Showing posts with label resto shaman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resto shaman. Show all posts
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Random BG thought...
Is it my imagination or is "chain heal" the only healing spell that literally draws a line straight back to the healer so that enemy players can easily find them? Now don't get me wrong. I love my shammy. Hell, its hilarious to be able to hold off/occupy 2-3 enemy players because they just can't kill you! But, I'd really appreciate if one of my greatest battlefield spells wasn't a huge, brightly colored beam emanating from my fingertips and ricocheting all over the creation. Hell, I might as well have a sign glued to my helmet that says "target me!". Just sayin'...
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
PVP update and Strand of the Ancients
So, on the excellent advice of Shamrockgirl, I added the glyph of stoneclaw totem and now drop stoneclaw at the intro to any pvp encounter. Generally I follow it with earthbind, but if fears are eating me and the group up I will drop the tremor totem. I'm not sure if I can quantitatively evaluate how it's working, bit a 15 second shield that absorbs almost 4.4k damage can't be bad. In the last couple days, I've been in a few BG's where horde was really getting smashed by a superior alliance force and I was able to keep myself alive and the teammates around me as well. At times I would have multiple opponents on me, but using the stoneclaw whenever cd was up as well as keeping earthshield up I managed to frustrate the hell out of some people! Survivability on a resto sham is nice. It almost makes me want to look into Arenas. Don't know alot about them but I've pretty much maxed the gear available to me without doing them so.....Anyone on Bleeding Hollow looking for a resto sham? Now onto SOTA.
As a healer there isn't alot to do on defense. I usually get on a canon at the beginning and try to take out tanks. I also try to call out tank positions and throw out the obligatory "focus on tanks not individual players!" mantra. If defenders really have the offense locked up somewhere, I'll join the battle and heal, but truthfully the secret to this battleground is the tanks.
On offense it's much the same. I may try to hex someone who is taking out tanks or throw out heals to those who are actually defending tanks. Again, tanks are really the main focus. One tip however is to always have a bomb on you. Whether you are in a tank or not, have a bomb, place it at a gate. Easy.
As far as strategies go, there are a few. Hitting one gate. Hitting both. Which graveyards to turn and when. The truth is I think the primary strategy is to destroy tanks on defense and defend tanks on offense. The team that does this without getting caught up in little pvp battles along the way will win, no matter what.
I'd say for the resto sham, heal when things are under control, focus on tanks and drop totems that best empower your team mates to do the same. SOTA isn't the most exciting BG for the healer, but I seem to get it quite a bit on random, so a comment on overall strategy seems warranted! Any resto sham specific additions for this BG are welcomed!
As a healer there isn't alot to do on defense. I usually get on a canon at the beginning and try to take out tanks. I also try to call out tank positions and throw out the obligatory "focus on tanks not individual players!" mantra. If defenders really have the offense locked up somewhere, I'll join the battle and heal, but truthfully the secret to this battleground is the tanks.
On offense it's much the same. I may try to hex someone who is taking out tanks or throw out heals to those who are actually defending tanks. Again, tanks are really the main focus. One tip however is to always have a bomb on you. Whether you are in a tank or not, have a bomb, place it at a gate. Easy.
As far as strategies go, there are a few. Hitting one gate. Hitting both. Which graveyards to turn and when. The truth is I think the primary strategy is to destroy tanks on defense and defend tanks on offense. The team that does this without getting caught up in little pvp battles along the way will win, no matter what.
I'd say for the resto sham, heal when things are under control, focus on tanks and drop totems that best empower your team mates to do the same. SOTA isn't the most exciting BG for the healer, but I seem to get it quite a bit on random, so a comment on overall strategy seems warranted! Any resto sham specific additions for this BG are welcomed!
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Warsong Gulch and the Resto Shaman.
So I have read a number of strategy guides discussing how to win at each BG. I have nothing better to add to that. What I'll do is discuss each battleground as it pertains to the resto shaman.
The resto shaman is a powerful BG healer. We have incredible survivability and combined with totems and a great set of healing spells, we are a force to be reckoned with.
Step 1- Sounds silly but make sure you have Earthliving on your weapon. Many is the time I have gone through a battle with flametongue still on.
Step 2- In WG I usually start with earth shield on myself. In WG I always heal the flag carrier. You should too. It should be your sole purpose. Of course throw some heals around as you are doing so, but the flag carrier is your focus. Keeping earth shield on myself until someone picks up flag keeps me alive. Once someone picks up flag, put earthshield on them. The amount of healing from this spell is awesome and it can save you fc's life. As you can only have earthshield on one target, put water on yourself. Mana generation is your friend. If your fc is dead or not in range (and you haven't applied it to them yet) keep earthshield on yourself. A dead healer is a useless healer.
Step 3- Totems. You have a lot of choices. In WG i tend to favor the pvp type totems. Earthbind is usually my first choice. Slowing down your opponents is very useful. For fire I usually go with searing. I don't find myself lacking in healing power so I usually go with searing totem for the disruptive quality. However, flametongue is certainly a viable option. For water you can go with healing or mana. Both are useful. In long battles, mana is very helpful. Don't forget to have your big mana totem on your action bar so you can pop it when mana drops too low. The cleansing totem is a nice alternative too if you have a lot of rogues against you. I typically go with my wrath of air totem for the haste although being able to pop a grounding totem here and there is nice (to absorb enemy spells). I usually keep the totems that I like to pop at opportune moments right there on my action bar. That way I can drop my pre-sets and then change as needed.
Step 4- Spells. For me, riptide and lesser wave are my bread and butter. Riptide is great because of the substantial instant heal and some pretty decent HoT as well. Lesser healing wave I use alot because of the quick cast time. If I'm getting nailed and I need to get out quick relatively potent heals, LHW is the way to go. Particularly in WSG. By the time you cast CH, your flag carrier is out of range already. Chain heal is an awesome spell. And if you can stand back and the other team is foolish enough to ignore you, CH is the way to go. You can throw heals around to multiple people right in the heat of battle. If your opponents catch on to you, you will be interrupted every time you try to cast, so at least LHW is a much shorter cast time. At some point you may be stuck in a relatively static battle (defending your FC in your base for instance) and chain heal works great. But, again as you are healing the FC on the run, riptide and lhw are the way to go. Anyway, keybind all three spells and figure out what works best for you.
Step 5- If you don't already have clic/grid or healbot or whatever healing add-on you choose, get it. Now.
Step 6- Non-healing spells. I keep hex and frostshock close by at all time. They are great to slow down pursuers or to get someone off you FC or yourself. Damage is not your goal, but distraction is nice!
Step 7- Follow the FC. Make sure earthshield is up all the time. Hit riptide when it's up. LHW as needed.
That's all my brain is allowing me to write at this time. I'm sure I have forgotten a number of good tips but...meh. Feel free to add any of your own! Up next...Arathi Basin.
The resto shaman is a powerful BG healer. We have incredible survivability and combined with totems and a great set of healing spells, we are a force to be reckoned with.
Step 1- Sounds silly but make sure you have Earthliving on your weapon. Many is the time I have gone through a battle with flametongue still on.
Step 2- In WG I usually start with earth shield on myself. In WG I always heal the flag carrier. You should too. It should be your sole purpose. Of course throw some heals around as you are doing so, but the flag carrier is your focus. Keeping earth shield on myself until someone picks up flag keeps me alive. Once someone picks up flag, put earthshield on them. The amount of healing from this spell is awesome and it can save you fc's life. As you can only have earthshield on one target, put water on yourself. Mana generation is your friend. If your fc is dead or not in range (and you haven't applied it to them yet) keep earthshield on yourself. A dead healer is a useless healer.
Step 3- Totems. You have a lot of choices. In WG i tend to favor the pvp type totems. Earthbind is usually my first choice. Slowing down your opponents is very useful. For fire I usually go with searing. I don't find myself lacking in healing power so I usually go with searing totem for the disruptive quality. However, flametongue is certainly a viable option. For water you can go with healing or mana. Both are useful. In long battles, mana is very helpful. Don't forget to have your big mana totem on your action bar so you can pop it when mana drops too low. The cleansing totem is a nice alternative too if you have a lot of rogues against you. I typically go with my wrath of air totem for the haste although being able to pop a grounding totem here and there is nice (to absorb enemy spells). I usually keep the totems that I like to pop at opportune moments right there on my action bar. That way I can drop my pre-sets and then change as needed.
Step 4- Spells. For me, riptide and lesser wave are my bread and butter. Riptide is great because of the substantial instant heal and some pretty decent HoT as well. Lesser healing wave I use alot because of the quick cast time. If I'm getting nailed and I need to get out quick relatively potent heals, LHW is the way to go. Particularly in WSG. By the time you cast CH, your flag carrier is out of range already. Chain heal is an awesome spell. And if you can stand back and the other team is foolish enough to ignore you, CH is the way to go. You can throw heals around to multiple people right in the heat of battle. If your opponents catch on to you, you will be interrupted every time you try to cast, so at least LHW is a much shorter cast time. At some point you may be stuck in a relatively static battle (defending your FC in your base for instance) and chain heal works great. But, again as you are healing the FC on the run, riptide and lhw are the way to go. Anyway, keybind all three spells and figure out what works best for you.
Step 5- If you don't already have clic/grid or healbot or whatever healing add-on you choose, get it. Now.
Step 6- Non-healing spells. I keep hex and frostshock close by at all time. They are great to slow down pursuers or to get someone off you FC or yourself. Damage is not your goal, but distraction is nice!
Step 7- Follow the FC. Make sure earthshield is up all the time. Hit riptide when it's up. LHW as needed.
That's all my brain is allowing me to write at this time. I'm sure I have forgotten a number of good tips but...meh. Feel free to add any of your own! Up next...Arathi Basin.
Monday, September 20, 2010
PvP: Some Basics
Here are some basic ideas for someone who hasn't done alot of PvP yet and wants to. Very simple. Very basic. I am by no means a pro. Just some observations as I've continued my PvP trek.
Maybe a brief foray into stats:
Resilience: This stat essentially reduces the chance that your opponent will hit you critically, reduce the amount of critical damage and reduce the overall damage received. You need a lot of this! As far as I am aware, the latest cap is 1414.5 (.5? Yes, .5) So functionally lets call it 1414 or 1415. I think many still think the cap is 1230 but it was increased since 3.3.3. The difference between PvP gear and PvE gear is resilience. If you have high resilience, things are a lot easier. Get as much as you can.
Stamina: In my opinion, the next most important stat. Why? Longevity. The more you have, the longer you live. That’s why PvP gear has so much more stam than PvE gear. Think about it. In PvE, provided your tank does his job, the monsters never seem to clue in to the fact that the fancypants girl in the back wearing the long flowing robes and waving her arms about as leaves and stars and flashes of holy light go off around the party is keeping everyone alive. Note to monster….KILL THE HEALER! Unfortunately for the healer, PvP is a different situation. You have a bullseye on you from the opening shot. Any player worth his/her salt should know to kill the healer. You see it in BG chat all the time. “Kill the healer you *&%$’n noobs!!” The more stam you have, the longer you stay alive, the longer your teammates stay alive. That being said, I don’t do a lot of additional stam. When I have a blue slot, I put a stam gem. The PvP gear has quite a bit already. Just wanted to point out the difference between gear.
The beauty of PvP gear is that it does this for you already. Not a lot of thinking. Your other stat priorities depend upon your class.
In my case today, I’m talking about my resto-sham. The stats I focus on for her are haste then a tie between crit and MP5 (maybe 60% MP5 and 40% crit…). Spellpower is on the gear already and it’s more than enough to heal what I need to heal. I don’t really go out looking for more than is on the gear. Crit is nice because it gives you those big hits. MP5 is nice because even as a resto-sham, you’re gonna run dry eventually (more on that later). How you decide to balance those is up to you. You’ll find out during some drawn out battle in AB whether your MP5 is sufficient! This is simply my opinion and I’m sure others have varying ideas. I gem and enchant haste wherever I can (much like PvE). The point is that I know with my regular gear and no added SP, that I can provide more than adequate healing power without a problem. The key is do my slow spells hit in time. Nothing is worse than watching the cast bar for your slow-as-hell chain heal hoping it goes off before everyone near you dies. Haste reduces that cast time and allows you to get off a lot more healing.
In summary, when preparing to PvP there are a few things you should do. Get appropriate gear. Resilience and stamina are key differences in gear stats for PvP vs. PvE gear. Get what you can. Accept that you’re gonna get eaten alive until you get some more. In my opinion, how you gem and enchant is up to you. Whatever keeps you alive longer on the battlefield is good (just not hit gems…okay?). I think next I’ll go into a little more detail on techniques that I use as a resto-sham and after that maybe look at how that changes with the specific BG’s. Talk to you later.
Maybe a brief foray into stats:
Resilience: This stat essentially reduces the chance that your opponent will hit you critically, reduce the amount of critical damage and reduce the overall damage received. You need a lot of this! As far as I am aware, the latest cap is 1414.5 (.5? Yes, .5) So functionally lets call it 1414 or 1415. I think many still think the cap is 1230 but it was increased since 3.3.3. The difference between PvP gear and PvE gear is resilience. If you have high resilience, things are a lot easier. Get as much as you can.
Stamina: In my opinion, the next most important stat. Why? Longevity. The more you have, the longer you live. That’s why PvP gear has so much more stam than PvE gear. Think about it. In PvE, provided your tank does his job, the monsters never seem to clue in to the fact that the fancypants girl in the back wearing the long flowing robes and waving her arms about as leaves and stars and flashes of holy light go off around the party is keeping everyone alive. Note to monster….KILL THE HEALER! Unfortunately for the healer, PvP is a different situation. You have a bullseye on you from the opening shot. Any player worth his/her salt should know to kill the healer. You see it in BG chat all the time. “Kill the healer you *&%$’n noobs!!” The more stam you have, the longer you stay alive, the longer your teammates stay alive. That being said, I don’t do a lot of additional stam. When I have a blue slot, I put a stam gem. The PvP gear has quite a bit already. Just wanted to point out the difference between gear.
The beauty of PvP gear is that it does this for you already. Not a lot of thinking. Your other stat priorities depend upon your class.
In my case today, I’m talking about my resto-sham. The stats I focus on for her are haste then a tie between crit and MP5 (maybe 60% MP5 and 40% crit…). Spellpower is on the gear already and it’s more than enough to heal what I need to heal. I don’t really go out looking for more than is on the gear. Crit is nice because it gives you those big hits. MP5 is nice because even as a resto-sham, you’re gonna run dry eventually (more on that later). How you decide to balance those is up to you. You’ll find out during some drawn out battle in AB whether your MP5 is sufficient! This is simply my opinion and I’m sure others have varying ideas. I gem and enchant haste wherever I can (much like PvE). The point is that I know with my regular gear and no added SP, that I can provide more than adequate healing power without a problem. The key is do my slow spells hit in time. Nothing is worse than watching the cast bar for your slow-as-hell chain heal hoping it goes off before everyone near you dies. Haste reduces that cast time and allows you to get off a lot more healing.
In summary, when preparing to PvP there are a few things you should do. Get appropriate gear. Resilience and stamina are key differences in gear stats for PvP vs. PvE gear. Get what you can. Accept that you’re gonna get eaten alive until you get some more. In my opinion, how you gem and enchant is up to you. Whatever keeps you alive longer on the battlefield is good (just not hit gems…okay?). I think next I’ll go into a little more detail on techniques that I use as a resto-sham and after that maybe look at how that changes with the specific BG’s. Talk to you later.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Resto PvP
So recent changes in schedule and life in general have changed my WOW habits quite a bit. I may be lucky to sit down for even thirty minutes a few times a week. Unfortunately, this is not all that conducive to playing WOW in general. Certainly it allows for some grinding/farming. Instances are pretty much out because I don’t like to join a group and leave half way through. Dailies have gone the way of the dodo as I prefer not to waste the few minutes I have on them. I usually jump on my bank alt real quick, check auctions, buy supplies if the price is right, send them to my more creative alts, make stuff, send it back, put it on the AH….you know the drill. That leaves about 20-25 minutes now. What’s a bored resto shammy to do with 20 minutes? Battlegrounds!
Generally speaking I can get into a battleground within about 3-5 minutes and BG’s are usually over within 15 minutes…..usually. Battlegrounds have always been an enjoyable diversion….something a might have done once or twice a week. Leveling my hunter in battlegrounds was a blast. She was covered in heirloom gear and it was great fun topping the damage charts while gaining xp very quickly! I lost touch with that little hunter at 80 though. Admittedly BG’s are way more fun when you have decent gear but getting trashed everytime I rezzed wasn’t the only reason. I just seem to have lost interest. Then I got hacked. Yes that’s right, hacked. How did that change my BG experience? The little bastards took everything but I was left with a decent PvP set for my shammy. I didn’t want to respec my elemental talents, so I decided to go in as a healer, and that was all she wrote.
Battleground healing can be a thankless task. It can also be a lot of fun! Nothing beats throwing out heals left and right, keeping your comrades alive and winning the node….awesome! In future posts I’m going to start talking about strategy, specific BG’s, gear and spec basics, etc. As of now I’ve only healed as a shammy and recently as a disc. priest (yes Miss Medicina, I finally switched!). I’m planning to work on my drood, but that takes time (which I have little of!) so for now I’ll have to be content with resto sham and disc. priest!
Generally speaking I can get into a battleground within about 3-5 minutes and BG’s are usually over within 15 minutes…..usually. Battlegrounds have always been an enjoyable diversion….something a might have done once or twice a week. Leveling my hunter in battlegrounds was a blast. She was covered in heirloom gear and it was great fun topping the damage charts while gaining xp very quickly! I lost touch with that little hunter at 80 though. Admittedly BG’s are way more fun when you have decent gear but getting trashed everytime I rezzed wasn’t the only reason. I just seem to have lost interest. Then I got hacked. Yes that’s right, hacked. How did that change my BG experience? The little bastards took everything but I was left with a decent PvP set for my shammy. I didn’t want to respec my elemental talents, so I decided to go in as a healer, and that was all she wrote.
Battleground healing can be a thankless task. It can also be a lot of fun! Nothing beats throwing out heals left and right, keeping your comrades alive and winning the node….awesome! In future posts I’m going to start talking about strategy, specific BG’s, gear and spec basics, etc. As of now I’ve only healed as a shammy and recently as a disc. priest (yes Miss Medicina, I finally switched!). I’m planning to work on my drood, but that takes time (which I have little of!) so for now I’ll have to be content with resto sham and disc. priest!
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Migraines, healing, grid and healbot...
Okay, so my intent was to post my thoughts on grid vs healbot yesterday. Unfortunately I was sidelined by a migraine. I've only had one other migraine in my life, about 7-8 years ago. For those of you who get these anymore than once per month....I bow to you and offer my sincerest sympathy. I don't get headaches in general that often, but when I do they're usually not much more than a nuisance. Migraines however....man, that knocked me out. Fortunately I only had morning appointments so was able to leave the office and sequester myself in a room with some painkillers and no lights until it went away. Needless to say, I wasn't feeling all that great so WoW wasn't on my list of priorities. A little later in the day I did get in a random 5 man on my shammy. Which leads me to the second topic in my title....healing.
I am still a relatively new healer. I'm no longer at the bottom of the learning curve, but certainly not at the top yet. Truthfully I have been known to drop a group when the HoR or PoS loading screen pops up. I just haven't felt ready to heal those. And I figure the group is now in front of the queue so they'll replace me in less than a minute...no harm, no foul. Yesterday however was different. I queued for a random as a healer and sure enough up pops PoS. I let group know that I had not healed this instance and they were all okay with it. Everything started out quite well. Moved through the trash without any problems. Got to Garfrost and finished him off no problem. Of course it was after Garfrost that I realized I had entered the instance without any mana restoring beverages....duh. Fortunately mana regen with water shield and mana totem is pretty fast so again group was okay with my noobishness. Moved on to Ick and Krick, one shot. Easy. Everyone did what they needed to do. Cleansing totem was a great help and despite retpally dc'ing during fight we still did it relatively easy. So far so good, I was feeling pretty confident. Of course its the mobs on the hill as you move up to the ice tunnel that are the real test. First group, tank falls off side and loses aggro...which quickly shifts to myself and the others.....wipe. No problem, we dust ourselves off and get back on it. Tank marks everyone this time and we knock out the first group. Hate those fire guys man...they are killers! Mark second group and finish them. Then we move on to the skeleton guys. Thinkgs get a little laggy and I don't get a heal in time and tank dies...el wipo (that's spanish for "wipe"). No problem, we're all okay finish off the rest of the skeleton yucky melee and caster guys. We get to the tunnel and all run for the middle plate/disc thingy. Tank spams thunderclap, I throw RT's on as many people as I can and we easily make it through the first wave. Then tank decides not to wait for everyone (not sure why???) and start second part. Myself and another caster who were getting mana are left behind...result....le wipe (that's french for "wipe"). Tank apologizes, we rez and everyone arrives at tunnel entrance and for some odd reason the tank starts in...ZOMG! We're all at half health and half mana, but we manage to pull it off. We agree to one shot tyrannus which we do actually quite easily. A good learning experience over all. Thanks to the boomkins colossal dps (retpally and spriest were not so stellar, but not bad) we made it! I had just changed my glyphs too. I now have earth shield, LHW and CH. LHW works perfectly for the other 5 mans, but for these ICC 5 mans, it's definitely underpowered. You must use HW. Fortunately with the speed buff from RT, HW works very well. Big heals, relatively fast. I am considering changing to HW glyph instead of CH glyph. Totem choices for PoS. Obviously the cleansing totem for the ick/krick fight (I use mana otherwise). Wondering if the frost resist totem is useful and if so do the benefits outweight the loss of the flametongue totem (my default fire totem). Otherwise, stoneskin and wrath of air for the other two.
On to the great grid vs. healbot debate. Crankyhealer pointed me to a great comparison that had already been written by Keeva at Treebarkjacket. A better and more thorough comparison I could not have written. The only thing I had to add probably has more to do with clique than grid as grid and healbots frames are pretty similar (grid being a little more modifiable with addons). One of the things I didn't like about clique was that binding spells to an unmodified left, right or middle mouse click leads to all kinds of problems when using those buttons for their other ingame uses. It is possible that I have not figured out some modification that makes those functions only apply when over a grid unitframe, but not sure. The mouseover click feature of healbot is smarter so it literally only applies when you're over a unitframe. This means you have more possible mouse key bindings. For me, shift and control are the only easily useable modifiers, so that gives 9 bindings on healbot to cliques 6. I use a combo of keyboard and mouse so it's not a huge deal for me particularly with the limited shaman spells. Priests however have just under one thousand spell choices, so having those truly functional extra three mouse click bindings is really nice. As I said, I may have missed something in the setup that negates all of what I just said, but for now that is my two cents (for what it's worth!) on the topic. Again, check out Keeva's post for a really nice, easy to read and thorough evaluation.
That is all.
I am still a relatively new healer. I'm no longer at the bottom of the learning curve, but certainly not at the top yet. Truthfully I have been known to drop a group when the HoR or PoS loading screen pops up. I just haven't felt ready to heal those. And I figure the group is now in front of the queue so they'll replace me in less than a minute...no harm, no foul. Yesterday however was different. I queued for a random as a healer and sure enough up pops PoS. I let group know that I had not healed this instance and they were all okay with it. Everything started out quite well. Moved through the trash without any problems. Got to Garfrost and finished him off no problem. Of course it was after Garfrost that I realized I had entered the instance without any mana restoring beverages....duh. Fortunately mana regen with water shield and mana totem is pretty fast so again group was okay with my noobishness. Moved on to Ick and Krick, one shot. Easy. Everyone did what they needed to do. Cleansing totem was a great help and despite retpally dc'ing during fight we still did it relatively easy. So far so good, I was feeling pretty confident. Of course its the mobs on the hill as you move up to the ice tunnel that are the real test. First group, tank falls off side and loses aggro...which quickly shifts to myself and the others.....wipe. No problem, we dust ourselves off and get back on it. Tank marks everyone this time and we knock out the first group. Hate those fire guys man...they are killers! Mark second group and finish them. Then we move on to the skeleton guys. Thinkgs get a little laggy and I don't get a heal in time and tank dies...el wipo (that's spanish for "wipe"). No problem, we're all okay finish off the rest of the skeleton yucky melee and caster guys. We get to the tunnel and all run for the middle plate/disc thingy. Tank spams thunderclap, I throw RT's on as many people as I can and we easily make it through the first wave. Then tank decides not to wait for everyone (not sure why???) and start second part. Myself and another caster who were getting mana are left behind...result....le wipe (that's french for "wipe"). Tank apologizes, we rez and everyone arrives at tunnel entrance and for some odd reason the tank starts in...ZOMG! We're all at half health and half mana, but we manage to pull it off. We agree to one shot tyrannus which we do actually quite easily. A good learning experience over all. Thanks to the boomkins colossal dps (retpally and spriest were not so stellar, but not bad) we made it! I had just changed my glyphs too. I now have earth shield, LHW and CH. LHW works perfectly for the other 5 mans, but for these ICC 5 mans, it's definitely underpowered. You must use HW. Fortunately with the speed buff from RT, HW works very well. Big heals, relatively fast. I am considering changing to HW glyph instead of CH glyph. Totem choices for PoS. Obviously the cleansing totem for the ick/krick fight (I use mana otherwise). Wondering if the frost resist totem is useful and if so do the benefits outweight the loss of the flametongue totem (my default fire totem). Otherwise, stoneskin and wrath of air for the other two.
On to the great grid vs. healbot debate. Crankyhealer pointed me to a great comparison that had already been written by Keeva at Treebarkjacket. A better and more thorough comparison I could not have written. The only thing I had to add probably has more to do with clique than grid as grid and healbots frames are pretty similar (grid being a little more modifiable with addons). One of the things I didn't like about clique was that binding spells to an unmodified left, right or middle mouse click leads to all kinds of problems when using those buttons for their other ingame uses. It is possible that I have not figured out some modification that makes those functions only apply when over a grid unitframe, but not sure. The mouseover click feature of healbot is smarter so it literally only applies when you're over a unitframe. This means you have more possible mouse key bindings. For me, shift and control are the only easily useable modifiers, so that gives 9 bindings on healbot to cliques 6. I use a combo of keyboard and mouse so it's not a huge deal for me particularly with the limited shaman spells. Priests however have just under one thousand spell choices, so having those truly functional extra three mouse click bindings is really nice. As I said, I may have missed something in the setup that negates all of what I just said, but for now that is my two cents (for what it's worth!) on the topic. Again, check out Keeva's post for a really nice, easy to read and thorough evaluation.
That is all.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Protocols and SOP's....yuck
Well, I've avoided work for about as long as I can now. This morning I am happily writing up protocols for tuberculin skin testing/reading/reporting within the various departments that I work with. Wow! Is that exciting. Today is my administrative day where I don't have patients but get to catch up on all the paperwork I don't have time for when I see 40 ppl a day on all the other days! Of course I only get one 4 hour block of administrative time (not the whole day!). And of course I'm using that time to catch up on WoW blogs! Ha ha! Being that it was Valentine's day and a long weekend, I actually didn't get all that much WoW time. Most of my computer time this weekend was spent editing last summers family vacation photos/videos into a DVD. How did I get roped into being the video guy? My brother is the tech nerd, not me! Anyway, as I have little to say (of any importance anyway!) I will guide you to some funny/interesting blogs this morning. Keredria had a funny post today with a play on Dante's Inferno. Gevlon provided my daily "huh?" as I'm afraid I didn't really catch the meaning/significance of his post. However drop by, read it and prove that you are smarter than I. I suspect I had the same look on my face reading his blog today that I had for most of my econ, accounting and stats classes in college! Now I have nothing else for you unless you'd like to discuss CDC recommendations for reading TB skin test results in an occupational health setting for at risk and not at risk employees. No? You sure? You can read over my new protocol and standing order? Really? Okay...let me know if you change your mind!
Monday, February 15, 2010
Priest vs. Shaman healing
So my healing experiment continues. As I've said, I have healed quite a bit with my shammy now. I've done quite a few heroics and feel pretty comfortable. For the most part, with earthshield, riptide and an occasional LHW, the tank is quite easy to top off. Riptide has a longer cooldown than I'd like, but it works well to top of individual damage and chain heal is great for group wide damage. Range, casting speed (including the fact that there is only one instant heal) can be an issue but it forces you to be aware of where your group is. Generally one CH followed by 1-2 LHW's for those that were missed by CH works great. Yesterday I decided to try out my holy priest. Granted he is only in about half healing gear, but I found priest healing much harder. There could be several factors here. I chose VH as my trial grounds. DPS was very underwhelming with top being around 2100, lowest 1100. However, this is not PoS or HoR. It's VH, and that should be enough. We got Xevozz as second boss and tank was having a hard time kiting him around. We had alot of those spheres and the squishier DPS were not moving well and I couldn't keep them up. It was taking too long to burn him down and group wiped twice. It could have been a combination of these things, but I just felt underpowered and awkward. For the tank, things were easy, PW:S, PoM and rolling renews. With heavy group wide damage however I was at a loss. I'd have a PoM going around at all times. CoH just didn't feel like it was doing it. Plus, with the longer cooldown I was having to use FH to top people off. With the fast and furious damage that comes in during Xevozz I just couldn't keep people up. The group was getting too spread out for HN to be of any use although maybe the extra dps could have helped. TBH I forgot about guardian spirit and that could have helped too. I'll find out today!
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Shaman healing
Wugan posted a nice piece about shaman healing over at Flow. And thanks to Miss Medicina for linking it in the first place. One of the great things about shaman healing is versatility. Now I often bemoan the fact that I don't have all that many instants. Only one to be exact. Riptide. But it has a nice instant heal and then keeps rolling after that. When followed by a chain heal or a few lesser healing waves, it's a very powerful combo. Of course the shaman must be very aware of party movement because of cast time. The versatilty really comes in with totems. It's great to be able to adjust your totems for the specific situation. At this point I'm only running heroics, but I change up my totems frequently throughout an instance. In AN or TOC (with rogue) I will definitely drop my cleansing totem. Nature resistance is nice for lighting damage. Stoneskin totem is really nice for some damage mitigation (but if there's no dk and I'm in a nice mood, I may drop strength of earth for you...maybe). Frost resist. Fire resist. Even dropping your elemental totem during tough fights (black knight, phase 2!). We have so many choices. For me what works well is to have my default totems set up (stoneskin, flametongue, mana, wrath of air). I then have my other common utility totems set up on their own bar (using bartender), cleansing, life, resists, elementals, etc. It's nice to just drop my defaults and then change as needed with a click. Using key bindings and clique/grid then puts all of my healing spells within easy reach and keeps a nice clean interface for me. Right now I have RT, LHW and CH bound to my F, E, and R keys. Earth shield, cleanse spirit and HW are then bound to the mouse through clique. So far it's working well. Any other ideas or thoughts on how you've streamlined things or things you've done to tighten up your healing?
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