As I started writing this post, I didn’t realize how absolutely basic it sounds.  It’s rather embarassing, but we have not done most of these things, at least consistently, in quite awhile.  Before rattling off these items, I want to express something that I learned myself just recently:

Cult of personality type leadership is fun, often easy for those not in charge, and even preferable on occasion for decision making; however, the skills and charisma of one person will always fall short of the combined talent of dedicated individuals.

Let me explain.  I sponsor a club at our school that only meets once a week.  I have grown accustomed to knowing the officers and relying on them quite a bit.  Without their help, our activities would grow fairly stale.  But even in light of their help, I recently failed to realize just how much I was running the show.  I impressed so much of my personality upon those students that we nearly lost all creativity.  When my wife finally went over some potential changes to the club with me, I was dumbfounded.  So many ideas!  So many things I simply did not care about or want to do.  So many things that were difficult to manage and accomplish!  Yet, I had to be reminded, the club is not supposed to be about me, my narcissism, or my desire to over-analyze things.  It’s about an organization that people can be proud to experience and enjoy.  The creativity of one person will always lack the energy of officers with free will.

So, my wishlist for our guild:

Investment of Role Leaders/Class Leaders with authority: Leadership roles reassigned based on current participation and knowledge, not tradition.  The Raid Leader should redirect players to these leaders when it falls into their purview.  But (and this is a huge “but”) be oh-so-careful about who is chosen to fulfill said roles.  Interview long-standing raiders.  Ask them if they want to help.  They may be more willing and knowledgeable of not just their class, but their role in general.

1. Clearly spoken guidelines to leaders about how to frame their conversations to fit the nature of our guild: IE, not ripping someone a new one unless actually needed.
2. Delegate to Role Leaders/Class Leaders for healing/tanking assignments, buffs, and other time-consuming actions. This requires said leaders to have a vested bit of authority.
3. Reestablishment and enforcement of role channels with leaders: Healing, Tanking, Melee, and Ranged.  Leaders should be charismatic enough to give advice without blowing their top.
4. Short, post-raid discussion amongst leadership to analyze player climate and where we should go for the next scheduled raid.

Everything below is not just about being a stickler.  It’s about the kind of atmosphere we create and want to maintain by example.

• Enforcement of Flasks: If someone can’t afford one, start a tab. The show will go on!
• Enforcement of Gems and Enchants: No Invite and mandatory redirection to Class/Role Leader for assistance
• Irrefutable Reputation for Subpar Performance: No Invite until taking advice from a Class/Role Leader (not just hearing it, but acting on it).  Steady improvement is rewarded with more invites.
• An Alt Policy: When alts are invited, a clear reason needs to be stated in raid to avoid confusion, even if obvious amongst leadership.

Back in the month of March, our guild was more than it had ever been.  We leapfrogged our way to the top three progressions spots on our server, thumbing our noses at elitist players who gave little relevance to our “carebear” guild.  Granted, it came with a fair amount of cracking down: enforcement of proper enchants in the vein of random drug testing, sitting people out for void zone failures, and a program for selling mandatory flasks before each raid.  Despite our dozens of failed attempts (well recorded in a video I like to call “1001 Ways to Wipe on Sarth 3D“), there was an air of professionalism that permeated the last few hours of our success.

I have not seen much of it since that night.  We have finished ToC25, but due to an extremely oscillating group, still have yet to down Yogg Saron.  In case anyone missed Yakra’s farewell over at Mirror Shield, one of his last posts dealt with the frustration of Tier 8 from a human resources perspective.  I realize this is true of every guild, and perhaps my statement will just enrage goblins in every form, but losing players, even one or two, will gut the heart and soul of a social raid.  There is nothing more damning than replacing patient, time-honored friends with new people, especially when you are there for the experience.

Along time ago, Spinksville did a post about “the guild meet”, actually coming together in real life with long-time raiders.  She recommended taking part in such an activity, but I never imagined how much it could change my perspective on others.  So when I say “social raid”, there is much more to it than just hanging out with some internet identities. Some of us even have the luck of living within driving distance and seeing each other every few weeks.  For those raiders that I cherish but have not met, I still hope to see them at a similar event next year.  Since many will read too much into my use of the word “social”, I want to be clear that none of these people are the kind to be carried in a raid.  They are exceptional players, old friends, and skilled individuals. I hope to meet more of them every time we recruit somebody new, but 25 people represents a great deal of different personalities and skill levels.

Having come down this road of friendship and camaraderie, I find that I have crossed a strange barrier that cannot be rebuilt.  I play the game to spend time with these people and to conquer challenges together, not just obtain achievements for the sake of digital victory.  I want to laugh with them, fail with them, and remember how one of our healers really likes Golden Girls; however, at the end of the day, we do want to eventually succeed, and there simply aren’t enough of us to maintain a steady roster.

So I realize that I don’t need hardmodes. I don’t need legendary healing maces.  I just want to finish content with a group of people that can remain semi-static.  Sarth 3D was one of those gems for us.  It was at the end of a relatively short road of content, and therefore presented us with a challenge we simply could not ignore.  With the amount of encounters that offer increased difficulty these days, I’m not even sure where we’d start.

My resignation no doubt makes me sound very average and mundane, but ask yourself (and perhaps this requires a certain age) if you can invest your entire night for several days a week without knowing that you are building relationships.  For me, the idea of excelling with people who “get the job done” but continuously flex their epeen is a horrible one.  And yet I know that there are plenty of guilds out there that are committed to raiding professionally without such antics.  My next post will be something of a wishlist describing how I’d like to see our guild evolve in that manner, if for nothing more than my own fantasy.

Oh, how embarrassing that the first post I make in quite awhile revolves around this patch.  I’ve read some great articles from other bloggers about all the emblems required for tier 9, the resurgence of old players (trust me, they’ll be bored again soon), and the annoyance of not quite being done with Ulduar.

Our guild sympathizes with them all, and if it wasn’t for some truly creative recruitment from my wife, I’m not sure if we’d still be raiding.  Luckily, we met a slew of new people, downed Mimiron, and managed to pull off a 25 Coliseum victory with shoddy UIs.  For my part, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the changes to Paladin healing, and since I haven’t read too many posts from players in full blown raids, I wanted to give my earnest opinions here.

Healing Alone

One of the newer paladins in the guild said it perfectly in vent halfway through the first Northrend Beasts attempt, “Huh, I’m out of mana.”  Back when I was talking up a storm about these 3.2 changes, I never realized how powerful that 30% change in Illumination would be.  You can read, analyze it, and debate on the forums, but nothing is quite like experiencing it.  Holy Light feels like an expensive spell.  THANK GOD.  I whispered the Disc priest that usually tank heals with me and told him to expect some fairly large changes.  I pulled out Flash of Light, frustrated beyond all belief, and prepared to only cast  Holy Light at the right moments.  He whispered me back afterward and said something like, “I’ve been putting out lots of heals to make it easier, but it’s been really stressful.”  This is kind of the moment in our guild that I’ve been waiting forever to experience.  You see, it’s one thing to be a cheapskate and hold out on casting big heals, but it’s another thing to just not be able to do it without going out of mana.

Anyone I’ve ever tank healed with has said something along the times of “oh how boring” or “the tank never takes enough damage” or “have fun carrying me, Ashe”.  These can be kind of humorous, but also absolutely frustrating whenever the tank ends up dead.  When you see “Prayer of Healing” as the number one healing spell for your other tank healer, it’s hard not to feel like you’ve been typecast as some endless mana sponge that just casts one spell and magically makes the tank not-dead.

And so suddenly everything has changed overnight.  The tank healers are talking more, analyzing deaths on recount, and sticking to their assignment.  It could all be in my head, but that feeling of teamwork that I missed in BC has suddenly returned.  We had plenty of communication while healing Sarth 3D, but for most of Ulduar, it felt like a lonely island where tank healing was really of lesser importance to OMG FLAME JETS FROZEN BLOWS TANTRUM LIGHTNING TENDRILS OBLIVION EVERYONE’S GONNA DIE!

Fatty Bacon

The changes to  Beacon were extremely useful on the first Coliseum battle.  Being able to keep heals on the tank with several bleed stacks during phase one while still healing the tank that has just taunted is amazing.  I’m still getting used to the play style, but so far, it has proven very promising.  At first, I had a great deal of trouble trying to pick targets out of the raid and use the right heal, especially when that heal needed to accomplish far too many things:

1.  Heal the target to safety

2.  Keep the tank going

3.  Not spend too much mana

While a Holy Light would cover two of those, it certainly isn’t efficient and does not make for good practice.  And frequently a Flash of Light would result in a dead tank.  So as the week has moved forward, I’ve learned when it’s safe to heal the raid with Flash or when I need to stay firmly on the tank during a tough phase, debuff, bleed, or poison.  While some people will argue that there’s no reason not to be healing another person since 100% of the heals transfer with Beacon, there are plenty of moments when it just makes more sense to focus properly instead of heal sniping the raid.

Conclusions

Having to make all these decisions revolving around Beacon and mana conservation has made my own healing experience  far more interesting, and I no longer feel 24 angry eyes (imaginary or not) on me when the tank dies to something.  I only have one actual complaint here…

I was lucky to be one of the paladins that didn’t avoid MP5 gear, not like you could in Ulduar.  So I’m sporting plenty of it now, and I even used a (gasp) Mp5 flask on Thursday when we finished Northrend Beasts.   But this is where the sick humor begins.  Take a look at the holy tier 9 stats.  Seems good, plenty of decent stats, nothing too overlooked.  Now examine the tier look-alike pieces that drop in Trial of the Crusader.  That’s right, keep reading.  They’re all PERFECTLY itemized for THE LAST PATCH, overloaded with spellpower, haste, and crit with no Mp5 in sight.  And considering how long it takes to get the authentic tier 9 pieces, these bizarre throwbacks are going to make for some tough gear balancing, especially since it’s hard to ignore the massive amount of intellect on all of them.

I guess I’ll just sit back and enjoy my pseudo-robe for the moment now that my “pally training bra” has finally disappeared.  =)

I really should say something about the upcoming changes to Holy Paladins, though I fear I will just be regurgitating things we already know.  I tend to be fairly benign about class changes.  They are exciting to read, but I don’t find myself raging over them.  To be honest, I’m more disappointed about potential changes to the tiered badge system than I am about any mana regen nerfs.  In any case, here are my thoughts, and I won’t say I told you so about the Mp5.

Beacon of Light will count overhealing:

This is obviously the change that could alter our entire play style; however, much like Amber (our favorite pally-gone-disc-maybe-holy-priest), my worries are firmly centered around whether we can afford to cast anything other than Holy Light on the raid.  That is to say, if the tank is threatened to die in two hits, Beacon’s transference of overheals doesn’t mean much if we’re busy shooting out a Holy Shock on a raid member.

If you look at my last post, you can tell that I’ve been trying to find ways to stop chain casting Holy Light.  As soon as I see any sizable damage reduction cooldown on the tank, I take that moment to do something different.  That is assuming the situation isn’t an emergency where they are taking more damage than normal.  I’ve also been more actively using Hand of Sacrifice.  It’s not completely frightening to use now that it cancels after a certain percentage of your own health.  For that reason, it’s also not entirely useful, but it does the job.  Having it off the GCD would really make it a more interesting spell.  But I digress!

I am personally tired of being punished for taking a single GCD to cast Sacred Shield or refresh a Judgement.  Sometimes, it’s not even possible to use Holy Shock because the RNG of avoidance has finally decided that your tank will be hit twice in a row for 25K health.  I’m gonna be honest here, and I apologize if it sounds egotistical.  Sometimes, when another tank-healer dies, I don’t even notice the difference.  We usually never have more than two people on the tank, though we do have very attentive druids and priests that toss the tank lots of hots in their spare time or keep a Guardian Spirit ready for use.  I owe them alot, but at the same time, I also feel like I’m solo-healing.  That is not to say that the other healer is not doing their job.  Perhaps it’s the absolute absurdity behind 15K Holy Light crits every few seconds for the entire battle that makes them think, “What’s the point?”

We have a great Disc/Shadow priest that usually tank heals with me.  He’s the only tank-healer that really makes me feel comfortable when I’m working with him, but he still spends alot of his time doing Prayer of Healing.  And I wonder, who could blame him?  The problem is that if anything adverse happens to me at all, we run the possibility of tank death.  And it’s been happening more and more lately.  All I can think is….my god, what could I have done?  It makes me furious, not at him, but at myself and the entire lunacy of tank healing as a Holy Paladin.  I think perhaps we need to get away from these massive Holy Light dumps every couple seconds, let other tank-healers spend more mana so that they feel interested on focusing their assignment.  Once we do that, perhaps there will be time for a spare GCD and room for Beacon to transfer more than just Holy Light.

Illumination Nerf:

Ha!  Remember back when people used to complain that pallys needed to go back to 80% mana return on Illumination instead of 60%?  The recent change to 30% should really be making those people stir crazy.  Surprisingly, I already Mp5 on every piece of my gear, not counting weapons, shields, and trinkets.  I kid you not! In Ulduar, there isn’t much getting around it, and I’m not one of those elitist pallys that’s going to cry about taking elemental shaman gear or stay in T7 out of spite.  You simply can’t do that, especially when Blizzard drops all sorts of foreboding messages about it.  In any case, I doubt the 25% extra Mp5 will be really noticeable, but it’s nice to know it’s there.  As I said already, if this stops the constant Holy Light chain casting, then let it happen.  If the tank cannot be kept alive, then perhaps not everyone healing the tank is making full use of their time.

Sacred Shield allows Flash of Light to place a HoT:

This one really seems interesting, but I have to say that I’m on the same wavelength as those who are arguing that it should stack to make the heal more viable.  I’m sure the danger is in making it so appealing that pallys do nothing but Flash of Light, but there is good reason to worry that this healing over time spell will be sadly overshadowed.  If you’re a holy paladin and you’ve tested your two piece tier 8 bonus, then you’ll know exactly what I mean.  Yes, it ticks for a massive 300-something health about three times and fades.  Free healing is free healing, but sheesh…throw us a bone.

In any case, I still like the idea of this Flash of Light effect on Sacred Shield beacause it will give me something to track.  I want to have this healing over time up the entire fight on the tank.  It gives me a nice little bar to watch, so I’m eager to try it out.  I do not, however, think that it serves as any kind of viable damage buffer, at least not in its current form.

Final Thoughts:

We needed change.  Some people wanted to be the one-and-only MT healer, chain casting Holy Light until eternity.  For me, regardless of nerfs, there is much to experiment with and appreciate.  I look forward to testing!

Ouch, I haven’t posted anything in nearly a month.  Rather than dwell on the various reasons, I feel a bit inspired to talk about something that is very centric to tank healing. While raids tend to see lots of Disc Priests and Holy Paladins take up this assignment, there’s no good reason why any healer (tank or raid) cannot benefit from knowing more about their tank’s cooldowns.

Of course, there are tons of people that simply macro a raid warning when they use things like Barkskin, Icebound Fortitude, Divine Protection, and Shield Wall.  While informative, this can also become slightly annoying, especially considering the frequency at which these skills can now be used.  Other tanks simply announce their use of these skills over Vent or some form of voice communication.  Again, I’ll argue that this has become less likely when we consider the rate at which these things are now used.  Now, if you can pick out a shield wall icon from twenty-something other buffs, procs, and flashing icons using either the default interface, X-Perl, or another system, then you have my sincere admiration.  For the rest of us, there just isn’t enough time or space on the screen to list and sort through all that garbage.  90% of what a healer  sees under a tank’s character portrait is absolutely worthless.   So, what is a healer to do?  And as a healer, why should you care?

Mana -Saving Opportunities

While the use of something like Shield Wall or Last Stand once implied an emergency situation, the bulk of modern usage can be attributed to several other circumstances.  We see tanks use them during difficult swaps, repositioning, overly high incoming damage, and even just as good practice when everything is going according to plan.  As a healer, we want to take advantage of these moments.  If a Death Knight pops Vampiric Blood, we suddenly have a moment to keep him afloat with smaller and cheaper spells due to the increased healing it provides.  If a Druid pops Barksin, we can ease off the button mashing slightly.  Wait a couple seconds between your big casts, and let that glorious damage reduction do its work.  This won’t always be the case, especially if these are actually being used in an emergency situation; however, a couple big heals is usually enough to fill the tank up long before the duration of the buff has expired.

If you’re a paladin healer, than you realize how tough it can be to throw in a judgment or refresh Sacred Shield.  Even though avoidance will typically rule in your favor, resulting in a dodge or parry during that GCD, there is ALWAYS a moment when the tank gets thrashed twice in quick succession for 25K damage.  In fact, this moment occurs more often than I would like.  With the massive raid-wide damage in Ulduar, I’m willing to bet most guilds are using only two healers on one tank.  That missed GCD can be horribly painful with that setup.

Cooldown-Saving Opportunities

Any healer with a host of their own cooldowns will also find comfort in knowing when a priest has thrown Guardian Spirit on the tank.  Whether that means you can save your own Lay on Hands, Guardian Spirit, Pain Suppression, or Blessing of Sacrifice will depend on the situation, but remaining oblivious is certainly not a viable option.  If you’re a raid healing priest, why not set your focus to a tank and shoot off a Guardian Spirit in a bad spot if nobody else has come to the rescue?

Remembering back to Sarth 3D, it would have been nice to be notified after our Death Knight tank had used up his important cooldowns.  It would have saved alot of stress over Vent.  Sometimes waiting for a response just isn’t fast enough.  Did the other healer in the cooldown rotation end up in the wrong place?  Do I need to cover for them?  Has somebody else already done the job in their place?   All of those questions should have immediate answers on your own screen.  So, how to do it?

Using Power Auras

Holy Dueg has a nice article about using this mod to a healer’s advantage.  When I originally started using it, I was doing it for DPS purposes.  I did not expect it to do what I wanted for healing, so I ended up banging my head against Quartz, Class Timer, and a few other mods before I finally realized how simple things could have been.

Seriously, it couldn’t be more simple. Download the mod, create a buff aura with the name of the cooldown, and then select it to use your focus or target.  That’s it!  The first time I did this, I had to choose a generic icon to appear over my head, but like some demented Pokemon game, the icons would fill in during the course of the night as tanks used them.   I could then select “Use Own Texture” to get the proper icon to display over my head.  Let’s just hope I wasn’t intentionally creating those situations.  I still need Divine Protection and Guardian Spirit…[mumbles something about "accidentally" getting locked out on Ignis tomorrow night].

Here’s a fun couple of pictures to illustrate setup and usage.  It’s all about aesthetics, and you certainly don’t need to setup the aura to be icons like myself.  I might consider adding a timer to these as well in the future.  Also, it’s okay to admit how gorgeous I am in these shots.  No, really.

1.  Millions of Buffs!  Ewww! And a conversation about over-healing that may result in deforestation of the guild. =P

2.  A short break in Ironforge to configure addons

3.  Lots of options

4.  Success!  It actually does work in raids, but I’m only using the “Test” feature in this screenshot.