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My Druid's main function is to heal, something I do with more or less success.

I have two pieces of T8.5 (or T8.25 as some call it) and a mix of emblem gear, ilevel 200 trinkets and heroic ToC gear. I find that regular heroics net me nothing of value and I'm actually contemplating using my emblems on Lazerchicken outfits because there's nothing more from the Conquest vendor I can use. It's either that or spending an outrageous amount of emblems on downgrading to T7.5 which is barely better than my H-ToC stuff.

The obvious answer would probably be to go out and raid some. Or a lot, actually. The issue here is that I'm not sure that I, skill-wise, am ready for that. I still struggle big time with minor things like H-Gundrak and H-Pinnacle. I'm pretty sure my gear is up there, so I guess it's a human error thing. I'm using mouseover macros and an easy to use frame UI for healing and I consider my reaction times to be quite good, but I still find that I simply cannot push the buttons fast enough to save that cloth DPS from a two-hit death. Had it been somewhere during The Burning Crusade, I probably would've told the clothie to mind his aggro (and I sometimes do still), but nowadays it seems if the DPS dies, it's either the tank or the healer's fault and blame depends on gear level.

Examples:

H-Gundrak - The first boss with the annoying poison nova. Everything was going fine up until that thing hit. People went from 100% health to 50% in a matter of seconds and having only two AOE heals, one of which is fairly weak compared to the situation, I found myself spamming Nourish and losing a clothie to the AOE damage. I simply couldn't keep everyone up fast enough. In hindsight I perhaps should've foreseen it and applied Rejuvs to everyone, but still, I'd like to think that Shamans and Paladins can heal that encounter as well. Another option would've been to pop Tranquility and say a silent prayer, but I wasn't sure if it would heal for enough compared to my 10k Nourish crits.

H-ToC - Confessor and The Black Knight P3. I find that I often forget to watch my own health when I've got my eyes glued to the party frames. A dead healer often results in a wipe, especially in heroics, so that's a big issue. I'm starting to just roll Rejuvenation on myself at all times and I do have an addon which alerts me if my health reaches critical levels. Unfortunately, being "leathery" and having a health pool of 16k means I go from healthy to critical to dead in a couple of seconds. And during the Confessor fight I'll often get feared and triple-hit by her Holy Shock thing which just tears me apart, especially if I'm focused on keeping the tank alive as well. The third phase of The Black Knight just ruins my days, really. It should be a fairly simple fight for a healer capable of rolling HoTs, but I never seem to get it right. I usually end up focusing too much on the tank, thereby sacrificing someone else. And if he adds that Mark thing on me, I'm just dead in a matter of hits. I can't really keep the tank up if I'm spamming Nourish on myself.

The other thing is that my guild is running Naxx10 for gearing up and having participated in one of those raids, I find that the healing there is sort of 50/50 based on luck and skill. Sometimes the healing is fine and everyone's alive, but sometimes people die in a matter of two hits, often before I can even get off a Nourish. How am I supposed to counter that? I tried rolling Rejuvenation on my entire group (we were two healers) and I ran out of mana in a matter of no time at all, because unlike in 5-mans, when I've applied Rejuvenation to all five members, I have to Nourish someone as well. Do I need more mp5? I'd hate to sacrifice some of my spell power on it, though.

If the Armory isn't working, my stats (there) are:

1972 spell power
465 haste rating
260 mp5

I'm an Alchemist, so I get a small bonus from Flask of the North, which is what I use for heroic farming (since it's endless). I also have endless mana potions which I rarely need in heroics. I often find myself popping Innervate on others, just like in the good old days.

Basically, I'm a bit unsure if I'm ready for anything other than heroics. Some heroics are a walk in the park while others are enough to make me ponder deleting my Druid. Are anyone else having issues with the snake boss in Gundrak and ToC, or am I just extremely lacking in healing skills?

Please tell me it's the former.

I'll let you in on a bit of a secret - in many ways, raid healing is easier than heroics healing. You have others there to pick up some of the slack and you are there to watch their backs. Also, if melee are getting 2 shot, then in most cases, it is their own stupid fault for standing in the fire for so long. In a heroic it is all up to you, in the raid, you are part of a team, especially in 25mans.

Try a few VoA's to get the feel for it - it is pretty easy to heal and gets you used to the bigger groups (as well as a chance at some T9 gear for free! :)




That is why I use Grid for my healing - my own unit frame is there just the same as everyone elses, be it 5, 10 or 25 man. Also, having it set up to show all the durations of your HoT's makes life much easier.

A couple of good articles on setting Grid up :-

Setting up HoT tracking

A nice clean Grid layout

Even if you don't copy it exactly, you learn a bit more on how to set it up to suit you.



Edited, Oct 16th 2009 2:39am by RareBeast

honestly, for HGD, just have all the melee run out when he starts casting the nova. that will avoid it assuming everyone is about 20 yards out.

alternatively, go for a full freaking burst down. pop tranq on the nova (should be the only nova you get) and youll be fine.

as for the rest, i find the best way to deal with healer tunnel vision (i.e. dying because you forget to heal yourself due to being focused on the group too much) is to use every fourth of fifth GCD to HoT yourself. alternatve between rejuv and lifebloom and wild growth and you ensure that you always have 2-3 HoT's on yourself, one of which is a group-wide heal. rejuv and LB last long enough to easily fill in the gaps between 4-5 GCD's (or more if you want) while giving you enough of an HP drip that you can weather most storms without too much trouble.

or you can just practice more. pvp with it i suppose. the only real cure for tunnel visioning is to break yourself of the habit; everything else is just a stop-gap procedure.

Maz I would take you to Uld.

Try it sometime.

2 Resto druids isn't really the best healer combo for 10-mans. As for healing Naxx 10, I think it really depends on the fight, and the people you're running with. The clothies might be really low on stam, the OT might be slow to pick up adds, or people might be taking avoidable AoE damage.

Well, I have no experience with healing. At least, not on my druid. But, I do have experience with gundrak. If you don't overgear it enough (your party, not just you) that it is facerollingly easy, skip the snake boss until you kill the statue / elemental boss, then kite the snake boss to the doorway just before the statue / elemental boss's room. You get maybe one snake the entire time, which greatly simplifies things, in addition to the fact that if you get more (horrible dps or what-have-you) the adds all have to run through the tank to get to other party members. I know that this doesn't really help with the poison nova damage, but I think you'll find that it is a much easier to heal through when adds aren't smacking people around as well. Gah. Hate that stun they do.

Also: tanks aren't the only ones with cooldowns. All classes have defensive cooldowns they can pop when large, predictable damage is incoming. But, of course, nobody uses those in heroics. Bubble, Enraged regen, ghoul sac, bear form/barkskin (or tossing out heals...), CloS, dispersion or a healing cooldown, parry-moar (deluxe edition), etc. The only ones who should get hit by it are melee, but the ranged classes have defensive cooldowns as well. Except maybe elemental shaman. Can't seem to recall if they do or not. I'm thinking not.

Oh, and since I realized that this has little to do with why you made the thread; yes, raid healing is a bit easier than heroic healing. To start out, at least. The different healing classes compliment each other rather well, and that...variety?... makes it easier.

Actually, I just thought about it, and realized that it probably isn't easier overall, but in heroics, the things you just can't do well really stand out in your mind, whereas in raids there really aren't things like that, because with multiple types of healers you have things covered. That and the fact that people can ***** up, and if you ***** up in a heroic, someone dies, but if you ***** up in a raid, chances are that the other 1-4 healers weren't picking that same time to ***** up, and can therefore cover you.

Blargh. This post is much less organized than I like. But, although I do care enough to mention that I'm kinda just rambling to ramble, I don't care enough to organize my thoughts so the paragraphs logically lead to each other. I also don't care enough to write out my exact thoughts that made the next paragraphs seem so logically placed in my mind, although I do care enough to tell everyone this. It's a tricky balance.

Hmm. I think I have a fever. That's usually the cause of uninhibited ramblings, at least in my case. *grumble*

Hiya Maz!

Your gearing is pretty good, I wouldn't be too worried about it. Your in combat Mp5 is a touch low though, but, again, not anything to be overly worried about. However I'd be spending a lot of time when raiding in the mana-regen set, especially if you are running out of mana. I'm sure you could take Ulduar ;-)

As for deciding on your healing strategies, its really something that happens with practice. Just like a tank will get better by memorizing the pulls in an instance, you can really improve your healing by just learning the rhythm of the fights.

Rolling HoTs on everyone all the time can be just as bad as always waiting for the damage to kick in before healing. There are fights where total pre-hotting is helpful, and well utilized. Something like Saph. where there is an arua, or like the last boss in H HoL when you know there's damage coming almost constantly. Anub'Rekem in Naxx is a good example of when you can pre-HoT the melee if they are slow to run out of range when insect swarm starts.

I'll do some selective pre-hotting at times I'm worried about mana. Just keep HoTs on the more critical targets, such as healers (and yes, keeping one on yourself at all times is a great piece of insurance, especially if you are slow to react to your own health bar!); or those who are more likely to need them, like the hunter that is always slow to move out of the fire.

Finally in some fights, like patchwerk, you may find there's no need to pre-HoT any of the DPS/healer types.

As for whether or not you'll be higher on the meter then the MT heals, that's also something that is going to be fight dependent. If your group is good at staying out of the fire, you may not have much healing to do at all on some fights. Times like this you can pre-HoT if you feel the HoTs will be utilized, or just sit back for a seconds and let the mana pour in! :D

I guess in the end, practice practice practice! The more you know the fights, the better you will get at healing them without wasting a lot of mana. I like to look at the recount summary after a fight. If a spell is really high in over-healing compared to healing done, it might be a sign that it wasn't being effectively used in that fight. Cases like this I'll often stop and try to assess if there was a different spell that I could have used in that case that would have been more effective. For example. there are times where the extra insurance from pre-hotting with RJ is worth the over-healing, but there may be a point where you say it simply isn't anymore, and not pre-hot on that fight.

Anyway I hope that was kind of understandable, I'm hope sick today and watching the baby, so I'm not totally coherent. :p

Edit: oh wow bad tanks... good luck healing through that! :)


Edited, Oct 16th 2009 2:10pm by someproteinguy

Mazra, my spellpower hovered at about 1800 from H's right through Ulduar until I started getting ToC pieces and 25 Ulduar badge pieces with the last patch.

Frankly, if your main issue is people pulling aggro left right and centre then the problem isn't you, it's them.

My standard rule is: Regrowth+rejuv on the tank, LB if he's taking more damage then rejuv anyone who takes damage but can last the 10s it will take for the rejuv to heal them to full, otherwise it's a quick nourish. WG whenever I feel like it.

If you can heal a non-crit immune tank, then you're doing well.

This really is the time to find a average/good guild and to start running raids with people who don't have the same general level of fail as the people you tend to find in PuGs.

If you were on my realm I wouldn't recruit you, but that's just because I don't want anymore competition for the resto drops /sadface

Oh, and the minor inconvenience of being on the other faction.

Mazra Im not a healer so I cannot help you on that count, but I am an avid raider. I have seen way worse going into naxx and coa eoe etc. I have also seen equally geared toons doing uldaur as healers very successfully.

My advice would be to get into a guild doing Naxx voa uldaur and use wow web stats religiously until you can see what you are or are not doing. From what i know of it, it uses addons that gather all dps info heal information etc. and then puts it into a format so you can compare yourself to other healers dps of the same class(or different classes) for comparison.

Heck you might even see if you could go run with an established guild on alt night or one of the runs they do that is now farm status just to get an idea of where you are at gear wise, as well as ability wise.

I'm pretty sure most good guilds would be happy to help someone that is looking to improve themselves find out if they are close to where they believe themselves to be in both gear and ability. If not and you're willing to swap realms give me a holler as I'm positive we will make room for you /em has a nice comfy sofa for post raid discussions

Mazra,

As someone who healed all throughout BC, kara up into Kalecgos in SWP, throughout Wotlk including 25 man Uld HM and 25 man ToC HM I've always felt healing heroics is a lot harder than healing raids.

It might feel more intensive in raids but you know you've got people backing you up incase you're on your gcd, whereas in heroics its you, and only you.

Just keep practicing and working on gear it all comes in time.

*pant pant*

Okay, seriously, I'm going to sit down and have a little chat with whoever developer came up with Trial of the Champion Heroic. That instance... it's not normal. I'm telling ya, it's not normal!

How the hell am I supposed to heal that place when the bosses have mechanics that make tanking completely irrelevant? I'm casting Nourish on one target while another gets two-shot in the meantime. In the meantime! When the tank requires me to roll Regrowth, Rejuvenation AND spam Nourish, how am I supposed to heal anyone else? How am I supposed to prevent anybody, including myself, from being two-shot by this ridiculous RNG boss mechanic?

And this wasn't some scrub group with entry level gear. The tank was a Druid in T8 and misc epics. The Hunter was in T8/T9. The Rogue was also in misc epics and the Mage was in T9. Yet, they died in a matter of a SECOND <- not plural. If they die from AOE in the time it takes me to cast Rejuvenation (with a mouseover macro) on another member, how in the sweet mother of god am I supposed to even come near this content without the gazillion addons I'm using? If I had to click-select everyone before casting, if I didn't have event warnings, if I didn't have threat and DPS meters.

It makes no sense!

I'm done. I'm done with that crap instance. Seals? I don't need to freakin' seals! Rep? I don't need anymore rep! I'm revered!

Wrath, Blizzard... wrath.

THE FURY OF A THOUSAND DEMONS ON YOU!

I QUIT!



Rant over, I guess...

Edited, Oct 23rd 2009 5:06pm by Mazra

You can skip the opening sequence now, the three groups spawn and aggro within 30 sec of the npc walking off the midfield.

The champions reset themselves too.

Edited, Oct 23rd 2009 1:25pm by Norellicus

Yeah, the champions self-reset after the dismount too.

Edit: Ok, I thought I had posted this above earlier but god if I didn't refresh the page like 20 times >_>

Edited, Oct 23rd 2009 11:31pm by Norellicus