrows in the person I'm asking, and they sometimes feel uncomfortable giving constructive criticism. These two blogs got me thinking about how people 'manage performance' in WOW (that sounds so corporate) and how anyone can aid the performance of themselves and others quite easily.

I'm not going to talk massively about constructive criticism, Ophelie has already covered this, but I'll frame it briefly for the purpose of this post. Constructive Criticism is giving feedback on areas that can be improved (which need not be bad, but could be better) in a manner which indicates what the issues are, and a 'framework' to go about improving them. It is most certainly not "you suck" type comments, that comes under the abuse category. Football fans will probably agree that Lionel Messi is, if not one of the best, the best footballers in the world at the moment; is he perfect? No, could he improve? Most definitely – he's not the best header of the ball, there's one area he might work on in training. At this point, this post is in danger of becoming a whitepaper on how corporate performance management does and doesn't work, I'll try and keep away from that little can of worms, really I will, but there's a lot of similarities between (good) corporate practice and good gaming.

I'll ignore self-improvement for the moment and concentrate on helping other people, as much of the lessons apply when you turn the focus on yourself. Firstly, who can you help? The answer is anyone; I've helped people who I met 5 minutes precious in a PUG, through to experienced raiders who know their class inside out. Giving advice and having it taken on board are two different things, it's all about the relationship you have with the individual and the way you frame your advice. You have a relationship, of sorts, with anyone you've ever interacted with, it may be a very superficial relationship as in my PUG example, but it's still a relationship. If the person has reason to respect what you say, they are more likely to take heed of your words. Imagine for a moment that on the first pull you've shouted in party chat "GOGOGO" and OMG "WTF IS GOING ON WITH YOUR DPS" and then whisper the other shadow priest in the party and say "excuse me, but do you realise that the Mind Spike you're using is removing the three DoTs you've just cast from your target? You'd be better off…." The recipient of this advice is likely to completely ignore it or worse, tell you to stick it. If however you started off with a pleasant "hi guys" or similar you've already framed your words in an (admittedly thin) veil of respect. By starting off with "I hope you don't mind me saying…." Or similar you further open the person up to accepting you're not just trying to call them a noob.

In recent months, I've seen numerous examples of heroics that were heading south being turned around because someone has helped out one or more of the party (quite often be being one of those on the receiving end). So it's clear that something can be done in the very short term to improve performance, I've seen equally as many, if not more instances of members simple leaving or vote-kicking without a word as soon as problems are encountered.

Taking this to the raiding and guild environment, where improvement is more likely to be sought, or even demanded, it's a bit easier, but also a lot harder in some respects. On the relationship front, it's a lot easier, you've had a long time to establish trust, but they recipient has also had a lot more time to observe your actions, if they see that you're not practicing what you preach or lack respect for your words, for whatever reason then you've hit problems. You will also be more likely to encounter the suborn types, you know the ones, the pretty decent players who aren't the best, but are better than average who assume they are the finished article, they're not! See my comments about the certain diminutive football player above.

Once you have established a trusting relationship, how do you go about improvement? Firstly look for the low hanging fruit, pick the easiest things which give the biggest boost first. Take saving money on energy bills for instance, if you want to save money on your electricity bill, what do you do? Spend £10,000 on a solar panel for your roof? No, you pay £100 to replace the insulation in your loft; it's cheaper, easier and quicker, and gives a far better payback on the investment. In the same vein, if someone's DPS is 15k and the best achievable is 18k, but they keep dying, it's probably more profitable to look at why they're dying and focussing on positioning rather than DPS rotation (incidentally DPS may reduce in the short term as a result, but total damage output will drastically improve). On the same token, concentrate on one area at a time, try rubbing your tummy in a circular motion and patting your head at the same time, unless you've practiced for hours (saddo) you almost certainly can't do it – peoples brains best deal with things in a serial nature, tackle one thing, 'fix' it, move on to the next.

If you're a raid leader and you need to help someone improve, you need to make sure your message doesn't come out of the blue – if someone's DPS has been substandard for three months, telling them you've been watching them for some time and they have a week to sort it out or be benched is silly, tackle issues openly and early to avoid drama (llamas?). On the same token, it's not just about negatives, focus on positives, which sounds best "you're DPS is good, but I think we can improve it by…." Or "you're not doing enough DPS, you need to improve by…." Notice also the subtle difference between we and you! We are a team and we are working together to jointly improve our performance. As opposed to you aren't good enough and you need to do something about it.

My final point, is don't forget to look in the mirror; lead by example (even if you're not a GM or a raid leader, you can still lead), actively seek feedback, it's almost impossible to spot your own failings without help; if you've ever tried to proof read an assignment at school or college thinking it was perfect, only to have the teacher hand it back scrawled in red ink you'll know what I mean. Don't shy away from people offering advice, be thick skinned and take it, whether you like what you're hearing or not. Above all, nobody is perfect, everyone can improve in some respect or other, so don't think it doesn't apply to you.



And finally, finally, I've mentioned llama's twice, so I'm going to lead by example, practice what I preach and all that, and include a nice picture!

10-man went to Maloriak

So I was milling around last night, minding my own business running a heroic when a little whisper pops up in my chat box from a guildie "have you done BWD this week?" I explained I still don't raid so clearly haven't, to which the reply comes "would you like to?" Now one of the reasons I don't currently do any raid instances is I have commitments on every evening my guild raids. Mondays I'm generally playing badminton, but as (bad) luck would have it I've sprained my wrist so was unable to play last night. As it turns out, this was a 10-man with a different guild, they are a smallish guild and struggle to make up the numbers on some nights so had invited this guildy along on a number of previous occasions (my guild has no issue with alts and casuals running 10-mans with PUGs) so I finished up the heroic and jumped in. There ended up being 3 Camelids in the raid; we started at the 3^rd boss, Maloriak, in BWD, this was their first ever pull of him, I quickly scooted round Org pulling together mats for a few potions and flasks, jumped on their Vent server, and took the summon to the instance. Their guild leader took the time to carefully explain the strategy, from the way he described it he'd clearly been there a few times, but wasn't overly sure of what he was saying for other roles than his own, as he ran through the strategy I had wow wiki up checking off its guide and making my own crib notes. I was one of three healers, a Paladin, my friend another (Disc) priest, and me. It turns out the fight was pretty simple for a healer, or specifically me, I was assigned to AOE healing so most of the usual spells in the kit bag went out of the window – I assigned Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing to alt-mouse clicks in Healbot (I normally use key binds for them in instances as they're not as useful as the direct healing spells).

As I said the healing is pretty straight forward, there's no crap on the floor to avoid, the only complexity in the fight for me was the three vial stages (he throws a vial into a cauldron which initiates different abilities), red blue and green; red meant grouping up in the middle and sticking down a few big AOE heals, occasionally running out of the group if you get a debuff. Blue meant spreading out, basically mana conservation and watching out for characters which got ice blocked in order to sling a few heals their way, and the green stage which was pretty easy healing. The phase struck me as being all about mana conservation later in the fight. The lighwell went down, amazingly it got clicked, lots, and I was struck by how good the raid leader was on vent at communicating what was going on and what people should be doing, typically I copped the first red debuff, untypically I noticed straight away, and was already running when the call came over Vent for me to move out. After the first fight ended, which was a bit of a blur in all, having gone reasonably well (30 something % I think) I had a chat with my other priest who told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to concentrate on AOE heals more and forget the direct heals – I protested explaining that there was very little raid damage and the tank was copping it, hence the skew towards direct heals and muttering something along the lines of "healings not just about the numbers". He was having none of it and politely told me to shut up and do as he said… The next pull my healing output went up, my mana conservation down, and a feeling that my effectiveness was lessened, I also suffered from three consecutive debuffs in the red phase which had me running round doing very little healing. The raid wiped because the main tank went down, I smugly announced over whisper that "I could have saved him, but you told me not to use direct heals…" (Clearly this wasn't true, I'm not that much of a dick, I was out of mana, but I do like winding people up).

We went through the motions a few more times, the raid got progressively better, as did my healing output, and more importantly my own feeling of how I was performing. On the meters I was on a par if slightly behind the Pally and ¾ of that of my fellow priest which was to be expected as my gear is pants in comparison; most importantly I felt m performance improved, to the extent that I was never in danger of going oom, with at least one CD or pot left until something went wrong like a tank dying. Unfortunately I was only able to stay for two hours, the final two pulls were very close and I had the feeling that Maloriak would be downed very soon, but alas I had a stupid-o'clock train to catch, which I'm writing this from now BEFORE 8am, so I had to leave them to it. All in all a great night, a large flasks bill, a large repair bill, and a few new friends, well worth it.