Anyways I have had over a month of blogs and forum posts to sift through in the last week and let me tell you…ugh!

First off: Holy priest gear…where the eff is it? I suppose I should have went over the forum posts BEFORE I started to make my BIS list and the easiest way to obtain this gear. I thought to myself “why oh why can I not find the FULL list of gear? This cannot be everything, blizzard really doesn’t hate hpriests that much do they?”. Ha, so I went to the healer forums and started sifting…there were two main posts that had maxed out on replies QQing about the gear list. I could not begin to even read all of the “I am quitting wow, EFF you blizzard” vs “STFU the gear list is fine”. I found myself thinking about whether or not to QQ or just go with the flow. Blizzard has been known to in the past give you what you want after you whine enough but did I really want to take the energy to do that?

So I put my little BIS project on hold and just decided well I will try to get in on a couple of runs and see what drops. El oh El! It wouldn’t have mattered if I had made the list or not..everything that dropped was plate, leather, plate, more plate. And then there it was, a beautiful trinket from Majordomo Staghelm. I had no where near close the amount of dkp to compete with the other healers for it but it gave me the motivation to make my list. I am not going to make a list of BIS gear in this post, but there will be one shortly!

Secondly: This goes hand in hand with the gear, many many posts about holy priest mana regen. Shadow fiend not picking the right target to attack, hymn of hope only giving marginal returns..blah blah blah.

Lastly (for now): I know healers claim to “not watch meters”. Give me a break! Yes you do, there are just different things that we analyze than dps. So I was hearing all this “holy priests suck now” so I headed over to World of Logs.  I am all for having good healers in my raid but all resto druids? Really? Of course there were a couple of holy pallies mixed in there but few and far between. For normal modes (25 man) that I looked through the top 150 healers; here is the spec for priests that do well:

Beth’tilac: Holy (This may change once they “fix” Holy Word: Sanctuary)

Shannox: Disc (hello smite spec!)

Rhyolith: Holy (PoH/PoM/CoH spam on stomps and P2)

Baleroc: Disc (super powerful bubbles)

Alysrazor: Disc BUT holy can also be viable if you can pump out the numbers for when everyone is grouped up

Majordomo: Disc (preventative healing rather that throughput for scythes is win)

Ragnaros: Holy (if you spam renews it appears holy is great for this fight)

So number wise it appears that holy and disc are pretty close on viability of healing per fight. I think that the gear check comes into play for the mana regen for holy, yes there is less gear for holy priests but with more intellect on pieces and the usefulness of reforging you can still reach a comfortable level for regen. The argument of “well I am sacrificing reforging to haste/mastery” is just something we are going to have to deal with.

So death to the holy priest? I don’t think it’s quite that extreme. We may not be as powerful as we once were but that’s just what happens. My advice is to learn both disc and holy so that you as a player can do what is needed to help your raid succeed rather than pouting in the corner saying “but I am a holy priest and my Holy Word: Serenity doesn’t scale with the flame buff on Baleroc.”  Learn both specs and be a great PRIEST!

Up next: My late BiS gear list for both disc and holy and also as I become involved in more kills the “how to” heal each fight in each spec.

Lunar Shower has been redesigned. When casting Moonfire, the druid gains Lunar Shower. Lunar Shower increases the direct damage done by Moonfire by 15/30/45%, and reduces the mana cost by 10/20/30%. This effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 3 seconds. While under the effects of Lunar Shower, Moonfire generates 8 Solar Energy, and Sunfire generates 8 Lunar Energy. The amount of Lunar/Solar Energy gained does not change based on the number of points spent in the talent, or stacks of Lunar Shower. Those druids who wish to delay transition in or out of an Eclipse state should now cast the one of their two basic attacks which will not move the Eclipse bar (either Starfire or Wrath).

As far as play style goes, I can’t see this change drastically affecting single target fights that are mostly in a “stand still and nuke this” type fashion. I can’t say the same about multi-dotting fights, since we will be gaining lunar/solar energy at an increased rate now. More testing/researching will have to be done on my part. I see this change essentially takeing away our decision whether or not to sit in a certain eclipsed state. I could potentially see this hurting Moonkin damage on AoE fights where sitting in Solar Eclipse not only buffs the damage on our Sunfire and Insect Swarm, but also buffs Wild Mushroom. Sitting in Solar Eclipse is still possible; we just can’t use Sunfire in our AoE rotation anymore.

This has upset many Moonkins, however Blizzard basically responded with “tough luck” in their response to the Moonkin community:

“Those druids who wish to delay transition in or out of an Eclipse state should now cast the one of their two basic attacks which will not move the Eclipse bar (either Starfire or Wrath).”

There has been talk of just skipping the talent all together when the new patch comes out. Because Lunar Shower only accounts for a very small percentage of our dps, I don’t see a reason why this wouldn’t be a viable option in the future. However, as Graylo put it “The forums have been very busy talking about the possibility of dropping Lunar Shower from the talent build and I’m sure Blizzard has seen it. The entire purpose of this change is to prevent us from staying in Eclipse and doing Multi DoD AoE and Moonfire spam. Blizzard won’t want their efforts to be avoided.” So one can only assume that Blizzard will change some other mechanic that will make having this talent mandatory.

Another observation that was brought up was the fact that “movement” is no longer addressed in the new Lunar Shower tool tip. This may mean that the buff may be stacked with multiple applications of Moonfire, as opposed to just moving around like before.

In general, I’m strangely comfortable with this change (which is weird, cause I normally hate change), and think that it requires more testing before the Moonkin community rises up in arms against the Blizzard Devs. Keep in mind that Blizzard still has 2-3 more weeks to play around with the numbers on the PTR, and I wouldn’t worry to much about this change until it goes live.

This boss ended up being a bigger pain than expected. To be honest I just don’t think people were too focused while we did the first few attempts.  There were arguments on vent over where to run when you had the Sonic Breath. There were arguments over who was doing the gongs, there were arguments over holy priests using Body and Soul. By the time we downed this boss I was completely drained and not too happy with our overall group coordination.

To start we ran into problems on our initial strategy of the whole raid grouping up on the gong. There was slow reaction times, bad visibility (because Blizzard thought it would be funny to put a bright lighted gong on top of him that didn’t despawn.), there were range problems with healing the tank. After a lot of grumbling and finger pointing we decided that hey, let’s try this the way we did it on normal.  That was one of the best calls made all night.  Our first attempt at trying it the way we normally spread out by the door we got him down to about 15%. After that it went downhill.

The main problem we had was the Sonic Breath.  Atramedes would choose someone and they were to kite the breath in a circle around him without getting caught. Most of the time that person was safe but anyone in his path that wasn’t paying attention died. Then spawned the blame game. Well you were too close and he went to fast and the person couldn’t move, or you used Body and Soul and you aren’t suppose to use a run speed boost for kiting. OMG after minutes of debate we finally got it through to everyone that if you have low to no sound you can use any type of run speed boost as long as you DO NOT run through him causing him to wig out. While I understand that melee has a harder time coordinating together due to his butt being in their face most times, blocking all view, there are still boss mods that have handy things called timers. I admit at first I may have died once or twice to being caught between the Sonar Pulse discs and the flame breath, I learned to watch the timers like a hawk making sure I was always in a safe place when Sonic Breath was about to go off. At first there were issues with the person having the fiend maxing out on sound but I believe that was worked out fairly early. Once we had most of the kinks worked out for this phase came the kiting of the Roaring Flame Breath.

Sigh. So the first person targeted would forget all reasoning and just run. Sometimes they would run the right paths but more often then not they would cut right across the room causing a flame wall that made positioning when he came down a pain in the butt. I always try to Body and Soul the kiter and we also decided to use life grips (correct term is Leap of Faith) on the kiters due to the fact that we have at least 4-5 priests in our raids at any given time. Until we got the hang of when and where to do this it caused a whole new set of problems. Life grips would end up causing the target to land in a pile of Sonar Bombs maxing out their sound, or the angle would suck and the flame would catch a couple people in its path. Or the priest that life gripped would get it done perfectly but they themselves would get caught in a bomb/fire.  After awhile we got the kinks worked out of this phase and were able to work on the fight as a whole rather than as phases.

So now onto my point of view for healing the actual fight. Each group had a side of the room where they were stationed to “group up”. A few raid members questioned why we were to stand like this. It is for the simple fact that we have 3-4 healing priests, so to get more bang for you buck, you are stationed near other members of your group to gain PoH. My lightwell is usually positioned between my group and the melee so either group has immediate access to it. Also it is near the middle of the room for the simple fact that if you are dipping low on health during the air phase it is a simple click.

Most of my time is spent in Chakra: Sanctuary, seeing as there isn’t a lot of need for single target heals from me. Depending on my mana situation I will put down Holy word: Sanctuary for right before the Searing Flame to have those additional ticks of mastery/heals. I make sure I have the Serendipity buff for my group when Searing Flame goes off, Fheal/Bheal a lower member and then PoH another group that is low. There is really no set time to use Guardian Spirit so it is more at my discretion if a tank is getting low. Divine Hymn is the same way, I either use it during a Searing Flame or near the end when people are getting low and healers are running on fumes. I prefer to use it when I have a decent amount of mana and/or we have Heroism for the simple fact that the lower members get 10% more healing done to them. I always have a renew rolling on the tank and for this fight ProM is always on CD. CoH is usually on CD always, mainly being used on melee.

Now I will admit this was one of those fights where I just wanted to scream over vent (I rarely ever speak on it) at people that just weren’t getting it. But it also showed that we as a guild were able to overcome the cattiness and get it done. Now that we have killed him more than a few times on  heroic, things have gotten easier and the arguments are almost forgotten.

From time to time we hear from someone that has been recently wronged by the use of meters.  I usually assume this person to be a casual player, since I can’t imagine a more hardcore player not embracing a system of measuring improvement and success, but I suppose that any type of player could develop a dislike of meters.

Lots of people have written blog posts about how awful meters are.  “Everyone uses them incorrectly”.  “HPS != DPS”.  “Pushing HPS means you’re healing recklessly or abandoning your assignments”.  “Pushing HPS means you’re causing more overheal for other healers”.  “Pushing HPS means you’re taking another healer’s job“.  “Pushing HPS means you’re more likely to stand in fire”.  “Pushing HPS means you’re going to snipe heals from other healers to intentionally prevent their heals from registering”.  “Pushing HPS means that the communists have won, there are no more French Fries, and the world is going to end”.

A few common arguments and replies to the meter bashers.

“If the boss is dead and everyone is alive in the end then I’m doing my job”

Raid success does not indicate individual success. If you’re on a basketball team and you miss all ten of the shots you take, but your team still wins you had a bad game. Winning does not change the fact that you had a poor performance and your other team members must have had good performances, in fact they needed to have even better performances than usual to counter your poor performance.

Raid success indicates enough combined individual success to achieve a kill. Raids contain players of varying levels of skill. A raid with a rogue doing 15k dps and one doing 5k dps will fare the same as a raid with two rogues doing 10k dps. Does this mean the 5k dps rogue is doing a good job because his job is to DPS and the boss died before the enrage… no.

Measuring healers by raid success means there are two types of healers, good healers and bad healers. 1 or 0, boss is dead or boss is alive. Grading yourself on a pass/fail scale is not helpful at all. If you took a course in school where the teacher would grade all tests with a PASS or FAIL grade, without marking individual answers as right or wrong you would never be able to know which problems you needed to focus more on. You wouldn’t know whether you passed with a 60 or a 100.

“If the boss is dead then my HPS doesn’t matter.  Get off my back jack!”

Why wouldn’t you approach a healer with low HPS, even after a kill? Yes the HPS was good enough THAT time, but maybe the raid group got lucky. And it is likely that on a harder encounter that healer will hinder the group. The measure of a good raid group is the constant need to improve themselves.

After the basketball player missed all their shots in the game, even though we won, you better believe that I’m going to talk to them and maybe have them practice shooting extra for the next week. Why wouldn’t you? Escaping by the skin of your teeth is NOT the way to build a strong and capable raid group. Approaching members who are performing poorly BEFORE their performance affects the group’s performance is the smart thing to do.

If your raid group notices that X healer’s HPS is really low and the raid leadership doesn’t step in to try and help that person then when you get to a hard encounter and X healer’s HPS is STILL low you’re going to be in a world of trouble.

Healing meters (HPS) simply measure what happened in terms of raw numbers during an encounter. If one person/class out performs another on the meters it probably means they’re contributing more to the success of the raid than another player. Certainly there are exceptions (mostly raid vs tank healing), but MANY times healers are grouped into a raid healing role, especially priests/druids/shaman. If the druid is doubling the priests HPS then the raid leader has every right in the world to want more druids in the raid compared to priests. Just like if a rogue was doing 15k dps and a mage was doing 7.5k, whether it is due to the mechanics of the encounter or the players involved one person is vastly outperforming the other person. If the encounter favors rogues or druids or anything the raid leader can stack that class to increase the likelihood of success.

“Using meters to measure a healer is just as dumb as using Gear Score or Achievement Checks”

No… this is nothing like basing quality of player on gearscore and achievements. Those things you can be carried through, in fact your “I’m a good healer cause the boss is dead and everyone is alive” theory is actually what the achievement check is based on. If the person completed X encounter it must mean they’re good! WRONG. They could have been carried through the encounter. This is just like assuming that because everyone lived during one of your raids all your healers are good.

Basing invites on achievements because someone would “know” the fight more than someone who had never experienced it makes a little more sense, but it won’t tell you what kind of healer that person will be.

Gearscore and achievements are things that are independent of skill. Gear is so easy to get now. Pugs stumble upon success while carrying bad players. What matters is what HAPPENS during an encounter. Meters measure what happened. They are gearscore and achievement busters. They show you who is carrying their weight and who is struggling and being carried.

When we recruit healers we do a brief armory gear/achievement check and then go right for the persons previous WOL reports. That’s where you find out whether someone is worthy of a trial.

“Too many players are buying into the fact that HPS matters when actually healing is a unique and special animal that must be judged without the use of meters.”

High HPS is definitely important. Being able to push HPS means you’re able to push the correct buttons. You cannot achieve high HPS if you are dead, if you are overhealing too much, or if you do not know the encounter. WoW is all about jumping, dodging, avoiding, and playing the mini-games Blizzard programs into each encounter… all while pushing the theoretical maximum output your class is capable of. Pressing the correct buttons is not enough. Anyone can press rejuv or shield spam a raid. What produces high HPS is being able to continue this “best” cast order or priority, to be able to maintain this performance during the heat of the battle. Many players break down when the situation gets hectic or when they haven’t yet mastered the mechanics of an encounter, they halt their healing or their performance slips drastically. HPS measures these things. And it is important to measure for each encounter because different healers, players, and classes will have difficulty with different encounters. As a raid leader it is often your responsiblity to field the team most capable of beating an encounter.

Of course it matters what a healers role is during a fight. But the meters will often tell you which healing roles are important. If the raid healers are crushing the tank healers during an encounter then raid healing is probably the focus for the fight. You’ll always want to have 1-2 tank healers, but the majority of your healers will be raid healers most of the time. During a constant damage fight like Sindragosa or Blood Queen you need healers that can push high numbers and react quickly to changing situations.

It is near impossible to measure which healers save people from “fatal” damage. That’s a favorite argument of meter bashers. “Well while everyone focuses on meters I’m healing the people that really need it”. I guess… So while the other healers are just pussy footing around you’re the one saving everyone? That’s more primadonna than the meter watchers =P

My thinking is that it takes skill and mastery of ones class to push high HPS during encounters with many moving parts. Players able to achieve high numbers are also more likely to be players that can react quickly to saving people in dire situations. Another part of being a great healer is being able to go from “healing-machine” 100% efficiency maximum output to situational “save that guy” healing by breaking your routine AND THEN swapping right back into the healing-machine mentality without missing a beat.

“People that look at meters are selfish heartless people who should shunned from society!”

What if the people that focus on meters and measured improvement/comparison are actually people that are very pleasant? What if the only difference between the nice raiders that you enjoy the game with and these people is that these people want to be able to improve their play, not just for themselves but because they have a deep sense of responsibility and caring towards the other members of the raid.

Heck, maybe the meter bashers are the JERKS! They don’t even care about their fellow raid members enough to make a sincere effort to improve themselves. They just play for themselves and don’t care about the raid members! JERKS!

Broad character attacks based on the usage of meters are fun!

“People that push HPS are bad for the raid because their focus is on other things.  They’ll probably just die in fire”

That or they’ve elevated their game to a point where they’re able to dodge the same amount of fire as you and I, but maintain a higher HPS at the same time!  You don’t have to focus on one or the other.  In fact if they do die in fire their HPS goes to zero and that will be reflected on the meters.

In reality the meter watchers are probably some of the people with the firmest grasp of encounter mechanics.  Part of pushing their personal performance involves mastering the mechanics of the fight so that they can continue to maximize their output.  If they don’t master the mechanics they will slip on the meters, since this is their perfered form of measurement that would be unacceptable to them and they’d work to master the mechanics.

As I mentioned earlier many encounters require you to be able to alter your positioning or spell selection momentarily.  The best healers are able to do this and quickly regain their bearings, falling back into their “best” rotation.  Healers that get overwhelmed when they’re the target of Pact, Oozes, Ice Blocks or Ghosts are not going to be the same healers focusing on meters.

If you’re good at meters then you’re probably good at encounter mechanics, it just makes sense.

“Pushing meters or ‘sniping’ heals is bad for the raid group.  It means you’re lowering other people’s healing in a blatant attempt to beat them.”

There’s always a lot of talk about heal “sniping” when it comes to meters.  The argument is that meter watchers are figuring out who the other healers are about to heal and then healing that person first…  This is a stupid argument.

First this would require you to have an addon to track other healer’s targets and spell usage.  These addons exist and some people use them.

Secondly you’d have to take your queues on who to heal from this addon.  This means that rather than watching green bars and reacting to damage I’d instead be waiting for other healers to react to green bars, then watch them start a heal, react to their heal by choosing their same target and casting a heal that gets off quicker than theres. 

Most spells are instant or in the 1.5s range these days.  If it takes me 1s to realize someone needs a heal and 1.5s to heal them that’s 2.5s to swap and heal a target.  If I’m adding in a middle step, waiting for someone else to recognize a need for a heal, myself recognizing they’re about to cast a heal, and then healing the person I’m building in an extra 1s AT LEAST.  A meter watcher would get better results simply reacting faster to the GREEN BARS not the addon which shows which healers are casting what spells.

And this is exactly why people push high HPS, they react quickly to the green bars.  They have the right spells ready and apply them faster than the people who are slower to react.

This argument is also dumb because a ton of healing is preventative or pre-cast.  A druid rolling Rejuv isn’t sniping heals, they’re just casting HoTs on everyone.  Breaking their Rejuv rotation to cast a nourish on a target after reacting to another healer casting a spell would lose them HPS.

Silly.

“Healers have different assignments.  It’s impossible to compare healers like DPS”

This is only true for raid healers vs. tank healers.  If the tank healers have the tanks locked down then the raid healers are free for HPS comparison.  In 25 mans there are often 4-5 raid healers who can be compared fairly.  Maybe one class is just exceptional on an encounter, that doesn’t change the fact that their HPS is higher!  If a raid leader has the chance to pick between a resto druid and a flash of light raid healing paladin on the BQ encounter then you bet they’d pick the druid.  Same roles can be compared.  And you’re put in same roles often.

“Pushing meters means that there is less for other healers to do.  They might get bored or feel like they’re not important parts of the team”

Okay.  WoW is played by people, people are emotional.  That’s the nature of the beast.  Certain things are acceptable to get upset about.  If loot isn’t distributed fairly, if someone is being called out publically and in an inappropriate manner, if someone sits too often…  But if someone comes to me and complains that another healer in the raid is healing too much… well that’s not something I’m prepared to address.  That’s the old “He’s working too fast and making the rest of us look bad” argument which we hear about from time to time in failing businesses.

This isn’t the union.  You don’t have your allocated healing to do.  Healing is a competitive game.  This is why, for the most part, I don’t assign raid healers by group.  If someone is capable of pushing outside the bounds of their assignment I’m not going to limit them just because another healer needs something to do.

Flip it around.  How bored would the superb healers be if you forced them to heal their 1/5 of the raid group and nothing more?

“Meters are often used incorrectly.  I was on dispel duty and so my HPS was lower than X person”

If you take a ruler and measure the width of your keyboard, but read the ruler incorrectly, whose fault is it?  The ruler’s?  The keyboard’s?

No dummy, it’s your fault.  If your raid leader can’t properly read a ruler then maybe you need a new raid group.  Let me tell you, after 5 years of raid leading I can guarantee that leading a raid is harder than reading a ruler.

Meters are a tool.  It isn’t the meters fault that people can’t read them properly.

When I first started playing WoW there was a lot of talk about why the horde was so much better at Battlegrounds than the Alliance; “The Alliance has a lot more kids” they’d say. The Horde was mature and filled with adults. Or perhaps it was that the Alliance was so much more populated that playing BGs with experienced people was rare. I don’t really know the answers but for a time I played an undead mage horde side when queues were just realm based and horde didn’t have to wait for queues. I would guestimate that we won 80-85% of the games we played, and it was true that most of the time it was just the same team of us over and over again. We didn’t have to adjust to many new faces; people knew their roles and played to them.

I haven’t played Horde lately but I’d imagine things are much different. With the onset of battlegroup queuing and blood elves I’d guess that the Horde side looks a tad closer to the Alliance side these days, so while my perspective is based upon my experiences in general, most of them have been from the Alliance point of view. With that being said, let me get right into the annoyance that I often feel when PvPing (which is relatively frequently).

People are dumb. In my experience there are more dumb people than smart people in this game world and perhaps that is jaded of me to say but it just keeps being demonstrated over and over again.

Battlegrounds are simple and I would have imagined most anyone could grasp the concepts of each different game relatively quickly but that doesn’t seem to be the case. In its simplest of forms Warsong Gulch is a game about Flags, Arathi Basin is a game about Nodes, Eye of the Storm is a game about nodes and flags, AV is a game about Towers and generals, Strand of the Ancients is a game about Walls, Wintergrasp is a game about walls.

Now obviously nothing is simply black and white but those are the general ideas of the battlegrounds that should be the basis for everything you do in that game. None of those games are about killing as many opponents as you can though this single thing is what drives so many people who enter battlegrounds even to the detriment of the match itself. The interesting thing is, however, that most people play battlegrounds for a purpose: they want honor and badges, but, I can only assume, also want to have fun and certainly you can still have a lot of fun while losing, but in my experience that gets old very rapidly. Honor and badges come quickest when you win, so why is it that despite this basic knowledge people don’t do what is necessary to win? I can only surmise that it is because they’re dumb.

How many times have you been in Wintergrasp watching some idiot in a demolisher firing catapults at horde players while we haven’t even broken through the outer wall yet? And with a limited amount of vehicles and time, getting through those walls is the most important thing you can do but isn’t it more fun to shoot the bad guys? Apparently so. And if you aren’t in a vehicle you should be supporting the vehicles. Destroy guns, stop people from destroying the vehicles, pound the same part of the wall. Sure there are other important parts like defending towers and these things help buy time, but they don’t win the game.

Warsong gulch is a simple game of get their flag and bring it back to your base. If you aren’t the one with the flag your job is simple. Support your flag carrier and kill their flag carrier. You support your flag carrier in any number of ways but one of the most effective is just slowing people down. You don’t have to kill them; you just need to make them stay far away from your guy/girl until the flag is capped. Most classes have varying ways they can accomplish this with reasonable efficiency.  Conversely slowing down their flag carrier so that your team can gang up on them is also a great idea. Oh, I know some of you reading this are thinking .oO(“well obviously”) and yet when you enter a WSG game, see how many people actually do that; heck even if you DO slow down their flag carrier see how many stop fighting midfield and come get em.  They don’t because, i can only assume, they’re dumb.

Fighting on the road instead of near nodes in AB, getting hung up at the stables instead of riding past to other nodes, not defending nodes in EoTS, holding onto the flag with three nodes waiting for four so you can get an achievement, turtling at Balinda, not defending towers for 3 measly minutes, not manning yellow gate guns, the list can just keep going on and on.

For Elune’s sake people, REMEMBER what the game is about and stay focused on that!  Get a clue and stop being a noob, I’m tired of playing with you.