7 Ways to Improve Your Guilds Healing

"Healers, what happened?"  We've all said or heard those words before, either to ourselves, or actually to our healers.  It's a common question when something goes wrong.  One by one, little by little, your raiders are dropping.  It just seems like your healers can't keep up.  You have the proper amount of healers, they are all properly geared, specced, and enchanted.  They are all skilled players.  Your just at a loss of what to do.  How DO you improve your guilds healing?  Well, fear not citizens, for I have 7 sure fire ways to improve your guilds healing.

Thoughts on firelands

So, now that firelands has been out for a while now, it's time to sit down and do some good old ranting and raving.  Overall, I think it's a pretty good raid instance.  But, it's not without it's flaws either.  First and foremost on my bitch list, is the lack of cloth spirit gear.  The majority of my gear upgrades will come from the vendor.  And that bothers me more than just  a little.  That, and the fact I'm going to be losing a ton of spirit over the course of the patch.  I don't really need spirit on every piece, but having the option there would be nice.  It probably won't be much of an issue, as I'd probably go for some of those pieces without spirit anyways since I've reforged out of spirit on several pieces already.  I can't help but think however that this was done intentionally to nerf priests regen.  I can't honestly say that it wouldn't be eventually needed as i haven't had mana issues since early on in heroic t11, but I do wish they'd just come out and say it. 


The instance is gorgeous.  I really like it.  It just feels epic when you go in, with enemies literally everywhere, in a huge fire land.  Even the trash is fun and engaging.  Although, I wish they hadn't nerfed it so much.  It wasn't that difficult.  My favorite trash mob however, has got to be the turtles.  Even

Shannox Strategy Complete Guide

So, you've got your raid together, and are head into the Firelands, but now what?  Well, likely your first intended target will be Shannox, the simplest of the boss fights in the Firelands. You'll notice some trash as you enter, so go ahead and clear to the bottom of the path.  You'll also notice that there are several routes you can take through the instance, but Shannox will be to your right.


A standard raid setup of 2 tanks, and 6-7 healers (2-3 if 10m) should suffice.


The first thing you'll need to do is spawn Shannox, as he is not immediately available.  Start clearing some trash in the open area to your right, this is where you will fight Shannox.  Be sure to clear enough trash to give your raid plenty of room to do the encounter without pulling other groups.  Once you have cleared enough trash, Shannox will spawn and begin pathing around the area.  If you are not ready to pull just yet, just make sure you're out of aggro range when he comes by.  It takes a bit for him to path all the way back around again, which is pretty annoying, but whatever. 

Healing broke wow....and fixed it.

So, I was reading a post over on Root and Branch, entitled Enabling Failure, and it brought to mind a lot of discussions I had with other players during the beta and shortly after the launch of cataclysm.  It really is a drastic change in playstyle from 80-85.  I remember at level 80, I was a demi-god in wow.  I was nigh unstoppable.  There were very few mechanics that couldn't simply be brute force healed through.  Especially in the heroic dungeons, previous tier raids, and early bosses in icc. 


It felt great being so powerful.  A good healer could heal anyone through nearly anything.  In reality though, there was very little skill involved in this kind of healing.  It was really just a matter of having decent gear and pressing your buttons in a timely manner.  But, the near god-like status of healers had some very bad side effects on the general wow population. 


First, it took away nearly all accountability from an individual for their actions in a group, and transferred that responsibility to the healer.  Over the course of the two years of wrath the "healers that could do anything" bred a new breed of wow player.  The wrath baby.  And I mean that in the bad way, not just someone who started playing in wrath.  (I started playing in wrath btw.)  These are the guys you met up with in your randoms, that never moved from any type of damage whatsoever.  It was the mage who went entire dungeon runs  and cast only blizzard.  The guy in your icc run, who had good gear, and the appropriate achievements, but had no idea what he was doing and had no clue what the bosses did.  He just ran up to the boss and smashed his face on the keyboard until the purples dropped. 


We've all seen that guy.  We've all been in a dungeon run or raid with him.  And, I'm willing to bet, damn near every last one of us, just healed him through it.  It made us look better

Healing Shannox

Shannox is a fairly straightforward encounter as far as healing goes.  Most of the raid damage is avoidable, with the exception of Rageface.  Ideally, you will want to have at least 1 healer dedicated to each tank, and 1 to heal ragefaces target.  If running a 10 man, the healer on the offtank and Rageface's target will handle the raid healing. 




The healers should be spread out a bit, with the MT healer closer to the front of the room, OT healer closer to the back, and the Rageface healer in the middle.  The tank healers will need to be mindful of the stacks of Jagged Tear on their tank.  The more stacks they have, the higher the healing requirements will be.  Ensure you have these debuffs added to your raid frames if you use custom ones. 

So, I finally sat down and beat....

Ninja Gaiden.  The game has been sitting in my xbox inventory collecting dust for years.  I literally hadn't popped it in in well over a year.  But, I had some free time this weekend, taking some time off from wow, and sat down and finally beat it.  And, I have come to the shining conclusion, that even after all this time, that game is still fricking hard. 


I spent the better part of my weekend banging my head against one of the most difficult games in recent memory.  But, something I noticed about it, is that there were really only a couple of diffucult boss fights.  Most of the difficulties I encountered were not in the bosses themselves, but in the plethora of baddies between the bosses.  And, if I happened to die, the amount of the game I had to

Ask the devs: Healing

Q: I spend a lot of my time in raids keeping Water Shield up, which I rely on to maintain enough mana. There have been times I've neglected to heal someone because I had to refresh Water Shield. Why are shaman healers less effective compared to other healing classes? – Epistemology (NA), Ерз (EU-RU)

A: We’d like to be more consistent about what does and doesn’t trigger Water Shield. Having the shield trigger when taking direct damage, and consume an orb, is consistent with how all shaman shields work. On some encounters though, constant pulsing damage probably burns through those charges too quickly and doesn’t need to do so – that said, if you’re having to refresh Water Shield often, that also generally means that you’re getting a large amount of extra mana from all those procs that are burning through it. A situational glyph (like we have for Lightning Shield) could help with this issue, and that may be something we consider in the future.

Healing Critical Strikes 200%! Still not a great stat.

So, patch 4.2 and firelands have been around for a few weeks now, and I've had some time to test out the healing changes.  Crit heals now heal for 200%, which is nice.  It definitely bumps up the value of crit, but I still won't be stacking the stat.  While it's nice to see the big numbers, critical strike chance is still, well, a chance.  Meaning, there's still a fairly good chance that the heal will not crit, and you cannot crit on demand.  However, haste and mastery will increase your hps in a manner that is far more predictable.  And predictability of heals is far more important than the chance to heal for more. 


Most of the time, a healer will choose the heal they need to cast, based on the size of the heal needed.  A healer will never plan for a heal to crit.  Because if it doesn't, then their assignment may die.  Critical strikes are unreliable. They are nice when they happen when you need them, but it's still not a stat worth stacking.  You don't have to avoid it like the plague, but haste and mastery are still superior. 

Valor Points....really?

I have to admit, while I try not to be an elitist, the Valor Point changes in 4.2 are really not sitting well with me.  It just seems a little over the top, that a player can get capped on the highest tier raid currency, without ever setting foot in a raid.  I just don't get it.  Was there something terribly wrong with the previous cap?  Were those 300 extra points a week really putting actual raiders that far ahead of the dungeoneers.  Frankly, I find the change to be quite stupid.  I'm of the mindset that no VP should be rewarded from 5 man content, but I'm willing to concede that more casual players need the extra help.  But this is just ridiculous.  The regular heroics are outgeared at around ilvl 340ish, and the Zandalari at around ilvl 350.  With 359 gear available for justice points, 365/378 gear available from questing/rep, what purpose does it serve to cap out valor points from dungeons?  Especially if you're just a dungeon hero, honestly why do they need more gear to run dungeons they already outgear?


I don't know, maybe I'm just a little too upset about this.  But I can't help but be just a little butt hurt that the non raider will be gearing up just as fast as a raider.  At least with items from vendors such as rep gear and tier gear.  I don't know, maybe I'm just an elitist in denial, but I feel like people that actually step foot in a raid instance and kill raid bosses, should receive raid currency more quickly.

Real ID party feature available for testing.

Earlier today, Blizzard announced that the Real ID party feature is ready for testing.  So, as of right now, the feature is on live realms.  For those that don't know what this is, the Real ID party feature allows you to form groups with people on your Real ID, enabling you to queue for dungeons with your friends from other realms.


This is a great feature in my opinion, however, it does have a major drawback.  After testing, this will be a paid service from Blizzard.  I'm sure some people will be willing to fork over money to Blizzard for access to this feature, but I most definitely will not.  I don't know about everyone else, but running dungeons stopped being fun about a week into the expansion.  Why would I PAY, just for the ability to do something I already don't want to to, in order to be able to do it with other people who don't want to do the same thing.  If this were a free service, I'd be all over it.  I don't know how much it's going to cost, but I don't care either, as this should be a free service that was implemented when Real ID came out.


So, the Real ID party feature is now available, free for the time being.  It'll be fun for the first day or two, but the only people that will really benefit from this are people that have a lot of friends on other realms.  And those people will all have to enjoy running 5 man dungeons that everyone overgears.  Whoopty doo....

4.2 Hotfixes - July 12

July 12

• Pet Defensive stance will no longer cause the pet to assist the player while a vanity pet is active.

Druid

• Rake should again be able to trigger Primal Fury.

Dungeons and Raids
Firelands

• Characters who make for a good Dinner Time should no longer be ported to Ancient Core Hounds they are not in combat with when the ability’s effects end.
• Fire Scorpion and Flamewaker corpses no longer provide loot or reputation when they’re eaten by Hell Hounds and Fire Turtles.
• Unstable Magmas are now gaining energy properly from the Flamewaker Animators.
• Alysrazor
  • Voracious Hatchlings will now Imprint on a new target if their current target dies.
• Majordomo Fandral Staghelm
  • Flame Scythe now properly hits pets.
  • Fandral can now cast Searing Seeds and Burning Orbs while moving.
• Ragnaros
  • Several locations which could be used to avoid damage from Engulfing Flames have been adjusted so they’re no longer safe spots.
  • Combustible will always be reapplied to Living Meteors, even if the attacking character dies as a Meteor Impact occurs.
  • Living Meteors will now become frozen by Cenarius under all conditions when transitioning into phase 4 on Heroic difficulty.
  • If a Living Meteor is frozen in the lava pool during the transition into phase 4 on Heroic difficulty, it will teleport on a player after the stun ends, but will no longer explode immediately. Players now have a 2-second window to escape the meteor’s melee range.
  • Living Meteors will gain the Living Meteor Transform buff once frozen in the Breadth of Frost trap, even if a meteor is knocked into it.
  • If a Living Meteor's fixated target drops aggro via Feign Death, the meteor will target the pet, and then select a new non-pet target upon which to fixate.
  • Ragnaros now enrages after 18 minutes in all raid difficulties and sizes, up from 15 minutes.

Quests and Creatures
Hyjal Regrowth & Molten Front

• Wounded Hyjal Defenders should no longer sometimes spawn in with full health and in a standing position when players are on the quest Burn Victims.
• Molten Lords no longer become tapped by the first player who attacks them with any of the Trained Fire Hawk's abilities while on the quest Fire in the Skies, allowing for any player who dealt damage to the Molten Lord to gain quest credit upon its death.
• Windcallers now respawn within 1 minute on average for the quest Into the Fire when both are rendered inactive. Additionally, players will only experience a maximum of approximately 75 seconds of a delay before they are able to initiate the escort event.

Healing assingnments

So, you've entered the firelands, you're buffed up, feasted up, and read up.  Now what?  How do you assign the healers?  Are healing assignments necessary?  Depending on the gear level and skill of your raid, and whether it's 10 or 25 man, normal or heroic, the answer will change.  But most likely you will want at least some sort of general assignments going out to ensure that all the relevant people are getting healed in an efficient and timely manner.


So, how do you do this?  Firstly, if you're the one in charge of setting the assignments, you must familiarize yourself with both the strengths and weaknesses of the different healing classes, and the strengths and weaknesses of your individual healers.  When doling out assignments, do your best to assign people to areas that maximize their strengths, and minimize their weaknesses.  You likely would not want to put a paladin on aoe heal duty with the holy priest healing the tanks.  Sure, it can be done, but it would be far more effective if it was the other way around.


Now that you've done this, you need to familiarize yourself with the types of damage to expect.  And how much of it is going out and how often.  If raid damage is light, but tank damage is consistently high, you may want to assign more healers to the tanks for instance.  Or, if an extra healers isn't needed, i.e. your current tank healers has it under control, you may consider dropping a healer for another dps.  Good dps means a shorter boss fight, which in turn leads to less healing.  And the best type of mana regen, is good dps.

Surviving your first weeks in Firelands

So, as you all know, firelands has now been on live servers for the last two weeks.  So, what do you need to know before heading in?  Are you and your guild ready for the challenges that await?  If you've been farming heroic mode tier 11 for a while now, then yes, you undoubtedly are and have already cleared the instance with little trouble.  But, what if you haven't?  What if you're in the <Average Joe's>?


Well, if you've been clearing normal mode content in t11 for a while now, then you likely have acquired the gear necessary to down the encounters.  But, it won't be easy.  Some of the fights gave my heroic guild a bit of trouble, and would have been much more difficult in lesser gear.  So, what do you need to know? 

Healercraft is now live!

Blogging seems to be the thing to do nowadays, so onto the bandwagon I go.  I am an avid World of Warcraft player, so this blog will be about my main hobby, and whatever else I may find interesting.


Like skittles.  And other intersting things.....


About me:


I play a priest as my main character in Warcraft, preferably holy, but I've been known to disc and shadow it up from time to time.  I am the healing officer in my guild, which shall remain nameless at this time.  We're not exactly Paragon or Ensidia, but we do pretty well for ourselves.  Usually ranked somewhere in the US top 100 on wowprogress, if you care about that kind of thing. 


Contact info:


Please simply respond to the post if you wish to get in touch with me.  As this is my first blog, I'm not too keen to put my e-mail address out to the general public just yet due to security, spam bots, and goldsellers.