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.

How I roll

I’ve finally got round to adding a blogroll, to the site (see the right hand menu), something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, but never quite got round to it until I was having a look at my referral stats over the weekend (you know I’m a stats whore..) and had my conscience pricked as I seem to be making it on to the blogrolls of the occasional other blogger (my regular reader need to take note: you’re no longer the only one).

I thought rather than just stick it up unannounced I’d prattle on talk a little about why some of them are on there.  Firstly my main port of call, and probably the initial reason I started reading blogs; WOW Insider, it’s moved about a bit over the years as it’s become bigger and bigger (and possibly a tad more commercial), and is the only blog which I know about which can boast coverage of every class and every spec and a whole host of other regular columns.  Fox Van Allen is the regular Shadow Priest author, Dawn Moore the Holy (and Disc)  and both talk an enormous amount of sense (generally).  Seriously, if you’re regularly reading WOW blogs and haven’t heard of these guys you’re not doing it right.

One of the first blogs I click on when catching up on the rss feed is Divine Aeigis, with two main authors, Lyria and Lilitharien with regular posts focusing on the pro’s and con’s and the use of specific priest abilities, raiding, up and coming developments and patches, its a must read for me.  Next Comes the Stories of O, written by Oestrus,  who until very recently had jumped ships and was authoring for Divine Aegis.  Oestrus is now back on the one blog and covering similar types of topics to Divine Aegis but is often found branching out to druid (branching! geddit?? ), shaman, and paladin healing to take more of a generic look at all things healing.

The Greedy Goblin is a strange sort of blog, Gevlon strikes me as a pretty hardcore player of WOW and his views are often quite extreme, and polarise the blog community; just have a read of some of the comments on his more controversial posts if you don't believe me.  The blog is extremely  ‘elite’ player focussed and Gevlon spends a lot of time ‘helping’ morons and slackers ‘improve’.  I’ve included a commentary on this blog specifically because it stands out as one of the prime reason why people should blog; Whilst his views aren’t always popular, or in line with my own, Gevlon generally makes good, well balanced arguments, comments are (understandably I suppose) pre vetted by Gevlon as I would imagine he gets a fair few abusive comments, but to his enormous credit, he always seem to post critical comments (by critical I mean “I don’t agree, and here’s why…” comments, not “this post is crap…” the latter I would consider abuse).  I’ve seen some excellent debates go on in the comments of the posts here as a result, and I’ve taken inspiration for a number of my own posts as a result of reading posts or comments here.

Moving from the more niche focussed blogs to, well, random, we have Pugnacious Priest, I’m sure some time in the distant past this blog was more focussed around priests, now it’s at best loosely priest focussed, but is still an excellent and entertaining read.  Larissa and her Pink Pigtail Inn is another one of these blogs that I wouldn’t class as having a specific focus, taking a look at wow from the perspective of a raider, gives an enthralling commentary on the thoughts of Larissa on WOW and the Blogsphere.  with the added bonus that Tamarind, who was recently lost to the blogsphere, occasionally stops by with a guest post.

I also couldn’t write a post like this without mentioning two of the blogs and bloggers that have, for whatever reason, stopped blogging.  Misery written by Merlot which was loosely based around his shadow priest but encompassed an excellently articulated commentary on WOW.  And then there was Righteous Orbs, written by Tamarind, an excellent,well thought out, and thoroughly engaging blog.  Both of these guys decided to hang up their pen about the time I stared putting my ramblings down in prose and I do hope both will have a change of heart soon (though as I mentioned above Tam does occasionally pop up else where, but its just not enough).

Well there's a seemingly random sample of the blogs I read, there are loads more, but I think I’ve prattled on for long enough.  My blogroll will contain only  blogs which I genuinely read and wont be an attempt to get more links.  Rather topically I received an email from some random as I was half way through writing this post “I really like your blog ‘pleasefeedthetroll’ would you be willing to exchange blogroll inks….” yada yada yada.  Looking at the ‘blog’ it was clearly nothing to do with WOW, or actually anything in particular and just survived on trading links with other spam blogs.  I almost replied “certainly, if you can tell me one thing about the content of my blog”, but sensibly decided to consign it to the spam trap instead.  Hey ho….

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.

It’s not easy being a priest

I first realised I might have a little bit of an alotoholicism problem last week when I stepped back and had a look at the number of alts I have. I'm in the position now where I have 3 characters at 85, two of which (Priest and Mage) have been through tens of heroics, one which (the DK) is on his way to being reasonably geared, so I can safely say I know quite well. I've the druid which is late 60's and a Hunter Warrior and Warlock all in their 60's that I must confess I haven't played at all (yet!) since returning to WOW, a Rogue and Paladin in the 30's and the Shaman that I created but haven't played purely to make up the numbers. That's nine out of the ten classes I've spent playing, when you consider the different specs too, I reckon it's about 16 different class / spec combinations I've played, clearly some of those experiences are out of date since Cata hit as the play styles on most classes have changed significantly but you get the picture.

I was running a good few heroics over the weekend on my mage and DK as we had guild healers available, and then swapping to the priest with many of the same group. We were taking it easy and chatting as we went, when it struck me how much more involved the Priest is to play; on the mage I play a fire spec, I can easily kick out 12k DPS on regular occasion, with pretty poor gear, all that's needed is Living Bomb and Fireball till your heart's content, with a quick scorch to begin with, and looking out for Pyroblast and Fireblast procs; there's a little bit of complexity in choosing the correct spells for crowd dps, and the cool downs, but nothing overly challenging. Contrast this to the Priest, as DPS you've got three dots to keep up on the mob, your own buff to refresh, providing you have shadow orbs to be able to, Mind Flay to ensure you don't clip, SW:D to bring into the equation when the mob is at 25%, and that's before you take into account the cool down spells and when's best to use them. Cross over from the dark side and take a look at healing and it's even more complicated! There are a massive 12 healing spells which a holy priest may use in general play, another 4 occasional and "oh shit" type spells, and a further 12 situation specific spells, like Dispel Magic, which may or may not be added into the mix for a given encounter, add to this the different usage profiles of these spells, depending on what Chakra state you're in, the very fact you can now cancel Chakra after 30 seconds and recast to another state; it's a nightmare, a great big, fun filled, nightmare! Now don't get me wrong, I love the complexity the priest offers and the learning curve for playing it, anyone can pick up a priest, either healing or DPSing, but it takes a long time to master it.

Now I'm being a bit unfair to Mages in comparing them to healing Priests, I've always said tanking is harder (to master) than healing, and my experiences on the Death Knight over the last week certainly back that up, and healing is harder than straight forward DPS. But just taking the DPS comparison, looking at my first heroic with both classes, the Priest kicked out about 5k, the Mage was touching on 10k. Even on the healing front, I've been running through the old instances on my Druid, and am now getting to the stage where the instances are becoming difficult to heal (i.e. a Rogue with a few bandages and a bottle of magic spray couldn't do it) and I can't believe how simple the choices are, basically it's a hot, and a small heal (read Renew and Heal equivalents), a big heal for when things go wrong, a PoH equivalent and a reverse Holy Word: Serenity type spell (in that it removes a HoT and adds a big heal, plus an AOE healing circle on the ground, as opposed to making the next heals better with a Priest). Admittedly I'm not at 85 yet, so it might get more complex, but looking at the spell list on wowhead I doubt it's going to be that much different.

Actually the most difficult class I've played to pick up is the Death Knight, Tanking especially, but even on the DPS front; you're instantly presented with a million and one different diseases and abilities, with Runes and Runic Power to bring in, and none of the normal early learning curve as you don't start from level 1, fortunately I had a friendly guild DK, who I'll be eternally grateful to, who explained that it was more about priorities of sorts, than a true DPS (or tanking) rotation. Once you get to grips with the DK's abilities it's a lot more straight forward, it's not the face rolling it used to be by any means, but it's not hugely taxing. Of the other classes I've played, Hunters are pretty straight forward, ahem auto shot ahem, Warlocks are just wannabe Mage's with DoTs and a self-harming problem, Rogues just stab things in a similar vein to Cat Form Druids (but with knives I suppose) Paladins have it a bit harder (from memory) and warriors were a set key mashing order. Clearly if you're Tanking (well) on any of the classes which can, it takes a lot of ability, but as healing or DPS goes, I can't think of a harder (or more fun) class to play than a priest. But perhaps I'm biased? Go on tell me I'm wrong!


 

A look at Holy Healing after 4.0.6

Disclaimer: this is based purely on released patch notes so far and may be subject to change

With 4.0.6 seemingly just around the corner, I've been having a read up on what it'll mean to me in both Shadow and Holy builds. I have to say up front, I'm a big fan of where the priest is at the moment, I can't really speak for Disc, but from both a Holy and a Shadow point of view they're both extremely fun specs to play, whilst not the easiest, definitely great fun. Who wants easy anyway? Easy is for wimps. I'm concentrating on Holy here, if I pull my finger out I'll get a shadoo version written some time tonight / tomorrow morning too

Whilst I'm definitely a fan of Holy healing, that's not to say there can't be improvements made, improvements can always be made… so firstly, why do I think Holy is such fun currently? I think it boils down to two things, firstly Chakra which allows you to 'specialise your mechanics' on the fly to suit the situation; the art of choosing which Chakra state to be in at any given time and predicting which one you'll need next is a fine art. Secondly, the choice and variation of spells, I don't believe there are any other classes which have such a variation of spells; this is daunting at first, especially when combined with Chakra but means that the way one Holy priest goes about healing will almost certainly be completely different to the next. My normal healing style is with Serenity active (direct healing) with a Renew on the Tank (plus up to two others) being renewed by Heal with Greater Heal and Flash Heal used sparingly depending on how hard the panic button is being pushed, with the odd Prayer of Healing to top up the Party. I'll occasionally use Sanctuary, depending on the situation, and obviously Prayer of Mending and Holy Word: Serenity as the situation dictates, I also tend to throw the occasional Power Word: Sheil around as a fire and forget spell to protect people who've been slapped if the tank is taking big damage too. Lightwell tends to be a boss fight only spell for me but is still an important tool.

I'm going to go through the changes I feel are relevant in the patch notes posted on MMO champion here in the order they appear.

Power Word: Shield mana cost increased by 31% with its effectiveness more than doubled, this is a huge change which will change how I use PW:S drastically, because of the mana increase I won't be using it where I don't think there's a good chance of it being needed, the changes to Renew (detailed below) mean I'll probably be using that as the fire and forget spell of choice. The increased effect makes it even more useful as a pre-fight cast to be used just before the pull (have a look at this blog post for more on pre-casting).

Renew mana cost reduced by 24%. There's been a lot of, well, complete arse written recently about Renew not being viable anymore because of the mana cost, the fact is it's use has changed, it may not be viable to use Renew whack-a-mole Wrath style to heal everyone in a 100 mile radius but when combined with Serenity it is pretty much a free heal. The very fact that in some fights you can have 3 or even 4 Renews rolling on continual (free) refresh by throwing out heals on rotation make it exceptionally powerful. The reduction in mana cost won't have much effect on this use, other than extending your mana pool and giving you a bit more of a buffer, it will however make it more viable as a fire and forget heal where you just need to top someone up a little.

Prayer of Healing effectiveness reduced by 15%, you didn't expect it all to be good news did you? What Blizzard giveth with one hand they taketh away with the other… seriously though, if you're healing style is anything like mine, this won't make much difference. Yes there are some fights where you need to top everyone up quickly, and that will be more mana intensive, but under normal circumstances I can't see it affecting me too much.

Chakra now lasts 1 minute Amen! One of my (minor) gripes with Chakra is it runs out too soon, having to re-click it and then (in some certain circumstances) switch from the big or fast heal you're spamming to standard Heal to reactivate it can be fatal. On the flip side, a 1 minute length might be too long for some fights (Forgemaster Throngus anyone?). Whilst you can currently right click the buff to cancel it, it's a 30 second cooldown so it's pointless doing so. Leaving the the cooldown at 30 seconds might be a good idea, but I'll settle for a 1 minute duration, I think.

Binding Heal and Holy Word: Serenity now refresh Renew, more Renew lovin, thanks Blizzard. (Not that I ever use binding heal, and the later will normally be combined with another direct heal shortly after, but nice all the same).

Binding Heal, Flash Heal, and Greater Heal can now trigger Chakra: Serenity this was my only Major gripe with Chakra, when the brown stuff has hit the fan and you're dishing out the big heals, the last thing you want to do is have to drop off to a lesser heal, much more useful and a massive improvement.

Circle of Healing effectiveness has been increased by 30%. I almost never use CoH due to its mana intensity, this, combined with the PoH nerf make it sound almost viable, though I'll reserve judgement till I get to have a play.

Desperate Prayer now heals the priest for 30% of their total health – stop standing in crap and you won't need this anyway. I might bind it to an action key now so I can hit it in a hurry if needed, rather than have it languishing on my secondary bars.

Guardian Spirit: The absorb/heal from this ability can now never exceed 200% of the maximum health of the target. No biggy really, if your tank was taking this much damage chances are you're boned the second the effect lapses anyways…

Holy Concentration now increases the amount of mana regeneration from Spirit while in combat by an additional 15/30%, down from 20/40% even more reson to tear up and burn all of your Spirit gear… err, sorry, still in Shadow Priest mode. Bit of a ball-ache this, but again, nothing to be overly concerned about, Blizzard have already stated they don't want players sat there scratching themselves in inappropriate places for large durations of the fight in order to regen mana. I won't be massively surprised if in combat mana regen is removed completely at some point (Innervate and other 'specials' withstanding).

Surge of Light can now also proc from Flash Heal and Greater Heal, and can now also critically hit. Previously a bit underpowered, nice buff adding longevity to the mana pool again.

Glyph of Spirit of Redemption has been converted into Glyph of Prayer of Mending, which increases the healing done by the first charge of Prayer of Mending by 60%. This I like, an extra 6 seconds floating with wings isn't to be sniffed at, but as you get better, less and less useful (unless you have suicidal tendencies). 60% increase to the healing of the first charge of PoM is awesome, if used correctly (on the tank generally) it means that your total number of heals needed will be reduced, thus extending your mana pool further, who needs mana regen??

And there you have it, all in all some great tweaks to the Holy Priests arsenal, without too much of a reduction. Personally I don't care too much for in combat regen, I know others will bitch and whine about the nerf, but at the end of the day you just need to get on with it. This patch, in my view, is aimed to bring priests back to the fore in healing whether it be in instances, tank or group healing in Raids.




 

I has healz too!

I was messing around on the druid alt last night and decided to run a few dungeons rather than questing for a bit of a change. I signed up as the usual DPS or Healer roll (which inevitably means healer) and we were off. I had a couple of hours going spare and the footy was on so didn't really fancy doing heroics so when we finished I asked if anyone fancied another, it'd been a reasonable run so a couple of the dps did, we picked up another DPS and a new Paladin tank almost instantly and we were off again. Now on the first run in SM the tank decided he couldn't possibly die and tried to aggro every mob in the instance at the same time, whilst this makes healing a bit more of a challenge, it gets a little too much after a while. I'm happy to push the speed along in these instances, but I'd quite like to enjoy them at the same time.

Something struck me with the second tank, he was pulling at a reasonable (but not silly) rate, which meant we progressed as quick, if not quicker as mobs went down faster, and he could actually tank – I mean really tank, not only did the rest of the party almost never take any damage, he healed himself enough to enable me to stand there and scratch my balls without casting a spell for pretty much the whole instance. Now whilst the first instance was too frantic this was… well, dull; it wasn't long before I was in cat form and wading into the fight, stopping occasionally to band the odd heal about, I was averaging about half the DPS of the others as I was restro spec but I noticed an improvement in kill speed. The whole group did another instance (SM again) and I carried on as a Restro-cat and cast no more than three heals in the whole place.

Come the end of the run, only me and the tank wanted to do another, so we stuck ourselves in dungeon finder and up pops the "select your class" dialogue box. "Bugger this for a game of soldiers" I thought, I whispered my tank asking if he minded me swapping to go DPS spec and still healing, but to shout if he thought I wasn't doing enough healing – he agreed we picked up 3 new DPS and off we went; only one of them was sharp, or confident, enough to point out that I was supposed to be healing and asked why I was doing DPS…. I nearly piped up with "what a healer?" but didn't have the heart, I explained and nobody kicked up much of a fuss. After another run, I decided that whilst my DPS as Balance was reasonable in comparison to others, I was better going Feral (yes yes, I know all of the guide sites say level as Feral, but I just don't get on with melee). So I bit the bullet and respecced, I ended up knocking out as much DPS as pretty much anyone else and doing half as much healing as my Paladin tank over the course of eight or nine instances, some are easier than others, but bugger me they're far too easy, I was averaging around 45 minutes a level and actually went for nearly three instances on the trot without casting a heal.

Over the time we spent in the dungeons I got chatting to the Paladin, it turns out he's a complete alt-o-holic and has pretty much every class under the sun up to level 85. In the time we played together we saw it all; friendly, chatty players who enquired as to the 'healing' setup, the pushy warrior who was obviously better than everyone else and needed to show it through the medium of abuse and CAPITALS. Oh and special mention to the level 38 rogue, wearing predominantly level 20's cloth with spirit and intellect who asked if we minded him rolling on pair of cloth healing trousers because "they're an upgrade to what I've currently got"?!?!?!!! now I'm as forgiving as the next person, but with a comment like this I instantly hit the inspect button – the guy had 2 pieces of leather, the rest cloth, two of which were heirlooms which mean that he's managed to level at least one character to the 80's and run enough instances to be able to buy heirlooms! How can someone possibly get that far through the game and still not have the first clue how to play?

*ahem* eBay *ahem*

Anyways, a thoroughly enjoyable night all round, a new friend made who I hope to play with again sometime soon, a new spec and a football match that I ended up paying very little attention to. I'm definitely of the opinion if you want to power level, all you need to do are instances, over and over again. I'm not sure I'd enjoy that so much so I'm back to questing again with the odd instance when I play the alt.

Every Little Counts

When you know you're going to be tight on mana for a boss fight either because you're still improving your gear or the guys you're healing aren't capable of not standing in the crap, there are a few things you can do to help yourself out.

Making sure you have mana potions handy is the first thing to look at, there are a number of different favours useable depending on the situation allowing you to instantly recoup 10k mana with a Mythical Mana Potion, or 22k with a Potion of concentration providing you can spare 10 seconds to use it.

Look at the makeup of your group, a warlock has health stones which are a must, someone healing themselves is a mana saving for you. A shadow priest can help out with shielding and is far better equipped to regen the mana than you, arcane mages can buff your crit rating with Focus Magic etc. Aim to know the details of all of the other classes in the game and work out how you complement each other.

One thing which may not be so obvious for a healer is first aid, if you need a heal, but you're not desperate, then a bandage is a far more efficient way of doing it. Common sense needs to be employed, but there's definitely a time and place for bandages.

Now we come to pre-casting spells, I regularly do this and it can save around 10% of your mana bar. Lightwell is the obvious one, get this down before the fight and make sure it's well positioned. I generally follow this with a Renew on the tank, Chakra, Heal, Prayer of Mending and a power word shield for good measure. You can then sit down and drink as the tank pulls and be full mana before he takes any damage, it also gives you a little grace to get into position before the tank gets squashed. A word of warning, if it's a PUG, whisper your tank and explain what you're doing, there's no point doing all of this if the tank instantly charges in or sits there waiting for the spell effects to wear off.

None of this replaces players ability, and those players who don't take damage by doing silly things will always be easier to heal. As my year has got better I've found I need to do this less and less, but it's good to have it in your locker.

It’s Grim in Batol

I've had a quiet weekend on WoW front, excessive amounts of alcohol and trying to avoid removing extremities with a circular saw have taken priority (not both at the same time I might add). I've managed a total of two instances this weekend, both of them in bleeding Grim Batol. Let me state up front, Grim Batol is a horrible place, it is my Stonecore… I don't mind doing it providing it's with reasonably geared guildies or friends, but as a PUG, unless you get very lucky it's not going to get finished.

The first boss, General Umbriss, isn't too bad, providing you have the gumption to keep an eye on your deadly boss mods warning and move when he decides to pick on you and you have someone capable of either crowd controlling or killing the purple trogg. My first run was in shadow form, with a guild healer but the rest PUGed saw not one, but two wipes mainly because the tank was under-geared and didn't have a clue (I know tanks get a hard time, but having some idea of how to tank with your class, before pressing the LFG button and clicking the shield icon is desirable). In is customary for PUGs wiping in such fashion the tank blamed the healer, everyone else in the group, physics, and pretty much everything else possible before quitting, as did one of the DPS only not quite as dramatically. Reformed with a reasonable tank, Umbriss was despatched pretty quickly, and we were off to Forgemaster Throngus.

Now Frongus has been my least favourite boss as a healer, since I got bored of queuing and added my holy spec, that was until I realised dispelling the nasty debuff on the tank makes things simpler. Amazingly both as dps and healing this weekend we saw him off first time. I can't ever remember two fights going so smoothly with him. I suppose the source of my dislike for this boss is the fact that being unlucky makes it infintately harder; if you get more than one shield, or get unlucky with cave-ins with a shield and then get swords it becomes very difficult for the healer through no real fault of his own, just random chance. I'm all for encounters being variable and challenging, providing they don't become impossible randomly.

Drahga Shadowburner is the real group killer for me, it's the one where I've seen the most PUGs fall apart and although it's skippable, if you have to skip it you're probably not going to do the last boss either. It is also for me, since I figured out how thick I was being on Throngus, the boss which I'm currently finding the most difficult. There's just so much going on! Generally the tank takes a battering and so is needing big heals, there's adds running around like loons just waiting for you get your spell book out so they have an excuse to aggro you. The little exploding git add which needs to be kited or it'll pretty much one-shot whoever it's got targeted. And then there's the flames, I just can't seem to reliably keep myself outside of them, either I avoid them and the tank dies, or I completely miss the warning because of the anarchy which is ensuing and cop it straight in the face. It has to be said, it's easier with people you know and much easier if people are on vent communicating, but with PUGs it's an almost guaranteed fail. Not wanting to break with tradition, my first trek did exactly this, with a fair stab at it, but sadly a couple of the group just weren't up to it and neither were their replacements as in turn people quit.

The second group, with me healing, decided to skip it all together and head for Erudax, I quite like this boss, as bosses go in Grim Batol, but today was a different story. The first tank, who wasn't bad to be fair to him, had other commitments, made his apologies and left before we had our first stab. The second tank TALKED ONLY IN CAPITALS, said FFS in every sentence, and insisted his strategy which was "the way tankspot say you have to do it" (I checked, it doesn't) lasted all of two attempts before doing us all a favour. Another short wait and an unsuspecting tank later the DPS decided the adds weren't all that important, the idiot healer, ignoring my own rule, decided to stand outside of the crap and promptly died. At which point the hour and a half I'd set aside for a 'quick random' was up and I had to do something I hate and make my apologies. I hope they went on to kill Erudax at the next pull, it's not a particularly difficult boss, but people's minds just seemed to be elsewhere so I suspect it would have been called pretty soon after my departure.

Boss	General	Healing	DPS
General Umbriss	Move on charge Stay at range to avoid ground seige/ move when he turns to face you	Fade to avoid adds	Kill purple add if no CC Kill other adds if being overwhelmed
Forgemaster Throngus	Shield (flames) – get in close, move behind boss Sword – big DPS on tank Mace – Kite, stay out of path Avoid cave in	Dispell tank big AOE heals on shield, use chakra floor heal if neccesary Sword – big single target heals – use guardian spirit if needed Mace – small AOE heals
Drahga Shadowburner	Kite add if targeted Move on flame warning Avoid crap on floor	Conserve mana where poss Small aoe heals	Disperse if caught in flame
Erudax	Move into circle to avoid shadow gale	AOE chakra heal in circle if needed Keep players topped up in case of stun	DPS add immediately after gale

Suicidal Tendencies

Spirit of Redemption is a strange talent, I'm not aware of any other talent in any tree of any other class which is similar. It gives you 15 seconds of unlimited healing upon your death (21 glyphed). Why would anyone in their right mind spend a precious point on a talent which is only useable when you're dead? Well I did! And here's why:





In my view there are two reasons why you would spec SoR

1. You're general awareness is pants
   
2. You're general awareness is excellent
   

Now the more mathematically inclined amongst you (possibly statisticians, I don't know) may point out to me that my two reasons encompass all players, not so. The middle ground of not being pants, but not realising quite how SoR could be employed exists, here's a nifty little diagram to summarise my thoughts.

It's not so cut-and-dry, I suppose what I'm saying is all pants players will need it lots, because they've done something silly which has killed them, generally this will result in a wipe, but sometimes it'll be just enough healing to let the group kill whatever needs to be killed. Average players, where most of us sit, will drop the ball occasionally and do silly things too; the more you progress towards the middle ground the less you die, the less you need it? True. And the same has happened to me over the past few weeks, I've considered dropping SoR, but then a funny thing happened to me, we were Fighting Lord Walden in SFK, and I was completely out of mana, all my cooldowns were gone and I'd even popped my mana pot (can you tell the fight was going well?). Four of five of the party were alive and Walden was sub 5 % health, as were most of the party, when the green Toxic Coagulant debuff pops up. Veterans of SFK will know this means move around quickly or die (in fact I quite expect to get several comments of purely qqqqqqqeeeeeeeqqqqqqq just from the natural reaction to strafe at the mention of the green nastiness). Instead of my natural reaction to move immediately, my hand froze; I'm not sure this was intentional at this point or just an admission of defeat, moments later I was in SoR form and healing away again the part were back up to fullish health and Walden was as dead as a manic depressive Warlock with a haste buff. The logic is quite simple, commit Hari-Kari, incur a repair bill and have a chance of killing the boss, or don't do it, definitely incur a repair bill and wipe the party. If I haven't upset those statisticians too much to have left by now, they'll point out that this is simple game theory, which can be explained by a two by two matrix (the MBA graduates weapon of choice)

	Best Case	Worst Case
Suicide	Death & repair bill + loot	Death + Infinite repair bills (more subsequent wipes)
Don't Suicide	Death & repair bill + loot (kill it next time)	Death + Infinite repair bills (more subsequent wipes)

Admittedly you might wipe, reform, and kill the boss next time, but chances are you'll have at least a couple of attempts before succeeding, or calling it a night. Worst case scenario is no worse than not trying it. So in my view, it's worth a shot. I've employed this tactic on two or three occasions since to good success, there's a time and a place for it and it won't always work, but what have you got to lose? That's right, nothing. There are plenty of bosses in Cata which give you the opportunity to do this, so bare it in mind as a last resort. Don't expect to get thanks for doing it, people will just assume you died, so make sure to brag about being better than them if it comes off, or alternatively just keep quiet and sit back with a smug smile on your face knowing that you rock.

Click the Lightwell not to die!

The Lightwell is a funny thing, much maligned when it was introduced back in… actually I can't remember when it was, but let's just say a long time ago. Rightly so, in my opinion, when it was first introduced, the healing it did was negligible, and you had to be stood close enough to lick it to be able to use the damn thing. This relegated it to nothing more than a glorified range marker and subjected it to the derision of most of the WoW world.

Not so any more, HAURRAH I hear you say… the Lightwell ticks for 6 to 8k with average heroic gear three times, with 10 charges unglyphed (15 glyphed), and more importantly is clickable from up to 18 yards away, and EVEN MORE importantly you can use it while you're stunned, blinded, casting and pretty much any other situation you can think of. This means that it is not only a viable healing option but also, if used correctly, COMPLTELEY FREE, simply stick it down before the fight, and watch you're adoring party colleagues heal themselves, only stopping to whisper you and tell you what a good healer you are! Not a chance. It might be the most efficient healing spell in the game, it might be extremely useful given the movement dynamics of most boss fights, but can you hell get people to click it consistently?

I've tried a number of approaches in getting people to see the light, well, click it, with variable success. Guildies are easy, simply scream abuse at them over Vent until they cotton on J but in PUG's it's another matter. I've tried explaining the benefits of the Lightwells wholesome goodness before a boss fight, nothing. I've tried reverse phycology "you won't want to click the Lightwell and stay alive would you?" and much more. Sometimes people cotton on, wither because they're good players already and understand the changes, sometimes they're even better players and have the ability to learn and adapt (these types of players are the best in my view) but mainly they're completely oblivious.

My current approach is to drop a Lightwell on the first trash pull of an instance and explain what it is in a slightly tongue in cheek manner (me sarcastic? Nooooooooonnonono), then drop it at the star of each boss with a macro that announces its existence. I then proceed to spam another macro which yells to "click the Lightwell not to die" at points in the encounter where DPS not being thick would be desirable. Generally this has a reasonable effect, especially when combined with my relentless mocking should we wipe and the Lightwells still up. I've only once had someone take my word literally and click the Lightwell "not to die" BEOFRE the pull!!?! "But you said I had to click it else I would die" I'm still not sure whether this guy was a comedy genius, or a cretin, I'll leave it to you to decide.

I now understand the pain of the Warlocks suffering, not that they don't deserve it, but for years they've been dishing out health stones, only to see them go wasted as the party wipes with the boss on 1% health, again. We're even further disadvantage in that players can't simply sling it on the cast bar and click it, they have to actively search for it on the floor, make sure they're in range, and then click. (Ok, I take it all back, it's far too hard, don't bother even trying to click it…).

I recently experienced a novel approach to 'coaching for performance' (can you tell I work for a large corporate? J) from a healer at the first boss in HoL whilst brushing the dust off my mage and having a run out. "If you're shit and stand in the blue fire, I'm not healing you" again I'm pretty sure it was tongue in cheek, or perhaps he was just as scarred as I am on the stupidity front, whatever, it worked. So I'm tempted to steal his idea and threaten not to heal anyone until they've clicked the Lightwell at least once.

Ideas for improving the use of a Lightwell

• Make macro's to encourage its use and spam them relentlessly.
  
• Keep it friendly, I've found a little humour goes a long way.
  
• Drop one early on trash to acclimatise your party to it, it might be the first time they've seen one…
  
• Always drop it before the fight, have a drink, pull boss – free heals.
  
• Drop it in a sensible place, where it can be seen and where it'll generally be in range; midway between the melee and the ranged is ideal
  
• Don't give up, if at first you don't succeed, bitch and moan until somebody listens.
  
• Practice what you preach! You too can click the Lightwell; don't think you're special and thus exempt.
  

Who'd have thought it, I've written an essay on the damn lolwell, I'm off to petition the government to install 'vote kick' functionality to trains.

Seeing the Light

Spurred on by my first ever comment by my reader (I'm hoping for more, but I'm not sure it's quite plural yet) and boredom of yet another train journey, it's time for another brain dump. Kudos to Tamarind for posting the comment and making my day.

When I left this morning I was well in to the heroics, and had started looking at more advanced ways of tweaking my gear and playing style for maximum DPS, but as I've progressed, and the holiday season has ended there are less guildies available to run instances; I'm not quite sure whether it's my work commitments getting me online at bad times, the increased amount of raiding the guild is doing, or that people have started to realise how bad I am… I'll let you decide.

So anyways, I've started using the dungeon finder a lot, previously it was purely to top up the groups, now it's to find three or four other players. The first thing I notice, if there's a tank in my party you're into an instance quicker than you can blink, with a healer, I've generally got time to nip downstairs and put the kettle on. If it's just me, or me and only DPS, it's thirty minutes plus! THIRTY, three zero, there can't be that many Warlocks in the world can there?

As the handy-man said to his apprentice, "screw this", I'm getting the bandages out.

So off I go to have a read up on specs, I decide on http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bchZfurrRzbkcdoh as my spec and start to have a play with the healing mechanics; the first thing that strikes me is the options available to a healing priest nowadays, back in Vanilla WoW, which is the last time I did any serious healing, I used primarily Greater Heal, Flash Heal, and renew, with the occasional downrated standard heal if mana was an issue, and not much else. It strikes me that there are at least ten spells which will be in standard use, plus the more occasional spells like Guardian Spirit and Hymn of Hope etc. And what the hell is Chakra??? It sounds like some 80's punk rock band… I set up my bars in what seems to be a reasonable order, those of you who read my last post, you'll remember my fingers have long term memory issues and it takes a lot for me to get used to Renew, Flash Heal, Heal, and Greater Heal not being 7,8,9, and 0 anymore.

It just so happens that a few guildies need a healer for a normal instance for their alts, so I volunteer and head along and help out on the understanding I'm popping my healing cherry and am likely to suck…. And suck I did. Fortunately I had the sense to go for a normal where my overpowered gear and lower damage made up for my complete ineptitude. Several lessons were learned; firstly, Chakra is very important, secondly, I need some addons to help out desperately, thirdly, the bigger health pools mean that you can leave the DPS on lowish health for longer than I'd historically be comfortable with if you're desperately struggling to keep the tank up without too much danger.

I find healbot on either curse.com or wowinterface.com, I can't remember which, and set to installing it (I know, I know, "only nubs use healbot" pro healers use grid, I remember grid being a steep learning curve and I'm already feeling battered and bruised from my first healing experience, deal with it). I set about configuring it, so I have Heal on left click, Greater Heal on right click. I latterly add Decurse and Power Word Shield plus a few other bits and bobs, but you get the picture. Heal is my go-to spell, in normal circumstances I keep Chakra up on single target healing which renews Renew for free and makes it extremely mana efficient, I reckon I can keep Renew up on three targets quite easily if needed. My 'oh crap' spell is bound to ' again and I have the Chakra specific spell on 1, Chakra itself on 2, with Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Mending, and Circle of Healing on 3,4 and 5. This way, most of my healing is done by mouse clicks, and anything else is relatively close by my left hand should I need to change tack.

All in all I'm much happier with the healing since I've got this, I've also installed an addon to let me move pretty much anything about the screen so the important 'things to click' are all close together.

Some more general thoughts on (Holy) Priest Healing summarised below

• Single target healing Chakra with Heal is your main healing, with renew.
  
• Swap to Flash and Grater Heal when the going gets tough.
  
• Don't forget the chakra specific spell in this form, it's very efficient and improves the Crit of your next heal(s).
  
• Keep Prayer of Mending up if there's a lot of party damage; always cast it on the tank.
  
• AOE Chakra is crucial for some bosses (more on that in a later post) the specific spell can be vital, but is massively mana intensive.
  
• ALWAYS use a Lightwell before a boss pull, its free heals.
  
• Consider using a macro to spam party chat with "click on the Lightwell, numbtee" or something similar – the more scathing the better.
  
• Talk to your tank – whisper him or her when you first get to the instance and tell them if you've not been there, or you have problems with running short of mana etc…
  
• Use Circle of healing sparingly, I'm not sure it's that useful a spell any more, Prayer of Healing is far better for topping off part health.
  
• Don't be scared to shield targets, sling a renew at them and then come back to them later, suggest they click the Lightwell too J
  
• Be aware that DPS being silly is as likely to make you go OOM from not moving out of the crap as you being "a noob" the finger of blame is often pointed at the "nub healer" in PUGs, don't be afraid to, politely, point out that it's not (always) your fault.
  
• Leap of Faith is simply the best spell for annoying the hell out of your friends, work out the most ingenious way of doing so, and let me know what it is… (it's also useful in fights too)
  
• Have fun, healing rocks!