Showing posts with label Healing Mechanics. Show all posts

Disclaimer: I am not a PvPer. Never have been never will be. I am a PvEr who sometimes dabbles in PvP when she is after something. Like stone keeper's shards for heirloom shoulders. Or a new mount. Or because I get mildly crazy when I'm not sleeping and for some reason actually have the desire to PvP. Take all of this for what it is: A PvE-paladin's guide to PvP.

So, supposedly there’s a Cataclysm coming, or some such. Not sure what all that nonsense is about. I guess we’re supposed to be losing a bunch of stats, too? So even in my ridiculous two pieces of tank gear, I would be defense capped and you know, totally capable of tanking raids. That’s definitely not sarcasm in any way, shape, or form.

The most notable change for healers, I suppose, is that mp5 will be removed completely and replaced by spirit. That means our gear will likely soon include spirit and we can hang our heads in shame after laughing at all of the mages and warlocks forced to take spirit crap. Except they won’t be anymore, because apparently it’s only going to be on healer stuff.

What does that mean for a holy paladin, though? It’s not as if we have mana issues. The last time I actually had a mana issue in which I wasn’t just being lazy was when one of the tanks disconnected during Toravon and the poor fool left up got to 20 stacks of the debuff. Blizzard plans on changing this, making mana actually mean something again, but I’m not sure how much of this is going to affect the throughput of a holy paladin because to the best of our knowledge thus far:

INT isn’t really changing. Spellpower is now out the window, so a holy paladin’s INT will give him even more pewpew.

Divine Plea is still a 2 minute mana battery. When I switch over to play my shaman now, I have to remember that I actually need to drink to refill that blue bar. I don't see this really changing, though I hope other healers will be getting an equivalent spell.

I do expect a couple of things, however:

The benefit from INT is going to be reduced. Smaller mana pools seems to be the theme of Cataclysm; forcing healers to be smart about their spells instead of dropping heal-bombs into one target. And I do agree with that. There’s nothing fun or challenging about spamming Holy Light on one target.

We already know that INT is going to give less mana. But I expect paladins will be gemming for INT post-Cataclysm, as well. With the Reforging system, we’ll be able to convert 50% of another stat into something else, so gemming for haste or crit seems silly at this juncture. With the removal of spellpower, even FoL paladins will be gemming for INT.

But what’s going to happen to Divine Plea? I would hope that the co-efficient will change a bit. Hitting a cooldown every 2 minutes does not challenging mana management equal. Even in the middle of a boss fight, popping cooldowns with Divine Plea negates it almost completely.

I’d love to see a Divine Plea with charges that proc when you heal. If you want to be unoriginal, make it proc off of crits. And make it shoot down a pillar of light from the sky. Like a holy laser beam of greatness and awesome. That’ll show those disc priests.

Of course, there’s another small thing. If you’ve logged into WoW since yesterday you’ve noticed a patch. The first of the ICC buffs is now live, and I expect it will help nudge some guilds stuck on certain fights. I’m very much hoping we can get Blood Prince Council down and move on, and I anticipate with the buffs and our raid leader pointing out Slime Spray awareness, we’ll get Rotface in 25. Or at the very least, Festergut. That means 25 Putricide is swiftly approaching. Oh. Joy.

So how do I feel about the ICC buff going in before my raid team has cleared half the content? I don’t care a wit. I don’t raid to spend three or four hours doing the equivalent of beating my head against a wall. Sorry, I just don’t find that fun. The Wrath model of raiding may have ‘dumbed down the game’ for some folks, but I am not one of them.

And hell, I’m even glad. These buffs mean we might start seeing some new (to us) fights, and that can only be a good thing. Doing the same six bosses every week is pushing me rather haphazardly toward the edge of burnout. It’s Ulduar pre-Watchers all over again, and it’s driving me to be even more of a bitch than I normally am.

So this 5% buff? That’s cool. Making healing more fun in Cataclysm? …Good luck! Not giving holy paladins pewpew laser beams? …For shame.

On a related note, I will be FRAPSing the Rotface10 fight on Friday for cleansers. I hope to have it edited and available for viewing on Monday.

/flail

So there’s people on my blog. I’m not sure I’m awake enough to comprehend that just yet. Give me a bit. Shot in my coffee would be nice, too. Another thank you to WoW.com and Elizabeth Harper specifically for the link. I hope you enjoy my ridiculousness, and may you forever burninate the countryside.

Now, on to serious business.

There was recently a post in the Healing Role forums by a somewhat newly-minted 80 paladin who had concerns that he was getting too stressed as a healer. The original post reads as follows:

Its getting more and more noticeable. Im talking about just pugging LFGs, i feel like there is a weight on my shoulder, like i have to be on my toes at all times, and that if the group fails or gets close to failing, i look bad.

Since i hit 80 i have only healed, i dont know how to do anything else. PvP is out of the question.

What im saying is, every moment i heal, i dont see the group that we are attacking: i see green bars. I only wonder if healing is as fun as i think it should be. Honestly, i feel too stressed when i heal and i feel as though im missing the fun of PvE trying to do my role.

Maybe its not my fault if we fail, i wouldnt know; im just looking at green bars. Maybe its not me, its the other people? Maybe they make my job harder?

What do you think?

I've heard and joked that we healers are terribly surprised by the character appearance in game, because all we see in reference to you is a class-colored bar. Nowadays, I can tell who almost every person in my raid is by looking at their character, and yes, I have nameplates off. 80% of you fools are dressed exactly alike, too. /fluffs skirt

But when I first started out, Grid was, more or less, all I watched. I was dying to stupid things and I felt rather overwhelmed. Several things contribute to the stress of a new paladin healer, but my top three were as follows:

Lack of movement: We have one instant cast spell, so movement-heavy fights can get a bit crazy. Skadi is a decent example of this.

Lack of group-heal: Looking at you, Black Knight.

Lack of experience with Beacon: If you’ve ever healed with another class or like myself healed before Beacon was in the game, you may be stubbornly resisting this spell.

Here’s what Ghostcrawler has to say on the subject:

Here is the best advice I can give someone who feels overwhelmed. Your job isn't to keep everyone at 100%. Your job is to keep anyone from hitting 0%. If someone's hurt, but stable, then they may not need your attention right away. You're the medic, so you need to practice triage. There will be enough breaks to get those folks who aren't at 100% back up there at some point.

Aww. Ghostcrawler likes medics. That must mean we’re getting our ponies first. Oh, hey, did you know he has a Formspring? I guess he had some work done recently. He’s rocking the dwarf priest look. Yeah, I know. What are you gonna do? We can’t all be blood elves.

I do agree with Ghostcrawler. A lot of that comes from knowing the fights and being able to predict damage, and that only comes with time. These days I find myself topping people off in heroics because I am bored and healing in ret spec, but there was certainly a time not long ago where I didn’t have that… what do you even call that? Luxury? Apathy? [Divine Snarkiness]?

Here are my thoughts to counter the three things I mentioned above, as well as some additional notes:

Lack of movement: We do have an instant cast heal. It’s not the best thing ever, but it’s something. Think of all the baby shamans before they got Riptide! Won’t someone please think of the baby shamans?

That said, Holy Shock is a bit of a mana sponge until your crit and SP are high enough to make it roughly equivalent to a weaker version of Holy Light. While mana isn’t generally an issue for raiding paladins, it certainly can be for the new 80 trying to heal heroics. Still, though. Holy Shock is excellent for movement fights and an Infusion of Light proc will get you an instant cast Flash of Light to boot.

Lack of group-heal: This one, unfortunately, can only be overcome with a swifter reaction time, and that only comes from experience. If you’re losing group members it’s usually for one of four reasons:

People are being very dumb. This one’s largely out of your hands. Try to educate the group respectfully, and if you’re stuck in a heroic with the ‘go go go’ crowd, let them know you’re new to healing.

You’re not utilizing triage successfully. Do yourself a favor and if you use Grid, make sure you have an indicator for aggro. Mine shows a little red box in the upper right corner when someone has aggro and a yellow box around the unit when they are high on the threat table. This will help immensely in knowing who is taking damage now and who is going to be taking it in the future.

You’re not reacting quickly enough. Part of this I believe comes from just watching unit frames. I heal significantly worse when I get Grid tunnel vision than when I actually observe DBM warnings and what’s going on around me. It takes practice, but try to position Grid so that it’s in close sight but not the absolute focus of your screen.

You’re using the wrong tools for the job. Sure, we have three healing spells. But are you using them correctly? Using Holy Shock for Infusion of Light procs? Flash of Light for quick heals during group damage? Holy Light on a new tank? Are you using your Hand spells? Specifically Hand of Protection? How about bubble and Divine Sacrifice?

Queue for a battleground and do some PvP healing. Grab a friend and run some practice arena matches. You’ll learn very quickly what all of your spells do and when to use them. Either that or you’ll die. A lot.

Lack of experience with Beacon: Beacon is a lovely safety net. It allows you to heal two targets at once. In five mans especially, this makes a huge difference. Get some sort of mod or set Grid to notify you when Beacon is falling off. Force yourself to Beacon the tank. You have a multitude of ways to keep yourself alive, and you’ll need to get used to this for healing in raids, anyway.

Healing stress is expected, and I certainly have days (see rant post below…) where it gets the better of me, I’m ashamed to say. But all in all, learning your tools, getting some practice, and finally making that great save is a fitting reward for any stress you might go through as a healer.

I can heal without Grid. Really and truly. I remember pulling out raid frames back in the day, so I certainly don’t believe any addon will make or break a healer, but I wouldn’t trade the efficiency and sheer knowledge that comes from having Grid.

It can certainly seem daunting at first, but once you get into the meat of the interface, you can easily configure it for just about any purpose. This, however, isn’t a general guide to setting up Grid. There are plenty of those on the web. Instead I’d like to illuminate a few things you may not know exist in Grid, and what you can do with them as a holy paladin:

Tracking Buffs

You may have used this feature by tracking certain debuffs in new raids before the Grid library was updated to include them - Incinerate Flesh and Bonespike Graveyard, for example. Did you know you can add buff tracking the same way?

Open up Grid config and expand the Status subsection. Click on Auras, then where it says Add New Buff, type in the name of the buff you want to track. In this case, we’re going to add Beacon of Light. Hit enter, then expand the Auras subsection to see Buff: Beacon of Light.

Click on Buff: Beacon of Light and take a look at the options. You can change the color of the indicator here, as well as the priority. A higher priority will make sure the indicator shows above other indicators in the same location. Below the priority slider there are several options, but since I’ve decided I want my bacon to show an indicator when it’s on a target, I only check Show if Mine.

Just like a custom debuff, though, if you don’t set it to an indicator, it won’t do anything. Currently I have my Grid set to display an aggro indicator in the upper left corner and a cleansable debuff indicator in the top right. Let’s say you want Beacon to display in the bottom left. Go up to Frame and expand it, then click on Bottom Left Corner. Check Buff: Beacon of Light and make sure everything else is unchecked, and viola! I have a way to track Beacon of Light on Grid.

You can do this with blessings, as well. Add a new buff the same way you added Beacon, then go in and tweak the options. You can choose to Show if Missing, but I still keep it to Show if Mine. It tells me the same thing without giving me more information than I need. This isn’t a substitute for PallyPower by any means, but if for some reason your standard buffing addon isn’t working, you can still see who in the raid has buffs at a glance.

Tracking Aggro

Let’s say you’re in a raid and one of those silly warlocks starts Lifetapping mid-pull. You figure ‘Alright, he’s not getting hit by anything, so I’ll keep him on a lower priority.’ But suddenly, there’s a dead warlock on the ground and everyone’s looking to you for answers. Turns out the warlock got aggro from an AE pack, but Grid’s default aggro indicator (a flashing red line around the box) was at a lower priority than the low health (flashing white line) indicator, so you didn’t see it. Even if you had, by the time he actually got aggro, it likely would have been too late. He is a warlock, after all. Just look at them and they fall over dead. *

But did you know you can track threat via Grid? Expand the Status subsection and select Aggro warning alert. Check the Threat box and you will get three separate color indicators to configure. After that, you can go up to the Frame subsection and decide where you want it to show. I have my aggro warning indicator set to the top left corner at the highest priority.

Now when that warlock is inching up to the tank in threat, you can see it via a High Threat indicator, allowing you the chance to toss a Hand of Salvation on him to calm his Hellfiring butt down. Yep. You’re just that awesome. Everyone can line up to thank you later. Preferably with chocolates.

Tweaking Icecrown Debuffs

I like to call this one: Making sure I don’t cleanse the abomination like a dumbass.

If you’ve updated Grid in the past few weeks, you’ll notice it now auto-tracks things like Bonespike Graveyard and Mark of the Fallen Champion. This is great, but we can do a bit more tweaking to maximize the efficiency of these indicators.

Expand the Status subsection and then expand Raid Debuffs. Click Icecrown Citadel and Load. You should see all of the debuffs from the zone, separated neatly by boss. Let’s just say, for starters, we want to do a few things here. Mainly, we want to solve some problems:

Mark of the Fallen Champion is getting covered up by another icon! Halp!

Go down to Deathbringer Saurfang and click Mark of the Fallen Champion. Set the icon and color priority to 10 and your problems should be solved!

I need to know how long my target has on their Mutated Infection! Halp!

Go down to Rotface and click Mutated Infection. Check Remained time and you should get a little timer with your icony goodness.

I keep cleansing the abomination on Putricide and everybody hates me! Halp!

I’m sure I’ve…. Never done this. Ever. But if I had, I would go down to Putricide and uncheck Enable so this icon won’t show at all on Grid and I wouldn’t be tempted to cleanse it…

I imagine most of you awesome healers know about these advanced configurations, but I’m hoping it helps a few people get a bit more out of Grid. While you can certainly get the same thing out of other addons, I like having everything in one nice, pretty, boxy… box.

What about you? Do you use advanced customization for Grid, or are you happy with the standard setup?

* No warlocks were harmed in the making of this post.

71% overheal for ICC25. As high as 75% on certain fights. Initially I was pretty bummed by this. 75% overheal means only 25% of my heals are actually effective healing, which to me meant I was only putting in 25% of the work I should be.

But then I took a look at all the 25 man logs. Since we’ve been doing ICC, my overhealing has been a consistent 70%+. My lowest overhealing was 63%. So either I’m really good at consistently sucking, or there’s more at work here.

Healing Style

You can see, at a glance, that I favor a Holy Light healing style. In almost every log I’ve examined, Holy Light and Beacon of Light account for at least half of my total healing, which is a healthy level. Holy Light, unfortunately, has two sources for overheal: Beacon of Light and Glyph of Holy Light. Neither of these abilities discriminates against a target that is at full health versus one who actually needs healing.

There’s also the fact that I was tank healing for most of the raid. And in my worst overheal fight, Gunship Battle, there isn’t much need to toss gobs of healing onto anyone but the tanks, specifically the tank jumping to the other ship. So with six healers, at least three of them are probably tossing heals onto the same tank I’m healing, and my beacon is overhealing the tank the others are healing. Maths are hard, so I’m not going to go into the statistics of that, but it’s fairly easy to see the reason behind the overheal there.

Healing Synergy

I love my guild. Really I do. But on any given Sunday (I see what you did there…) we have four holy priests. Four. One is dual-spec’d disc, but he only breaks it out for Deathbringer Saurfang. The only other healers, for the most part, are myself and a resto druid.

Assuming the druid is running foundation HoTs and the holy priests are getting spillover from AE, not to mention the priests also healing the tanks, hell yes there’s going to be overheal. I’m not entirely sure what would help that, aside from having a resto shaman and a permanent disc priest in the raid.

For my part, however, I would like to learn more about how our guild’s healers work. I can stare at logs all day, but it doesn’t really tell me much. Perhaps I’ll pass along a healing survey to get a general idea and then look at the logs with that in hand to see what I can do to improve team synergy.

Abundance of Healers

I’m noticing it’s not just me that has a fairly high amount of overhealing. Everyone is fairly high. Without considering if people are healing the right targets and using the right spells for the right situations, that tells me we may be running too many healers. Or again, too many healers of the same type doing the same thing.

I’d be curious to try it with 5 and see how it goes. I don’t see Plague happening with less than 6, but Lower Spire should be completely doable with just 5. And then I don’t get stuck in the group with the snarky warlocks, ostracized from the other healers.

In Summation… Nobody Cares

Here’s the thing about overhealing: nobody cares. Well, let me refine that a bit. Nobody cares, unless you’re running yourself out of mana or people are frequently dying while one target just keeps getting healed past full.

Fighting overheal as a paladin is a losing battle. We have excellent throughput, but very little in the way of smart healing. You can avoid some overhealing snafoos by using your spells appropriately – you probably shouldn’t be using Holy Light on a warlock that’s just Life Tapped – but in a fast-moving raid environment, you may not have the luxury of time to determine whether or not that warlock just lifetapped, or if he’s taking sustained raid damage. Waiting for him to get hit again may cause his death.

Assuming you have some sort of monitor for incoming heals (Grid, for example) and know how best to utilize your spells, you’re better off worrying about other things. We can afford to be a bit sloppy about overhealing. Hell, part of our near bottomless mana pool is caused by the overhealing of crits.

So if you’re not running out of mana and people aren’t dying: Nobody cares! And you shouldn’t either.