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[Bisnic]

My guild is probably going to start raiding soon, which raid is the easiest for the first try?

 

[Alex]

Conclave (Throne of the Four Winds) or Magmaw (Blackwing Descent), IMO.

 

[scoobs]

My guild is probably going to start raiding soon, which raid is the easiest for the first try?

Magmaw in BWD followed by omnitron which is also in BWD. Conclave of the winds is probably next. Also halfus wyrmbreaker is super easy.

 

[J-Rzez]

I believe the developers more than I believe you because you have a history of stating things which you're basing on speculation as being based on fact.

There's evidence to support that their PvE damage was still very high; logs I've read showed Unholy still on top of the DPS charts, and I would also base that on personal experience and talking to other non-biased players. They were still doing a a lot more damage than comparable hybrid classes because Dreadblade was more of a compensation than a lot of people assumed it was.

Lol, right. Maybe to you but I've been right far more than wrong.

Fact is, with BiS, reforging, gemming, enchanting, the high end raiders found a way to get around the nerfs. Now this doesn't happen for people without BiS though Blizzard saw this, then when ESPECIALLY combined with the flood of tears from the PVP'ers about Death's Advance they went overboard, then finally nerfed DA to boot to finish off DK's for the next few months until they get around to fixing them. I'm not sure you're aware how things happened:
Patch Nerfs
Hot-fix nerfs
DA nerf shortly-shortly after.

My DPS got smashed, period. Plus now I hit laughably in PVP, and DK's are specing Blood because it hits harder than both frost/unholy along with having survivability to boot. That's pretty damning right there.

And you're wrong with "comparable" hybrids, because Spriests and Wars especially after the final nerfs wiped the floor with DK's. A war in my guild with 318 greens in slots basically did only 1k less DPS than I did in a heroic on a boss, things were broken. Now I have to scramble around and redo all my gear because blizzard won't fix this for months.

I think the idea of attunements is really cool, they're just difficult to balance. Too long, complex, or difficult and they make getting people into a raid a nightmare and they screw up the instance runs necessary for the attunement. Too short and it's a bit like... why bother?

The biggest problem with attunements, and I think the main reason Blizzard has stopped doing them, is they make it much harder to sub random people in when you're one short.

Anyway, I love that there are little short feeder quests to all the Cata 5-mans to at least tell you why you're doing them and I wish there were an equivalent for the raids. Given the way Blizz does things now, maybe instead of actually locking you out of an instance completely if you aren't attuned, you should just permanently get some useful buff while you're in that instance if you're attuned -- that would give progression raiders a very good reason to attune to every raid but still let more casual guilds sub someone in a pinch.

Well, how it ended up with Kara was you just needed someone with a key to let you in, lol. That kinda works at least. Perhaps give people with the attunement buffs, shortcuts, etc. Kara's wasn't really that bad. They can add to the lore with it, which many are crying about these days the lack of.

 

[Dexa]

As long as the game is sharing PvP and PvE at the same time, it's impossible to balance the game.

true - just do it the guild wars way. separate the abilities.

 

[TheExodu5]

Leveling a DK tank right now. How viable are they compared to the rest of the tanks, end game? My guild only uses a warrior and pally tank, so I don't have much to go on.

edit: I guess I mean: how do they stack up. I'm sure they're viable.

 

[Scrow]

Leveling a DK tank right now. How viable are they compared to the rest of the tanks, end game? My guild only uses a warrior and pally tank, so I don't have much to go on.

edit: I guess I mean: how do they stack up. I'm sure they're viable.

people in my guild have said they're OP as tanks

 

[AceBandage]

people in my guild have said they're OP as tanks

Really depends on the player and the gear.
Personally, I've always found Warriors and Paladins better (from a healer standpoint they take less damage).

 

[cuevas. PhD.]

Yeah dks are probably the worst to heal.

 

[Sax Russel]

Took my rogue into MC for the first time last night for some soloing. Got a binding off Geddon. Starting a third TF, woo XD

 

[Jazzy Network]

Haha I just realized the Valentine's day bosses are references from The Rock.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Right. I mean, this is the problem that affects literally every game company that produces a semi-competitive, metagame-oriented game with rolling content additions and lots of moving parts: the 0.1% population that you can test with internally or in beta/PTR will never find the things that 100% of the population in live do. To pick a seemingly very different example, Wizards of the Coast have this problem constantly with Magic: the Gathering -- they just can't catch some of the weird obscure interactions that hundreds of thousands of real-world players will inevitably find just by force of numbers.

There are usually threads on the PTRs and big-time guilds' forums detailing how these will shake out and get broken. They push the patch thru anyways (lack of ideas? Time? Care?)

(Though, again, I think attunements for raids are probably gone for good.)

Definately. I think they use the iLevel to shake stuff out more now in its place. Even my favored deep attunement work-around method (a scroll that drops off end boss of previous raids) wouldn't matter much now with secondary specs, homogenization, and any raid guild worth their salt has +10% guildbank looting guild achievements.

 

[AceBandage]

I remember getting the Onyxia Attunement.
Took me like two months...

 

[Nolimit_SS]

DK tanks are ok but have just been nerfed and are bit more complicated to play, mainly because they are rare and there's not enough information(look at EJ topic) about a lot of things. Plus there isn't consensus on stats for example, and this and that, if you wanna be good end game tank it might be bit more complicated.

Good website(and forum mainly) http://pwnwear.com/ for DK tanks.



Also 3/12, currently #2 guild on realm and #1 10 man, hopefully we kill more tomorrow and change that some more

 

[Angry Grimace]

Lol, right. Maybe to you but I've been right far more than wrong.

Fact is, with BiS, reforging, gemming, enchanting, the high end raiders found a way to get around the nerfs. Now this doesn't happen for people without BiS though Blizzard saw this, then when ESPECIALLY combined with the flood of tears from the PVP'ers about Death's Advance they went overboard, then finally nerfed DA to boot to finish off DK's for the next few months until they get around to fixing them. I'm not sure you're aware how things happened:
Patch Nerfs
Hot-fix nerfs
DA nerf shortly-shortly after.

My DPS got smashed, period. Plus now I hit laughably in PVP, and DK's are specing Blood because it hits harder than both frost/unholy along with having survivability to boot. That's pretty damning right there.

And you're wrong with "comparable" hybrids, because Spriests and Wars especially after the final nerfs wiped the floor with DK's. A war in my guild with 318 greens in slots basically did only 1k less DPS than I did in a heroic on a boss, things were broken. Now I have to scramble around and redo all my gear because blizzard won't fix this for months.




Well, how it ended up with Kara was you just needed someone with a key to let you in, lol. That kinda works at least. Perhaps give people with the attunement buffs, shortcuts, etc. Kara's wasn't really that bad. They can add to the lore with it, which many are crying about these days the lack of.

You're just admitting your statement was completely speculative, throwing out another completely speculative statement (that the evidence only applies to BiS raiders) and then claiming your original point is true because, paradoxically, you're always right (which you aren't).

 

[Fantasy Final]

Yeah dks are probably the worst to heal.

Because tanking rely on self healing and alot of people just dont know it. It's easy to suck if you don't know what your doing. But on the other hand, holding aggro is really easy.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Because tanking rely on self healing and alot of people just dont know it. It's easy to suck if you don't know what your doing. But on the other hand, holding aggro is really easy.

The "problem" with DKs was that in 4.0.3 you had to stack EITHER mastery or avoidance. You couldn't do both because of a funny interaction between them that no longer exists due to blood shields no longer overwriting previous ones.

 

[Thoraxes]

The "problem" with DKs was that in 4.0.3 you had to stack EITHER mastery or avoidance. You couldn't do both because of a funny interaction between them that no longer exists due to blood shields no longer overwriting previous ones.

I'm not too sure though how they are now.
Our DK tank is doing just fine currently, and it's rare that he ever dies (unless a DPS messes up an encounter mechanic though).

 

[PatzCU]

So is the current consensus that Unholy is better than Frost for DK right now? Haven't played mine since Wrath and was planning to do the 80-85 leveling soon. I was going to try out Frost for leveling, but if Unholy is better I may just stick with that.

 

[cubicle47b]

Wiped at 30K on heroic Chimaeron. So painful.

 

[scoobs]

So is the current consensus that Unholy is better than Frost for DK right now? Haven't played mine since Wrath and was planning to do the 80-85 leveling soon. I was going to try out Frost for leveling, but if Unholy is better I may just stick with that.

Unholy is 1-2k more dps than frost. So if you're min-maxing... go with Unholy.

 

[PatzCU]

Unholy is 1-2k more dps than frost. So if you're min-maxing... go with Unholy.

Nope I'm not. I'll give Frost a whirl. I played Unholy in Wrath and the only thing I enjoyed about it was using pestilence to spread massive amounts of dots everywhere. Otherwise it seemed like a pretty boring spec.

 

[Cyrillus]

Nope I'm not. I'll give Frost a whirl. I played Unholy in Wrath and the only thing I enjoyed about it was using pestilence to spread massive amounts of dots everywhere. Otherwise it seemed like a pretty boring spec.

Just to clarify: Unholy is still top dps for raids. However, if you're leveling 80-85, 2h Frost is your best bet hands down.

 

[bunbun777]

Been playing again for a little over a month now, I have a shadowpriest with 349
avi. Found a nice guild that is raiding and I got slated in their second group so I get to take down Magmaw on Tuesday. Hope I get Incineratus.

Bunbuniatha on Madoran.

 

[J-Rzez]

you're always right (which you aren't).

Maybe to you but I've been right far more than wrong

Meaning, I've been wrong in the past, but it's not the case here.

You want hard numbers, I just got done raiding tonight, with two new upgrades, and I've literally dropped 5-8k per boss fight. The only fight I topped the meters on is Cho'gal, and that's because I just tunnel him the whole time except for the adds on the final phase. My DC's and Ghoul hit far-far weaker than before, my shadow damage is still mediocre based off of dots and ScS shadow hit. This is optimally reforged, and luckily I had the mace in my bags with stats that suits the current build. They went too damn far with the nerfs, period.

And look back at all the posts when DK's were getting ragged on due to DA. Saying you can't peel them, and they're doing too much dmg. Thus, here comes a dmg nerf, and then after even more whining still because you couldn't peel a DK no matter what, here comes the DA nerf. Those are facts. But you can keep thinking whatever you want. That's how it is.

Blizzard is horrible at balancing. They rarely put a "slight" nerf on things. More often than not they nerf something to the ground or even break it, then fix it slowly over the months. It's poor balancing on their part, but this is what happens when your best team isn't on your bread and butter anymore.

 

[J-Rzez]

Nope I'm not. I'll give Frost a whirl. I played Unholy in Wrath and the only thing I enjoyed about it was using pestilence to spread massive amounts of dots everywhere. Otherwise it seemed like a pretty boring spec.

It's easily the most fun now, especially if you like control and "faster pace" due to being in unholy presence the whole time. Use your pet to control (gnaw, or putting it on an add and don't touch said mob), since it can't hold aggro like it did at one point where when you'd finally pull aggro, the mob hits you once and it dies.

The major glyph they added makes your DS while in Unholy pres heal you for 15% of your max health no matter what. I'm not sure what level you get it at as I'm at end game, but it's a great glyph. It proved it's worth it in raids now as well, especially on Mr. Healing is fun boss himself, getting your health above insta-gib range.

 

[Alex]

Unholy is still parsing towards the top of the pack, it's in a really good position assuming no more nerfs come. So in this case, I think crying about being broken is a little extreme.

Their balancing methods have become very stupid, but they're doing a decent job with numbers. I mostly just question the roller coaster of shit we have to go through now, like stat weights changing day to day, trinkets, weapons, etc, entire gear shifts. =/

 

[J-Rzez]

Unholy is still topping towards the top of the pack, so I think crying about being broken in this situation is a little extreme.

Once again, it maybe for people with higher than 359 ilvl, which I sit at. And I always topped the meters, I was well within range of the "top dps dks" when the game launched, but now I'm out-geared by probably all of them on the meters at this point. I don't have BiS pre-hardmodes, let alone BiS. So I don't have the stats to mess with like people on EJ talk about yet. I just took a huge DPS hit, that's all I can say by especially tonights logs that I checked out closely.

And yes, when they do the nerfs that require a ton of regemming, reforging, or different pieces of gear all together, it's annoying as hell.

 

[C.Dark.DN]

Unholy is still parsing towards the top of the pack, it's in a really good position assuming no more nerfs come. So in this case, I think crying about being broken is a little extreme.

Their balancing methods have become very stupid, but they're doing a decent job with numbers. I mostly just question the roller coaster of shit we have to go through now, like stat weights changing day to day, trinkets, weapons, etc, entire gear shifts. =/

What website do you use? I don't like world of logs' navigation.

 

[etiolate]

Tried Ele again out of boredom.

Still shit.

Thunderstorm is probably the lamest skill to get by choosing a talent specialization. A one time aoe that has a broken KB.

Mana problems all over again after having this issue fixed in Wrath.

Boring damage levels.

Most of your main damage being hardly usable in PVP. You lavaburst(weak weak burst) and then get one CL or LBolt off if you're lucky. No fulmination ever.

Easily locked down.

Weak heals

No mobility

Totem juggling for weak survival skills

Your one CC has a long CD

 

[cuevas. PhD.]

What website do you use? I don't like world of logs' navigation.

here you go: http://stateofdps.com/

 

[J-Rzez]

here you go: http://stateofdps.com/

These are generally nice summaries, they pull data from WoL, but usually it's a couple days or so behind. I'll have to check it out in a few days.

 

[C.Dark.DN]

here you go: http://stateofdps.com/

I've been using it, but I just now found the better search feature. Was wanting guild, server and spec and thar she blows.

 

[PatzCU]

It's easily the most fun now, especially if you like control and "faster pace" due to being in unholy presence the whole time. Use your pet to control (gnaw, or putting it on an add and don't touch said mob), since it can't hold aggro like it did at one point where when you'd finally pull aggro, the mob hits you once and it dies.

The major glyph they added makes your DS while in Unholy pres heal you for 15% of your max health no matter what. I'm not sure what level you get it at as I'm at end game, but it's a great glyph. It proved it's worth it in raids now as well, especially on Mr. Healing is fun boss himself, getting your health above insta-gib range.

DK is such a different class from most others that it took a bit of brainstorming to figure out what I had to do again. Essentially, I want to icy touch+plague strike to get my dots up. then use the remaining runes with respective strikes and dump runic power with the spec's runic power dump of choice? Rinse and repeat

Of course, this never happens when you level because mobs just die after your 3rd or 4th rune.

 

[cuevas. PhD.]

http://www.wowmeteronline.com is the other major one.


DISC PRIESTS ARE SO BROKE ATM ITS NOT EVEN FUNNY LOLOLOL, damn pvp and pve balance!

 

[Angry Grimace]

Meaning, I've been wrong in the past, but it's not the case here.

You want hard numbers, I just got done raiding tonight, with two new upgrades, and I've literally dropped 5-8k per boss fight. The only fight I topped the meters on is Cho'gal, and that's because I just tunnel him the whole time except for the adds on the final phase. My DC's and Ghoul hit far-far weaker than before, my shadow damage is still mediocre based off of dots and ScS shadow hit. This is optimally reforged, and luckily I had the mace in my bags with stats that suits the current build. They went too damn far with the nerfs, period.

And look back at all the posts when DK's were getting ragged on due to DA. Saying you can't peel them, and they're doing too much dmg. Thus, here comes a dmg nerf, and then after even more whining still because you couldn't peel a DK no matter what, here comes the DA nerf. Those are facts. But you can keep thinking whatever you want. That's how it is.

Blizzard is horrible at balancing. They rarely put a "slight" nerf on things. More often than not they nerf something to the ground or even break it, then fix it slowly over the months. It's poor balancing on their part, but this is what happens when your best team isn't on your bread and butter anymore.

This of course is entirely premised on the theory that Unholy DK SHOULD be overpowered vis a vis every other class solely because you play them. Blizzard doesn't balance by bringing other classes to the top because that's the worst idea ever. You just keep overreacting about how your class is "broken" based on your personal experience with your DPS being lower, which proves nothing about the class as a whole or how it relates to its viability. There's simply no evidence that the nerfs weren't deserved nor that they overreached their target (probably because you don't actually have a concept of what the target is other than you want your DPS to be as high as possible).

The mere fact that you can post in intelligible English doesn't mean your theories are logical or have any foundation. You don't even have any real evidence that Blizzard's "best team" is doing anything, you intentionally failed to identify any of these phantom A team members, or even who is working on the game right now.

You're just literally making things up, appending the word "fact" to the end of them and then saying "Blizzard sucks."

 

[wonderdung]

My guild is probably going to start raiding soon, which raid is the easiest for the first try?

For the most part the order doesn't matter. None of the fights are too hard on regular unless you have a really awful raid makeup or something. Magmaw, Halfus, and Omnitron are all very easy. Ascendent Council, Cho'gall, and Nefarian are the hardest in that order.

I don't really know where Al'Akir stands difficulty-wise... somewhere between Cho'gall and Nef I guess. I'm still not convinced that is a real instance.

Edit: One thing that's nice about this raid tier is you kind of have to know what you're doing. When I say "easy" I mean that they become trivial once everyone in the raid group understands what they're doing.

 

[Johnlenham]

So Ive picked up the ten day trail to see if im still into WoW after going travelling (so I never touched Cata)
What should I play?
Ive got a 80 Hunter and DK (tank)
or Should I just restart as something totally different? maybe go to Horde side (but all my stuff and gold etc )

 

[Naeblish]

Personally, i recommend playing the cataclysm new zones with one of your 80's. You could start a new character and enjoy the new Azeroth, the quest flow is much better, it's fun but it's also nothing special. And also, Outland is okay because you can rush through (and have a flying mount at 60), but Northrend is a boring ass grind if you have done it before.

I lvled a Worgen Rogue to lvl 71, but had more fun in the new zones on my 80 DK. 85 now, seen all the dungeons and canceled my subscription. For some reason i always quit like a week after hitting max lvl.

 

[borghe]

gave a shot on healing with my shaman last night..............

overall it went well, but man.... TOTALLY god damn stressful. I mean with DPS, if you fuck up it usually only guarantees your death with a slight chance of a wipe. With healing, if you fuck up... guaranteed wipe.

So I haven't healed (both in general and with this guy) since MC and BWL, and mind you that was healing pre-2.0, with a shaman, and mainly raid healer, not tank healer or anything. so it was basically playing whack-a-mole on health bars to keep people topped off with healing wave.

now... man... life is so much more fucking complicated. Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave, Healing Surge, Chain Heal, Riptide. keeping totems placed, keeping earth shield up... uggghh.

So anyway, I get into a UK group last night... see a dude dead at the stairs.. ok, this looks like a wipe. let's just see where it's going. first mobs on stairs are dead, but first real pack is still alive. WTF? So the party leader is bitching at the tank about something. Tank goes in, pulls first pack and dies. I mean I can't keep up with him AT ALL. So I am thinking "yeah, I am not ready for this.. going to leave........" and the party leader starts bitching at the tank some more. So the party leader (fury warrior) says "I'll tank and show you how it's fucking done idiot" and goes and pulls the same pack.. not a single problem keeping up on healing him. get to the pack right before the first boss and the original tank pulls the packs again and dies, again I'm not able to keep up on him. So while in spirit form a vote goes through to kick the stupid tank, it passes, I see the other guy queues as dps or tank, he ends up as tank.. make it through the rest of the packs, first boss, second boss, third boss... no problems. part way through to the final boss he asks me "throt, why are you healing not as resto?" So I say "I am resto." and he responds "why aren't you using earth shield?" to which I respond by throwing an earth shield on the tank and say "sorry. this is my first time healing since shelving this guy in 2006." at this point expecting to be kicked. instead a bunch in the group say "wow. great first time healing man. seriously, good job." SO FREAKING SWEET! So we get to the last boss and what happens? a DPS dies........... not sure if it was my fault or his fault. Anyway, we didn't wipe, still took the boss down one dps short for the entire fight. ended up getting a caster dagger and like one other piece of gear out of it.

still, very stressful knowing that you are responsible for people not dying. once I get more comfortable with it I will be so much happier. scariest moment came down when I swear the tank's health bar was empty. he couldn't have had more than like 5 HP....... I though for sure it was a wipe but from somewhere my heal took him back to 33% and I could get a riptide and a chain heal off on him. Pretty exciting actually. Seriously, this was the down time I needed from DPS burnout.

so basically I use healing wave to keep people topped off, riptide on tank (or if needed on a dps who has taken a bit too much) and follow up with chain heal to top everyone off, and healing surge for a pretty deep heal, and Nature's Swiftness plus Greater Healing Wave for the "ooh shit he's going to die" moments. right?

 

[No45]

Half way through 83 now - this is going to be the first time I've EVER had to worry about gearing up a character (I've played a lot, but only ever hit the level cap in the right expansion once before now... and immediately quit playing!).

I'm getting to the point where I'm petrified of picking the wrong quest rewards - and the uncertainty about the value of crit (Fire Mage) really isn't helping things! >_<

I assume that there aren't any quest rewards before Twilight Highlands that I should expect to keep for long? I don't really expect to go beyond Heroics, and perhaps the odd random raid with my guild.

I've been through both Hyjal and Vash (they both go on for too long) and I landed in Deepholm last thing last night before logging. Going to go through all five zones I think to get as much rep as I can before starting with normal dungeons at 85 (trying to work out what dungeons I can use tabards with - anyone know if this list is accurate?).

 

[borghe]

honestly, quest rewards are worthless. well, not worthless, but the majority of your gear will come from rep rewards (333 at honored and 346 at revered) and running instances until you are sick of them (333 for regular 85s and 346 for heroics)

and playing as a fire mage, crit is sort of low right now. In theory crit is a big deal but because ignite is so buggy right now reforging for crit is much less served than reforging for haste.

basically get your gear at 346 with hit and int being your desired stats. gem and enchant for int, reforge for hit to the hit cap (1742) and reforge for haste after that. use rawr, especially now that it's Silverlight based. will tell you how to best gem/enchant/reforge your gear and give you your best upgrades.

 

[Bisnic]

long resto shaman post

I've recently start healing again again with my resto shaman(havent done so until super easy wotlk heroics in T10), with lvl 85 regs. Man, i feel like my heals dont heal as much as before. Before that, i could cast Healing Surge and Chain heal and top everyone up no problem, now it seems Chain heal barely heal. :lol It didnt help that my first group for Cata healing was one where the tank didnt bother to mark for CC or anything. Idiot.


But yeah, keep earth shield on the tank at all time, if you see only 1 or 2 stacks are left, you can renew it. Remember that after casting Riptide, you get a buff where your next heals cast faster. Since Healing Wave is kind of a slow cast, i like using Riptide right before it. Dont bother with Chain Heal on ranged if they're spread out. It's decent if your melee dps is taking damage at the same time as your tank though. I keep Healing Surge for those times that Healing Wave isn't enough, and a Greater Healing Wave isnt worth it. Oh yeah, dont forget to watch your Water Shield, 3 stacks can be gone pretty fast sometimes. Also, learn to dispel curses and magic debuffs fast, i often see healers ignoring those or being too slow to dispel the real dangerous ones.

At 81, you'll get Unleash Elements which is pretty good too, small heal and a healing bonus for your next direct heal. And Healing Rain at 83 is awesome(big healing circle on the ground). And at 85, you get something that will allow you to cast heals while moving, it was also awesome for the last boss of Lost city of Tolvir when he throw you in the air lol.

 

[Fularu]

snip

Dude, stop wasting your time with him. He lives to hate, nothing more.

Almost every single one of his posts has some form of "Blizzard sucks" in it.

 

[PillowKnight]

gave a shot on healing with my shaman last night..............

overall it went well, but man.... TOTALLY god damn stressful. I mean with DPS, if you fuck up it usually only guarantees your death with a slight chance of a wipe. With healing, if you fuck up... guaranteed wipe.

So I haven't healed (both in general and with this guy) since MC and BWL, and mind you that was healing pre-2.0, with a shaman, and mainly raid healer, not tank healer or anything. so it was basically playing whack-a-mole on health bars to keep people topped off with healing wave.

now... man... life is so much more fucking complicated. Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave, Healing Surge, Chain Heal, Riptide. keeping totems placed, keeping earth shield up... uggghh.

So anyway, I get into a UK group last night... see a dude dead at the stairs.. ok, this looks like a wipe. let's just see where it's going. first mobs on stairs are dead, but first real pack is still alive. WTF? So the party leader is bitching at the tank about something. Tank goes in, pulls first pack and dies. I mean I can't keep up with him AT ALL. So I am thinking "yeah, I am not ready for this.. going to leave........" and the party leader starts bitching at the tank some more. So the party leader (fury warrior) says "I'll tank and show you how it's fucking done idiot" and goes and pulls the same pack.. not a single problem keeping up on healing him. get to the pack right before the first boss and the original tank pulls the packs again and dies, again I'm not able to keep up on him. So while in spirit form a vote goes through to kick the stupid tank, it passes, I see the other guy queues as dps or tank, he ends up as tank.. make it through the rest of the packs, first boss, second boss, third boss... no problems. part way through to the final boss he asks me "throt, why are you healing not as resto?" So I say "I am resto." and he responds "why aren't you using earth shield?" to which I respond by throwing an earth shield on the tank and say "sorry. this is my first time healing since shelving this guy in 2006." at this point expecting to be kicked. instead a bunch in the group say "wow. great first time healing man. seriously, good job." SO FREAKING SWEET! So we get to the last boss and what happens? a DPS dies........... not sure if it was my fault or his fault. Anyway, we didn't wipe, still took the boss down one dps short for the entire fight. ended up getting a caster dagger and like one other piece of gear out of it.

still, very stressful knowing that you are responsible for people not dying. once I get more comfortable with it I will be so much happier. scariest moment came down when I swear the tank's health bar was empty. he couldn't have had more than like 5 HP....... I though for sure it was a wipe but from somewhere my heal took him back to 33% and I could get a riptide and a chain heal off on him. Pretty exciting actually. Seriously, this was the down time I needed from DPS burnout.

so basically I use healing wave to keep people topped off, riptide on tank (or if needed on a dps who has taken a bit too much) and follow up with chain heal to top everyone off, and healing surge for a pretty deep heal, and Nature's Swiftness plus Greater Healing Wave for the "ooh shit he's going to die" moments. right?

Most of the time a DPS dying is not your fault, often times a tank dying is not your fault. Cata heroics have a ton of one hit kills and a bunch of periodic abilities that cant be healed through. Good groups make healing effortless, bad groups make healing almost impossible.

You've essentially got shaman healing down except for a few things. Riptide-->Unleash Life--> Healing surge is a really good and big heal and it doesn't suffer from the long CD of ancestral swiftness. Healing rain is in general more efficient than chain heal; each tick of healing rain has a chance to proc earthliving heal, you'll want to use healing rain first unless under special circumstances. Oh, and don't underestimate healing stream totem, it's cheap super efficient healing.

 

[Bisnic]

. Oh, and don't underestimate healing stream totem, it's cheap super efficient healing.

I didn't dare to use healing stream totem yet, even with the major glyph. Mana spring totem is hard to ignore, and i don't really know which other class can give the same buff.

 

[borghe]

heh, a bunch of the things (UL, HR, etc) I'm not high enough for yet. only 72. But I appreciate the tips none the less.

yeah, I'm getting that healing is going to require not just skill but, like DPS, familiarity with the encounter. knowing when the AOE damage is incoming, or when the big near-death hit is coming to the tank. fortunately I mostly remember the LK dungeons... and know the cata ones like the back of my hand... of course I know both as dps, so I am familiar with the basic mechanics and especially AOE damage to heal through, etc. just have never EVER had to watch tank health before (obviously), so not sure where the big hits come through on the bosses, etc. Like in UK last night tank healing the first phase of Ingvar was pretty much near trivial, but when the second phase started (where as DPS you BL and just burn) I wasn't prepared for exactly how fast the tank's health was going to drop. It was a miracle he didn't die. like literally, a miracle. At one point his healthbar was empty (I use raid frames for party on this guy), as in actually empty as I was casting HS and I thought "god damn it........." and by a miracle HS took him to about 35% and I was like "RTRTRTRTRTRTRT!!!!!!!!" Although I always followed up RT with CH to consume the HOT but from what I'm reading around (including here) it's much smarter to follow up RT with HW (or even GHW for a deep heal with the lowered casting time)

queue time (for LK regular of course) was like 5 minutes though. Can't say I hated that.

I didn't dare to use healing stream totem yet, even with the major glyph. Mana spring totem is hard to ignore, and i don't really know which other class can give the same buff.

thing is, as a caster dps, mana spring really means nothing to me because I already have to manage my mana assuming that, like you are saying, a shaman isn't in the group. so while mana spring gives me a little bit of extra mana, my max-DPS rotation is already built around not having it so having more mana means nothing to me. healing stream on the other hand directly makes YOUR (and now my) job easier, at least by a little bit. in most cases I see healing stream being way more useful than mana spring for the whole of the party. just my 2¢.

 

[cuevas. PhD.]

i don't really know which other class can give the same buff.

Paladins and Warlocks.

 

[Entropia]

I didn't dare to use healing stream totem yet, even with the major glyph. Mana spring totem is hard to ignore, and i don't really know which other class can give the same buff.

Mana Spring returns a pitiful amount of mana vs. the amount that your party is healed for.

My healing stream ticks for ~1450 to each party member. Mana Spring returns 326 mana every 5 seconds. That's not even enough to cast a spell. Healing Stream heals everyone to about 1 cast of Healing Wave in that time.

Having Healing Stream glyphed is inconsequential. Use it.

 

[Bisnic]

thing is, as a caster dps, mana spring really means nothing to me because I already have to manage my mana assuming that, like you are saying, a shaman isn't in the group. so while mana spring gives me a little bit of extra mana, my max-DPS rotation is already built around not having it so having more mana means nothing to me. healing stream on the other hand directly makes YOUR (and now my) job easier, at least by a little bit. in most cases I see healing stream being way more useful than mana spring for the whole of the party. just my 2¢.

Thing is, i dont use mana spring for the caster dps, but for myself. The last thing i want is to be OOM during a fight, and mana is more of an issue at 85 than at 70.

But yeah, with the major glyph, healing stream totem is probably better for those fights with lots of elemental damage even without that extra mp5.