Rez Me First!

….Or at least another Priest.

It could be a Soulstone, a Divine Intervention, a vanished Rogue with a pair of cables, or a clever Druid with a well-timed battle rez taken once the coast is clear. The idea is to save the raid the lengthy corpse-run, and to pick up and move on as quickly as possible.

Wipe Prevention - (n.) - \ˈwīp\ \pri-ˈven(t)-shən\ - the concept of having at least one raiding member with the ability to Resurrect other members still alive after all other raiders are dead, and the boss or mobs have reset.

Because the entire purpose of wipe-prevention is time-efficiency, it has always frustrated me when the player charged with reviving the raid seems to have no concept of whom to rez first, second, or last. It gets worse when no one else in the raid seems to know what to do, either. After my guild’s last efforts in Sunwell, I decided to write a quick tutorial:

Always resurrect other rezzers first

This is the most crucial point, but even within this simple concept, it makes the most sense to pick some rezzers over others. Three classes have out of combat resurrection spells. Priests have Resurrection, which costs 60% of our base mana. Shamans have Ancestral Spirit which costs 72% of their base mana, and Paladins have Redemption which costs 64% of their base mana. It makes sense to pick up your Priests first, since they will be able to resurrect the most people without having to stop and drink. Remember that HEALER doesn’t necessarily mean REZZER. Druids can obviously not help here, but non-healing Priests, Shamans, and Paladins should. Don’t let them be lazy.

Personally, 60% of my base mana is 1,500. My Shammie brothers-in-arms’ rezzes cost as much as 3,000. I only have to drink to the point where I have 3,000 of my mana back and my regen will allow me to chain-cast rezzes without stopping until the whole raid is up. It makes more sense to pick me up than to pick up an ele shaman with only 250 mp5 and a 9k mana pool.

Resurrect raiders who need to do extra prep second

This means warlocks who need to summon healthstones and demons, Hunters who have to revive their pets, and buff-classes who will need to fill their mana in order to buff. (Mages, Druids)

Last are classes with little prep

Rogues who may need to apply poisons, non-buffing (usually feral) Druids, and Warriors.

Other speed-recovery pointers

That can sound like a whole bunch of rules, but the underlying principle is very simple: Rez the people who can help get the rest of the raid up as quickly as possible first. Rez the people who need time to get ready second. Rez the people who need the least time last. You can save enough time this way to get in more attempts, avoid re-clearing trash, or keep a night of farm content from drawing out much longer than it should.

Luv,
Wyn

Outsourcing Your Raid Instance: Pros and Cons

High end raiders will reach a point where they can’t seem to make any further progress in the week. Maybe their raiding week ended early and there’s a day or two left over with a few bosses remaining. In some cases you might encounter a situation where a more progressed Guild comes up to you and requests to take your instance.

Why would a Guild do that?

Both parties could benefit out of a mutual arrangement. Here’s a few reasons:

The Asking Guild

The Receiving Guild

Things to consider

There are a few ethical obligations to keep in mind. Usually an asking Guild will go to the guild leader and ask them for permission and try to reach a deal. If they’re not able to, they might turn to other members in the Guild in order to hijack their instance.

Pros
Cons

As a personal belief, if an opportunity arose where another Guild wanted to take our instance and kill Kael in Tempest Keep and we would no longer be raiding the rest of the week, I would have no qualms at all with giving them our instance. Coming from an Asian family, it’s been instilled that wasting anything is wrong whether it’s money, food, or Archimonde.

So what’s the going rate on Archimonde right now? Would your GM be willing to pay to take another Guild’s Archie kill? If you’re on the receiving end, what would your price or terms be in negotiating with another progressed Guild?

Breaking the 2000 Heals Per Second Barrier

2000hps

The time: 2230
The place: Tempest Keep
The objective: Infiltrate, search and destroy the Voidreaver prototype
The crew: Fallen Heroes lead joint operation

I had finished an excursion into Botanic in the hopes of procuring me a Bangle. Boy did that not work out. Shortly after I finished, I received a tell from a mission commander in Fallen Heroes.

Apparently, one of their heroes had… fallen.

Since I happened to be in the area, I agreed to lend what assistance I could. I entered the area and the entire complex was picked clean. All the Elven guards were dead or no where to be seen. Halfway in and a glance upwards showed that the team inside had a giant roast turkey for dinner at some point.

In any case, we’ve cleared out the room in Voidreaver and a new strategy was devised. I didn’t know what was up but when I heard ranged won’t have to move I straightened my back and listened.

The idea

A group of hunters would run laps around Voidreaver while the rest of the group stayed directly underneath him.

All that’s necessary for me to do is spam CoH (pronounced Coe, like toe. None of this See Oh Aech business) and PRoH (pronounced Prow). Yes, I’m setting a precedent.

The execution

Oh it was glorious! That’s all I did the entire fight! I sat directly beneath him and did nothing but spam those two AoE spells the entire night. If the pounding timers are on the mark, I can time my prayer down to the split millisecond that it begins and it’s as if no one loses any health at all.

And after the dust settled and the smoke cleared, there were only 5 or so casualties. I got nothing but a Fel Reaver’s Piston for my effort. No one rolled on it and I wasn’t about to just leave empty handed. At least I have a void crystal now.

Obviously in order to sustain that kind of healing output, you’re going to need gas and lots of it. If you ain’t outta gas, you ain’t tryin’! Resto Shamans have good mileage there’s no doubt about that. I guess you could call them hybrids. But what does Tim Taylor need? More power! Therefore, I take pride in being the suburban SUV of healers everywhere with Druids as my mobile gas stations.

…

*ducks*

Wyn’s UI - Part Four (The Macro Problem)

Part four of a series. Part One , Part Two , Part Three.

Hot Keys

One of the add-ons that has the biggest impact on my UI and gameplay is Bartender. As I’ve mentioned before, I navigate and target with my mouse. If I need to move and target or cast at the same time, I use auto run - it’s on my 4th mouse button. Nearly all of my spells and abilities are Hot Keyed to my Keyboard. Here’s how that looks:

Any fans of The Guild out there?

This is what my keybinds look like when I’m out running around solo. Most of the icons should look pretty familiar, and you can see that my offensive spells are on the top line. That blank spot is for my Disc buffs when I respec for the weekend. I do not hotkey my consumables, to avoid hitting them when I type. The bottom row is non-sensical, but it’s also not bound… it’s where I throw things when I need them once, then I don’t move them out ’til I need to put something else there. When we get into macros, you’ll see that the single-buff of Fort is redundant… my first row of buttons scrolls away when I have someone Mind Controlled, and I sometimes like to play nice with the allies and toss them a buff. Again, the numbers on the bottom of the icons are from Dr. Damage. One thing about Bartender is that you can use your standard keybinds from the stock bars, but if you want the numerals to show up on the icons you have to use the slots specifically labeled in the menu for Bartender. It’s in the same window, just scroll down.

Dr. Damage also gives you super-nifty Tool Tips on mouseover. Like this:

 Dr Damage ToolTip - Smite Dr Damage ToolTip - Heal

I think I may have mentioned that I’m an information junkie… this just feeds the problem.

 

offensive with alt

This is still my offensive set-up, but I’m holding down the Alt button. See how the icons change? That’s a product of using macros with the “?” icon. I’ll get to that in a second. Notice, too, that the healing coefficients change on ProH and Nova’s icons.

When I’m raiding, a quick Shift+Scroll Up gives me this:

Greater Heals normal

Holding Alt will make the same changes that happened to the offensive set-up.

My Super-Secret Macros

I may be crazy for deciding to discuss macros. They can be very simple or complicated, and I use a mixture of both. This is not intended to be a macro tutorial. These are simply a few I’ve cooked up, cobbled together, or flat-out stolen. I wanted to show you what those extra buttons on my bars do, and this seemed to be the best way. PLEASE feel free to ask questions about the ones I list, but understand that I probably won’t be able to help you troubleshoot one that you’ve written. If you DO want a how-to, the best one I’ve ever read is over at Priestly Endeavors. A few notes before we begin:

 

Since none of my offensive spells involve macros, I’m going to assume you’re looking at the raiding picture with all the G-heals. I’ll go from left to right.

Gheal macroStopcasting saves lives. Even after 2.3, being able to stop a heal on one target, change targets, and instantly start casting your new heal is an excellent skill if someone is spiking. Also, you can keep hitting this when targeting the MT, and just let it land when they actually need a heal. That way, you can drop out of the 5-Second-rule, without abandoning your job. (yes, you could jump or step forward, but jumping wastes time, and so does hitting multiple buttons.)

#showtooltip Greater Heal(Rank 7)
/stopcasting
/cast Greater Heal(Rank 7)

 

FW Macro Now that all priests have Fear Ward, it’s nice to be able to let your tank know you’ve got their back. This one casts FW on your target, and whispers them.

#showtooltip
/cast fear ward
/script SendChatMessage(”Fear Ward on YOU”, “WHISPER”, “Orcish”, UnitName(”target”));

 

Prayer Macro NormalPrayer Macro AltThese three all do pretty much the same thing, and I just wrote it as another space-saver. Hit the macro, and it’ll cast Prayer of (whatever) on your target and their party. Hold Shift, hit the  macro, and it’ll cast a single-buff on your target. Hold Alt, hit the macro, and it’ll cast a single buff on you. Neat, huh? (You can tell it’s not a raid night because of how few candles I have on me….)

For Shadow Protection:
#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift] Shadow Protection(Rank 4); [modifier:alt, target=player] Shadow Protection(Rank 4); Prayer of Shadow Protection(Rank 2)

For Fortitude:
#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift] Power Word: Fortitude(Rank 7); [modifier:alt, target=player] Power Word: Fortitude(Rank 7); Prayer of Fortitude(Rank 3)

Divine Spirit:
#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift] Divine Spirit(Rank 5); [modifier:alt, target=player] Divine Spirit(Rank 5); Prayer of Spirit(Rank 2)

Flash Heal Macro Normal Flash Heal Macro AltBecause my UI set up has either my offensive spells or my Greater Heals visible, but not both, I wanted the option to toss a G.Heal on myself when I’m solo without too much effort. So I made this. Generally, it’s the same as my stopcasting macro for Greater Heal, only for Flash. The difference comes in that if I hold Alt, it’ll interrupt whatever and start a max-ranked G.Heal on me, without changing my target. Handy, right?

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [modifier:alt, target=player] Greater heal(rank 7); Flash Heal(Rank 9)

 

P4 Fiend Macro I would feed my Shadow Fiend cookies if I could. I love the little guy. But sometimes, he gets lazy. This macro will keep him attacking non-cc’d mobs if his current target dies, and toss a scroll on him (if I have one) to boost his mana-return. Just spam it for a second.

#showtooltip
/cast Shadowfiend
/petaggressive
/petattack
/use [target=pet] Scroll of Strength
/use [target=pet] Scroll of Agility

 

Rez Macro Most of us have been in a situation with lots of people rezzing at the same time. Just save time, and have your macro type in your healing channel who your target is. Mine also whispers the person that’s getting a rez.

#showtooltip
/cast Resurrection(Rank 6)
/6 Saving %t the run back, but not the repair bill
/script SendChatMessage(”Rezzing you”, “WHISPER”, “Orcish”,UnitName(”target”))

Focus Macro This is really simple. It just sets my focus to whatever I’ve got targeted. No muss, no fuss.

/focus

There are some really nifty things you can do with focus macros, like this one I stole from Priestly Endeavors

/focus [noexists,target=target][exists,dead,target=target][modifier:alt,target=target]
/stopmacro [modifier:alt]
/cast [target=focus] Shackle Undead

The first line says: [make my current target the focus if I don't have one] or [make my target my focus if my current focus is dead] but [if I'm holding Alt, make my target my focus no matter what].
The second line says:[if I'm holding Alt to re-set my focus, ignore the rest of the macro]
The third line says: [whatever I'm targeting, cast shackle undead on my focus]

ProH Normal ProH Alt Down-ranking macros are fun! Here’s one for Prayer of Healing. Hold Alt to cast rank 3.

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:alt] Prayer of Healing(Rank 3); Prayer of Healing(Rank 6)

P4 Random Not a macro, but sometimes in a quest or a fight there’s a random item you need to use regularly. I drag mine over to “J” and just hit it whenever I need it. This is from when I had the daily quest in Nagrand.

Nova NormalNova Alt I always heard it was good to keep Rank 1 Nova on your bars for PvP purposes, but where to put it? On the same button, naturally. Hold Alt to use Rank 1, hold nothing for max-rank.

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:alt] Holy Nova(Rank 1); Holy Nova(Rank 7)

Lifetap We all know Warlocks Life Tap at the WORST time… this was my solution to train my ‘Locks to know when it was okay. For this one, I didn’t use the “?” icon, since that would just look like a normal Renew. Dr. Damage still catches the heal, though. (True story: one of my Warlocks actually macro’d his LifeTap to whisper me that he was going to do it in response to this macro. I was so proud!)

/script SendChatMessage(”Lifetap if you need to”, “WHISPER”, “Orcish”, UnitName(”target”));
/cast Renew

OhShit OhShit in combat Sometimes, you have to keep yourself alive ’til your fellow heal-bots can help you out. EVERYONE must have an “Oh, Shit” button. This one can keep me up through over 20k damage. The [combat] modifiers keep reagents from being used up accidentally.

/target player
/cast [combat] Power Word: Shield
/use Master Healthstone
/cast Prayer of Mending
/use Fel blossom
/use [combat] Super Rejuvenation Potion
/use [combat] Nightmare Seed
/use Battlemaster’s Perseverance
/use Vial of the Sunwell
/cast Renew

Trink 1 Trink These are both really simple, but helpful. No matter what trinkets you have equipped, each of these macros will use one of them. Use the “?” icon, and you can see which trinkets you have equipped at the moment.

#showtooltip
/use 13

#showtooltip
/use 14

P4 Berserking If my heals have to come faster, they may as well come bigger. This trips Berserking, my OP-as-hell Racial, and my +healing trinket at the same time. (Does not trip GCD)
You can macro all kinds of things together - multiple trinkets, other abilities. Go nuts!

#showtooltip
/cast Berserking(Racial)
/use Tome of Diabolic Remedy

 

P4 Mount Macro I wrote this last one just to save space on my bars. It gets out my Puppy and my Nether Drake. If I hold Alt, it gets out my Puppy and my Raptor.

#showtooltip
/use Worg Carrier
/cast [modifier:alt] Swift Blue Raptor
/use Reins of the Azure Netherwing Drake

Add
/equip Riding Crop
as the last line, if you want, but remember to replace your trinkets when you get where you’re going!

To Be Continued. . .

Wyn’s UI - Part Three (Boss in Action)

Part three of a series. Please read Part One & Part Two.

Okay, finally a real action shot like I’ve been promising. Welcome to Mother Shahraz. There’s a LOT going on in this fight, but you do get to stand still for most of it (unless you get Fatal Attraction, but that’s another post altogether.) I picked this shot because it catches a few things - good mana-regen cycle, a solid fight with only one real phase, and me making a pretty big mistake.

Typical Bossfight:

Click to enlarge....as soon as Matt uploads the larger version!

 

BF Focus

1. I set the boss as my focus on this one, so I can more easily watch for what aura she has and which tank she’s targeting. Different fights call for different focii; just set it to whomever you need to babysit. If you’ll look at the bottom row of myFocus MacroBartender you can see an icon that’s an eye with something pointing at it.
I’ve macro’d that button to set my focus just to make it a little faster and easier. I’ll post about the macros I use at the end of this series.

Hot Candy
2.HoT Candy keeps track of everyone I’ve Renewed. Right now, it’s just the MT, but that’s because my mana’s about shot. (No worries, my pot CD finished as I took the SS.) Resto-Druids especially take note: HoT Candy is your friend.

RegenFu Bar
3. This is part of RegenFu. I’m just about out of the Five Second Rule, and will hit some serious mana-regen goodness. Fully buffed, my non-casting regen is over 900, but in full shadow resist, it takes a big hit. So I’ll burn Inner Focus before my next big heal, to maximize the mana I get back without stopping casting. I also wait until I’m out of the FSR to burn my Earring of Soulful Meditation. (If you don’t have it, find a way to get it. The Bangle of Endless Blessingsfrom Botanica is a substitute, but only about half as good.) I rarely make it the full 15 seconds without casting something, but at least I get the full benefit at the beginning.

BF Clearcast expire
4. Here’s where this shot catches me not paying close attention. Look here on my ElkBuffBar - Clearcasting is just expiring, but you can see at the top of my screen that I didn’t have enough mana to cast the Circle of Healing I was trying to cast. On Grid, you can see that group 3 was taking pretty even damage - I was spam CoH-ing them to patch them up. I should’ve thrown a G.heal on Joe in the middle, there. I’d've been finished with the cast by the time I had enough mana to CoH again, and been able to burn Inner Focus more appropriately, or let one of my Shammies top off the rest of the Warlocks while I regenned a little more.
Grid Damage - Group 3

5. On Bartender, you can see which of my cooldowns are available. Mana management is absolutely critical for these kinds of fights. My Pot CD finished as the SS was taking, Fiend is down, Inner Focus is available, and my Earring is down.
Pot CDFiend CDInner Focus CDEarring CD

As healers, our mana-rotation is as critical as a DPSers spell rotation. Learning to be efficient is one of the best things you can do to become a better healer. For me it looks something like this:

  • Start: 12.5k manaI can haz cookie?
  • First Pot - 9k mana
  • Pop Earring - 9k mana again
  • Inner Focus - When expensive heal is needed
  • Shadowfiend - 6k mana
  • Second Pot - 7k mana
  • Earring again - ASAP

    And so on.

Mana is a lot like gasoline in your car - it’s just as easy to keep the top 1/4 of the tank full as it is the bottom 1/4. And the earlier you pop those cooldowns, the sooner they’ll be available for you to use again. Once you’ve used them all, just rotate through as soon as they’re available. I tend to Inner Focus for Prayer of Healing, but will use it for G.heal or Binding heal, if necessary. A tip for Mother - don’t wait to Fiend. Your mana will drop faster than you’ll believe, and when that CD comes up again, you’ll be very thankful. Also, watch for the auras that increase or reduce shadow damage. You don’t have to wait for the increase-aura to Fiend, although it will help you, but you will want to avoid the one that will nerf your little guy.

BF Quartz Bar
6. Okay, I’m going to highlight that mistake a bit more here. Since I didn’t use my Clearcast to throw a heal on poor Joe, I pasted this copy of my casting bar in from another screenshot so you could at least see where it goes and how it works. You can see from my toon’s posture that I’m not actually casting anything. Quartz tells me what I’m casting, what rank, shows a timer, and who I had targeted when the cast began. I change targets almost constantly, so that’s a very handy feature.

BF Grid All7. This is one of the best shots to show how Grid works; most of the raid is at full health, and it’s obvious who needs heals. If you look at the top-right square, you can see Acalon - our MT for this fight. The Red dot in the upper left of his box means he has aggro. There will be any number of those little dots when there are multiple mobs targeting people. That dot, rather than damage taken, is my cue to take action in most cases. A working knowledge of the mobs involved helps me know if I should start casting a heal, or just shield/renew the people with aggro. The groups are a little jacked right now - my raid leader moves Shammies into the melee group in a rotation for Bloodlust (Heroism) purposes. You can also clearly see who is dead, and who is out of my range.

BF DBM8.Deadly Boss Mods lets you move where your raid warnings pop up. Back to the concept of reducing eye movement to maximize reaction time, having them right where you can see them helps you know who’s about to need a heal - especially if it’s a fight like Void Reaver or Illidari Council where the boss targets random raid members to take damage.

Recount Main9. Here’s Recount again. Pray is a shadow priest. He’s beating the Paladins on heals, because they both died early-on. It’s important to note that just like any other statistics, the data is only as valuable as its interpretation. This particular shot tells you very little without knowing the set-up. Por was assigned to heal up those people who get Fatal Attraction. Not very glamorous, and it limits his ability to cross-heal. Wize and I are both on raid-heals, so we’re pretty much neck-and-neck. Eizara is generally assigned to the Tanks, but her mana-efficiency is so excellent that she helps a lot with hotting the raid. She is an absolute BEAST of a resto-druid.

10. Scrolling Combat Text isn’t that important, as far as I’m concerned, for my incoming heals or mana regen - I’m watching bars, so I can see that. The important thing is that it tells you when you gain a buff or debuff. Clearcasting, Diabolic Remedy, Deep Meditation, Band of the Eternal Restorer, Berserking… all that stuff pops up over my head, and keeps me from having to watch my buff list. There are mods that do this, and will personalize it any number of ways, but the stock UI also has this feature now. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch it showing in this ss, and it looked funny ’shopped in. The “10″ is where it would go.

Bossfight Breakdown

These shots were taken during a trash-pull right after Mother. I’m very self-critical, and have found a lot of value in analyzing my own performance after a given boss fight. I wanted to walk you through my personal stats after a fight.

Wynthea's Effective Heal Detail
This is a pretty typical boss-fight mix for me. I’m usually assigned to raid healing, and expected to help out on the tanks when they’re taking extra damage, or their healers are in some way incapacitated. Notice how MANY times particular heals were used: 17 Greater Heals compared with 14 Flash heals. 57 Renews. Clearly, I love me some Circle of Healing. It is my bread-and-butter for raid healing, but be careful not to fall into the trap of spamming it for everything. I have seen priests with upwards of 90% CoH - I cannot stress how inefficient that is. CoH is a great tool, but it is not in any way a substitute for good decision making.

A few examples:

Note: If you are taking damage yourself, and so is the Tank, don’t be afraid to Binding Heal. Once they nerfed the mana cost (it used to be about 1k, and now it’s around 700), it became very viable to heal the two most important targets you have - yourself, and the guy keeping the bad guy from flattening you. It costs about the same as two Flash Heals, and saves you the casting time, and the decision.

This shot is the report for WHO I healed during the same bossfight.

Healed Who

1. Remember, my assignment was to raid-heal, and supplement on the tanks when their assigned healers needed help. (Usually from getting the Fatal Attraction debuff.) Acalon was our MT, and he got the bulk of my raw heals, usually in the form of ProM, Renew, and Greater Heal, with a few Flash Heals thrown in if I got nervous. I forget where I read it, but a good rule to follow is to Flash Heal if your target needs a heal NOW, Greater Heal if you think you have time, and just Renew them if you KNOW you have time. That said, I keep Renew on the MT at all times, and ProM him as much as possible. My #2 target is Omegax - a warlock with a fondness for Life Tap. His heals are mostly Renews. Oneiros and Bull were our OT’s, their mixes look a lot like Acalon’s.

2. This second area of the screen shows a break down of what heals I used on a particular target. Haidi is one of our healadins, and the first example of my typical raid-healing mix. You can see that he didn’t require any special attention. Working through the rest of the raid heals, this is pretty much typical for everyone, maybe with a Flash Heal thrown in.


To Be Continued. . .

Note to Officers: Your Raiders Want to Raid


Image courtesy of fireball45 from stock.xchng

I was relaxing on my vent server last night after watching the Stanley Cup Finals. Moments later, a friend storms onto vent and I could immediately tell he was frustrated.

“My raid leader is stupid!“, he vents.

“Slow down! What happened? Aren’t you supposed to be raiding?” I ask.

“Yeah. But the idiot cancelled the raid because there weren’t enough guildies on for a full guild run.” He explained, “22 people in raid are from the guild. Two of them are friends or alts in other progressed guilds, the other is a trial and he wanted the entire raid to consist of the guild only.”

That is bad thing to do. It seemed the raid leader wanted to have exclusive Guildies only. Even though he had enough players to field a whole raid he chose to bag it instead. What happens now? You have over 20 pissed off players who were generous enough to have cleared their whole evening for a night of raiding. This kind of short sighted behavior is bad for a raiding guild. People who join raiding guilds are in it because they want to do one thing only: they want to raid. It’s a simple concept and it still surprises me that some Guild leaders out there do not understand that raiding guilds that don’t raid aren’t considered raiding guilds.

That mantra sounds familiar doesn’t it?

“Bloggers that don’t blog aren’t bloggers.”

Was he worried about loot? Maybe by introducing foreign players into a raid, the loot rules would have to be explained and rendered fair for them have a shot at said loot. I can understand Guildies getting upset if their loot system becomes suspended for a day because of the fact that there are 3rd party players in the raid.

For Carnage, I’ve cultivated a working and professional relationship with numerous other Guilds that are slightly below our level for progression. It works because of 3 reasons:

  1. We get an extra set of hands in case we can’t field a full team.
  2. They get the necessary experience to share with their Guild on what to expect when they reach our level.
  3. Loot that isn’t needed by us is looted to them free of charge.

For Guilds that are on the same level of progression, consider incorporating your friends into your loot system, whatever it may be. If it’s DKP, allow them to earn it. Whatever you do make sure you explain to them beforehand what the rules are and what they’re eligible to get. Make it known that while it’s possible for them to get loot, it is not guaranteed.

I can’t say I understand his motives but I was in a similar situation in Carnage nearly a year ago where there were days that the Guild was unable to raid because of attendance issues. I made it known to the officers at that time that I play this game to raid. If this organization doesn’t plan on doing that then maybe I’m in the wrong Guild. I gave them a 3 week grace period to get things together and we were able to get the raiding machine going.

So how do you know when to kill raids?

When to kill raids

Alternative activities

Can’t get the raid going? Not all is lost. Here’s a few other things you can do to make the best of a bad situation.

Wyn’s UI - Part Two (Trash)

Part two of a series. Please read Part One

Note: It seemed more relevant to organize these shots by topic rather than in chronological order. So, we’re jumping from Akama to Illidari Council trash.

Typical Trash Heal Mix:

Click to enlarge

1. This is pretty typical mix healing on trash. With so much going on, I tend to focus on instant casts. I also use PW:S liberally, but that’s one of few things Recount doesn’t show. I didn’t take an SS of my over-healing, but on trash it’s substantial. My mana-regen is enough that I don’t have to drink between pulls (you can see my mana bar is full). You’ll notice also that I don’t simply spam CoH. It’s overkill, and it’s boring.

2. I have an Illidari Blood Lord set as my focus. This is because he’s a Paladin mob, who will bubble himself and start to heal. The bubble has to be mass-dispelled, so rather than wait for them to call me to dispel it, I just watch him, and cast it as soon as he has the debuff. (around 25-30%.)

3. Recount’s main window. One of the reasons I keep Recount open during combat is to get a good sense of what my fellow healbots are doing. Most of us have been together for a while now, and we have a pretty good idea of our standard baseline. Typically, I’m about 1.5% ahead of Wize, who is around 3% ahead of Eiz, who is about 2% ahead of Por… you get the idea. This is an atypical pull, because Wize is #3. As you can see from Grid, it’s because he got smooshed. (You can’t do your best when you’re dead! remember that!) Also, Por is near the bottom because he was AFK. It’s handy to be able to get a nearly-real-time idea of who’s paying attention to the pull, and who needs to take a break, without having to constantly over-communicate.

The other large reason I keep it open is because my guild is constantly auditioning new healers, and it’s good to be able to give the Raid Leader an accurate opinion of how the new guy is fitting in with the old guard. I also have a pretty good idea of my heal-mates’ gear, and if an under-geared newbie is out-performing a same-class veteran, it will become obvious very fast. With recount, I can see what heals they are casting, who their targets tend to be (tanks, raid, or a combo? do they follow assignments?), and how much over-healing they have. As I’ve said before, over-healing isn’t a huge issue unless people are dying or pulling aggro (then dying), but with a new person, a large amount of over-healing and a low amount of effective heals could indicate a lag problem or a lack of attentiveness. As an additional coaching tactic, I’ll frequently set the trial member as my focus - Quartz allows you to customize those casting bars as well, and I can tell what rank of what heal they’re using, on what target, and at what health level they began their cast. Recount simply makes it easier for me to stalk people, and keeping it open makes the data easier to access. As a side tip, Recount gives you a lot of options for linking the stats. I’ve found that guest healers appreciate getting a quick link to let them know that they’re doing okay. Running with a BT guild on farm can be intimidating, and everyone performs better when they’re relaxed.

I don’t pay a huge amount of attention to recount actually DURING bossfights, I have more to worry about. But I don’t like the idea of opening and closing it all the time any more than I like the idea of not having the trend-style information easily available. And, sometimes, having it up for things like Dispels on RoS phase 1 or Gorefiend helps give real-time feedback to people who need it.

4. With Grid, it’s after the pull, so not much of interest is going on here, but you can see in Wize’s frame what it looks like when someone is highlighted because of low health. Grid also shows exactly what their deficit is, and I have mine set to approximate the amount of incoming heals they’re about to receive. Wize has none incoming, because he just stood up. Again, the faded squares are people who are out of range. You can see the train of people making their way into the Chamber of Command on my mini-map.

5. Yes, we raid with a Battle-Chicken.


To Be Continued. . .

Wyn’s UI - Part One

In the beginning… there was stock. And it was okay, but very limited. Thankfully, Blizzard designed the game to be almost infinitely customizable by players. I started out just wanting to show you the view from my chair, but then I realized that I’ve never found “standing around a major city” screenshots useful. Instead, I’ll be posting some “action shots” of my UI, the mods I use, how, and why. You’ll get a better idea of how I heal, and how I’ve gotten my UI to help me do that. There’s a lot of explanation involved, so I’ll do this in a couple of parts.

Personally, I don’t like a lot of crap that I don’t use sucking up power or my attention. I also like mods that pack a LOT of information into tiny packages. That said, I use a lot of add-ons, and I’m constantly auditioning more and deleting the old ones. Your eyes would bleed if I marked each one and told you what it was, so if you have questions, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Intro to my UI:

I had this idea in the middle of Black Temple, so I waited to get a nice, basic shot. Things will get a little more complicated when it’s in action. Personally, I want the middle of my screen as clear as possible. Priests have a bad reputation for dying, and I’ve found that keeping my field of vision very clear helps me move out of the way and stay alive. The mods I look at the most are right below my ‘toon, with those less relevant during combat further from that point.

Basic UI Shot. Englarged version coming!

1. The bar across the top is FuBar. Lightweight, with lots of modular plug-ins, FuBar makes it really easy to access and customize your mods. Keeps buttons off my mini-map, too. My personal favorite is RegenFu. This little gem tells me my int/mp5/spirit ratio on the fly, and how much time I’m spending in the 5SR; (85% on last fight). It also has a timer bar (which is faint, over my raid frame) that shows when I’m in the 5SR. Over time, I know if spirit or mp5 food or elixirs are more appropriate for a given fight, and I can better control my mana-consumption rate.

2. AG_UnitFrames. Before I used grid, I used AG for my basic Raid Frames. I still use it for 5-mans and a couple of other things because it’s lightweight, and very customizable. I’ve tried Pitbull, but found that it couldn’t do anything AG couldn’t do, and I already had AG the way I wanted it.
(2a) My frame and my target are at the top of the screen, and just above my chat box
(2b) you can see my focus frame and their target (in this case, I’m focused on myself for
some reason, so it’s just a miniature of what’s going on upstairs. Sorry about that.)

3. Grid took some getting used to, but it’s now my favorite mod. It shows a LOT of information in a very elegant and minimalistic manner. My groups are arranged horizontally, and the player names are cut off at a max of 4 letters. They are also colored according to class. That “W…” is me, and my group includes Wizendone (resto-shammy), Nl (s.priest), Haidi, and Alden (both healadins). Those that are greyed out are simply out of range.

A word on targeting: Obviously, you can see my target up at the top of the screen. One of the best rules of being an efficient healer is to maximize your reaction time. Minimizing the distance your eyes need to travel to get the information you need helps. Part of my solution has been to set Grid to have a white border around my target’s square. (Since I have myself targeted, and priests are denoted in white, it’s not showing properly.) Also, I use Quartz for my casting bar, and have it set to show the name of my target in the cast bar. Like this:

Quartz bar

This makes it easy to avoid healing the wrong target, since my quartz goes right above grid.

4. Your spells have to go somewhere, and I use Bartender3 to keep mine organized. There are a LOT of mods that do this; find one that you like. You’ll notice that nearly all of them are hotkeyed - I navigate and target with my mouse, and cast with my keyboard. (That blank spot is for my Spirit buffs when I spec disc on the weekends.) You’ll probably notice a lot of icons you don’t recognize - I use macros very heavily. You’ll also notice how many ranks of Greater Heal and Flash heal I use. 4 of each. The fifth (5 and T, respectively) are stopcasting macros with the max-rank of the heal. (T is a little special, but I’ll get to that in the upcoming post on macros.) You may also notice that the only offensive spell I have hotkeyed is Pain. This is because I’m a healer, not a DPSer. Don’t worry, my offensive spells are easy to access (hold shift and scroll the mousewheel up once), it’s just that in the average raid, I don’t need them taking up space. I tend to click pots and such, so I don’t hit them accidentally while typing. The average amount per heal (or offensive spell) on each icon is from Dr. Damage. It helps me down-rank without having to read tool tips and do math in my head.

5. Recount. Use it. Love it. I have some great shots of how to use it for self-coaching later on. I have it running, set to “current fight” AT ALL TIMES. (Which is why it cleared once the boss was dead. Sorry about that, too.) See my previous post for why.

6. Simple Mini Map. I like it because it interfaces well with cartographer, it’s light, and it is very customizable.

7. Prat. A chat mod that lets remove you those damn arrows, and scroll with your mousewheel. Has a bunch of other nifty features I find useful. You’ll notice I don’t keep a combat log open. Recount substitutes for that.

8. ElkBuffBars. Matt made me get this one, and I’m glad he did. Montiors buffs, debufs, and everything else you need to know in a (say it with me!) Lightweight, customizable format.

Essential mods that you can’t see:

Deadly Boss Mods. Don’t leave home without it.

Omen Threat Meter. KTM was great. Omen is better. If you haven’t upgraded, do it now. Omen interfaces with KTM, too, so just because your Tank lives in the stone age isn’t an excuse for you to do the same.

Instant Health. This is a combat log parser that updates the health of your party or raid, with any raid frames, without waiting for the information to be sent to the server and back. It saves insane amounts of time (up to 3 seconds!!), and buys you time to react. As people keep stacking more and more Spell Haste, this kind of thing is going to become more popular.
(Edit: As I’ve been using this, I’ve noticed it messes with Recount and other combat-log parsers. Please be aware that it may interfere with any other mod you have reading this information; it is a known issue with the beta.)

More on Quartz. This has been around for a while, but I wanted to point out that it does more than allow you to change the look of your casting bar. The tail end of a given cast comes up in red (or any color you pick), and alerts you to your latency. What’s more, it allows you to begin a new cast before your computer has finished communicating with the server. This means you’re less at the mercy of Blizzard and your ISP to get those heals off in time. Pre-2.3, Quartz and a stop-casting macro were indispensible for quick heals. I still use stop-casting, although now more for mana regen purposes than global cooldown.

PoM Tracker - I found this after I took these screenies. I used to use Mending Minder, which stopped working at 2.4. This tells you who has your ProM, how many bounces it has left, and how much it’s healing. Nice.


To Be Continued. . .

Why I Always Care About The Meters

You’ll frequently hear raiders knowingly make comments about “the meters.” DPSers who have to crowd-control or dispel have a bit of a case; it’s harder to be #1 if you have more to worry about than standing still, popping pots, and hitting your spells in the right order. Healers occasionally have a point, too: Purge, Dispel, Cure, BoP, PW: Shield, and buffs all take not only mana, but global cooldowns out of our resources to be the “best” healer on the charts.

Here’s the thing though: you will rarely, if ever, find someone complaining about the unfairness of the meters when their name is consistently at the top. Here are a few reasons why I never forget to check the meters:

Supervisory

Whether you think a player is afk’ing trash, throwing out the wrong heals, or making a serious contribution, it will show up on the meters. Add-ons like Recount or WWS allow you to access your players’ habits with an unbelievable level of detail. If you don’t know what’s wrong, you can’t make it better. If you don’t know what’s right, you can’t give meaningful encouragement. Especially when making quantum leaps in content, (10-mans to 25-mans, or jumping tiers) being able to coach your players effectively through the transition is important.

Consistency

This works a couple of ways. On a micro-level, some classes are better suited for certain fights than others. If your Druids typically own highly-mobile fights like Leotheras or Supremus, and a new Druid isn’t keeping up with their peers, it’s a good indication that they need some help. On a macro-level, if, week after week, no matter what the fight, a certain player is always dead-last or near to it, there’s either a gear, hardware, or player issue. The raid leaders need to be able to address underperformance quickly. Why give a raid spot to a 9th healer when you’re effectively only fielding 8? Bring in another DPS, and make the fight shorter instead.

Personal Benchmarks

The first time I consistently broke 1,000 HPS was on Illidan. At first I was proud, but then I realized that I should be pushing my limits that much on EVERY fight. The first screen shot of me breaking 2,000 HPS serves as a constant reminder of my capability, and pushes me to work, heal, and fight harder; every boss, every time. It’s also fun to have some small competition to wake you up when farm content gets boring. Personally, if my favorite resto Shaman gets within 1% of my heals, I start working harder to keep my #1 spot - and he’s not afraid to point it out when he’s gaining on me.

Comparative Benchmarks

I’ve heard the arguments that the meters are skewed: AoE healers always win, healers assigned to players taking the most damage always win, healers that can hold still always win, healers that don’t have to Dispel, Cure, etc. always win. It’s not about winning. It’s about proving to yourself and your raid that you’re doing the best you can. I’ve fought for the top spot with Shamans, Pallys, and Druids. Every guild and healing corps. is different, and the sooner people stop making excuses and start pushing themselves to be their absolute best, the faster the bosses all die.

Accuracy

No meter is perfect. Some of them don’t ascribe things like the last tick of Lifebloom, or the ping of a ProM to the caster. I haven’t seen one yet that records the absorption of PW:S as the life-saver it is. You can tweak some of them so that overhealing or out-of-combat heals show up as effective healing. They all have their quirks, but any data collected over time irons out a lot of the inaccuracies and shows you real trends. I would never chew a player out over one bad night. But if that same player has nothing but bad nights, it’s important to have specific concerns to address with either them, or their class leader.

Timing

Even if the quantity of healing going out is enough, if the timing is off, it doesn’t matter . A tank taking hits for 10k needs an 8k heal. Unless they’re already topped off. Or they’re already dead. Overhealing is sloppy and wasteful, sure, but it’s also unavoidable to an extent. And to be completely honest, if no one’s dying it doesn’t matter much. But if they ARE dying, you need to be able to identify the problem. Grim-meters let you know if poor timing (and inattentive healers) were the culprit, or if the tank needs to put Shieldwall on their bars and learn to move out of fires.

Fairness

Let’s face it. No one wants to be stuck working on the same boss for weeks on end. If the definition of insanity is performing the same action but expecting a different result, it can’t be far from madness to randomly change set-ups without any data behind the decision. If you need to replace a player, you have to know whom to replace. The last thing good leaders want to do is pull a player that’s really doing their best, and keep someone who’s not working hard. And if you’re the one on the cut list, having some data to back up your desire to stay is always a good idea.

No metric is perfect. You can nitpick any measurement of success as biased in any number of ways, and healing meters are no different. The meters are absolutely not the end-all, be-all identifier for the “best” healer - but they are an invaluable tool for improving overall raid performance. My bet is that if you watch them for yourself, and for your raid, and make some key decisions based on the information you learn, you and your guild will progress further, faster, and with better players.

Why I Stopped Caring About Healing Meters

When it comes to healing, in my eyes there is only one true goal: Keep your targets alive. Use whatever means necessary within reason. Sometimes a Dispel or a Cleanse is the better way to go instead of trying to out heal the damage sustained over a period of time. As the healing captain, I take the information received about healing in meters during raids with a grain of salt. They don’t mean much to me at all, and here’s why:

Inaccurate measure

While it’s true that these tools are great for measuring the overall output that a player contributes, is it being spent wisely? It also doesn’t accurately account for players that are on full time dispel duty. AoE healers will have an edge over single target healers like Paladins on fights where the raid sustains major damage. It’s hard to compete against players with the ability to heal 5 players simultaneously as a Paladin. Therefore, even though a player’s heal output seems lower, it doesn’t mean they’re any less valuable.

Does it really matter?

You’ll find out early on in your WoW raiding career that it takes 25 players to down a boss. The ones that slack off in DPS, tanking, or healing weed themselves out fairly quickly. You’ll reach an equilibrium at some point where your healers will be able to keep the raid alive long enough to down a boss. That’s your results right there: A dead raid boss.

Different jobs, different heals

Healing is an art. It can come in many different forms. Assigning heals is a delicate balancing act to ensure that you don’t overload too many players on one person. The consequences of doing so means that another player in a different part of the raid isn’t getting enough. It’s common to have multiple healers stack up on the main tanks. No encounters in the game are built the same (hey that rhymes). You end up having your healers working on targets that they’re better suited to heal, anyway.

So in conclusion, healing meters are useful. But in the end, they don’t really matter to me. All I care about most is my people surviving. I don’t care how much mana is expended doing so or what resources were needed to pull it off. I trust my healers to use their smarts and judgments to keep their guys alive at all costs. If they can do that, then meters are just another resource hog.

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