Breakfast Topic: Whatever happened to healing assignments?

A few nights ago, I was casually playing my mistweaver monk when I saw a pick-up group forming for Mogushan Vaults. He wasn't really that well geared, but I figured "why not?" and jumped in. Since this was my first time joining a raid on this character, I tried to be prepared; I ate my spirit food, drank a flask, and asked the raid leader for healing assignments. His response? Well, parts of it are unprintable, but the gist is that "assignments are lame" and "nobody uses them anymore."

I admit, I'm not the best at paying attention to what my healers are doing, other than thanking them when they repeatedly cover for my slow reaction times, or lighting our tree druid on fire. (Ulla, if you're reading this, it was the warlock. Really!) Thinking back, though, the last time I remember healing assignments really being a "thing" was Chimaeron, and nothing since then.

Understandably, heroic raiders still have assignments as they have to keep people from dying every second, but what about the rest of us? It seems like assignments have died out: do you think this is a bad thing or a good thing? Tags: featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, healing-assignments, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

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Totem Talk: All about Healing Tide Totem

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how.

This week, we're going to talk a whole lot about Healing Tide Totem. Why are we going to spend that time discussing this resto shaman healing talent? Well, because like with everything else lately, there is a hot debate springing up about it. This has to do, of course, with the upcoming patch 5.4 that is currently being tested on the PTR. Again the information we have on this is subject to change, but we can still talk about it until things go live.

Since the start of the expansion, there has been a love hate relationship with HTT. The debate started day one with if this talent was mandatory for restoration shaman and how much of our healing truly relied on it. After just a little bit into the expansion's first tier of raid content, the debate intensified and has been going on ever since.

A rising star, or a falling shaman?

The beginning of the expansion is always a time to see what our new goodies will bring us and what type of impact they will have. From the get go HTT was a curiosity. The talent seemed strong and was often times compared to a druids Tranquility of a priest Divine Hymn, and it gained the ability to utilize our mastery Deep Healing. It gained about 48% of our spellpower, and while that was great, it still didn't compare to other raid cooldowns that would get 85% or higher of the caster's spellpower. The downfall was that basically as other healers got gear, and as players learned not to stand in bad, the cooldown would slowly dwindle in power. The problem was, well, it hasn't quite worked out like that. A considerable amount of our healing throughput has wound up tied to HTT, especially at the beginning.

Personally I know the very first time I used HTT, the other healers pretty much had a cow when they saw how much healing it did by itself during Feng the Accursed. That's been pretty much the curse of this cooldown from the start. It does so much of our healing by itself simply because there are so many fights where everyone is broken down into much smaller groups or simply can't stack on top of each other and take advantage of Spirit Link Totem or Healing Rain like we did throughout Cataclysm. That's been one of the largest complaints among the respectful punch of our healing brethren, that so much of our healing is on this cooldown. There are fights, like Tortos, where HTT is counting for almost 35% of the healing we do simply because of how spread out everyone is. This wound up making the talent pretty much mandatory for that tier choice compared to the other two.

This of course presents an issue on two fronts. First, if the healing cooldown doesn't scale quite as well as other cooldowns, it will eventually fall out of favor and become much less useful. Second, with so much of our healing on certain fights deriving from that, what does that have to say about our healing longevity as a class when compared to other healers?

Will this change?

This is a difficult question to answer some times, but overall, it's not a great place to be where a cooldown like that becomes something you rely on so much for certain fights. We can already see that there are things in the works to make this not the case, or at least attempt to. The new Glyph of Chaining is an attempt to make our beloved Chain Heal more viable in fights were we are going to be spread out, which from all appearances will be happening again in the coming tier of raiding. The new Glyph of Riptide is going down the same road by lessening the initial blow of the instant healing effect. The idea will be that we can start to rely on them a little bit more on those fights where people are spread out.

The second part of this equation is a redesign of the other talents from that tier of choices. Conductivity has been updated so that casting Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave, Healing Surge and Chain Heal will increase the duration of Healing Rain by 1 second. Conductivity has been one of those talents that has pretty much been written off since the start of the expansion, and this is an attempt to make it more viable as an option when compared to HTT. Will this change be enough to knock HTT out of the spot as a mandatory talent? I'm not entirely convinced. While increasing the duration of HR is nice, it is going to depend on how much stacking we're going to be able to do in the next tier of raiding, and the jury is still out on that. Personally, I don't think anything is going to knock HTT out of it's place in our toolkit anytime soon, which is good and bad.

What about buffing HTT?

This is another one of those topics that has been debated. Half of the shaman healing community would love to see HTT buffed so that we can continue to use it competitively in the tiers of content to come. The other half think that doing so will do nothing but hurt us in the long run by making us so much more dependent on the cooldown for our healing throughput. In patch 5.3's release, a lot of other raid healer cooldowns got buffed yet our HTT did not get any increase. In a Twitter exchange, everyone's favorite crustacean Gregg "Ghostcrawler" Street stated that buffing HTT would only make it more mandatory for resto and that SLT was our raid cooldown. Later that same day however, patch 5.4 ptr notes showed that Healing Tide Totem was getting buffed to heal for 50% more. As it stands on the ptr, HTT will also gain 72% of our spellpower on use. That's a significant bump and puts it much more in line with other raid healing cooldowns.

In the end, I still have a love-hate relationship with the cooldown. I love it because I have a big soft spot for totems in general and I'll always argue for more and cooler totems for us to use. I hate it because I hate feeling like everything we do is tied up in a single cooldown cast every 3 minutes. It points out that we have some severe deficiencies when it comes to fights where we can't keep our raid grouped up. We tend to have to work very hard to keep up.While I love excelling at group healing fights, and I'm not opposed to rolling up my sleeves and putting in some hard work, I hate feeling pigeon holed. My hope is that shaman healing will get another close looking over in the very near future. I still love being a shaman healer, I think we're still a great healing class, but I feel like we have the potential to be so much better. Totem Talk: Restoration lends you advice on healing groups, DK tanks and heroics and mana concerns in today's endgame -- or take a break and look back at the rise of the resto shaman. Happy healing, and may your mana be plentiful! Tags: ancestral guidance, AncestralGuidance, conductivity, earthliving weapon, EarthlivingWeapon, featured, guide-to-shamans, healing tide totem, HealingTideTotem, patch 5.4, Patch5.4, resto, Resto-Shaman, restoration, restoration-shaman, restoration-shaman-column, restoration-shaman-totem-talk, shaman-guide, shaman-healing, shaman-info, shaman-restoration-column, shaman-talents, wow-shaman, wow-shaman-info

Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk

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Six simple tips for getting started in healing

A little while back, we had six simple tips to getting started in tanking. In the brief introduction to that, I asserted that tanking was among the more stressful and pressured roles in WoW at the moment, just because of the low numbers of tanks compared to others in situations like raids, particularly the Raid Finder.

While the same is not true for healers in the raid finder, you're the only one of your kind in 5-man content, where you're likely to start to learn to heal. Healing's a little tricky to get started with, just because there's not much scope to practice out in the world, without other players. I would definitely have a go with all your spells out in the wild, just to see what they do, but it's only going to be when you get into an instance that your skills are actually tested.

Starting as you mean to continue

One of the things that's going to affect your gameplay and learning experience as a healer is how you're getting started. Leveling a new healer from scratch is a great way to go, as the low level dungeons are pretty well stress free, and you'll get your abilities little by little, so you can learn how each one works and, just as importantly, weaves in with the other spells at your disposal.

If you're going straight in at max level, then you've got all your spells at once. It's a touch more tricky! Do check out the core spells in the spellbook's new tab to see just what you're dealing with, it won't explain how to heal with everything you've got, but it's a good start.

If you can, run 5-man normal dungeons, or easy heroics, with friends or guildmates. The best will be if you can get someone in your group who plays your healing class too, and they can give you tips on healing in certain situations. For now, I'd recommend grabbing all your abilities and dragging them straight onto your bars from day one. You won't use all of them all the time, but it's a good point to start from.

There is no rotation

If you're coming from a DPS role, you may well be wondering about your rotation, you know, the order in which you cast spells to get the maximum healing output from your spec. Unfortunately, healing isn't quite like that. The best spell to cast at any given time is the spell that is the best one to cast! Yes, there are some elements that are predictable, your class of choice may have a set of spells to use for AoE healing, for example. But, largely, it's a case of knowing what's in your toolkit and being aware of when to use it.

What's more, it's not just the type of damage flying around that you've got to consider. That's pretty obvious, really, and will differ from class to class. There will be times when it's better to use a few single-target spells, and times when it's better to use an AoE, and the best place to find this out is in class guides. Often there's a minimum number of people to be affected by an AoE heal or suchlike. But, apart from those sorts of things, there's no real rotation. It's a case of being adaptable, and knowing what tools you have for every situation.

Don't set too much store in healing meters

Our very own Dawn Moore wrote an article a while back about how to top the healing meters as a discipline priest. While it related to discipline in Cataclysm, the message is the same, snipe heals to get ahead. Sniping heals, though, isn't OK. It's not nice, it's not being a team player. If you're part of a healing team, rather than a solo healer, and you're with friends, then you should work together to put as little of your blue bars into everyone's green bars as possible. The way you get to be top of the healing meters isn't necessarily the most mana-efficient.

Healing Per Second isn't everything. There's no point, if you're a priest, in flash healing away your entire mana bar then hitting the report total healing button. HPS in that instance means very little! For starters, what you're after is effective healing, not just raw throughput. There's no point smashing out 100k heals into players who only need 50k to fill up their health bars. Only 50k of that 100k is effective. Efficiency is something to monitor on meters, some classes have it harder than others, but watch your overhealing, and try to keep that low. There's an overhealing measure available on most meters.

Keep your party under control

It's nigh impossible to heal people when they're not in range. It's also remarkable how often players forget this! You really do need to have your healer in range before pulling, particularly if there's a door that closes! Protip for behind closed door healing, though, if you're a shaman your totems and Healing Rain go through doors, as does priests' Prayer of Healing. I'm not exactly sure on other classes, but indirect heals are probably good!

So, if you're drinking for mana, say so. And don't be afraid to ask for mana breaks, you need mana in order to heal, and if a tank is going hell for leather through a dungeon with you chasing frantically behind them with all but no mana, that's not going to optimize your healing if it all goes wrong. Most healers have mana cooldowns, but not all of them get those cooldowns particularly early on, if you're starting a new character to heal. Learn what they are, and use them, but don't be afraid to stop for a drink!

Be aware of your utility

Speaking of cooldowns, while I don't play every healer, do also be aware of your utility. If you're PvP healing, this is particularly important, as you'll be more to your team than green numbers. To be a good PvP healer, you need to know what else you can bring to the table outside of just pure heals. Slows, interrupts, crowd control, purges, all these are examples of utility.

And it's not just for PvP either, utility is very handy for PvE in certain situations, particularly those where it all goes horribly wrong. Aggro drops, slows, roots, cyclones, other CC, stealths, fades, all those sorts of things can save your behind when things get out of hand in a dungeon just as much as they can in PvP situations.

What's more, be aware of your throughput cooldowns, your OMG cooldowns, your big party trick that saves the whole situation. Always take a second to bind new spells so they don't just sit languishing in your spellbook!

Consider healing addons

There will inevitably be a slew of comments saying "you don't need healing addons, I've healed since 1974 with just the standard UI." True, you don't need them, but they might make your life easier. I know when I first started healing, healbot made my life so much more straightforward. I now heal with a mixture of target healing (the standard UI method), click healing, and macros.

Neither one is inherently better or worse than any other, although I'd encourage something other than click healing for arenas, as it ties up your mouse, which you should really be using for movement. Nonetheless, if you like to click heal in arena, more power to you.

If you're finding target healing a bit of a struggle, I wrote a two-part series on raid healing addons, so you can make an informed choice! Do try them out, they might make your life a whole lot easier! Or, you might hate them. Everyone's different!
Visit the WoW Rookie Guide for links to everything you need to get started as a new player, from how to control your character and camera angles when you're just starting out, to learning how to tank, getting up to speed for heroics and even how to win Tol Barad.
Tags: featured, guide, healing, healing-guide, how-to-heal, how-to-play-wow, new-to-world-of-warcraft, noob-guide, raid-guide, raid-healing, raiding-guide, rookie-guide, world-of-warcraft-guide, world-of-warcraft-help, world-of-warcraft-noobs, world-of-warcraft-rookies, wow-guide, wow-healing, wow-help, wow-noob-guide, wow-noobs, wow-raid-guide, wow-raid-healing, wow-to-play-world-of-warcraft

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