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19
Aug
09

Druid Healing: From Nub!Branch to Pro!Tree

By Pyo 6 Comments
Categories: angry healers, druid and Healing
Tags: , ,

Argh!

Sorry for not updating in so long, loyal viewers, but with BlizzCon just around the corner, my husband and I have been working our tails off on costuming and such (if you’re going to be there, I’ll be dressed as Lady Onyxia!  Feel free to grab me and say HI!) and I have been sorely negelecting this most beloved of healer blogs.  And for that, I apologize.  Rest assured, however, that I have been coming up with post topics and have managed to achieve some time to take care of business!

As I’m sure you know, I am a member of the WoW Ladies Livejournal community, and, as of late, I have seen a lot- and I do mean A LOT- of  ‘OMG I’m a new tree HALP’ posts.  And while I’m sure everyone has seen my previous post on the subject, I decided that a little more indepth take on how a tree!druid heals is probably what’s needed.  Now, please keep in mine, I’m not theorycrafter- I flat out suck at math, and I refuse to redo the work the people over at Elitist Jerks have put so much time into.  But you didn’t come here for theorycrafting- you came here for angry healers explaining whats up with our classes.  And that’s just what I’m gonna do.

DISCLAIMER:  All of the following information is based on my experiences as a tree!druid.  Please note that this is not the LAW of Tree!healing, nor should it be treated as such (though I would be extremely flattered if you are assisted at all by this.  I am verry passionate about druid healing.)

We’ll start simple- how do druids heal?  Now, I’m sure you’re wondering, ‘Well, isn’t that what this is about?’  Yes, it is.  But if you think that druids heal like priests, paladins, and shaman, you are incorrect.  Think about it- watch that priest the next time you run with one.  When does he/ she heal?  Typically, its after the damage has been dealt.  We like to call this reactive healing- healing the target after the damage has been taken.  Now, if you were to watch me heal a fight, you will notice that, while I do throw HoTs on targets reactively, the majority of my healing is done when I know there is damage incoming- preemptive healing.  This is the key to being a pro!tree- not waiting for the damage to happen, but planning for it and taking precautions.  This is a totally different mindset than that of a priest/ pally/ shaman healer- we can’t heal like they do, so we can’t think like they do.  HoTs are designed to heal when damage is taken, not after.  If you can wrap your brain around this, then you are ready to tree!heal.

Next up for discussion are druid healing spells and their uses.  Druids have 2 kinds of healing spells: Heal over Time spells, or HoTs, and Direct Heals.  It is important to understand these concepts, as it is core to how a druid heals.  Druids have an abundance of HoTs, and limited Direct Heals, which gives us some fairly enormous flexibility when it comes to healing assignments.  I am a firm believer of the idea that druids are for raid healz.  I’m not saying we can’t tank heal, because we can.  We do, however, excel at raid healing, and I will almost always put any and all trees in a raid with me as a raid healer.  We’ve come a long way from the ‘MT healzor ZOMG bind all of your keys to Lifebloom and faceroll’ days of The Burning Crusade.

Now, how about some spells? 

Heal over Time spells:  A druid’s primary HoTs are Rejuvenation, Wild Growth, Regrowth (direct heal with a HoT), and Lifebloom.  I’ve listed them here in the order that I use them (I am spazzy with Rejuv, I swear.)  HoTs are, for lack of a better phrase, the heart and soul of a tree!druid- love your HoTs, for they are your strength as a healer.  All but Regrowth are instant cast.  It makes tree!druids very mobile (now that they fixed Tree of Life form’s speed nerf), and they do quite a bit of healing.  Rejuvenation and Wild Growth are the majority of my heals in a raid situation, and I rely heavily on them.

Direct Heal spells: Swiftmend, Nourish, Regrowth, Lifebloom (when it blooms), Healing Touch.  All of these spells can proc Living Seed, if you’re specced into it.  These do not get used as often, as that is not my particular style of healing, but I do abuse Nourish occasionally- its nice in a pinch, especially with the glyph.  SWIFTMEND OMG.  Love your Swiftmend- its an amazing way to heal up quick spike damage (get the Glyph for it- will explain later.)  I have saved many a pixellated ass with Swiftmend.  It is one of my most used (and useful) spells, next to Rejuv and WG.  Be wary of Lifebloom, Blizzard keeps nerfing its healing bonus and increasing its mana cost- making it practically useless, in my opinion, but I will occasionally throw a stack if needed.  Regrowth and Healing Touch rarely, if ever, get used.  I’ll use Regrowth on the tank during the Vezax fight, but thats about it.  I try not to rely too much on these spells.

 Now, druid stats.  What a tree!druid should be looking for in gear is this (in order of importance):

Spellpower:  This is pretty easy to understand.  The more spellpower you have, the better your heals are.  Koko is currently rocking 2200+ spellpower in treeform- some might say thats a bit low, but I seem to manage just fine.  I tend to top my guilds healing meters (including beating out those 2.5k spellpower holy paladins), so I must be doing something right.  But spellpower should be your TOP stat concern. 

Haste:  Why?  Well, a couple of reasons. 

1.  Getting to that elusive 1 second Global Cool Down (GCD), and

2.  Reducing your Nourish cast time close to 1 second.  You may not use it often, but its nice in a pinch.

Shorter GCDs = more HoTs you can throw = more healing done = less people dead at the end of the fight.  Always a good thing. At the moment, I am currently unsure of the exact soft haste cap for either the 1 second GCD or the 1 second Nourish cast, though I am pretty sure the GCD soft haste cap is near 420.  Don’t quote me on that. 

Crit:  Now, Crit is kinda controversial.  Sure, its nice to have some Crit stacked (Living Seed is ok), but HoTs don’t crit, unless you happen to be the lucky tree wearing 4 pieces of Tier 9, which allows your HoTs to crit (sexy set bonus is sexy!)  So, really, I wouldn’t worry about trying to stack this.  If a piece of gear drops and it has crit on it, by all means, take it if you can.  But leave the crit clothie pieces to the clothie casters (don’t make your clothies cry.)

Intellect:  For the standard reason all spellcasters stack Int- MOAR MANAZ.  (Mana mana DO DO DO DO DO…)

Stamina:  Again, same standard reason- moar health = you stay alive to heal people longer.  Again, not worth stacking, but don’t pass on a piece of gear that happens to have quite a bit of Stam on it, you’ll be thankful one day.

Spirit: Okay,  OKAY.  I KNOW.  Blizzard nerfed Spirit (I growled and yowled and cried about it, too) but, really?  Your mana regen probably isn’t nerfed too badly.  I’ll have to Innervate on those long, drawn out fights (piss off, Hodir and Ignis), but I don’t really notice that much of a drop in my regen.  Also, you gain +healing in Treeform equal to a certain percentage- 15? 20?- of your total Spirit.  So its still worth having, in my opinion.

Now, one of the more fun things to discuss (and a change I’m damn glad they made), Glyphs!  There are 3 Major Glyphs that are widely accepted as the raiding tree!druid’s healing glyphs:

Glyph of Swiftmend (Major):  does not cosume Rejuv or Regrowth.  I can’t emphasize how hawt this glyph is.  It just is. 

Glyph of Nourish (Major):  Increases the healing done by Nourish by 5% per HoT on the target.  This results in OMG nice Nourish numbers (for the record, a stack of 3 Lifebloom only counts as 1 HoT.)

Glyph of Wild Growth (Major):  Increases the number of people healed by Wild Growth to 6.  One more person in the circle!

The Minor Glyphs are pretty much pick and choose, but these are the ones I use:

Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth:  Removes the need for a reagent for Rebirth (battle rez).  I won’t say it saves money (it does, a bit).  Its true value lies in not having to say, ‘Oh shit, I’m out of seeds, sry healer, no brez 4 u,’ and having people not call you a nub!branch (by the way, you can blame tokudama from lj for that phrase.)

Glyph of the Wild:  Reduces the cost of Mark of the Wild and Gift of the Wild.  Now if only they’d remove the reagent for this, too…

Well, I suppose this is really all I have for now.  I’m sure this will be updated and changed as time goes on, but I hope this helps those of you struggling for tree!healing help.

FOR THE… everyone?

~Pyo

13
Aug
09

Things the DPS Aren’t Allowed To Do Anymore

By ILikeBubbles 7 Comments
Categories: angry healers and World of Warcraft
Tags: , , ,

Things the DPS Aren’t Allowed To Do Anymore

  • Misdirect onto the priest/mage/other non-tank like person
  • …or ToT onto a non-tank like person
  • Throw trash items into the bank spelling out my name to irritate officer
  • …even if I am an officer
  • Stand in fire to see if the healers will really let me die (they will)
  • Hug mobs that whirlwind
  • Alt tab upon death and wait for a rez…then miss the first three, tab in, and ask for another
  • Announce my death despite the very obvious word DEAD across my box on every healer’s screen
  • Announce that I have X debuff that the healers have painstakingly set up their UIs to show
  • Panic and scream for heals
  • Otherwise blather nonsense on Vent I have been asked not to blather, thus drowning out actual important information that we didn’t already know
  • Post meters in /raid
  • Post meters in /say (it’s not magically less annoying)
  • Instantly blame the healers for every death

This list brought to you by stupid wipes in Ulduar.

28
Jul
09

Power Auras How To

By ILikeBubbles 1 Comment
Categories: World of Warcraft
Tags: ,

So you’ve got your addon and now you log on and type in /powah.  This is what you see:

Obviously we’re going to click on the “new” button here to get started.  I’d already done my healers and wanted to start off from scratch, so we’ll be doing some Angry Tank Power Auras…but you’ll get the idea.

To be completley honest: I don’t know what all this shit does yet.  This is just a basic tutorial.  The Texture bar there lets you pick between pretty pictures.  Opacity, size, and position bars should be pretty self explanitory. 

Turn your attention to the “Activation by:” dropdown menu there.  In this case, buffs is selected. 

Buff happens to be what I’m looking for, so I’ll leave it as is.  Now, type in the name of the buff you want it to look for.  In this case, it’s Sword and Board, and you can see that I’ve changed the picture to be a shield.  For something like that-a simple buff or proc I want an alert for-that’s really all I have to do! 

But let’s say you want it to show you when you have Serendipity x3.  See that Stacks box, right of the activation by menu?  You’d type 3 in there to get it to show up only when you had three stacks of Serendipity.  Neat!

Some important boxes to pay attention to there are “only if in combat”, “only if in raid”, etc, but those you should be able to figure out easily enough.

Now let’s say you’ve added everything you wanted-in my case, I’ve got 4 icons showing for various things.  You’ll see that although I’m “done” right this second, nothing but ?s are showing.  If I closed the power auras window right that second and started testing, nothing would work.  O noes!

That confused the hell out of me when I first started setting it up, but just give it a few.  Eventually, it’ll look like this:

Ta-da, it sorted itself out and now it’s showing the proper icons.  The only one with a ? is my aggro indicator, because aggro doesn’t have an icon.   Once it’s showing the icons, it should be working correctly.  If something seems borked, make sure you’ve typed the name correctly.

ETA: You can click the sound tab and add sounds to it for extra oomph!  I uh…I dunno what those other tabs really do, yet.  I’ll have to try for a Power Auras 102 post some day.

15
Jul
09

Post Series: Healing in Ulduar- Mimiron

By Pyo 3 Comments
Categories: Healing
Tags: , , ,

Time for another Keeper of Ulduar!  In keeping with my previous posts, I will discuss them in the order that my guild defeated them.

Mimiron, Great Builder

Iron Gnomes- Not Just For Punting.

Iron Gnomes- Not Just For Punting.

When you cruise on down into the Spark of Imagination- after battling your way through killer bomb bots, stealing the battletanks, the ‘Trash’, and taking a ride on the bullet train (which was VERY anti-climactic, IMO), you see this little guy- little in comparison to his fellow Keepers, anyways- busily hammering away at a miniature Flame Leviathan.  He looks innocent enough… right?

Recommended healers for this fight: 6-7

Phase 1: 

Because the first one wasn't bad enough...

Because the first one wasn't bad enough...

 

The first thing Mimiron does- after berating you for breaking the XT-002- is hop into the Leviathan MK II ground assault vehicle.  This thing has several different abilities:

Plasma Blast:  an attack aimed at the tanks.  Looks like a thin, red beam that does a considerable amount of damage.  Tanks should be blowing cooldowns to survive this.

Napalm Shells:  AoE attack targeted at ranged types.  Has a range, so as long as you’re about 10 yards apart, the only one who should be affected by this is the target.  Target will need immediate heals, as this is a fairly punishing attack.

Land Mines:  Mimoron’s answer for not being able to Napalm the melee.  He’ll toss out mines that will fall in a pattern, leaving sections open for escape.  Not too much damage, but melee shouldn’t be hitting them, anyways.

Shock Blast:  Similar to Stormcaller Brundir’s Overload ability.  Melee need to run out of range or they will be one shot.

 

The basic strat here:  Have a dedicated tank healer and 2 Napalm Shell healers- one on the right and one on the left.  Raid damage is minimal in this fight as long as melee avoids the Land Mines and people don’t cluster up.  Keep at least 2 ranged healers, just in case, and have the others assist the MT healer/ Napalm healers.

Phase 2:

BFG

BFG

In phase 2, good old Mimiron tucks the Leviathan MK II in the garage in favor of this bad boy- the VX-001 Anti- Personnel Assault Cannon.  It pops out of a cylinder in the center of the room (NOTE:  do not stand near it, it will throw you across the room.)  Its abilities:

Rockets:  It will shoot one of the rockets on its back up into the air.  It will typically target ranged, but if there are no ranged to hit, it will drop it on the melee.  Keep an eyeball out for a red and orange graphic on the ground and avoid it, thats where the rocket will hit.

Laser Barrage:  This machine’s big attack.  It will stop moving around and the big guns will start to ‘spin up’.  He will then begin firing in a clockwise rotation.  EVERYONE should move behind him to avoid the damage, as it will kill a tank.

The strat:  Separate the ranged into three groups.  Stick them in the large, pie shaped areas in the room with an AoE healer each (preferably).  Melee should be right up on the VX-001 and staying on the wide, black strips that split the room into the pie shapes.  All other healers should be with the melee. 

Phase 3:

Proof that Blizzard's game designers are twisted.

Proof that Blizzard's game designers are twisted.

In phase 3, Mimiron will stash the VX-001 in favor of this, which he calls his ‘magnificent Aerial Command Unit.’  Flying gnome head?  Why not!  This machine needs to be tanked by a ranged DPS type- my guild uses our resident warlock, Sasinko.  Its abilities:

Plasma Ball:  Its primary attack against the ranged tank.  Fairly weak damage, but he does it often.

Bots:  He will drop 3 different kinds of adds in this fight- Bomb Bots, which need to be soaked; Assault Bots, which need to be tanked and killed; and Trash Bots, which need to be destroyed.  These bots drop Magnetic Cores, which are used to pull the flying gnome head down to the ground where it can be DPSed.

The strat:  This is the easiest phase to  heal, imo.  Very little in the way of raid damage being taken.  Put a dedicated healer on the ranged tank, the Bomb bot soaker, and the Assault bot tank.  Have a melee drop the Magnetic Cores and burn him down.  You’re aiming for less than 3 burn cycles on the head.

 

 

Phase 4:

You are NOT a real geek if you don't get the reference.

You are NOT a real geek if you don't get the reference.

In phase 4, Mimiron is done playing nice, and he brings out all of his toys, which join up to create the V0-L7R-0N.  This phase is the most fun- and most insane- of them all for healers.  His abilities:

Shock Blast and Land Mines, as per Leviathan MK II.

Lazer Barrage and Rockets (x2 this time), as per VX-001.

Plasma Balls as per the Aerial Command Unit.

Hand Pulse:  Only gained while V0-L7R-0N is all together.  A short burst cone blast from his hands.

The strat:  2 tanks are needed- a Leviathan tank and a flying gnome head tank.  Mimiron will use ALL OF THE ABILITIES LISTED, so your team needs to be on their toes.  Rockets and Land Mines need to be avoided, when he spins up Laser Barrage, everyone needs to move behind the VX-001 portion, not the Leviathan MK II.  Move out of Shock Blast.  Have one dedicated healer on both of the tanks, and the rest on the raid.  The 3 parts need to be DPSed down to about 100k health and then burned- please note that it is specifically to 100k health, and not a certain percentage, because each part has a different amount of health.  Melee should concentrate on the Levathan MK II, while the ranged to DPS the head and middle.  Feel free to swap DPS priority around as necessary.  Defeat Mimiron’s machine.  Get lewtz.  Profit.

Well, thats it for today, folks!  Happy hunting!

08
Jul
09

Post Series: Add Ons and Mods, part 2

By Pyo 1 Comment
Categories: Healing
Tags: , ,

Why does it look like the Angry Healers are rapidly becoming the Angry Healer?  :(

Anyways, moving along… there are people to educate!  Individuals to enlightent in the ways of the WoW Add ons!

Last time, we took a look at Grid and Clique- a personal must have.  Now, I want to show you Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text (or MSBT)!

I should put something witty here, shouldn't I?

I should put something witty here, shouldn't I?

 See those numbers and words scrolling around the middle of the screen?  That’s Mik’s SCrolling Battle Text.  What it does is it shows a ton of information in a small space, and is totally customizable.  Are you sick of AoEing and seeing all of the yellow, flashing numbers filling your screen and dropping your framerates to a crawl?  MSBT consolidates all of your outgoing damage and displays it as ‘amount of total damage done [# HITS]‘. Druids, are you tired of seeing your HoTs tick for each indiviual person?  MSBT will do the same for your healing as it will for everyone else’s damage!  Done with staring at your spellbar to time your spells with longer GCDs?  MSBT can be configured with alert tones to let you know when your cool downs are up!  It will also tell you when specificl class abilities, like Revenge, Eclipse, or Art of War, proc!  It really cleans up your display and makes it all so manageable.  It also has tons of customization options, raging from scroll locations, directions and patterns; fonts and font sizes; alert tones, and so much more.  Its very easy to set up and use.  Comes highly recommended and with the Pyo Seal of Approval.

Next mod I have to share is not a necessity, but it sure is nice to have:  SexyMap!

It really is sexy.

It really is sexy.

 

Hot, yes?  I’d say this really served no purpose other than to look good, but it does hide all of the buttons around the minimap when you don’t want to see them, and will show them when you mouse over it.  So that’s nice.  However, the best part is that you can design your own skin for it.  YES!  If you know how to get into WoW’s texture and image files and know what you are looking for (WoW Model Viewer can help with this) you can make your own skin- choose designs and colors, glows, runes, rotations, sizes… anything that is a texture incorperated into WoW can be used!  As a matter of fact, Phae from Resto4Life created her own skin for tree!druids to love !  I built it from the tutorial she had up on the site before I realized they’d incorperated it into the mod.  -shrug-  But there are tons of preset skins for it, and all of them are pretty awesome looking.  Don’t like round maps?  There are square ones you can use, or change, if you’d like.  The options are limited only to what textures are loaded into WoW.  So have fun!

The last mod I’ll discuss today is one that, I believe, is an absolute must if you are a raider or plan on raiding anytime soon.  It is a requirement for all raiders in my guild for a very good reason:  DeadlyBossMods (DBM).

 

Ignore the glowing tattoes and screaming Illidan fangirls.

Ignore the glowing tattoes and screaming Illidan fangirls.

Deadly Boss Mods is a Boss Ability timer.  It gives you the cooldowns of boss abilities, shown as bars (see right).  It’ll warn you when a boss is using a targeted ability on your raid (Shadow Crash WUT?) as a Raid Warning, complete with annoying noise (though some people still manage to get hit by it).  If the boss has mobs, it will show their health (like Freya’s Storm Lasher, Snaplasher, and Ancient Water Spirit, or Mimiron’s V0-L7-R0N) which is especially important if you need to kill them Romulo and Julianne style.  It will let you know when a boss is doing an AoE attack you need to avoid (Emalon the Storm Watcher’s Lightning Nova being a prime case)- it even tells you to ‘Run Away, Little Girl!  Run Away…’ a la Big Bad Wolf from such attacks.  The only thing DBM doesn’t have that other Boss Timers have is the final Fantasy victory music when you beat the boss- damn you, BigWigs.

So there you have it.  I hope that someone out there found this at least somewhat informative.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress…

30
Jun
09

Post Series: Tree!Healing in Ulduar, part 4: Freya

By Pyo Leave a Comment
Categories: Healing
Tags: , , , ,

Whoa, I’m back!  -dusts off the leaves and waves-

Its been a while since I’ve updated this post series, and my guild has cleared through a lot of bosses since then.  I’m still taking them one at a time, because we still have bosses to go, but… I’m sure everyone is ok with that.  Our next boss downed in Ulduar was Freya, Goddess of Life.

It takes a special kind of hairspray to give stone hair that kind of hold.

It takes a special kind of hairspray to give stone hair that kind of hold.

That’s a big bitch.  /silly

Freya comes equipped with 3 huge tree spirits who will need to be killed- left up, they activate Hard mode.  Each drops an Emblem of Conquest.

Moving along… strats!  Freya’s fight is about defeating the adds she summons and killing the Gifts of Eonar that spawn and heal them.  She summons 3 distinct add types, each with its own mechanics.  In addition, while her adds are up, she stacks a healing buff called ‘Attuned to Nature’ that increases her healing, which makes her impossible to kill.  Each add group that you kill reduces the stacks of the healing buff until finally none are left.  She summons each group of adds twice, and will occasionally blast a raid member with sunlight.

Storm Lasher, Snaplasher, and Ancient Water Spirit:  Each one of these adds is a huge elemental.  They need to be killed Romulus and Julianne style (within a certain time frame of each other, or they’ll resurrect) and only 2 of these mobs can be tanked- the Storm Lasher and the Ancient Water Spirit.  The Snaplasher looks like a giant Lasher and runs around the raid.  For each hit he takes, he gains a damage increase buff.  It is important that he is not hit, and that he is killed last, because he will 2 shot a tank when the stacks get high enough.  The Storm Lasher looks like another Lasher only crackling with lightning.  The Ancient Water Spirit looks like a revenent elemental and can be kited around.  Preceded by Freya yelling, ‘CHILDREN, ASSIST ME!’

Lasher Swarm:  Looks exactly as it sounds.  Freya summons up a bunch of lasher adds.  They do not have an aggro table and each one will explode upon death, making AoE difficult.

Giant Tree:  Don’t remember exactly what this guy is called, but he’s big and hard to miss.  He needs to be tanked away from Freya and away from the patches of sunlight that will heal him rapidly.  Also during this phase, mushrooms will pop up all over the place.  Any raid member not standing near one is Pacified. 

And that was just phase 1.  But, really, once you get past that, Freya is simple.  Just watch out for the exploding bright green seeds.

And that’s it for now!  Stay tuned, Thorim and Mimiron are next on the block!

FOR THE HORDE!

~Pyo

25
Jun
09

Post Series: Add Ons- A Healer’s Best Friend

By Pyo 4 Comments
Categories: Healing
Tags: , , ,

A post series in which Pyo reveals that she really is a noobhealer because she uses mods to heal (its trufax, yo.  Just ask all those pro healers- mods are for losers.)

My response to that?

To all the people who think healing with mods = terribad healer.

Image compliments of a cracked out magenoob named Vargos. (You still owe me a bike, bitch.)

Anyways… moving along, folks, nothing to see here…

Mods!  Add Ons!  Whatever you like to call ‘em, there are a few that, as a healer, you should have (or should at least consider investing in.)  Pyo’s Top Add-On Picks for Healing are Grid + Clique.

grid

Grid is your friend.

This is Grid.  See how pretty Grid is?   The beauty of Grid is that you can show anything and everything you need to see right there in that frame by utilizing a series of corner ‘lights’, central icons, and overall shading.  This mod can be used by itself as a point- and- click style mod, or it can be used in conjunction with Clique.  Customization options include assigning corner ‘lights’ to specific heals (both yours and the heals of others), HoT timers, incoming heal alerts, and aggro/ tank targets;  designating the central area of the block to show curse/ poison/ disease/ magic statuses; and showing class colors and player names/ health deficits numerically as well as visually.  I know several non- healers who use Grid for other reasons- mages/ boomkin use it for decursing.  Pallies use it to Cleanse.  Non- resto shaman use it to dispel magic.  Some have it up just to maintain an eye on raid status.  You can prioritize your heals- if you see a heal incoming on a player, you can skip over to the next guys.  You can set it up so that the borders around each individual block light up different colors for different effects!  Its an all around useful tool, but especially good for healers- cuz whack- a- mole is fun.

HoT Timers = YUM

HoT Timers = YUM

Grid also comes with tons of modules- GridStatusDruidHots is almost a must for the Trees in your raid, due to its sheer usefulness.  You can set it up to track your HoT timers, Lifebloom stacks, and various HoTs.  You can track the other guy’s HoT timers and Lifebloom stacks.  Its helpful in deciding which target to bounce Wild Growth off of (in case it isn’t you.)  If I see the other Tree in my raid throw down a Wild Growth the same time I do and hit 6 different targets, I’ll roll Rejuvs on the guys who didn’t get hit.

I don’t just use this to help me heal- it also helps me manage my mana and the mana of my other healers.   It saves lives and mana.  Win- win, IMO.

Next up is Clique, the mod I use in conjuntion with Grid.  Cue the pic…

Yes, even hunters use Clique.

Yes, even hunters use Clique.

Clique is super fast to set up and super easy to learn.  It attaches its mod button to your Spellbook tab, below all your other tabs.  Click, and the configuration window opens.  To set up, just mouse ofer the spell you want out of your Spellbook, and hit the button you want to assign to that button.  Simple!  Just remember which buttons you asssign to which heal… you don’t want to accidentally blow your 20 minute CD Battle Rez on someone.

Yes, I really did that.

Go ahead and laugh, its ok.

That’s it for today.  Stay tuned, folks, more Angry Healers coming your way soon!

(Gogo cheeseball closers!)

FOR THE HORDE!

~Pyo

25
Jun
09

The Art of Raid Explanations

By ILikeBubbles 3 Comments
Categories: World of Warcraft
Tags: , , ,

Everyone knows that normal raid explanations are boring.  They drone on and on, and very quickly everyone is just tuning out the RL and tabbing out to read 4chan/Post Secret/whatever. 

One of three things happen then:
-Everyone asks questions that were jsut answered 2 seconds ago.
-Everyone just smiles and nods, runs in, and stands in the fire.
-A good attempt is put in because everyone read the strats and watched videos beforehand anyway.

Mooooost of the time, it’s the first two. 

But I, Lyrandre, have mastered the art of the HILARIOUS AND YET INFORMATIVE strat telling!  Let me share with you my secrets, and then you too can deliver strats in a way that people will actually enjoy!

Tip One: Distill into Common or Silly Terms
First off, forgot the official terms for most shit.  If you tell your DPS to kill the Gifts of Eonar, they are going to ignore the green trees that spawn because really, who the hell expects a Gift of Eonar to look like the tree?  They’re probably looking for gift wrapped packages to spawn.  Tell them to get out of the Fire/Glowy Shit On Floor/Falling Snowflakes/Circles of Doom.  Tell them to kill the Really Tall Guy first and stay away from him because he Whirlwinds. They will know what you mean when they see it!  Do you really think that DPS pays attention to the name of the mob that just killed them because they didn’t realize THAT mob was the one that whirlwinded?  No, of course not, that’s why they die so much.  Just give them a quick, memorable description.

Tip Two: Divide into Categories
While it’s nice for everyone to be aware of each other’s roles, it’s…not going to happen.  Since there can be a lot of information to remember to start, split your explanation up.   Tell your healers that all they need to do is stay out of the Bad, cleanse the Really Bad,  and watch green bars, then move on to the DPS.  Etc, etc.  A standard line of mine usually delivered every run is, “Tanks, don’t die.”  That comforting phrase tells them it’s a tank and spank and they can go back to browsing porn after achieving a nice threat lead.

Tip Three: Throw in Jokes
Is there one person who you blame for everything even when they’re not in the raid?  One person who dies all the time?  Use running jokes to your advantage.   I also offer t o beat people with pillows or forget to heal them if they do X Thing Thing They Shouldn’t Do.   Don’t forget macros!  I have silly macros I like to spam for things like Thaddius, in case people forgot their left and right.

If you have people in your raid that are skeptical, let someone give the normal explanation and then interject your comments between (in raid, so that you don’t drown them out on vent).  You’ll still get your point across!  I provide for you an example of me doing just that on Hodir:

Follow these guidelines and my stellar example and you, too, can get your raid to pay some fucking attention!  It will lighten the mood for the wipes to come.

Love and shiny heals,
-ILikeBubbles

14
Jun
09

LOL HPS: A Disc Priest’s Guide to Making Healing Meters Useful

By Kivuli 2 Comments
Categories: Healing, priest and World of Warcraft
Tags: , ,

I’m sure every disc priest has encountered at least one “no thx” when pugging, or has been kicked for not healing enough, or been asked to go Holy by their guild because they don’t look like they’re pulling their weight as Disc.  Just recently I was in a Maly 10 group.  It was me and a pally healing, so I was on the raid.  I had raid-healed a 2-heal 10 man Ulduar a few days earlier so I was confident.  The tank kept dying.  They kicked me, lolwut?

THAT PRIEST SUCKED OMG THEIR HEALING WAS LOW LET’S NOT PAY ATTENTION TO THEIR ASSIGNMENT OR SPEC LOL

Anyway, before I get off track here: While situations like the one above can be discouraging and tempt us to write off healing meters as a complete waste of time as disc, there ARE several ways to evaluate a discipline priest using them.  Raw healing done is certainly not one of them (except to go “OMG BAD PALLY YOU ARE UNDER THE DISC PREST, WHAT IS WRONG?”) but more detailed dissection of a parse can reveal very interesting things about how a disc priest is doing.

Some things you can check out:

- Uptime of Renewed Hope.  This should be as close to 100% as possible.  Most fights I am at 100% uptime, except for weird things like Vezax.

- Uptime of Divine Aegis on tanks.  This number will be widely variable, but over time or comparing disc priests it’s interesting to look at.  Personally my uptime on main tanks is about 25%, though I’ve had parses as high as 50%.  (It’s also an interesting tool for comparing tanks: a stam/mitigation tank will have a lower % uptime relative to how many applications of DA they got, while an avoidance tank with have a much higher % uptime.)

- Uptime of Weakened soul.  This should be close to 100% as possible, though timing, human error, multiple targets and fight mechanics (saving shield for rune punch, frozen blows, etc) keep it from being possible to hit 100% like you can with Renewed Hope.  Most fights I can usually keep 70-90% uptime on the MT if I’m assigned to them

- How many shields are wasted.  Check how many ticks of Rapture the priest got compared to how many shields they cast (if you’re using a log that doesn’t track absorbs, count the applications of Glyph of PW:S). This is a rough estimate type of deal because partial absorbs won’t trigger rapture, and it’s still unclear to me what that “every 12 seconds” text on the talent actually means (I’m looking through a combat log and it’s hard to tell, ugh).  But a really big difference, like more than 4 times as many shields as rapture procs, means the priest is bubbling at bad times and/or indiscriminately.  Personally for a whole night of Ulduar I usually bubble about twice as much as I get Rapture, and I’m a little shield-happy.  On fights where I am focusing on the MT, it’s much closer to even (ex. this one Hodir parse, 23 shields, 20 rapture procs)

- If you’re using a log that doesn’t track absorbs at all, Prayer of Mending should be one of a disc priest’s top heals, after Penance (Penance is usually about 25% of my direct heals).  There’s no real reason a disc priest shouldn’t be using PoM every cooldown, so if it’s up up there on healing done, they’re probably neglecting it.

- If a disc priest is running oom and has high overheals, they should stop overhealing.  If mana isn’t a problem, overheals with high crit chance are actually pretty good (this is such a 180 turn around from 3.0, when we got insane mana back from effective heals)

Though not very cut and dry, looking at these things can help evaluate how a disc priest is doing, and can help foster a more critical eye for healing meters in general :)

———–

OKAY so during the process of writing this I found out something EXTREMELY ANNOYING.  We’re currently using World of Logs, WMO, and sometimes WWS for parses (though I actually use the above tricks in WWS because I like their layout better, easier to look at buffs, but it’s also the log that does not count absorbs at all).

I discovered, because the WoW combatlog doesn’t have detailed information about absorbs, even in logs that estimate absorbs and give Disc priests some more accurate numbers —- IF YOU’RE RUNNING WITH OTHER PRIESTS IT WILL SOMETIMES COUNT YOUR PW:S AND YOUR DIVINE AEGIS AS *THEIR* HEALING.  I just did some numbers when I found this out. Our log for one night last week has me with 508 DA absorbs, with another 250 split among the holy priests.  That’s like 1/3 of my DA absorbs weren’t even credited to me.  WTF BLIZZARD D:

Healing meters mean nothing here

Healing meters mean nothing here

- Kiv \jj/

LOL HPS: A Disc Priest’s Guide to Making Healing Meters Useful
EDIT!!!:  So apparently that thing I’m complaining about up there is probably not mis-credited DAs.  Word on the street is there’s a DA bug where PoM procs DA on ANY priest’s PoM if there’s  a Disc priest in the raid.  Lame, but at least it’s just extra healing the raid shouldn’t get, and not THEM HOLY PRIESTS STEALING MY NUMBERS :D
11
Jun
09

Gaining Rep with the Healer Faction, part 2

By Pyo Leave a Comment
Categories: Healing
Tags: ,

More tips for gaining rep with your healers.

1.  If I am assigned to heal the raid, and you are standing across the room out of my range, do not whine if you die because ‘you didn’t get any heals.’  Me running over to where you are standing- all alone- means thats less heals I’m putting on the people who, you know, were smart enough to stay by the healers.

2.  We can’t heal through Overload.

3. When the warlock summons fel cookies, TAKE ONE.

4.  We can’t heal through Lightning Tendrils.

5.  We can’t heal through Eye Beams.

6.  Do not kite Eye Beams through us.   Please refer to #5 if you start to wonder why we ask this of you.

7.  We can’t heal through the Death Rune.

8.  Don’t pull aggro from the tank and then drop aggro.  Doing so is almost certain death for a healer.

Please keep these statements in mind when working with your healers, and we promise they will be happy and keep your tail alive.

The Mandatory Tree Shot.

The Mandatory Tree Shot.

FOR THE HORDE!

~Pyo

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Ellspeth, the Angry Tree

The Angry Healers is a World of Warcraft blog dedicated to the underappreciated and often overlooked role of The Healer (c) from the perspective of a (mostly) angry Tree!Druid. Here will be discussed talents, gear, spells, specs, and other healing related topics, as well as snarks, rants and general grumpiness about my chosen role in WoWlife, and patchnotes, changes, nerfs/ buffs, and expansion myths and legends (and maybe even facts!)

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