The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Ego MailDump
by Vonya
I’ve been getting some really nice emails lately, that have been sort of wasting away in my inbox.
But tomorrow I have a dentist appointment, and my first class this semester dropped a doozy of a hardware requirement on me, so I need a gimme post for tomorrow. This counts as Thursday’s post, since I probably won’t be able to post it.
Gonna drop both emails here, you guys are the most knowledgeable and talkative group of commenters a blog could ever hope for, so maybe you’ll have the answers I couldn’t find. =]
Two great questions ahead, folks. Strap on your seatbelts.
I have two more lined up and rotting in my inbox that I may post on Friday out of a sense of guilt for not actually doing a post this week.
<.<
>.>
Depends on how intensive my Ruby on Rails homework is. =]
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Question 1 :
What is the PUG Etiquette?
I was trying to do underbog last night with a pug. We had a lvl 70 rogue who was so hyper, keeps jumping and moving around, that one of the member repeatedly ask him to stay close the group. After a few requests, the lvl 70 rogue had enough and bolted with remarks. We had to stop and look for new member to have a 5 man party to do underbog. Time wasted and frustration builds. Not sure what to do so I watched the entire episode of soap unfold right in front of me. Had any one of them took a step back, we would’ve been able to do underbog instead of bickering and wasting time.
Now, you may wondering why did the lvl 70 rouge have all that time to jump around and not enaged in a fight. This all happened when I was drinking and eating. There was no kill order and no communication. A very typcial chaotic pug.
Being a squishy, I rely on the tank to hold the aggro and party members to help me keep aggro off me. I did notice that in underbog, those pesky warrior dont like healer. I get aggroed right away with a renew or 2. Part of my logic is the tank probably is not geared up. It is taking a bit more damage than usual and I have to heal the tank a lot more there for I get aggroed.
Normally, a fade will do. This time, fade worked a bit then they are back on me. Clearly, the tank and the party are way too busy to notice that I need help even tho I requested help when I faded.
Needless to say, I visited the spiritual healer one time too many. I’ve asked the party to look out for me so I dont get killed trying to heal them. That is when I had to drink and eat to recover and while the party waiting for me to fuel up, the drama unfolds.
My question is, in a situation like this, should I
a) Psychic Scream, hopefully attracking more mobs so my party would know how it is when ur surrounded with big bad monsters. Therefore a wipe fest. Twisted Evil
b) Leave Confused
c) Tough it out (builds character Rolling Eyes )
d) DC (probably same as leave but had the bonus that they might wait for you to come back) Cool
e) None of the above. IdeaIn case you wonder, my party was 2 warriors and 2 rogues. 1 warrior is prot and the other is fury build. Not sure about the rogue’s spec.
What is your thought?
My Answer :
Personally, I have 2 rules that I adhere to when pugging (which thankfully isn’t often).
The first rule is the Red Rule. When my gear becomes red (even if it’s only a single item at 10%) that’s the end of the run for me.
The second rule is the 3 Strikes Rule. Three total wipes on the same exact pull nets everyone in the group a nonjudgemental out for the run. That doesn’t mean I always leave - if I feel that we’re close and it’s a good group, I’ll stay on. But generally, wipe-fests are wipe-fests and I won’t stay in a bad group if it’s apparent I’m going to be in the situation you were in.
Finally, in that particular situation, it sounds like the tank wasn’t AOE tanking. For a good tank, a Fade-returned mob will not come back to you once Fade wears off. For a bad tank, they won’t even notice that you went to the trouble. If you’d mentioned your need for help to the group and were ignored multiple times, and you faded, I would say you probably did your duty.
Psychic Scream tends to cause more problems than it solves, unless you know the area VERY well and you’ve pulled far enough away from the next group that you aren’t in danger of snagging the next mobs.
Good luck with the pugging.
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Letter 2 :
Dear Ego,
My guild has recently started doing 25 man raids. We had been doing KZ with 2 healers for a few months and ZA with 3 healers. We are downing Gruul and Mag in 1 shot, and Fel Reaver with in 2 try’s now. (New people keep coming and doing stupid things) Our normal raid makeup is 3 Holy Priests, 2 Shamans, 2 Paladins.I voluntarily spec 23/38 so our other priests could go CoH to increase there effectiveness in ZA. (I have all but the helm from there)
My problem though is that I don’t feel I have a solid place in the raid. During trash pulls I typically use Flash Heal on the raid, everyone just seems to heal over my renews and Gheal is to slow, and I use PoM and Renew on the tanks. Once we get to a boss, I’m assigned to raid heal. So I run around casting Renew on other raid members with the occasional PoM on the tank and a Flash Heal or Gheal thrown to someone else. Most of my healing though is over written by another raid healer, normally a shaman. The only time I find myself useful is when someone dies. Then it’s my job to take over what ever role they had, be it raid heal, melee heal, or MT heals.
To me this just isn’t rewarding anymore. I’m trying to figure out how to make healing fun again but it just feels like the Priest is the back up healer for the raid. The best analogy I can come up with is the Goalie in soccer. If your team sucks, the goalie will see a lot of action and have fun for the most part. If your team is good, your goalie will be bored. My raid pretty much downs everything we try with very few snags. I don’t like having to wait for someone to die or screw up to become important.
I’m trying to figure out how to work myself into a more solidified healing role. I’ve talked to people in my guild to try and become a better healer, but with no one to heal I feel more like a buff bot.
Nobs - Troll Priest
My Answer :
Ummm…ouch. That’s a tough one. Being a backup healer is important, but if you’re pretty much being constantly overhealed, it sounds like your guild may be bringing too many healers. I’d talk to your raid leader about it - if you’re so-inclined, you might try going shadow. You can still be the backup emergency healer for your raids, but you’ll be a mana-battery too.
But I’d say your guild probably isn’t getting the most out of you, which is a shame.
Maybe a reader will have a better thought for you. =]
January 16th, 2008
On the PUG issue, specifically with Fade: My macro for fade also puts a PW: Shield on me. But it ALSO hollers out, /p * * * THE PRIEST IS FADING! * * *.
You’ll know pretty quickly if you’re in a good group or not with what happens next (you are running to the tank, right, to make his/her task of regaining aggro easier?). Your tank better be doing everything possible to get that aggro back. Likewise, if I’m playing a hunter and I know the healer’s in trouble, I’m going to throw a concussive, distract, or arcane shot (depending on cooldowns) to get the mob’s attention. My mail armor isn’t plate–but it’s not cloth, either!
Clearly, if targets aren’t marked and the pull is a free-for-all, your likelihood of getting aggro from something as benign as a Renew or Flash heal is a lot higher than if 3 mobs are sheeped/stunned/trapped and the rest of the group is killing the skull: Aggro is spread out all over the place, and is therefore “diluted” for want of a better term.
That means it’s much easier–too easy, in fact–for a priest/any healer to move to the top of some mob’s hate list.So there’s your first clue that it may be a bad pug. Second (or maybe this is first), if the tank isn’t concerned about your well-being, you have another clue.
Finally, if there’s a 70 rogue in an Underbog group (non-heroic, I assume), there’s no freaking way a squishie–any squishie–should be dying! (Feel free to substitute Ramparts and Blood Furnace for Underbog in the preceding sentence.)
January 16th, 2008
@ Letter 2 Response…
Was thinking the same thing. Backup heals is important, but it’s a *perfect* opportunity to contribute health and mana back to your group as shadow. Also a blast to do… Just have plenty of aggro management/avoidance tools available.
January 17th, 2008
Raid healing is always about communication. Sometimes my fellow healers complain they have “nothing to do” on certain boss pulls of Kara, as, with an AoE pally tanker, I can focus all my HoTs on one target and not worry much about anything. However, if they had said during the encounter about not having to heal rather than expecting me to watch their perpetual mana, I could have eased up on my own reins, making my own job more relaxing and their involvement more apparant.
Another things is shared addons that tell who is healing whom, and macros that announce heals. If there is not enough communication, the other healers may not know who is getting a heal. It is more time consuming to click another person and check to see if they have renew ticking than it is to click, heal, move on.
Just one druid’s $.02.
January 17th, 2008
A question for the 2nd letter. If the other Priests are specced for CoH, why aren’t they raid healing? That is the perfect spec for raid healing as you can get 5 people at a time with an instant cast spell. However I do agree with Ego that your group may be bringing too many healers. If you don’t have the ability to affect raid composition, you may ask for a more specific assignment. Have yourself raid heal groups 1-3 and another healer 4 and 5 (with the understanding that you won’t have tunnel vision). The only other thing I can think of is that your healing group may not trust eachother. Everyone is watching everyone elses targets because they don’t trust that the healing will be taken care of. You can try talking to your healer-lead (whoever is making the healing assignments) and ask if there’s something you can do as a group not to step on eachother’s toes.
I hope you can find a way to make it fun again!
January 17th, 2008
Ego - you get RoR homework? Lucky little guttersnipe. That’s fun time for me…
Letter #1: If they ignore your requests, restate. If they ignore you again, leave. As a healer, you’re a valuable commodity, you can get another group much more easily than the DPS. Don’t feel bad about using that to your advantage, PUGs are a free market.
If you have a mediocre group, with a tank that communicates and clearly wants to win but is, simply, crap - point them at tankspot.com afterwards.
Letter #2: if the other healers go OOM, then they need to relax and stop sniping. Same if they use a lot of FoL (over 50-60%), regrowth or flash heal. If they don’t go OOM, you have too many healers. 7 is ok for most fights - 3 palas, 2 trees, 2 priests. Shaman can sub for a tree or priest. That’s Ally ofc, I have no idea how Horde manage without palabuffs. Sending one holy priest spooky is a good idea, if they don’t mind of course.
I got 46% of total healing in Kara last night with a paladin and a shaman… priests are decent snipers if you focus and anticipate heavily. With smart use of PoM/renew/shield, you can lock that damn pala out of most of the potential healing ;D
*kof* Not that healing is a competition. Noooo. oh no. I would never spam CoH on a single target just because it’s instant.
Games I Have Played To Make Healing More Fun:
+ lock the damn paladin out (may not make friends)
+ beat a DPSer while main healing a heroic
+ beat a normal with 80%+ renew (Recount will show you healing by spell)
+ beat a normal with 60%+ pom
+ beat a heroic with 100% greater heal
the last one I just thought of, may have to try that tonight.
January 17th, 2008
Galadria is correct. Especially in SSC and above PoM + CoH is amazing. 7 healers is pretty much what you want in SSC and above, and in some situations you may want 1-2 more depending on the rest of your raid makeup/boss. I’m surprised you don’t have a tree in there also. If you are assigned raid healing, casting PoM on the tank is somewhat of a waste after the initial pull. You will get more return from your Frisbee by throwing it on the melee group. Keep that thing in play, always.
Also, I would suggest that you go CoH too because frankly, CoH > Imp DS. Until our other priest randomly decided to switch to a cookie cutter build, we rarely (if ever) had imp DS. Didn’t notice the difference then, and I don’t notice it now… to most of us it is just another buff icon at the top of my screen. Run the numbers for a raid and compare how much more healing you will provide vs how much more dps/mp5 imp ds provides. (its a slightly better after the spirit buff, but still nowhere near as useful as coh). Ditch the imp ds and after a few raids you wont even notice it missing. Wow, I can’t imagine how much easier Najentus and Bloodboil would be with 3 CoH priests lol
As for trash healing, ja. Depending on how your raid does trash pulls, it could be a matter of just a GH or crazy flash heal spamming. If you are ending trash pulls without going oom, keep with flash heal + renew + pom madness. Essentially, heal like you are dps’ing a mob. Be aggressive.
As for going shadow. Be careful with that. First off, it’s a *lot* different than healing. Second, if you already have 1-2 shadow priests, you going shadow would only make your raid spot more tenuous because essentially anything over 1 spriest in a raid gives you diminishing returns. Some guilds are ok with bringing 3 dark jedi to a raid, but most (in my experience) are not, it is usually 2 max. Thirdly, gearing an spriest isn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world
January 17th, 2008
Eldr made me laugh.
“Not that healing is a competition. Noooo. oh no. I would never spam CoH on a single target just because it’s instant.”
hahaha
(/guilty)
January 17th, 2008
Letter 2:
I’ve gone throught the same situation with my guild a few months ago.
Though, i don’t think I’d suggest you follow the same path I did.
I decided since I wasn’t much use, and I was overstacked with fall quater, I took a break from my priest. No raids, no pvp, no logging in for daily quests.
I’ve been back online a few weeks now without doing any 25mans. I’m enjoying the game again - doing Karazhan and a lot more pvp these days. Seems to me you’ve got to ask yourself if you want to go through end-game content or not.
As for fixing the problem I’d say your raid should have less healers. Seems like with the skill of your raid healers you can do with one less.
January 17th, 2008
One thing I have seen that gets the attention of the tank in pugs is after I get aggro from healing the tank I will start to *gasp* heal myself! usually stoping the heals on the tank.
he’ll usually turn around to see why is he not getting healed and notice the mob hitting on his personal healer.
January 17th, 2008
@ Letter #2
I am in the exact same position you are. I am specced 23/38 as well. One thing you may want to consider is the 5/5 improved wands at the bottom of the disc tree. You can start laughing whenever you want but when I get bored raid healing because everything is going right, I wand DPS. Whenever I know for sure that I won’t have to do hardly any healing, I actually go all out with normal DPS. The trick is to not let your mana get too low in case you have to heal later in the fight. As a disc/holy priest though, mana should almost never be an issue provided you have sufficient regen through MP5 and/or Spirit.
I know you are just getting into 25 man raiding now, but most of the bosses you and your guild has conquered are really not that bad for a focused raid group. That is probably one of the big reasons why you don’t feel as useful right now. Later on, as your guild starts learning new raid bosses from SSC and TK, you will find a lot more opportunity to utilize your skills as a raid healer. I’m sure you wont’ get bored when your guild decides to tackle Morogrim Tidewalker in SSC. He’s enough to give most healers a heart attack :).
About your heals not really being effective right now, don’t sweat it. When everything is going right and you are storming through raid bosses, the job of the raid healer is not overly challenging. It’s when you are working on progression fights and you actually have to wake up or people drop like flies. That is when you will be really noticed and your fellow raiders will praise you for it. 7 Healers sounds about right for 25 man content. I have mixed and matched my raids a little and found that there are some fights that you can heal with 5 healers and some that require all 7 going to the limit. Your time WILL come if you hang in there a little longer. Make sure that the healing assignments are clear and concise. No one should ever really be overwriting your heals on your own healign assignment unless there is a steady influx of predictable damage (On the main tank for example).
Usually for my raids I try to stick healers with what they are good at. Paladins generally get to heal the main tank or a single target of some sort. Druids usually either smooth out the damage on the main tank with constant HoT’s or I put them on the raid. Shamans are generally best when in a position to chain heal, I use them to keep all the melee classes alive most of the time. Priests are the jack of all trades healers. I generally use them wherever I am short. A skilled priest should be able to do any healing assignment in the raid. I usually put myself on raid heals along with another priest or druid to back me up depending on the fight. You don’t get as much utility without CoH but your points in the discipline tree should give you a pretty long lasting mana pool to work with. I make up for the lack of CoH with going for a little bit of inneficiency now and then. I’ll spam flash heals all around or chain cast renew on anyone that needs to be topped off. That should give you some breathing room where you can enjoy some sweet time out of the 5 second rule to wand your heart out :).
January 17th, 2008
Honestly, you priests are amazing. I cannot tell you the number of times in PUGs that I have been neglected and left to die. Unlike priests though, I have plate and invulnerability until the tank decides that it might be worth his time to pick the add up.
I can’t even imagine the hell that you priests have.
But as for leaving a party? I have some hard and fast rules too. If you let me die on trash, I can forgive you… If you gripe because we wipe after I was downed, its time to go, and I won’t be polite about it either. Oh well, idiots happen and they make me savor good players all that much more.
January 17th, 2008
To nobs, I’d ask how tied are you to this guild? Sure, you could stick around and try to find a place for yourself. Mention your frustrations to the class/healing/raid leader and see if they’ll give you some more responsibility. But it sounds like you’re a little surplus to requirements. An alternative is to look around for a developing guild. You might have to take a few steps back in your raid progression but the trade would be a more central role in the group and a chance to really stretch your healing potential once more.
January 18th, 2008
I think everyone covered the first letter wonderfully.
Now, onto the second letter… The issue here is your raid leader has you doing the wrong assignment. When you have 3 priests and only one is imp spi, that’s the one that should be on MT healing. Why? Because you don’t have the coverage for raid healing like the other two but do have the time/focus to provide the bulk of the heals a tank will need. Looking at your healing group comp, this is what you should be doing:
Paladin, Shaman, and Imp Spi Priest on MT, Paladin and CoH Priest on OT, Rest on Raid
You guys need to get a tree asap, btw. You’re missing out on a ton of utility and you’re going to need the HoT’s down the road. The ideal assignment would have the tree on the MT, freeing up the shammy for raid healing. Then you’d move a CoH to standby.
For trash, it’s totally fine to flash your little heart out. Otherwise those punk paladins/shamans will write over your heals.
And don’t be discouraged or assume that HKM/Gruul/Loot Reaver are any indication of how hard/fun 25-man raid healing is. They’re not. Step into SSC and let us know after you’ve had some fun on Hydross/Lurker/Morogrim.
January 18th, 2008
2 cents to question #2. My guild is doing the 10-man raids right now. We’ve pretty much got kara on farm status and are 3 boss downed in ZA. We have 3 main healers, 2 very well geared/skilled druids (1 - 51point restro, 2 restro/balance) and myself, priest holy/disc w/IDS. Also have a Ret Pally, Shadow priest and a Elemental Shaman to OH if needed. I (the priest) am the raid healer. I typically come in 3rd in healing on wowstats. Not a big deal, because it doesn’t tell the full story. My non-stop PoM doesn’t give me credit for heals, which can account for 500-750k healing throughout the entire raid event. I’m also the dispel god, freeing up our only other priest (shadow) to concentrate on dsp and keeping the mana recharging and the health trickling back to the party. I’ve also adjusted my talents to allow for a little more dps (1/2 second off my smites and G.Heals which can be a lifesaver). My holy novas help clear the aoe pulls a lot quicker. So I’m contributing about 500-600k damage to the raid, whereas the druids just cannot contribute, they have to keep the MT / OT alive. So I guess you need to look at what you want to do and what can you contribute to the raids success. Even as a holy priest, it may not always have to be “all healing” because dps, dispelling and even good shackling can be the difference between a downed boss and a wipe.
January 18th, 2008
Wow thanks for the post and replies. Leaving my guild isn’t an option as I have known most of it’s members for 10+ years. We have no resto druid, yes sad face. Our CoH priest’s usually heal the melee group and I’m on the casters.
I respec’d CoH because I felt it was of more use than having a Imp DS priest in the raid. Still wasn’t super exciting so now I’ve got a new plan. I’ve recently spec’d 42/19/0 and told them to screw off I’m gonna smite raid for a few weeks. So since I have to be back up healer I’m going to smite while doing it. Our mage now loves me because I told him he would be getting all my Power Infusions.
Thanks for all the advice though, I think I may have just been burned out. We were doing ZA every cool down, KZ on 2 different characters, and Gruul, Mag, and TK. Now we have backed off a bit.