World of Warcrack

[Tobin]

Had a good laugh at my sister's expense - it's ok though, she laughed the rest of the night too.

Hubby and I know what her character's name is - so we could check to see what level she had managed to get to (lvl 9 on her hunter). We put together a care package for her of gear, money, bags and potions that should take some of the sting of the earlier levels.
I have a lvl 20 hunter that is still in Silvermoon, so hubby's warlock meets me over there so we can find her using 'track humanoid'.
We get lucky and she's practically right outside, so we roll on up and start talking to her.
She kinda ignores us and keeps running away to pull new mobs.

Me: "You know, if you don't answer people - they're going to think you're a bot."
Sister: "..."
Me: "Hellooooo..."
Sister: "..."
Me: "You remember how to talk? type /s whatever."
Sister: "SORRY NOOBY"
Me: "Wow, already yelling too."
Hubby: "Capslock, it's on the left of the keyboard."
Sister: "Sorry. I new here."
Me: "We guessed."
Sister: "My sister plays for years."
Me: "Ya don't say."
Hubby: *snicker*
Me: "How long do you think it will take her to figure out who we are?"
Hubby: "Six months."
Me: "You'd think she would recognize the guild name."
Hubby: "At least."
Sister: "THat you? Not Rattle name."
Me: *sigh* "This is an alt - tracking made it easier to find you."

We called and spent the next hour on speakerphone while helping her find stuff like the bank, AH, etc. Got her to take mining/skinning to help with money early on.
She said she was having a lot of fun, and she's excited about getting her first pet.
I'll probably drag her and hubby's newest baby rogue through RFC tonight or tomorrow.

[PhelanArcetus]

Use speakerphone, don't give her Vent info?

Yes, I'm a bad person.

I blame uncomfortable dress shoes and a 2 hour demo which we're sure is getting us no business.

[Tobin]

She's still working half-days because of her ICD surgery, so she's already called me twice with questions.
I think she's already addicted - she was whining about having to go to some social thing tonight and being away from the computer.

I've already promised to give her the Vent info - mostly because it will be easier for her to talk with a headset since she doesn't have a speakerphone at her house, and also for the guild's general amusement.
And you thought you were bad Phel, :devil:
I'll build seperate Vent rooms for different levels/raids, so we shouldn't have cross-chatter too much.


I've scraped together a halfway decent list for two Kara runs that should cover all our 70s, alts included. We'll only be short an OT and a Healer, but I think I did a decent job with balancing the DPS between the two groups.
I'll bring up the idea to the other officers and see what they think.

[TerraPrime]

Heheheheh.

I have a pally at 10 parked in Silvermoon somewhere. Also got an L6 warrior in the tauren area. If you want more noobage to drag through RFC, I'm game. ^_^



(Yes, I already started alting even though my main is still 38. Shoot me.)

[Lyanna Stark]

[quote name='Kalbear' post='1416441' date='Jun 26 2008, 17.47']I'm honestly asking here; I don't have a lot of experience healing and a lot of my knowledge comes from reading and observing others, but from what I've seen when you've got two healers on one tank, the best bet is to have one giving steady small heals while the other gives long heals & stopcasts. That's what I've seen produces the most success. You're probably right though; some times a tank is just gonna die.[/quote]


Nah, smalled heals like FoL and flash heal just won't do the HPS on bear. Our shaman is a bit slow as well on picking up the slack, which is another factor.

Basically, on our gear level, you need to think HPS in ZA. Regen is secondary. No paladin or priest worth their salt will stand there and spam flash heal or FoL. :) for a pally it's not enough HPS, for a priest it's oom-ville. I mean, a FoL or FH is maybe 2300 healed, 1.5 sec cast and a GCD? A max rank gheal sits on maybe 5.8k healed untrinketed, 2.5sec cast plus GCD. A pally HL if it crits (and it often does, plus can be forced to) will sit on over 7k healed. You are nerfing your healing a LOT by using shorter heals just by counting the GCDs. Trust me when I say I often shout at my GCDs. :P

NO PRIEST EVER should spam flash heal in a boss fight unless it is to urgently heal an otherwise dead DPS, or if it is a gimmick fight. My mp5 in combat on my holy priest is sitting around 300 raid buffed, which is pretty decent for my gear level. I chain pot on bear, and so does my pally friend. We never stop casting (well "stop casting" but that's different :P It's not a fight you can comfortably say "taking a 10 sec break to regen" in :P )
As for communicating when heals should land, how do you do that if you stop cast? You will have to constantly spam ventrilo with "2 sec to gheal rank 4 landing" "oh, no wait, I stop casted" "Swapped to rank 7, plus using a GCD for Prom" "A shit a cleave, no time for prom, a trinketed gheal rank 7 instead" with the other guy doing the same. It's just...not doable. :)

The reason I really like healing together with this pally is that we normally have a very good basic rythm. As in, we have healed together a lot now, and we sort of know eachother's patterns. He's normally quicker than me to heal initial damage, while my bigger heals completely covers the spikes, plus some renews and Proms. He's also insanely good at dispelling :P which helps a tonne. Basically, we have similar reactions to things. The time our tank got gibbed on bear after taking a spike, we both had trinketed max rank heals incoming but got silenced on the last 0.5 sec of it. Like a hive mind. :P (This is where the "and what was the shaman doing?" question comes in, and my reply would be "most likely semi-sleeping :P ")

It's MUCH easier with a druid healer as well, since it totally takes the edge off the spike damages. Especially since you can take spike damage and then get a silence, which you can't really predict. I mean, compared to Mags, I know when the bounce comes more or less, and normally I can slap ProM, renew and a shield on the tank. Bear won't leave you that luxury though, which makes him such a weird fight to heal.

Lynx takes more HPS, but bear is just soo....random. Since both me and Mr Holy pally can pump out insane HPS on one (or two) targets in that fight, it makes it easier than bear. We did Halazzi un-tranqed last week and it was easy despite our shaman being a nublet.

As far as I know, bossmods won't tell you when the silences is going to hit, you just have to deal. (I run DBM, and it tells me the transitions, but not the silences. The silences can also be resisted.)

As for healing based on class, I know only little of shaman healing, except they complain about single target healing (oom-ville they say) and like group healing (kinda obvious I guess. :P )

Paladins and Priests normally stay on the long, slow high number heals, while druids are there to take the bite off the spikes and shamans to raid heal with chain heal. (Unless the priest is CoH and on group healing.)

Another reason why priests are an extremely bad choice for fast small heals are not only the mana inefficiency of flash heal and poor HPS, but because priests need to be outside the 5SR to be viable in most longer fights. Priests rely on stop casting and chaining clearcasting procs with inner focus, plus regen trinkets.

Of course, on most ZA fights you rarely stop casting, so it's often worth it to swap to mp5 trinkets instead.



Phel: Yep, I recognise the throughput problem. Jan'alai is simple, Arkil'zon is more annoying for the people on raid healing. Halazzi is straight forward, but as long as your HPS is high and your DPS good (if not, it's utterly dreadful and really stressful), it's caek. Malacrass is......a walking nightmare. :lol:

[Stego]

Last night I ground rep with the Sandman.

[PhelanArcetus]

Yeah Lyanna, I was just putting numbers on the throughput for a reference. Flash of Light just doesn't put out the health per second needed on ZA bosses. It is the paladin endurance spell; at only 180 mana, I can cast it all day long. My mp5 is much lower... though in part because I don't get any part of spirit regen while casting.

But for example, a few of us went to fill out a pug Kara run last night. Only had Nightbane, Illhoof, Netherspite, & Prince left. On Prince, I spammed Flash of Light mindlessly, threw in one or two Holy Lights at most, and did all the cleansing. With Kings, Int, Wisdom, and Mana Spring (I don't know for sure, but I doubt the shaman dropped a Mana Tide) I didn't even get to 50%. No potioning, no stopping to regen.

Because we picked up a third healer, I got to AoE tank Nightbane's imps. It was kind of fun. Doing over 1k dps as a holy paladin was entertaining.

I also made it up to a whopping 5k honor (two "hey, let's just lose fast" AB groups were worth virtually no honor; I hate those), and even did some 2v2s. We didn't do well, but I got just enough rating to afford season 4 gloves. The problem: we're not PvPers, we weren't in much PvP gear, and we weren't a high quality team combo. 3-7. If we'd waited a few weeks, well, we might be up against less people who outgear/skill/team makeup/interest us. Holy Paladin / Arms Warrior. We met discipline priests and resto druids, we met a mage/rogue team that just bursted us down. And we met a lot where each member had more resilience than the two of us combined.

[Tobin]

Ran both RFK and RFD for two of our guild kids (really they're our OT and MHunter's alts). They both got what they were really looking for, but not a lot of side loot they could use.
I might get a little time tonight to play, but I doubt it.
We're rolling 4e characters for our D&D game tomorrow. Since the system and rules have all changed, we figured we could use the extra time.
Plus, we're going to our friend's house to spectate their Kara raid and offer suggestions. They still can't get through Moroes (with 3 priests) :o .


I've been tinkering with lists and I think my guild can pull off a second Kara run with our 'extra' 70s and filling in with core member alts. We'll still be short an OT or a Healer, but if I get my Resto sham up fast and geared - I can swap and fill the 2nd healer's spot on team 2.

[Mister Manticore]

Playing WOW again after a long hiatus. It's interesting to come back, especially when you're running at a good bit less than 100% of your normal abilities.

But at least it's something to do besides lay around watching TV.

[Lyanna Stark]

:o No Moroes with 3 priests?

Hmm, sounds like they're not reshackling fast enough and don't have focus macros.

Plus if they have the prot warrior add, just have him OTed, helps a tonne on mana if you have to keep spamming shackle.

I always force it on our new priests in KZ. They thank me for it later. :P

clearfocus [modifier:shift] [target=focus,dead] [target=focus,noexists]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/script SetRaidTarget("focus", 1)
/cast [target=focus] Shackle Undead


How to use:

1. Use it instead of normal "Shackle undead" when you first shackle moroes's adds.
2. Stand at max range from your shackle
3. Click macro button every 5-7 seconds during the fight.
4. This will autoamitcally refresh the shackle without you having to detarget your healing target.


In general for priests on Moroes:

-Stand next to the tank when he pulls and shackle ASAP. A lot of priest habitually stand at the back, and won't get their shackle off until it has one-shotted someone in the raid.
-Mana pot quite often so you always have enough mana to shackle. Start when you are at 60% mana. Shackle is more mana expensive than healing spells if you spam it.
-Time your fiend to just after Moroes comes back, approx when Moroes is at 30% HP, that way you are guaranteed a nice amount of well timed mana. Nothing worse than being dry, whipping out the fiend and have moroes disappear.
-Re-shackle EVERY 5-7 SECONDS!!! Holy priests have no spellhit. Your shackle will break a lot on the heartbeat checks. My rule is 2 gheals or three shorter heals plus GCD, then re-shackle.
- Don't stand near someone else's shackle either, some of them WW. (you'd think this would be self explanatory :P but it isn't)


Resto shamans are pure awesomeness if well played. :) If I ever roll alliance it will be a squidface shammy for sure.

[Tobin]

I have a feeling that their critical problem is:

"Too many chiefs, not enough Indians."

Everyone thinks that they know best and refuse to follow directions.

This is likely not the [i]only[/i] problem they have, but it's a biggie.
I should see tonight.



I've been stalking the AH trying to get upgrades for my little sham girl - but there is patently nothing between 45 and 60 that isn't stuffed with Spirit or some other useless stats. She's still running around with Herod's shoulder at lvl 50 - it makes me sad, :(
I've got two of the Elements set pieces stashed in the bank for when she's old enough, but that will be a little while.

Another two levels or so and I'm going to beg a run through BRD, see if that helps out.

[Stego]

I deal with a lot of Chiefs, Tobin. It can be overcome.

[Kalbear]

[quote]Another reason why priests are an extremely bad choice for fast small heals are not only the mana inefficiency of flash heal and poor HPS, but because priests need to be outside the 5SR to be viable in most longer fights. Priests rely on stop casting and chaining clearcasting procs with inner focus, plus regen trinkets.[/quote]From what I've seen both in our raids and personally, this isn't nearly the case it used to be thanks to the spirit buff for regen. The healer in our raid that has the highest throughput of heals is almost always the IDS priest, and they cast Flash heal at least half the time. Yes, I've read EJ about it, and yes, the base article in there is a bit outdated; it really doesn't take into account how amazing the mana regen is now. It occasionally sucks in that those flash heals are underhealing a lot of bigger heals (so everyone else gets more overhealing), but it's a consistent stream of healing. Also, why would the priest be spamming the fast heal in your circumstance? Put the pally on flash of light, put the priest on greater heal, and all is well. What I really don't get about what you said is that on the bear form, when he silences - it's all about bleed damage, not spikes. It's a long, slow, steady stream of damage that starts increasing over time. There aren't saber lashes to worry about, there isn't some weird crushing mechanic, etc.

(that's another reason to put the pally on the warrior and the warrior on the bear - silence means no holy shield if you're unlucky, which means crushable pally. Yet another reason is that a warrior will take less damage innately from bleed effects thanks to how much better defensive stance is over RF).

Still, if the small heals aren't going to cut it no matter what, it doesn't really matter and you're forced to both do max gheals. In which case...

[quote]As for communicating when heals should land, how do you do that if you stop cast?[/quote]You use things like grid or xperl that tell you what heals are incoming, who's casting them and how big they are. Even if this doesn't show you things like the stopcasting - which it won't - it can absolutely tell you whether someone else is starting a bigger heal or not and then tell you whether you should at that exact instant. If you see someone else casting that big heal, wait a sec or cast a small heal so that you're not on the same rhythm. Matticus had a good article about this, and so did resto4life.

I agree that the fight is far, far easier with a resto druid healing it. Most 1-tank fights are, especially ones that interrupt healers. But in lieu of a resto druid, you can fake your own. The overall hps of a resto druid isn't huge relative to a pally or priest spamming max rank big heals, but they can heal so much faster. I was thinking that you can kinda fake this behavior by one healer doing the small heals that land quickly while another does the big ones. It's not perfect, but it may solve issues with fewer spikes. I mean, you're doing everything else that does - pom, renew, shield, and hopefully your shaman is giving GoA if he's in the group and earth shield. But it doesn't sound like consistent behavior on that fight anyway, so it's mostly a theoretical exercise. :) I find myself thinking a lot about healing assignments and healing behaviors these days.

[Kalbear]

Oh, my good news - got my swift flight form last night, and it is awesome. Farming for herbs has never been easier. Though I ran into more than a couple mushrooms while flying around zang afterwards. Fast flight is fast.

[PhelanArcetus]

[quote name='Tobin' post='1418024' date='Jun 27 2008, 09.00']We're rolling 4e characters for our D&D game tomorrow. Since the system and rules have all changed, we figured we could use the extra time.[/quote]

I want to try out 4e but haven't had a chance yet. Anger.

I haven't tried healing ZA. But my experience is that on many fights, more HPS than my Flash of Light and the other person's GHeal is required. Which means I need to move to Holy Light at least part of the time. Mostly, not all the time.

Fast flight is indeed fast.

Damnit, which reminds me. Add one more task to my list. Farm badges on 3 characters. Farm honor on one. Check AH for overpriced leather chest pattern. Level shaman. Farm cash because 2.4.3 adds a buyable 22 slot bag. And I don't really have enough surplus to buy those without dropping below what I expect to need to spend on the chest pattern should it show up.

[Tobin]

[quote name='PhelanArcetus' post='1418179' date='Jun 27 2008, 10.35']I want to try out 4e but haven't had a chance yet. Anger.[/quote]

You could come join us - though I think the distance commute might cause a problem.

We're desperate for new (COMPETENT) players. Hubby too often gets frustrated when the only ones interested in the carefully crafted world/experience he's built are me and possibly my sister (yeah, she's creeping into all aspects of my game life). The others in the group would probably be just as entertained with a dressed up table-top Diablo game.
Hubby has actually threatened to do that one night - but I told him if it gets to that point, just don't run a game at all. He's a great storyteller and a devious DM, he deserves better from his players.

[Lyanna Stark]

Kalbear,

Regarding spike on bear, yep, bleed damage, but also during the silence, if it gets unlucky for the pally tank, he can actually be prevented from renewing holy shield. On the other hand he has Commendation of Kaelthas and Argent Defender, so normally it leaves enough time.

I normally leave the tanking assignments to our tanks, since they know their stuff. To be fair, I don't know why the paladin was tanking bear and the warrior the humanoid (except for by tradition, the warrior is on the humanoid).

As for relying on GRID or other interfaces (I use PitBull) it can be extremely useful, but not always correct. GRID especially seems to suffer from severe lag quite often, with PitBull being far better. Interestingly, GRID totally missed target switching by Zul'Jin during Lynx phase making the healing there.....a bit more interesting. :)

Regarding Imp DS priests outhealing everyone with flash heal......erhm, I can't think of anything more inefficient :P
It's probably better to have a pally spam FoL than a priest spam FH. Sure, they CAN do it now by liberal use of mana pots and mp5 gear, but why would you like to? In proper fights, i.e. longer than 6 minutes, you go bone dry unless you severly outgear the encounter. Priests are put to far better use by speccing CoH and raid healing instead of FH tanks. Palas and druid are by far the best tank healers, plus one shaman or priest for inspiration and the shaman equivalent.

ProM on the tank is also nice since it gives the tank some extra threat, which can build up nicely during a long fight.


Healing 25-mans are also very different from healing 10-mans, in my experience. In 25-man you can normally rotate your healers a bit more and you have a little bit more slack, since you normally have three tank healers (say druid, priest and paladin) and during known spikes, the tank can get full hots, ProM, shield and ES. Hell, I was spamming FH on DPS last Maggie we did since I had so much mana and nowehere to put it. I even smiteLOLed him. I am thinking of starting to run it with 5 healers and just take more DPS since our healers fall asleep.

The main difference here I think is that a priest spamming FH is inefficient and teaches bad healing patters, while FoL for a paladin is actually a very efficient heal. So if someone should spam small heals, the paladin would be the best choice. However, a lot of time it is about HPS, and it won't cut it.

In pressured situations where you need to both heal efficiently and push out HPS, flash healing is just a total no go.

FoL is an efficient spell for paladins, but due to GCD it just doesn't have the HPS. I am not sure how a paladin in full haste gear and minimised GCD would be affected by this though, and how much it would up the HPS of FoL.


[quote]I haven't tried healing ZA. But my experience is that on many fights, more HPS than my Flash of Light and the other person's GHeal is required. Which means I need to move to Holy Light at least part of the time. Mostly, not all the time.[/quote]

Yeah, this is my experience also. Healing ZA comes as such a shock when you are used to healing KZ. Especially Bear just boggles your mind the first time. I still always burn through pots like there is no tomorrow on that fight. Our pala says the same: he's standing there praying for those HL crits.

And then you come to Lynx and wonder why you ever thought Bear hit hard. I still remember going "OMFG!" the first time we engaged Halazzi.

[Kalbear]

[quote]As for relying on GRID or other interfaces (I use PitBull) it can be extremely useful, but not always correct. GRID especially seems to suffer from severe lag quite often, with PitBull being far better.[/quote]Have you tried InstantHeal? It updates based on your combat log, not client info, which makes health updates way, way better. Our healers have found it really amazing. And it works with all interfaces.

[quote]Regarding Imp DS priests outhealing everyone with flash heal......erhm, I can't think of anything more inefficient[/quote]It might be inefficient - in fact, I know it is. But as long as he continues to heal well and heal his assignments well, it's hard to complain. He doesn't seem to run out of mana or otherwise is not hampered. We already have two CoH priests that regularly come, so having an imp DS priest is worth it, at least right now. Come sunwell he'll probably spec back to CoH. I'm not sure I'm really happy with him doing so many flash heals, but he looks good on the meters and we're still progressing, so I can't complain. His biggest problem is that he seems to die all the time, though I think that's more perception than actual fact. Still, it's worth noting that on longer fights where efficiency matters it may become a drawback to be doing all those flash heals. I'm very curious now to see how he does on Council or Illidan, given those fights are like 10+ minutes long.

And it really, really sounds like you need a bear tank. :) Seriously, halazzi hits hard but it's really not that bad with that 30+k armor. Plus on ZA you get DPS when you don't need two tanks, which means more chests. I love ZA; Blizzard designed it so that a paladin/druid is the best tanking combo :)

[Stego]

Yeah, InstantHealth is required. It's incredibly useful for up-to-the-second updates.