Healing with others

This past week I got into some sort of alt raid. As I haven't been raiding they asked me to come. It went really well technically by bosses down. But by enviroment of vent it was pretty bad. Having main raiders paired up with alts and realtively new players was interesting. Healing at least was good.

I was healing with two other healers as usual. Although one was the alt of that guy who was basically leading the raid. I was rather low on the healing meter coming in third place and apparently he was a bit riled by that. (and the constant messed up kick didn't help) I had my excuse of having other things on my mind that night, but really why was I so low?

Our healing situation was him a pally, a shaman, and me the druid. He was good with his pally, I think he's leveled 8 or something. The shaman is normally the healer in my run, and she's pretty good except for her lack of gear due to luck. So of course going back to the meter I was low, I had high overheal a prime example of a bad healer.

With Druids we are all about HOTs, not as much as we used to be, but they are still our core mechanic. Hots of course have that nasty little over time part. I love the over time part, and if someone is not going to take more damage while the hot is sitting there there shouldn't be a reason to cast another spell until it is needed. In a perfect world HOTs would heal people the exact amount they needed before the next burst of damage came in.

However, in a world with a great pally and shaman healer I doubt those HOts are going to do much of anything. I have two options then: continue and appear to be horrible, or start trying to do direct heals. Switching to direct heals is just a horrible idea. You'd have to compete with two good healers who have better and faster direct heals. You would also be giving up your mastery in order to beat them to the heal.

Even if your hots were all going to overheal just having them up alows your speedy Nourish, mastery benifit, swiftmend, etc. This allows you to jump in when the other healers can't keep up and they need you. You should also have your innervate available for them. You will also continue using direct heals when they are needed, and keeping up one tank easily will benifit everyone.

This case was not as extreeme as I make it sound. It just brought up the thoughts. All healers should understand that there are more than one of you. Casting a spell that won't heal someone to full, but will combine with the 1-2 other healers to heal them to full will save everyone mana. The smaller the heal the more mana you save (except Regrowth!).

When healing with others you should try and understand how they are going to heal. They also need to understand how you are going to heal. We are all very different healers, but we come together to keep the raid alive. Add your mana to the other healers, use it as one unit to keep people up so they can kill the boss.

Patch 4.0.6!

Or at least that's what my blizzard patch notes said as it installed. Has anyone else had that same problem? I love reading patch notes. I've even gone back and reread patch 1.14 patch notes and such for various reasons. But nearly every patch since the new launcher/patcher I keep getting the previous patch's patch notes. I could go browse around the forums, but I always have problems with that. I can't find it cause it's been so long, or I get distracted with the new layout, or the bug forum and think about posting my bugs again.

I expected to find them on the main page, which turns out they are there, but not in the highlighted news section at the top. I should stop looking at the top of the site and just scroll down it seems, but it's so big and demands attention. So now I guess I'll read the changes and post at the same time.

• Prowl has a new icon

That was probably the largest change I noticed right away, besides addon errors and respecing for 66g which dropped to 33g permanently after I switched specs for the first time since the patch.

• Feral Swiftness now also causes Dash and Stampeding Roar to have a 50/100% chance to instantly remove all movement impairing effects from the affected targets when used.

Well that goes and explains why I've not been hearing any "complaining" about how much ferals suck in pvp lately from the guild.

• The troll druid models for Flight Form and Swift Flight Form have been slimmed down to be more in scale with other druid flight forms, and have had their animations improved.

Aww, I just saw that last weekend or something. It was so neat looking.

Wow what a huge patch, did anyone else notice the massive changes to old dungeons? They removed chunks of wailing caverns! Also wtf they added the leatrix latenancy fix into the game options O.O which would remove the affects of the global registry settings from other programs. And to think my guild master just posted that to our main page.

Where's the 4.1 resto druid analysis and changes you may be wondering. Well almost every druid blog I read has a 4.1 post I agree with and I'm certainly not going to add anything new to their well thought posts. Especially since I'm not even raiding until our tank mysteriously reappears.

Making 'I' a link just felt wrong

Am I Trying?

Last night I was told that while people used to be impressed by my healing numbers they thought I wasn't trying anymore. I took some offence to this since when I needed to I definitely do try. It just feels so limiting with the spells we are given. On trash I've definitely given up though. If we are CCing the pull there's nearly no damage anyways. If I feel up to it I put Lifebloom on the tank. Raid damage tends to be single target and other people have much more efficient and faster heals so I let them do their thing. If I did try to heal them all I can cast fast enough is regrowth which generally wouldn't top them off, so they'd need another heal anyways.

If the trash isn't CCd then there might be some AOE. AOE: Cast Wild Growth followed by Rejuvenations and recently Nourish as needed since it's fast now. That's what I do, there's nothing else to be added to that except Swiftmend. There's no variation. And that's AOE. Seems like I'm missing something.

And bosses are just a combination of the two, Lifebloom and AOE. Sure there's cases where I cast Healing Touch, even rare cases I might cast a Regrowth or an Insect Swarm. So am I not trying? I don't know, but to me it doesn't feel like there's anything I can do except cast the spells that need to be cast when they need casting. If I'm doing near equal healing as our priest I think that might be good.

Also this brings up the old topic of BIG numbers equate to good. Healing is not similar to DPS in the numbers it puts out. This is more true than ever now. From people who have said this to me repeatedly and then told me I must not be trying because my numbers are low, it's rather shocking. They should know I try to be efficient not just cast Wild Growth when it's off cooldown and hot the raid constantly. That Guy boasted about beating me on his shaman the one night he was with us. Congrats to him, but he sure didn't cleanse me as I was feared across the room and we wiped.

All this leads to something I've said to myself often. Healing has become boring. Not to say I don't like it. I still like healing in a raid. If I didn't I would have quit ages ago and bought some toys with the $15 I'd save every month. It's just so much of the same. Partly the reason behind this is we've been stuck doing the same bosses for about a month due to third healer issues. If we had a good healer we would prolly clear everything except Nef in the first two nights. We nearly did that once a while ago. Then we could start heroics and such

I somewhat wonder if I could try more. I have gotten to being able to use my innervate on others nearly all the time. So I could then use more of my mana. If the goal was to end the fight with zero mana I could cast regrowth more often. As I currently consider the amount healed for the mana the worst of any spell in game. Therefore, I tend to try and cast it never. That would definitely burn my mana, but as we are doing the fights without this, would it really be worth it at all...

In other news. I finally finished buying justice point things, yay a relic.

Internal Blizzard Policies

Most of this is not based on facts, just ideas.

Blizzard is a company and as such has policies and management dictating decisions. One policy I firmly believe in currently is that each expansion class spells are strictly limited in order to make classes feel equal. I've heard my guildies talk of BC spells being unequal, according to WoWWiki classes got 5-6 new spells. Some felt they deserved 6 when they only got 6 or some were completely useless; arguments ensued. Now in cataclysm every class got three spells.

Perfectly equal with every class getting exactly three new things. Which is why, although I think it would work amazingly, we won't be seeing a new druid healing spell, although making shrooms have a heal might work. Then again I could be completely wrong, Spirit Link Totem, grats shamans! Really, we both need fixing. I guess your new spell made it through the management levels faster ;) I'm hoping we get something similar since there are still issues.

I have also noticed a change in the way the game has been handled recently. I have an idea that this translates back to something within Blizzard that has changed. The change I've noticed relates to the distribution of patches. It's true I've never been through a previous expansion, so perhaps I am wrong. However, I have been through a lot of patches.

Previously patches were something I dreaded, and still do, full of bugs, addon updates, hours of unexpected downtime, and just eww. But since the release of 4.0 the patches have seemed smoother. This may just be coincidence and Blizzard might not be doing anything different. I at least think they are though. It seems patches on the PTR stay there longer. The bugs get worked out, and the patch goes live with a lot fewer issues overall. There are lots of hotfixes I attribute to it being an expansion, but there aren't many major bugs.

I've also been rather bad at predicting when patches will come out lately. I'm normally on target or off one week rarely, and I've been consistently off by two weeks. In fact I've given up predicting when they come out. The patches seem to be lacking in extended downtime or server crashes. There's been fewer server crashes and lag outs since 4.0 than the few patches before in wrath. Also, I believe, the expansion was playable. I've heard that didn't happen when wrath came out. I wasn't there though, so I can't say anything for sure.

What does this all add up to? I can't say for sure, but being in the software field, especially a tester, I think they could be focusing on quality. Before I'd say they were focusing on keeping people interested with new sh-ahem, stuff. I've felt that they didn't need to do that at all through all of wrath and maybe they caught on. Maybe they are focusing on quality now. Or maybe there's a new boss. Whatever the case, I'm glad that when a patch comes out I'm not hating the fact that I have to raid cause that's where peoples schedules line up.

incoming extended downtime to prove me wrong

BA Shared topic: When Good Guildies Go Bad

I've been looking at the shared topics over at Blog Azeroth for a while, and after my vacation I had an idea for a topic, but no title and wasn't sure if I wanted to write it anyways. Then I wrestled with myself for a while about posting this, but finally decided to even though it's late. Jack at The Casual Raider came up with the topic this week that relates and gives this a title, even if this might not be quite related.

I'm going to try from the other perspective. What I mean is that I've been doing some pretty bad raiding lately. So lets look at what happens when you are the good guildie gone bad. Lets start a few weeks ago where I changed up my entire UI and started healing in a new way. I was able to adapt pretty well, but the addons I'm using have some odd "features." It also condensed some of my addons, one in particular is decursive. The new raid frames I'm using shows debuffs I can dispell and is amazing.

What went wrong, however, is the nice Blackout debuff on Valiona and Theralion. The first week no one dared cleanse it so I took up the slack there. Then the second week rolled around and I kept cleansing it early. I had reasons each time, though none made any sense to me. I came to the conclusion that I was just too tired to be trying to cleanse that correctly. So the raid leader told me to stop doing it, so I did. Then people cleansed really slow and I felt horrible. I had wiped us 3 times by this point, and wiped us again when I missed where a flame breath was coming from.

That was probably one of my worst nights of raiding I've ever done. I think the cause of my failures was being tired after staying up late for whatever reasons with the raid leader and friends. This being the cause I've since taken measure to try and get more sleep. However, the situation during raid could have been handled a bit better to let me take a short break I think. The making me stop cleansing it may have been the fastest solution though.

I wish this was my last problem, but they continue. Our guild started 25s with a partnership a few weeks ago. It abruptly ended last Thursday with the last raid day being Tuesday. Tuesday I had planned not to raid. I had just got back from a 5 hours plane flight and hour drive home, but I was expected to come along for whatever reasons. The entire night I felt pretty useless with constantly low healing done. I don't know if anyone else noticed because I made the entire raid stop early in order to get some much needed sleep on my part. I missed any review of logs that was done.

If anyone did notice I'm sure they wouldn't tell me about it later. A huge problem in the guild in my opinion. I'm not sure if it happens to others, I try and let people know if there is a problem pointed out about them. However, if there is a problem with me, I rarely recieve any feedback about it. I've attempted to mention this to some people before, I figure I'll point them here when this gets posted to start addressing this.

As for my thoughts on what was wrong that night. The fact that I was up since 3:30am with little sleep in a raid I wasn't expecting to be in and still learning the class changes from the patch. Everything combined and made me appear to be a horrible healer. I know I was able to keep the tank I choose alive for fights where that mattered, which allowed us to progress. Me leaving early might have cut the raid short for everyone else as well, making me look like quite a b-word.

I haven't been very fun to be around lately as a whole. Due to these issues as well as others that have been irking me. I think I'll seek out bugging people about them. Communication on both sides is key to addressing raid problems. My guild could use some work in that area which hopefully I can start changing. I hope I can get some other problems addressed, and back on a schedule to help improve my playstyle. Raiding back in 10s will help me as well, since I've liked them better since I was introduced to 25s.

Cata Healing

The new healing style. I normally never have to think too hard about how I heal. Back in wrath occasionally druids would ask me how I heal, or how to heal a specific boss fight. My response would normally be "uhhhh.... put hots on things..." or something to that effect. Sure, certain boss fights I had little ideas that came in handy, like the timing for lifebloom to heal infest on LK, or other things I've forgotten. Generally I just found healing natural and didn't need to think about what I cast because things just fell into place.

Now cataclysm has changed up this whole process. This has made me think, and since spells are so strict it makes how I heal quite obvious imo. I think the best place to start is what heals do we have?

Spells

Our Main healing spells

Lifebloom

7% - This is the cheapest thing we can do, but we can only cast it on one person. So we should keep it on that one person as often as possible. The spell also can heal for a lot if we let it fall off, but this should only be done if the burst is needed for a specific boss mechanic and you have time to put it up again.

Nourish

10% - The second cheapest heal, refreshes lifebloom, and longest cast time. If the lifebloom target isn't at full hp near the 3 second left mark, and they aren't nearer to half hp, cast this. Also can be used to top others off when a rejuv won't be quite enough and there is no other immediate threat to anyone.

Rejuvination

26% - a huge cost jump between this and our other heals, but worth it whenever someone isn't going to be healed by someone else to full, or you want to get your mastery bonus on another spell. Also combining this after wild growth for raid healing works well.

Healing Touch

30% - Our biggest heal, same cast time as nourish, so if you have an OOC proc, use this if at all possible ever! If anyone is dropping faster than your hots, or needs a big heal and you feel okay on mana, also use this.

Regrowth

35% - Some people love this spell, I can not understand that. As our most expensive heal, with almost no hot, hits for half a healing touch only when it crits, and doesn't refresh lifebloom I don't see any real use for this. Sure talents bump the crit up to 80%(counting my own gear), but if you rely on that it could just as easily fail. If a dps is dropping so fast that you need to cast this as a faster heal in order to save them, generally they've done something wrong and you shouldn't be needing this to save them. Yes, you should use it in that one circumstance, but if it keeps happening you might want to ask them why, after you go oom and wipe.

With the Natures Grace talent, this can help bump your haste for your heals temporarily. This can come in handy for certain areas of fights, and should be used for them. Just try to time it with an OOC proc. Personally if I know when I need the haste beforehand I'll save a GCD for insect swarm which has the same effect and does a bit of damage for a lot less mana. There can be a lot more discussion about this with Living Seeds and other things, but when I look at it I just see a huge mana dump.

Cooldowns

I list these seperately even though most have short cooldowns it affects their overall use

Swiftmend

10% - same price as nourish! instant cast, heals for more, pretty crits, and drops Efflorescense! Use it as often as you can to the best of it's awesomeness. Always benifits from mastery :D

Efflorescense

0% - This is our little group heal when people are stacked up. It comes from a swiftmend, so taking note of where people are before you go casting swiftmend on the lowest hp target can make this much more useful. Generally best used on fights where you are stacking up, but most fights have you spread such that 2-3 people might be able to stand in this depending on the abilities in that encounter.

Wild Growth

27% - Mildly costly for a rather small amount healed. Using this in conjunction with rejuv can give some nice healing, but it's rather slow healing. Use it when aoe healing is needed, at least it will stack up with other healer's similar aoe abilities to get the raid back up.

Tranquility

32% - Our class defining spell, reworked and better than ever. Wild growth before casting this makes it even better since it has a huge hot, and wild growth after for those heavy aoe situations. Only downside is that it's such a long cooldown.

Tree of Life

6% - healing buff, plus modifies a number of our spells. Lifebloom is allowed on multiple targets. Use the lifeblooms to get more OOC procs in order to cast the now instant cast Regrowth. And wild growth affect an additional target now. This is an amazing aoe healing cooldown. As well as single target if you keep up a few lifeblooms for extra OOC procs. Personally I avoid using this, unless there is a need to use it. The cooldown is rather short, so twice in a fight can be done. Lately I've been popping it with hero, or during a burn phase to throw some dps at the boss. 20-30k wrath from a healer O.o

Extras:

• Lifebloom from tree of life can continue to be refreshed after the form ends.
• Glyph of regrowth... is interesting. Perhaps on Chimaeron.

Patch

The upcoming patch. Makes some minor adjustments to healing. For whatever reason people tell me these few changes will fix aoe healing. I'm skeptical, as always, and am writing this mainly as a way to put my ideas together in preparation for this patch. The changes are few, and rather minor.

• Lifeblooms can no longer exist on more than one target when tree of life ends :( it was fun and difficult while it lasted
• Rejuv mana cost reduction
• Regrowth refreshes lifebloom
• Tree of life duration decreased
• When rejuv is on 3 or more targets, Nourish cast time reduced by 30%
• Wild growth healing increased by 30%
• Wild growth cooldown reduced
• Glyph of regrowth now refreshes while under 50% HP
• Omen of clarity no longer procs from spells unless talented for lifebloom only

The general sense of these changes show that tree of life was too powerful. Aoe healing has been improved, with wild growth buff, rejuv buff, and nourish buff. Regrowth has been made more useful, but I still don't see it as the go to for OOC especially since there is a reduced proc rate. However, glyph of regrowth seems really interesting for Chimaeron and I shall be trying that out.

One thing extra that I'll be testing is weather wacking the boss for 100 damage from my staff... will be procing OOC. I used to do this in molten core... oh memories. I also can't wait to hear the RL yell at me to get out of melee! But... but, omen procs ;_;

Restro/Restro

So I'm really considering dual spec of restro/restro. Seems insane to me because I always loved balance a little. Ever since the starfall from the mounted lady in WC3. I was trying out what it would be like to try and do daily quests in my current restro spec. Well using spells is just fine, I have some feral gear, but eww feral.

Everything was fine until I aggroed 5 things at once. In my balance spec this would be no problem, but I had to switch to bear to live. So I'm able to live no problem, but if you've never seen a restro druid take on 5 mobs in bear form... take 15 min and watch sometime. So now I'm a bit worried about switching, though I did start a new druid that I'm going to make feral, so maybe I'll level her a little faster once I switch. Or maybe I won't like two healing specs. It will be interesting though.

Patch!

So the other night was a raid with a new patch, omfg. I love healing though, so I didn't complain. The major issues would be addons, they always break and mess up, right? Well mine were all fine, I don't use very many, and the only one that died was carbonite, and I barely use it anyways. So what's the first thing I see when I join the raid? Half the people are logging on and off trying to get their addons working. I understand this is their first time on all day, but why do they need so many to function I always wonder.

I never like patches, there's too much hassle when one comes out. First there's the patch, which needs to download. It's nice that part of it preloads once they know they are done with parts, but it can still be a while. Also, nice they use a torrent since the more people downloading it the faster it has a chance to go. Then it has to install which always takes a while. Then the servers have to come back from the extended downtime when they update the server software. Then you have all your addons that break and you need to try and get them back. Then the addon website is overloaded by everyone else trying to get their addons. Then there's the random bugs that each patch brings (strafe and jump then shapeshift into crow form, whee!). Then there is the lag from everyone trying to do everything new all at the same time, which may or may not crash the server.

Really though, this was one of the best patch days (or weeks) I've ever been through. I downloaded the patch, read the notes, got new addons, and by then the servers were up and then addon websites crashed. So I logged in and was ready for the raid that night. I'm just sitting there slightly fixing grid so it doesn't error out, which is really easy, don't even need to log off. People are trying to get a new DBM, which there isn't one, and complaining about xperl. As always people take a good 30 min to get to the instance, and even longer since they keep logging off to mess with addons.

I've never seen the point of a vastly different user interface for any of my characters. Before my mage I didn't really need any sort of bar mod. And when I used one I didn't replace blizz, just added some extra buttons I could customize of keybind. So when people completely replace the UI and then freak out on patch day, I always wonder why they do that to themselves. If you don't freak out, yay!

Healing Alts

Lately a few friends have been making healing alts. One even made druid healer, which surprised me since he was trying to make something for every role, and already had the other two roles a druid could do. Somehow I'm the one they come to on advice for talents and healing. It's really interesting teaching others how to use a healing class. Mainly the two people are Dravus who made a druid and Lyricz made a shaman, which is now her main character.

Dravus had leveled from 25 to 60 in one day, and then dual spec'd. I'm a real fan of leveling up your character slowly so you can learn what you like, what the spec's are, and how to use it though. I gave him enough advice and help with talents to get him started, and he should be able to heal things just fine. From what I've heard he can and enjoys it. though I'll have to wait about 10 levels till he gets to where my 70 hunter is to find out how well he's doing. Or level one of my level 30's.

Lyricz was a bit more interesting. We actually started shamans together, but she wanted her's to get to 80 a lot more than I did, so we split apart around level 30. She leveled as a healer, which I consider insane as my 73 druid was pulling around 300 dps in great healing gear back then. Questing was unbearable. Shaman dps as restro seems to be better though, since my shaman is restro at level 40 and can quest a lot better than my druid could.

Helping her I haven't been that useful though. Shaman is a lot different and using what I know I seem to have made a really bad shaman healing spec for her. Not sure at all what went wrong with it. She's got a good spec but seems to need to learn a bit more in order to be an awesome healer. Shaman is a very new world for me, since I slept in the emerald dream for two years right before the dark portal was opened. Or at least that's how I like to put it. My own shaman is only level 40 and near invincible.

And I'm planning to make a new druid soon and level her as a feral druid. I'll definitely dual spec her to healing, since I love that so much. My main goal is to learn the aspects of being a feral druid. I've never had a problem with balance or healing, but being a cat has always been so foriegn to me. I'd just click buttons and then switch back to caster confused as to what I was doing as a cat. I'm a little more successful as a bear, but without talents it seems so hard to do anything. (I really should level my shaman or priest for healing... druid first!)