So I finally got everyone specced and glyphed. My shammy and priest were first. Resto-ele and disc-shadow. Healing was great. Mana seems limitless. Even using healing surge on my shammy, I'm hard pressed to run out. As ele and shadow, dps is awesome. That seems to be where it ends though. My MM hunter, arms warrior and unholy DK suck. I can barely generate anything. I did the HH and i was doing under 1k dps on arms warrior. Maybe it's the mechanics of the fight, I did notice that generally dps is atrocious for most party members. But even on the dummy it wasn't easy to get 2.5k dps. On brewfest boss, my arms warrior was doing 3.5-4k easily (moderately geared). My MM hunter was too (low-moderate gear). I can't break 3k on the dummies. Did I miss the patch notes that said the plan was to lower everyone's dps? Now I'm spending all my time trying to figure out how to fix this....
PS- K, enjoy the next chapter, hope to see you around some time. Somebody has to defend those delicious little gnomes.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
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.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Welcome to the world....
Our new family member decided to show up Tuesday night, September 28th at 6:30 pm. All 6 lbs 2 oz of her. I think she's got my good looks.....
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, September 7, 2010
Not Dead......yet
Greeting all! Yes...it's true...I am not dead. Actually some changes at work, some changes in the jobsite's internet policy and a new little monkey due in just a few weeks have left my blog at just about the lowest peg on my priority board (one notch below dailies). I do log on to my toons a couple times a week for 30 minutes or so but that's about it. I'm off of work this week and once my little beast hatches (mid-October)I'll be on family leave for 4 weeks. I plan on getting a little more playing and blogging done. Of course posts will still more than likely be few and far between but I'd like to shoot for at least one per week. The majority of my time has been spent healing battlegrounds on my resto-shammy so I'm thinking a focus on battleground healing may be in order, but we'll see. Anyway, glad to be back and hope to get through my feedreader within the next year or so! Adieu, adios, sayonara, aloha! for now
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
