How to survive stupid PUGs: SIT DOWN!

This is primarily written to tanks and healers.

You enter an instance using the LFG tool. After the first pull, you know this is going to be a real bad experience. Some signs:

• One of the dps pulls.
• One or more of the dps don't attack the skull.
• People stand in the whirlwind.
• Nobody (except possibly you) interrupts enemy spellcasters.
• The dps don't burn down adds when it's an important boss mechanic.
• The dps deals less damage than the tank (on a non AoE-fight).
• People randomly goes afk, without a single word.
• People refuse to CC.
• ... or worse: People AoEs, thereby breaking the CC.

If you've ended up in one of those groups, and you happen to be healer or tank, there's something you can do about it.

Sit down. Tell the rest that you refuse to heal/tank if people don't start doing their job properly. Tell them what they can do different, keeping it very concrete. Be polite, but firm.

You are not polite if you just play along and try to heal or tank and build up a lot of frustration because people don't care about the fight mechanics. You just burn yourself out.

You will experience a lot of nerd rage this way. You may even be kicked from the group. But as long as you are polite and say what should be done, most people will recognize this and behave. In many cases, you get to kick the worst offenders.

You are a vital part of the group. It's about time you demand the respect you deserve.

Keybindings and Macros Galore

I'm not exactly the first person to ever write a post about key bindings. Rather than focusing on exact key bindings, I'll share some of my thoughts regarding how I make up the system.

Muscle Memory

When playing a game such as World of Warcraft, you develop something called "Muscle memory". I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I believe it is something like this: When you decided to activate a certain ability in WoW, your brain does not consciously connect which ability is on which key binding. You have developed a muscle memory that allows your brain to just decide which ability to use, and then the fingers do the rest. Perhaps the connection is in the nerves of your hand, or your spine?

If you lack the muscle memory for a given class, you need extra time to connect the ability to the key binding you want to use. In some cases, you even need to look for the key on the display.

High level PVP players can often play several classes at top level. However, even they have the problem that they can't maintain a muscle memory for too many classes at the same time. Their reaction time is superb, but their response time suffers from the extra time they need to figure out the key binding.

A semi-counter for this is to have key bindings which are similar for all characters. It does not automatically make you better at the game, but I believe it personally helps me learn the key bindings faster... or re-learn them into my muscle memory whenever I switch class (again!).

Everything available

Even if you only play a single class, you can perform better if you need less movement of the hand to do what you want to. If your rotation requires you to often hit 1 and G, for example, you will probably be a bit faster if you change it to two keys next to each other, after some time learning the new keys.

Re-learning time for key binding

Before every expansion, during the beta, I look up all abilities for classes that either have gone through big modifications, or have gotten some new abilities added as part of the main rotation (at least buttons that need to be hit regularly), or just new classes I intend to level, like a warrior this time. Then I sit down with pen, paper, and a list of all abilities of a given class. After about two hours (usually split into several half-hour sessions) I've set up the key bindings as I want them in the next expansion.

However, that often means I've changed a lot of abilities around. It can be a real pain to learn a new set of key bindings. It takes a lot of time for your muscle memory to forget the old key bindings and replace them with the new, leading to a lot of circumstances where I end up hitting the wrong button at a critical moment. However, levelling is the best time to make such a change, as you usually play a lot of solo and only yourself suffer from the mess-ups.

It also takes a certain mindset to successfully do it. If you constantly irritate yourself over the messed-up keybindings, you're probably better off with the old. You need to think of the learning as a useful process and not just an irritating one, or the irritation will prevent you from learning effectively.

WASD or ESDF?

I have remapped the movement keys for all first-person shooter games and WoW from WASD (that is, forward with W, strafe left with A, etc) to ESDG (forward with E, left with S, etc). It took some time to learn, but I don't regret it.

The main advantage as I see it is that you have a lot more keys close to your fingers. From the usual position WASD, the following keys are easily reachable (not including the movement keys): |, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, q, e, r, (t), f, (g), <, z, x, c, v. Total of 15 keys easily reachable, 17 if you include t and g. From ESDF, you can reasily reach all of the following keys: (|), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, q, w, r, t, (y), a, g, (h), <, z, x, c, v, b. Total of 18 keys easily reachable, and 21 if you include the fairly easy to reach ones. That means another 3-4 abilities easily within reach. For a game like WoW where each class has some 40+ keys (including stuff common for all, such as follow), that can be extremely valuable. The second, minor benefit is that it is slightly easier to find the position on the keyboard if you keep in mind that your right-movement finger is on F, which always has a slight bump or some other ways of tactile detection on all keyboards. I hope that made sense.

Multiple usage of a key with shift and ctrl

You can map multiple abilities to the same key. For example, Q can have one ability, Ctrl-Q can have another, Shift-Q can have a third. I recommend not using Alt-Q or any other alt-modification key-binding, as alt is terribly place for ease of reach during a hectic battle. In addition, should you happen to hit alt-tab, you've just accidently tabbed out of WoW (in Windows, that is).

With that said, I sometimes use Alt-Q (or something similar) for macroing abilities that need to be cast are to be cast on my focus target.

Macros, macros, macros

Macros 101

There are two ways to get multiple key-bindings on the same key. One is to bind three different "slots" to for example Q, ctrl-Q and shift-Q, and then drop each ability into one slot.

The other is to macro them, and put the macro into the slot Q. Bring up the macro interface by typing /macro in the chat area. Create a new macro. Call it whatever you want, and use the question mark (?) as icon.

The following macro is an example, using three mage abilities, but you can replace them with whatever you want.

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift] Frostbolt; [mod:ctrl] Frostfire Bolt; Fireball

Now drop the icon into a slot, and close the macro interface. The icon should be for Fireball when you don't press anything on the keyboard. If you now hold [ctrl], the icon should change to Frostfire Bolt. Finally, if you hold [shift], the icon should change to Frostbolt.

Now you can either hold [shift] and click the icon with your mouse to cast frostbolt, or you can hold [shift] and push the key bind for the slot you've dropped the ability into, for example Q. WARNING: If you have bound another slot to Shift-Q (or whichever key you're using), hitting [shift]-Q will activate that slot, not the one you've assigned to Q. Same with ctrl-Q. You need to unbind any slots you have with ctrl- and shift-keys for these types of macros to work.

Short explanation of the macro: The first line (#showtooltip) will tell the icon to change depending on which ability is triggered in the macro. Without it, the icon will be static. The macro will still work, but not the icon. It only works if you've chosen the question mark (?) as an icon for the macro.

The next line of the macro says something like this: If Shift is pressed ([mod:shift]), use Frostbolt. If shift is not pressed, but ctrl is pressed ([mod:ctrl]), use Frostfire Bolt. If neither ctrl nor shift is pressed, use Fireball.

Macros 102

A macro is always evaluated in order, meaning the first trigger to happen will be used. I'll give an example. Say you want to add something to the macro. If a friend is targetted, you want to cast Arcane Intellect instead. You can add that to a macro by typing "[help] Arcane Intellect". The [help] means that it only triggers if you have a target you can help. The opposite is [harm].

Consider the following macro:

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift] Frostbolt; [mod:ctrl] Frostfire Bolt; Fireball; [help] Arcane Intellect

This macro will work exactly like the one above. It will never allow you to cast Arcane Intellect. Why? The [help] condition comes after Fireball, which does not have any conditions at all. You effectively say "Always cast fireball if nothing else is triggered before that".

The next version of the macro:

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift] Frostbolt; [mod:ctrl] Frostfire Bolt; [help] Arcane Intellect; Fireball

This time, it will evaluate the condition "can I help the target" before it attempts to cast fireball if nothing else fails, but after it checks if ctrl and/or shift are pressed. That means: If you press ctrl or shift, even if you have a friendly target selected, it will attempt to cast frostbolt or frostfire bolt, hopefully producing an error message. (If not, go buckwild blasting your friends to death!)

The last version of the macro looks like this:

#showtooltip
/cast [help] Arcane Intellect; [mod:shift] Frostbolt; [mod:ctrl] Frostfire Bolt; Fireball

This target will check if the target is friendly first, before testing if you've pressed shift and/or control.

Note that there is (usually) no right or wrong concerning these macros. They are only correct or not in the sense that they do what you what them to do. Either of the last two might fulfill your needs if you want to create a macro for all four spells.

Macros 1042

Now we arrive at some slightly advanced macros. This one is specifically aimed at healers. I'll present the way I use now. I'll start by presenting a macro, from my druid arsenal.

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift, @player] [mod:ctrl, @focus] [@mouseover, help] [help] Regrowth; Wrath

Now, this is what it'll do.

1. If shift is pressed, cast Regrowth on myself
2. Else, if ctrl is pressed, cast Regrowth on my focus target. I could easily add that it should only cast on my macro target if it exists and is alive, but I want it to fail it isn't.
3. Else, if I have my mouse over a target that can be helped (either on a unit frame, raid frame, Grid or on the actual character), cast Regrowth on that target
4. Else, if I am targetting something friendly, cast Regrowth on it.
5. Else, cast Wrath.

Using a macro like this, I don't need an addon like Clique. I just move my mouse to the target in the raid I want to heal and hit the button I've assigned to this macro, R in my case.

When healing in raids, I focus the main tank and target off-tank (and I have sticky targeting enabled in the interface options). When healing the main-tank, I hit Ctrl-R. When healing the off-tank, I hit R. When healing any other target, I move my mouse to the target on my grid addon (but it also works on the core raid frames) and hit R. If I need to heal myself, I hit Shift-R.

The reason I choose to focus the main tank rather than targeting it, is that there's a risk my mouse happen to be over any friendly target when I'm casting R and trying to heal the off-tank. If that happens, the heal will go on the mouseovered target instead. With practice, it rarely happens at all, but if it does, I don't want to get the main tank killed over such a mistake.

Macros 10-gazilliion

There is also a lot of other fun stuff you can do with macros, but I'm really derailing from my intended topic here. Check out a macro-guide if you're interested.

Principles for key bindings

O----kay. That was a lengthy introduction to what I was really writing about. Key bindings.

Here are my own rules.

Never change key bindings across specs

Any core ability which all specs have should always be on the same key. That also applies for talents which all specs take, such as Inner Focus for priests (well, up to Cataclysm, then only Disc priests will have it).

Healer, heal thyself

For any key that contains a targeted heal, which means 90% of them, macro it to heal myself with Shift pressed. It doesn't apply to non-targeted heals such as Holy Nova.

Main rotation on QWRT

The most commonly used abilities for any spec should be on W, R, which are the easiest reachable of any keys, possible not including A and space. The next should be on Q and T. After that I'll use 3 first, then 2 and 4.

For casters, I try to place cast-time spells on QWR and possibly T, and instant spells on 1-6. For healers, I always macro together all heals with harmful spells, depending on the target, like I've listed in the macro section above.

Abilities that need to be refreshed or are exclusive on A

For my shaman I have Water Shield on A and lighting shield on ctrl-A (no idea why I chose ctrl-A over shift-A). For my priest, I'll have Inner Fire and Inner Will on A, easy to switch. For my warrior, I'll have Commanding Shout and Battle Shout there. For my DK, I have Horn of Winter on A, actually macroed so that it will attempt to raise my pet if it's not already up in Unholy spec and then cast Horn of Winter.

If a class/spec have no such abilities, I just bind it to some ability that seem handy.

Emergency ability on H

Slightly tinted towards PVP. This includes Psychic Scream for a priest, Barkskin / Nature's Grasp for a druid, Stoneclaw Totem (glyphed) for a shaman, Divine Shield / Divine Protection for a paladin, Icebound Fortitude for a DK and Shield Wall (in defensive stance, else Retaliation/Recklessness) for a warrior.

Reactive abilities at G

Abilities that need to be cast to prevent something from affecting myself from an enemy (usually in PVP). Grounding totem for a shaman, Spell Reflect for a warrior, Anti-Magic Shell for a DK, Dispersion for a shadow priest, recast form for a druid (breaking snares and polymorph).

Spell interrupts at 4

Shield Bash / Pummel for a warrior, Wind Shear for a shaman, Skull Bash (in cata) for druid, Rebuke (in cata) for retribution pally, Avenger's Shield (since it silences) for a protection pally, Silence for shadow priest, Mind Freeze for a DK.

I also bind stuns and secondary silences on ctrl-4, such as Hammer of Justice (pally), Bash (feral druid) and Strangulate (DK).

Stances on ZXCVB

In the case of druids and warriors.

Taunts at 6

Taunt, Growl, Hand of Reckoning and Dark Command. On Shift-6: Challenging Shout, Challenging Roar, Righteous Defense and Death Grip (since it also taunts). Actually, I've macroed so that hovering the mouse on a friend as a pally will cast Righteous defense without shift as well.

Focus target on <

I'm not sure I'm too happy with this keybinding, but it has been there for so long... A macro that will focus the target if no focus exists, select the focus if a focus exists, and clear the focus if the target is dead. If ctrl is pressed, force re-focus even if the old focus still exists and is alive.

I don't have the macro here, but it was slightly complicated, so I dare not attempt to reproduce it here without testing it first. If you really want it, let me know in the comment, and I'll dig it up.

Talented abilities

I macro in a way that lets the same key be used for different abilities depending on which spec I'm currently in. For example: I'll use the same button for Shield Slam / Mortal Strike / Bloodthirst for my warrior, depending on what spec I'm in.

Unfortunately, not all specs have the same number of talented moves, so I'll just make do on the odd abilities that remain.

Multi-binding on the same key

For any ability that can not be cast on a friendly target, I macro another ability on the shift-version of the same key. I always try to stuff cooldown-abilities on the non-modifier version of these macros, so that I can see the cooldown on the icon without hitting shift. For example, for cataclysm I'll have macroed Judgement / Exorcism to the same button. Judgement has a cooldown, Exorcism has none.

In the cases where I have several cooldown-abilities I need to bind to the same button, I'll use the least most likely without shift or ctrl pressed.

Abilities across stances

I try to group ablities on the same button that are exclusive to a given stance (warrior or druid) and that makes sense together. For example: I've macroed Thunder Clap and Whirlwind to the same button. Thunder Clap can only be used in Battle or Defensive Stance. Whirlwind can only be used in Berserker stance. Both are AoE abilities, and thus have a logical connection.

Heals sorted by casttime

All healers in Cataclysm will have one cheap heal (Heal, Nourish, Healing Wave, Holy Light), one big heal (Greater Heal, Healing Touch, Greater Healing Wave, Divine Light) and one fast heal (Flash Heal, Regrowth, Healing Surge, Flash of Light). I place the big heals on Q, the cheap heals on W and the fast heals on R.

I use T for an instant heal, slightly depending on class. For disc priests, I use Penance (well, sort of instant. At least the first tick hits instantly). For holy priests I'll use Holy Word: Chastice there in Cataclysm, since it morphs into a healing spell in a chakra state. (Haven't been holy for the entire Wrath...)

For druids, I've used Nature's Swiftness + Healing Touch there up until recently, but will most likely change it to Swiftmend. For shamans, recently Nature's Switness + Grater Healing Wave, but in cataclysm Unleash Elements, common for all specs. For paladins, I've placed the new Word of Glory there for cataclysm, common to all specs.

Damage spells sorted by casttime, too

I group damage spells on the same principle as the cast-time spells, placing the highest cast-time (and usually highest dps) on Q, and then advancing through W and R. With some exceptions where I can't find fitting abilties. Paladins, for example, have only one cast-time damage spell, Exorcism.

Be flexible

Even with the best logic in the world, I often find that there's something not fully working during levelling. When I do, I spend some time to try to come up with a better solution, often switching several key bindings around.

Your daily heroic addiction-shot

This post is based on a nagging feeling I've had lately. Let me take it from the start.

Let's assume we can divide the player-base into three parts. On one end, we have the hardcores. I define them as players logging on every day. It doesn't matter if you're not actually raiding or doing arenas or anything, you just log on every day to do whatever you like to do in WoW.

On the other end of the scale, we have the very casuals, who just log now and then. They don't spend much off their time when they're not logged on thinking about WoW. They might be pure RPers, or just level alts (or mains) very slowly. They have no goals such as "become level 80, down a specific boss, obtain a specific item".

On the middle end, you have the group of moderate casuals. They log on regularly, but not every day. They have goals, and might even raid. However, they have a measure of control over their game-time and are generally not addicts.

Enter the daily heroic

I belong mostly in the last group, the moderate casuals. At least used to. Okay, I've always had a lot of playtime on release of new content, but generally. Now I'm feeling I belong more in the first group. Why? Because I feel I lose something if I don't log on every day to do the daily heroic random. Somehow, it's gotten worse in patch 3.3. In 3.2, I knew that whatever gear I acquired with Emblems of Triumph were much easier to get in 3.3, and it was a lot of places dropping them. VoA, Onyxia, Trial of the Champion...

I like doing the daily random heroic, but I don't like the fact that I feel forced to play every day. The "forcing" is of course all in my own mind. It feels like it's pushing me further into WoW-addiction.

When the blame hits the fan...

Imagine the following situation. You've just wiped. The tank died first, and held all threat until he started hugging the ground. He did no obvious mistakes like standing in the fire.

In almost any pug, 5-man or raid, the first question that will pop up is: Whose fault was it? The healer(s) or the tank?

I've encountered the situation several times. It's just as embarrassing and annoying every time.

The blame game

The main problem is the focus of the group: The focus should not be "whom to blame?", but "what can we do next time to prevent it from happening again?". It's freakin' hard to admit you did any mistakes when you need to eat through a heck of a lot of mean words in addition to the weight your conscience is already putting on your mind. Most people prefer to remain silent in such a situation, and that's a very bad starting point for finding out what could be done differently.

There are times when you just need to replace someone in your pug. However, that ought to be plan B or C, not plan A. Plan A should always be to try again, improving from last time.

The people that like to blame are also prone to leaving whenever something goes wrong. Just yesterday, we did the weekly raid quest to kill Razorscale in Ulduar 25. We waded in with no plan whatsoever and wiped at 2%. People started leaving. What the heck? 2%? It's nothing left. We were practically guaranteed to get him down on next attempt, and we did. Similarly, when the new 5-man instances just were released, I wiped with my group 5 times on Garfrost because people insisted on doing it as a dps race. While that is possible, it requires Frost Resistance Aura, Frost Resistance Totem, a very special setup consisting of only classes capable of removing debuffs including a paladin healer, or lots of lucky resists. Several people came and left. Only me and one other persisted. And we learned the encounter the hard way, how we were supposed to hide behind the boulders to clear the debuff stack. We got him down. It felt just as good as downing any raid boss the first time.

Some people cannot be unbroken

There might be some reasons for replacing people, however. Unwillingness to learn is the primary reason I want to kick people. People insisting on repeating the same mistakes despite a different strategy being agreed on in the chat. I'll give another example.

We wiped times and times on the 9th wave in Halls of Reflection. The healer complained that I was taking too much damage, he couldn't possibly keep up. He wasn't superiorly geared, but neither was he particularly undergeared for the instance. He said I wasn't usually taking too much damage, except when I got stunned. Not strange. I got almost 60% avoidance normally, but when I get stunned I avoid 0% damage. That means I take more than twice the normal damage. We discussed in party chat, and decided on killing the mercenaries first. It worked like a charm. Except for one rogue, who insisted on killing the priests first, because "that's what had worked for him earlier". That meant I had to maintain lots of threat on two targets rather than one, and it took longer to burn down the primary target. Annoying. We were, however, successful. However, I dislike people doing it like that. At the very least, he could've protested on party chat, letting us know he disagreed before we actually got into the fray.

Call me undergeared, huh?

Another thing that annoys me is people entering the group, taking a look at my unbuffed health (about 32k now, was around 30k earlier) and leaving. They consider me undergeared because I don't have 40k health. That buggers me seriously off.

Before my current career as a DK tank, I was a druid tank and healer. Once I was pulled into a group in Trial of the Champion heroic, as healer. The tank was a druid with 45k health self-buffed. Great, I thought, the tank is well equipped, this ought to be easy to heal.

It wasn't. It was actually harder to heal than most other tanks I had healed. Why? It turned out he had skipped on all kinds of avoidance to buff his health sky-high. That meant he took much more damage over the instance than one who had had more balanced stats.

Consider it this way: Let's say the tank is going to take 1 million damage before avoidance but including mitigation (armor). If he avoids 30% of the damage, he will take a total of 700.000 damage. If he avoids 50% of the damage, he will take a total of 500.000 damage. That's 28.5% (the difference, 200.000, divided by the total, 700.000) less damage taken, a huge difference. Note that the difference is more than 20%, the actual difference in avoidance.

I go with balanced stats. That yields me less health than tanks going all-out stamina, but allows me to take less damage over the instance. While it is less effective against magic damage, there are almost no encounter that does not combine magical damage with physical (avoidable) damage. take Koralon in VoA 25. He hits for a lot of unavoidable magical damage with his meteor fist. At the same time, he auto-attacks. If I can parry or dodge on of those, I'll have better chances on getting healed in time compared to a tank who avoids nothing but has more health to soak the damage.

No, you can't depend on avoidance. At the same time, you can. The waves in Halls of Reflection heroic hits for a lot together. Since they hit separately, you get a lot more attacks incoming per second than a single boss with the same total damage would've given you. That's where you can depend on avoidance: As you take more hits, the number of actually avoided attacks get closer and closer to the number on your character sheet. See the difference between how much damage the tank normally and when he's stunned on those encounters, and you'll see.

I do have the Black Heart myself, but I've skipped it in favor of an avoidance and a mitigation trinket of higher item level.

When healing fails

Sometimes, though, it's just not enough. You've got a properly equipped tank, he's not taking unnecessary damage, and he's holding threat on all mobs. Blizz has in the latest 5-mans added a lot of abilities which hits a random target member. You need to keep everyone alive while not losing the tank.

There are a few things that can be done differently. Talents might matter. Sometimes they make a major difference. Once we had trouble with an encounter, I (tank) died first every time. The healer was a bit underequipped, but not horribly much so. He shared his frustration with us. I inspected the druid healer to see that he had skipped Nature's Grace, one of the most hardcore tank-healing talents. However, in most cases, talents are not the problem.

However, priority often seem to be a problem. Many healers overreach themselves. Some need to be told that while healing, the tank and the healer is priority. If they have trouble keeping up, let dps die first, not the tank. In particular, this holds true when dps takes excessive damage. Not moving out of the AoE on the ground? Dpsing while everyone else hides? Let them die. Sometimes the healer can carry them through their mistakes, but that's not how it is supposed to be done. If the healer has trouble keeping everyone up, they should die and usually will die first.

There might be some parts of the encounter that someone in the group is not familiar with. I've beat encounters with seriously underequipped people as long as they know exactly what to do.

Often a dps can do something different that can change the outcome of the fight. CC a mob? Use a different totem (like Grounding Totem or Cleansing Totem)? Change Aura? Stun more, even at the expense of dps? Put a pet on a mob, letting it "tank" it and die rather than letting the tank take more damage?

Finally, most encounters are impossible to do without enough dps. If dps is lacking, it's neither the healer nor the tank's fault.

How to spot "problems" and solve them

I have three primary tools.

First, inspect. It will give you an idea of what gear level the tank or healer is decked in, and what talents he is using. A Blood tank is going to bring a lot more self-healing, but less AoE-threat. A paladin tank will usually take less damage from most hits because they block so much, but have no particularly defense against magic.

Second, recount. It will tell me what kind of spells the healer is using. Is the healer having trouble keeping you up? Perhaps he's not using Nourish at all (many druids seem to rely only on hots and Swiftmend, scarily enough).

Third, chat. Communication. This is and will always be the primary way of solving any kinds of problems. Talk with the group, acknowledge their frustrations and problems, and work with them to solve the problem you're facing.

On nice people

Disclaimer: When you read "nice guy" in this post, substitute "nice guy/girl".

With a handful exceptions, I've pugged all the instances I've done. Well, if it's also pugging when I ask a guy I've met earlier if he'd like to join in.

There are a lot of different people you meet when pugging. I'd like to speak of one specific personality type, one I was a member of myself for my first years of WoW.

The nice guys. The ones that seem to stick around no matter how bad things go, and will accept almost endless amounts of "nerd rage", blaming, accusing, unreasonable favors (like a guy asking to be ressed when the entire group wiped without any reason at all) and other negative communication.

Incidently, the nice guys very often end up as healers, tanks and often also group leaders. Not necessarily the group leader as the tank getting the party leadership to mark targets, but the one that put the group together, was first at the stone to wait several minutes for the next one to show up to summon and so on.

Healers seem to be the most common role for these guys. They want to help. They want to be important to the group or raid force. They want to make a change. Healing is a natural response to that "need", as they're critical to the group, can contribute without competing on a damage meter, and get the warm fuzzy feeling when they succeed on keeping everyone alive, or at least prevent a wipe, despite the odds.

One of the most striking features; They usually don't complain. They feel they shouldn't.

Now, they have a problem. I can describe one of the most common sympthoms. Previously, said person have been working hard for weeks/months, avoiding complaining when psosible, and always done what was best for the group(s). Suddenly he or she burst out in furious anger, and seemingly creates a huge conflict over something others consider small or trivial.

The best example I know of was a raiding druid who let out his rage on the official forums from the time I was a regular there. He was a raiding resto druid at lvl 60. His guild was doing great, downing bosses east and west. A physical dps leather item dropped, and he wanted it for his feral set. The guild leader gave it to a rogue who had recently joined the raiding force and needed it as a minor upgrade.

The druid in question spent half an hour screaming on vent and cursing on guild chat before leaving the guild and the raid force. I don't know what happened afterwards.

Now, the problem was not that the guild leader gave the item to the rogue. It was only the last drop which caused the glass to spill. At best, giving the item to the druid would have delayed the problem, but it would have happened later instead.

The problem didn't necessarily have only a single cause, but I can imagine some. The druid had persisted through lots of wipes without complaining. He had set his own needs aside for the raid force's. He had probably swallowed a lot of frustrations, not wanting to 'cause problems' or 'create drama' until the moment he was unable to swallow it.

I'll go as far as to say there are quite a lot of similarities between this and several break-ups. One person, often the girl/woman, remains silent until she suddenly can take no more. After the following break-up, the partner is unsure what happened.


What can be done to prevent such problems?

The short answer is Communication.

The long answer; There are several means that can help.

The best mean may be for the person to learn to talk about it. It may sound strange, but just getting your problems acknowledged by someone else helps immensly. There's a reason why you feel the need to complain to others when you've experienced something annoying or uncomfortable. It helps even more if you can talk to a person who is in some position where he can understand well what happens. In the case of WoW, a fellow WoW player is better than a random person. A guild member may be even better. A person that participated in the scene that caused the frustration will be even better. Best is probably the if the person him/herself that caused the frustration can acknowledge the problem. Shared first place might be the raid/guild leader.

Getting your problem acknowledged is first step towards solving it. How to solve it will vary with what kind of problem it is and who is involved. In the case of raiding, an officer might make a change, even minor, that can ease the frustration.

But before you can think of a solution, you need to actually identify the problem. After all, this personality archtype doesn't complain in the first place. That's why others, everyone that can, should react to signs that there's something wrong. In particular, the leaders. Asking if everything's okay won't necessarily help.

There's a skill straight out of the child psychology book that can be applied to much more than just children; Achknowledging by describing.

Consider the following situation I participated in yesterday. Simplified for the example.

I was dps, pretty average. We had a moderately well equipped tank. We had a superior healer. We had a superior mage dps. We had a average rogue who was a bit annoying to me. Let me put it this way; Who will ask for a res in TotC heroic after a wipe?

The healer suddenly had to leave after the first boss was down. It's hard to find a healer, harder when you've already downed a boss and you don't get the loot/emblembs/champion's seals.

I calm the group down, and say I'd find a new healer. I had assembled the group in the first place.

I've got black belt in random whispering, saying something like "We're in need of a healer for Trial of the Champion herioc (5-man). We've downed the first boss, then our healer had to leave for a raid. Would you happen to have time and interest in joining us?" to all healer classes at lvl 80 which isn't in a zone that dictates they're doing something I'm disturbing them in.

I come across a priest healer. He doesn't want to join, he'd just had a very bad experience with a pug. He's definately one of the nice guys archtype. I didn't get all the details, but I belive it was somthing like he had stuck around for wipe after wipe with a terrible tank, people leaving and cursing and blaming. I can completely understand that feeling after having "been there" myself several times. While going on whispering others, I reply to the whisper by describing how frustrating that can be, and how I understand he want to take a break from PUGs. Meanwhile I get a 20-30 declines on my offer to join, most of them polite.

After a few minutes, the healer I'm whispering with says he'll join us after all. He says I sound like a guy he'd like to pug with. I graciously accept his offer.

Fast forward. We wipe two more times before finishing the last two bosses. The tank stands completely immobile, and doesn't move out of the Desecration the death knight puts on the floor. Neither does the rogue. I do, leading to a serious downtime in my dps.

When we last succeed, it's with only 3 people standing. The priest ran out of mana healing through all the damage on the desecration. He was "correctly" equipped for the instance. While an overgeared healer might be able to heal through that without a sweat, this priest did nothing wrong and still ran out of mana. We did ask the tank after each wipe to kite the black knight around, not to get caught in his desecration.

The tank and the rogue leaves. The three of us stands around for several minutes. I tell the mage how I appreciated his dps despite the zombies in phase 2 swarming over him, and how we I don't believe we'd succeeded in the first place without his dps. I tell the priest how I saw that he managed to pull it through, despite the tank and a dps taking much more damage than intended by the instance.

What happens next? They open up and talk. A lot. Letting out their frustration and letting me know how they appreciate grouping with me, despite the fact that I was tied for the lowest place in dps. They even go so far that they share the names of their alts with me, hoping to group with me again. I'm not sure they would've opened up if I've asked 'Everything okay?'. Most likely, they'd answered something like 'yes, we're (finally) done' or something.

I believe both of them walked away more satisfied than they otherwise would. Imagine the difference; several wipes, and noone mentions a word about the hard work you put in to make it finally work. Alternatively, several wipes, but someone saw you and what you did, and tells you how they appreciate it. It's different from a 'Good work'. Someone saw exactly what you did, not just that you collectively succeeded.

Neither of them have their problems solved. But they have had some of their problems and work appreciated.

Some ways to solve problems might be for you nice guys to leave the group if it doesn't work with a warning in advance, or perhaps even kicking the 'problem player' if they've got the leadership. Don't hesitate to do that. It's not punishing the player. It's letting him or her know the consequences of his or her annoying behaviour. Just be sure that you share the view with the majority first.

Don't hesitate to talk. You're not causing a problem if you're telling what's bothering you. If you've got a guild leadership who think you are, you're in a very self-destructive guild. It's going to blow up, or rather, implode sooner or later. Guild quit and find a place where you are achknowledged.

I'm no longer one of the nice guys. I'm one of the guys that take responsibility for myself.

Why do we play?

As a parent, I'm reading quite a lot of child psychology, especially Alfie Kohn for the interested. The interesting part of it is that a lot of the psychology that turns up there aren't limited to children, or can be easily ported to the rest of the population as well.

One of the most interesting topics I've come across, both with Alfie Kohn and other sources, is motivation. I'd like to take a look at motivation in WoW with the insights I've come across there.

First, some background. While I may not use the exact same words, psychologists speak of internal and external motivation. The internal motivation is the motivation to do something for the it's own sake. The classical school example is a pupil that suddenly realizes a connection in mathematics, and desires or even aches to learn more. Then there's the external motivation. That's when you have some other reason to do something, and you're not nescessarily interested in doing whatever you do for the sake itself. Classic example continued: A teacher stands behind the pupil, watching him, and telling him "Good job" when he does something good, thus the pupil wants to do more math exercises (not nescessarily learn more) to keep hearing the teacher saying "Good job".

According to the theories I've read and what I've experienced, external motivation kills internal motivation. If you do something for fun, and someone starts giving you money to do it, chances are great that you'll now view it as a job rather than an interest. That's not saying you can't have internal motivations towards a job. What matters, in my mind, is your view of the task at hand. Do you do it because you want to do it, and payment is just a nice side effect, or do you do it to get the payment? If you fall into the latter category, you'll easily find yourself hating your job, or at least looking forward to job is done or the weekend.

Now, let's take a look at WoW. Internal motivation could be doing quests because you're curious what will happen or find the story interesting. External motivation is doing quests for the rewards only, to the point where you never really read the quest text. Internal motivation could also be exploring for the sake of itself, while external could be exploring to get an achievement.

WoW has so many ways of external motivations that it's almost silly. XP/Level, reputation, gear upgrades, money, titles, various mounts and pets, and achievements. My theory is that if you focus on these things, WoW will be less entertaining for you, raiding will feel more like a job than entertainment, you're much more likely to suffer burnout and so on. I used to skip every quest text through second half of vanilla WoW. Now I read every quest text, book, readable quest item and dialogue carefully, to absorb as much as possible of the story.

That is not saying you can't have fun with achivements. But if you do an achivement just to get +10 achivement points, that's possibly a bad sign. Do it because you find it entertaining, or just have fun with a random achivement popping up now and then without intentionally hunting them.

Still, there's a big playerbase, and a lot of them *are* motivated by external motivation. What keeps them back? I've got a theory of that as well, though I didn't invent that either. The general idea is that addiction is often caused by the enviroment rather than the thing you're addicted to itself. Translated: Many people who are addicted to WoW feel that their lives are lacking in some way. Thus, the sympthom of that is that they've developed an addiction to WoW, even to the point of playing when it feels like work. The actual cause is in their actual lives. Taking away WoW doesn't solve the problem, only removes a sympthom.

Aspects of the healer role

I'd like to share a view of the 4 healing classes and their 5-man healing styles.

Whack-a-health

First, let's review the obvious truth. A healer's primary job is basically to make sure there's always a hint of green on their party member's unit bars. Preferably lots of green. Of course, there are lots of details which add complexity, but this is the basic idea. If you bring along a healer, that's what you at least want him to do.

To this end, all the healer classes have various spells which make sure the green stuff doesn't entirely dissapear. I name this the whack-a-health game, namely 'whacking' each health bar as it is emptied. It's more whacking with direct heals than with various heal over times and heal on demands, but the idea still stands.

Now, let's make an assumption. We now assume all the healers have the tools for the job, given acceptable working conditions. You're not expected to be able to keep up the stupid DPS who doesn't move out of/away from [insert some dangerous mob ability here]. Various healing spells' efficiency and throughput is now what I want to discuss right now. Besides, Elitist Jerks is probably the best place to look for those sort of theorycrafting discussions.

No, what I want to discuss are other aspects of the healing role.

Support, anyone?

Now, usually, when you bring along a healer, you're not only bringing just the whack-a-health part of it. Imagine the annoyances to the rest of the group having a priest who ignores every suggestions to shackle, a shaman that never drops a totem, a druid that doesn't buff or res, or a paladin that doesn't bless. While you can argue that a healer's ability to keep others alive is what matters most, I'd like to argue that a healer's skill is also reflected in the ability to use supporting spells. Further, while the healing spells plays a big role, these supporting abilities is actually the biggest difference in playstyle when you're logging on to another healer.

My first-hand experience is limited to druid, priest and shaman. I have healed as paladin, but pre-40 is a bit different from healing at 70. I don't have experience healing 80-heroics yet, but I think no class changed very vastly those 10 levels. A new spell to compliment the playstyle here and there, but basically the same idea.

The idea here is to focus on the four aspects of the healing role playstyle of each healing class.

The Keeping-stuff-up aspect

All healer classes have abilities which need to be kept up to be 100% effective. I'm now talking primarily about abilities that either have a short duration (2 min or less) or abilities that needs to be refreshened on demand. For example, while you as a priest need to make sure you've got Prayer of Fortitude buffed on the party, with a 1 hour duration it's not like you need to worry about keeping it up. Fire and forget, baby.

I'm only including abilities which affect allies here, and omitting some that will come in the next section.

Priests aren't so bad:

• Prayer of Mending: This is very special. On one hand, it lasts 30 sec after each jump, but what does it help if it's just stuck on some dps that never takes damage? Sometimes, you'll want to use it on every cooldown. Other times, it's better to leave it where it is because you expect some AoE sooner or later. Special note that you also need to watch when you have it yourself, because you can bump it off you with Shadow Word: Death. Bonus points for being the in my opinion coolest healing spells in the game, and spell that I really miss when I'm on the other healers. Not because it's so darn powerful (which it is, but other classes also got powerful stuff), but because it's so darn fun.


• Inner Fire: Post-70 this is a spellpower buff as well as armor. Most of the time, it lasts 10 minutes. But, since it has charges, I often find that I don't notice when it's down after having taken some minor AoE damage here and there. Improved Inner Fire helps. On the other hand, in heroics it's less of a problem... if you're taking hits, you're usually dead long before you need to refresh this.

Druids have only one (unless I've forgotten something), but it's painful:

• Lifebloom-stack on the tank. Has a base duration of 7 sec, but can reach as high as 10 seconds with Nature's Splendor (no-brainer) and the glyph (not so no-brainer, as there are other useful glyphs out there as well). My experience from 70-heroics is that it was a major pain. If I lost the stack, I'd have to spend 3 gcds to rebuild it on the tank. On the other hand, refreshen it too often, and you never dropped out of the 5-sec rule, in addition to the fact that you lost ticks of the last, and thereby mana efficiency. But just a single stun or other problem, and the stack was gone. This was what caused me to end my career as a druid healer for a while. I'm very happy with the new duration, not to mention Gift of the Earthmother to lessen the pain of rebuilding it.


• Honorable mention: Thorns. This is possibly the buffing spell I forget most often to keep up. It shouldn't really be on the list, since it has a duration of 10 minutes.

Shamans have several abilities that needs to be kept up:

• Earth Shield: Since it has charges (up to 8 with Improved Earth Shield) you need to refreshen it as it runs out. If the tank is hammered, it takes in my experience about 30-40 seconds. Not too painful.


• Totems. Usually, these run for five minutes. However, there's two restrictions. First, it's the range. At 30 yards for most totems, it's painfully shorter than the healing range of 40 yards. Further, if the fight is moving in some way, you have to redrop the totems closer. The second restriction is in fights with spawns or adds of some kind. These will very often target a totem and destroy it, forcing you to replanting it. Totems can be pretty frustrating to work with sometimes, and it sure takes a bit of practice.


• Water Shield: If you don't have any talents and don't get hit, it's a simple once every ten minute refreshening. When you start taking a bit of damage, it's more often. And if you've taken Improved Water Shield and cast anything but Chain Heal, you'll need to refreshen it very often. Refresh time between 10 and 30 seconds.

Paladins didn't need to keep up so much eaerlier... well, actually, they did. 5-minute blessings was probably a pain I've never experienced. But in BC, it wasn't so bad. WotLK, however, brings a bunch to keep in mind.

• Sacred Shield: Their new 80 ability is pretty... special. To me, it seems like they worked hard to make an ability that could only reduce incoming damage, never leaving the target with more health than they started with, and never absorbing all damage. There is little reason not to keep it up on the tank all the time, especially so if you can benefit from the increased critical rate on Flash of Light. But ... 50% increased crit? What were they smoking? Paired with the +13% crit chance from talents they can pick up, and a good deal of crit rate on gear, attaining a 100% crit rate doesn't seem impossible. Anyway, needs to be refreshed every 30 sec.


• Beacon of Light: For some reason I can't resist hearing Bacon of Light all the time. You know, what you get when you fry pork in light. Ehem. Anyway, for any fight that involves AoE damage, this is handy, as it can potentially double the healing throughput of Holy Light. Of course, it only "copies" effective healing, not including overhealing. Since paladins lack a true AoE heal, this is as close as they come. 1 min duration.


• You might want to keep up Judgement of the Pure, meaning you need to judge at least every minute. Possibly more often, because of the actual benefit derived from the judgement. And to judge, you need to have a seal up, which needs to be refreshened every 2 min. Speaking of seals...


• ... there's also the glyphs to consider. Namely Glyph of Seal of Wisdom or Glyph of Seal of Light. I'd consider it a rather strange choice to pick both, but each to his own taste. Pretty good glyphs too. The Seal of Light one adds throughput and mana efficiency, the wisdom one only adds efficiency... but more of it. And if the seal of light one only adds over healing, it's wasted, whereas the wisdom one will aid every single heal. I'm not trying to get into a big discussion which is better to use, as I don't have a high level pally.

Bottom line: Choose your poison. Each class has abilities which needs to be kept up. Personally, I hate the lifebloom-rolling aspect of a druid, but I know many others love it. Than 3.0 I now have a choice: I can choose other healing styles as a druid than pure lifebloom-rolling. I'd say priests have the "easiest" time keeping stuff up, with mostly long-lasting buffs.

Addons can make the job easier to live with for all classes. Cheating? Crutch? Nescessary? I'm not making any judgements. Each to their own taste.

The whack-a-debuff game

In addition to health, there's also the debuffs to take care of. Well, the debuffs the healer in question can remove. The ones they can't heal, they have to heal through. That also means that every healer have the potential to heal through all of it, but it's a lot harder.

Priest:

• Cure/Abolish disease: Usually enough to keep diseases at bay.


• Dispel Magic: Since it eats two magic debuffs on each cast, it means they can usually keep their party free of magic debuffs.


• Mass dispel: If they can anticipate an AoE magic debuff, this can potentially clean it up easily. I've noticed as a priest that a lot of AoE magic debuffs, for example, only last 5 seconds. There are a few times it's worth to dispel, though. I personally like to keep my pally tanks silence-free, as that tend to keep the enemies out of my face. But mass dispel to keep all the other melee'ers silence-free? Nah.

Druid:

• Cure/Abolish Poison: Poisons? Can't see'em, sir. Poisons that hit several allies can still be annoying, though.


• Remove curse: Curses aren't usually spammed, so this takes good enough care of them. If they were, though, this'd be a problem.

Shaman:

• Cleanse Spirit: Poison, disease and curse in one go. Nice. In fact, completely replaces Cure Disease and Cure Poison.


• Poison/Disease Cleansing Totem: The peak of debuff removal (in my opinion), this means you can pretty much ignore poisons/diseases on the entire party. I believe this sports a 40 yard range, despite what wowhead tooltip, and contrary to the normal 30 yard range for totems. The downside is that using this prevents you from using Mana Spring, Mana Tide or my usual preference, Healing Stream Totem. In some cases, I'm not sure if it's a better benefit to using Poison/Disease cleansing totem over Healing Stream and just remove the debuffs with Cleanse Spirit on the tank. Depends on what kind of diseases and poisons there are.


• Tremor totem: This falls into two categories, both this and the next. The special thing about fear is that while you can remove it on a teammate, you can't remove it on yourself. I think I read that this has a 40 yard range somewhere, despite the tooltip. Wouldn't depend on it without testing it, though.

Paladin:

• Cleanse: Handy for all kinds of stuff except curses. However, paladins lack both a group version, something that keeps cleaning, and a more effective direct version (like Dispel Magic killing two magic debuffs), meaning they might need to spend a lot of GCDs on this. So many, in fact, that they can't always keep up. Poor pallies. Major annoyance, am I right?

Conclusion: More of an observation, really: every healer has their own set of debuffs they can remove, the rest they have to work around. That means debuffs can't be so powerful that it's impossible to heal through them.

The enemy-watching aspect

This is the aspect that took me the longest to learn. I know that I'm not the only healer that have a tendency to suddenly attain a complete tunnel-vision regarding the party health bars when I'm healing. In many encounters, I hardly ever saw the enemy before it was dead. However, as I wrote in an earlier post, situational awareness is really what makes you a great player. If you're not watching the enemy, you're wasting potential.

First, let me be portrait what I'm not discussing. Many boss abilities affect the entire raid. Most of them force you to move or suffer. These kind of abilities aren't healer-spesific, and they're more about learning the encounter. The primary healer-spesific issue are abilities which hurt the tank a lot, meaning you need to be on your toes, possibly blow cooldowns, make sure the tank is at 100% right before the ability hit and so on. Those are also about learning the encounter. Some mobs also got a vulnerability time, in which they need to be hurt as much as possible, including by the healer. Again, encounter-spesific, and not my goal right now.

The issues I'm interested in, are the ones that separate the different healer classes. What do you need to as a to minimize incoming damage? There are, generally, two parts of this. One, the preemptive. Second, the reactive.

The preemptive part includes using abilities which will counter enemy abilities, partly or competely, but that needs to be applied in advance. The reactive part includes abilities which needs to be applied on demand. Many abilities can fit into both categories.

Priest have some abilities, but outside of Shackle, I find that I can largely ignore the enemies and just focus on bars and it all works out fine.

• Shackle Undead: Crowd control always demands that you watch your target. A good CCer will refresh the CC before it runs out, immidiately re-CC upon accidental breaking, try to maintain a position that makes the risk of wandering into AoE relatively low and worry that the target might resist the reshackle.


• Fear Ward: Preemptive. On the other hand, this can be thought of as a fire-and-forget buff. Just as long as you make sure to refresh it on cooldown.


• Shadow Protection: Preemptive. For lazy priests, with the glyph you can just rebuff your party with Prayer of Shadow Protection every 30 min and forget about it otherwise.


• Offensively Dispel: Reactive. Some abilities enemies have can really make a difference. However, dispelling is a toll on the mana bar, and should be limited to buffs that actually do some harm.

Druids have little offensive utility to speak of, except for their crowd control which is rather superior. Then again, there's a severe disadvantage:

• Various crowd control: Entangling Roots, Cyclone and Hibernate. Different uses. On the paper, it looks like this should make druids the royal kings of CCing among the healers. However, there's a problem: They're not available in the primary healing form, Tree of Life. Shifting to Tree of Life costs mana, which any healer should be careful to just toss around. (Improved) Tree of Life provides mana efficiency (-20% mana cost on HoTs), improved healing (+6% healing done aura), more improved healing (15% of spirit as healing spellpower) and armor (+100% contribution from items). So druids are left with a choice: Better healing or crowd control. A skilled druid healer should know when to drop Tree of Life and use their other spells as well. What does all the healing throughput in the world help if you're dead? You can keep at least two CCable enemies at bay for quite some time (Entangling roots, move, Cyclone and re-cyclone). One disadvantage with Cyclone: It might occasionally make the mob hard to pick up by the tank, as they're immune to taunt as well.


• Faerie Fire: Armor debuff. But it's low priority and costs precious mana, so I see no reason to not just leave it alone on the action bar.

Now we're getting somewhere. Shamans have quite a lot of reason to watch their enemies.

• Tremor totem: This was in the last section as well. But you can't use it reactively to remove fear if you're being feared. That makes it a preemptive measure, and since you sacrifice some other earth totem to keep it up (most likely Strength of Earth or perhaps Stoneskin), you can't just keep it up all the time. Solution: Watch enemies, or just remember encounters. Mostly the last one, I guess.


• Wind Shock: For two reasons. Reactively interrupting spellcasting is always good, but unfortunately many mobs are immune to it. But don't disregard it until you've tried. Take Grand Magus Telstra in the Nexus. While her normal form is immune to interrupts, the clones that appear aren't. There's quite a lot of damage that can be prevented there. The second part is to reduce aggro. Unlike Fade, however, the aggro reduction is permanent, though it's limited to one person and a limited amount. However, it can be used sort of preemptively, wind shocking before you actually have aggro. Since your threat level was reduced, it'll then take more threat than earlier for the mob to break contact with the tank. Now we're talking useful. I'm pretty sure I've survived by this only a few times, where the aggro have been all over the place.


• Grounding Totem: This is golden. This will absorb any one single target spell against a party member. Since it doesn't really affect a mob (ony the spell he/she cast), it can be even be used to absorb boss abilities. No risk of resisting, missing and all other sorts of bad stuff. Of course, the disadvantage aside from cooldown is that this is mutually exclusive with Windfury or Wrath of Air Totem, to name the most commonly used by myself. Juggling those totems is a possibility, but costly. With good timing it can really make a difference, without it's just wasted mana.


• Resistance totems: Preemptive, to reduce incoming elemental damage on the party. However, that means you can't use any other totem associated with the same element. The resistances are a bit random, after all. I must admit I'm rather notorious on forgetting to use the various resistance totems, and I'm not sure how much diffence it would've made. Trying to remember to use them.


• Purge: Like a priest, except that shamans can only remove enemy buffs.


• Hex: Starting at lvl 80, quality crowd control. While it has it's own disadvantages (range, shorter duration than cooldown, limited types of mobs it works on), it doesn't have the disadvantage of the druid CC, namely that you need to drop your "healing" form. Besides, you can then Wind Shock the mob to reduce the chances that he'll charge you the moment Hex brakes, without worrying about breaking Hex yourself.

Paladins have a few, but not a lot reasons to watch enemies. Their primary reason being to judge regulary for the judgement effect itself (most notably Judgement of Life) and the Judgements of the Pure buff, but I must admit it's not much of watching included. Just toss it on the tank's target, and keep healing. In other words, I don't include that.

• Resistance auras: Similar to resistance totems. The difference is that instead of stopping you from using the same associated totem, it will instead stop you from using Devotion Aura, meaning the tank (and everyone else) will take more physical damage and less magic damage of the chosen type. I'm not sure how much difference it makes.


• Hammer of Justice: Especially now that it is garantueed to interrupt spells. On stunnable mobs, there's a lot of damage to prevent. Stunning the whirlwinding mob, for example, will possibly save a lot of healing.


• Turn Undead: Rather circuimstancal, but Turn Undead can be used as crowd control. But since it has all the disadvantages of fear-based CC, it's probably not a good idea.


• Judgement of Justice: Prevent runners, if there's a risk.

Here's my personal conclusion: I can't speak for pallies, but as a druid and priest, I could pretty much just ignore whatever the enemies did short of stuff everyone had to watch out for, and only focus on the green bars. On a shammy, I feel I have a lot more reason to watch enemies, and in that way a higher skillcap for the healing role. With that said, there's more skill involved in the art of staying out of the 5-sec rule as a priest or druid. To a shaman or paladin, that matters less.

The oh-shit-aspect

This the last aspect I'd like to look at. Let's now say bad stuff happens. A double (or even triple) pull. A patrol walks in on your skirmish. Or the adds on the boss are all over the place. What difference can each class make?

It might be argued that mana-gaining effects might help, as running out of mana is a sure group-wiper. I've chosen not to include them, as every healer class has a way of restoring mana mid-battle.

Priests... ehm... pray? Seriously, though, it doesn't feel like they're able to do a lot to prevent a wipe. At least at 70, but there's a new spell to play with now.

• Psychic Scream: Sometimes this comes in handy to give yourself a breather. In most cases, I find that while it does give me a breather of about 10 seconds, as soon as the mobs reach me again I'm dead. It's hard for a tank to pick up mobs running all over the place. Especially annoying for a pally tank, probably, since their taunt relies on the enemy to have you a as a target, and while they're running around they don't have a target at all. That, and the fact that it's often bound to make a bad situation worse by not only having the mobs return to you, but they'll also bring along their grandmothers, neighbors, carpenters, sons-in-law and who knows what.


• Pain Suprresion/Guardian Spirit: You'd be a rather unusual priest healer these days if you don't have one of these. Slightly different uses, but the main purpose is to extend the life of a single target for the duration of the buff. Will sometimes keep yourself alive for the same period. Neither makes you invulnerable, most heroic mobs will just tear through it in a second or three extra.


• Fade: Not an emergency spell per se, but it has it's place. It can't be resisted (unlike Wind Shock) and works on all mobs. However, since the threat reduction is temporarily, I've found that this sometimes will give me and the tank a false sense of security, resulting in a very hard wipe when the mobs suddenly stroll back to me.


• Spirit of Redemption: For a holy priest; It's nice that you still can be useful after you're dead. But it's hardly wipe preventing unless you've got a second healer along for the ride, as the 15 seconds of limitless healing fades rather fast, in my experience.


• Lightwell: In combination with Spirit of Redemption, it *might* prevent a complete wipe. I'm not holding my breath, though.


• Power Infusion: While it's nice in a crisis-situation, I think it's a bad idea to wait that long with using it. Better to use it as often as possible, for the mana-saving effect. After all, you can end up in a homemade crisis situation if you run out of mana.


• Desperate Prayer: Very useful in PVP. In PVE, though, it doesn't heal for enough to really save the day and at the same time costs mana. Binding Heal is usually a much better way to attempt to prevent a wipe.


• Divine Hymn: Now we're talking. This is an emergency spell if I ever saw one. Crowd control + healing in one package, long cooldown. I'm so looking forward to testing it in AV when the alliance is trying to kill Drek'Thar.

My personal experience is that druids have slightly more emergency tools to work with than a priest. However, they have their limitations.

• Tranquility: One of my all-time favorite spells. Phaelia describes it as an ability used to reset an encounter. Tranquility probably have the highest throughput of any heal in the game if you count all the targets. If you have Improved Tranquility, it's a fantastic wipe-preventer, as long as you don't have too many heroic mobs hitting you when you activate the spell. Without the talent, it's a bit more unreliable. If you want to use it, it usually means that people are taking more damage than you normally can handle, often combined with a messy pull, adds or something similar. And since it then will heal for quite a lot, chances are rather high that plenty of the mobs will break for you. Despite serious throughput, it can't outheal several heroic mobs beating on you. Besides, since it only lasts at best 8 seconds, you're often taking a lot more damage than you can handle as soon as the channeling ends.


• Barkskin: A bit of personal preference here, I guess. Some would wait for an emergency before activating it, others would use it as soon as they're going to take damage or have some dots running on themselves. It's not a real wipe-preventer, though.


• Nature's Swiftness: Handy. Usually paired with trinkets, and an unglyphed Healing Touch or Regrowth. Can also be paired with some crowd control, like Entangling Roots or Cyclone. Handy, but not usually enough to prevent a wipe. Can also be paired with...


• Rebirth: This, on the other hand, is a real wipe preventer. Battle res the tank, for example, and you might still succeed. It can also be used as a wipe recovery, battle ressing another resser and having him or her wait until everyone is dead to accept the res.

Shamans... now, in my mind, they've got some extremely powerful tools, and most of them doesn't even require a talent.

• Earth Elemental Totem, also known as tank-in-a-can. The best part is that it does an AoE taunt as it's dropped. Have saved my hide several times. It has rather good mitigation, but not too much health, so it can be a bit hard to keep up. Even more so on heroic. On the other hand, even if it dies after 10 seconds, it might've done it's job already, namely given the tank time to build threat on the mobs again. Since it's not very intelligent, it won't nescessarily pick up every mob if some dps with aggro have strayed too far away, but ... I love it for what it does.


• Fire Elemental Totem: Very different use, namely as extra dps. Has occasionaly made the difference between life and wipe, when we've lost too much dps but the tank and myself are still alive. Very handy that it packs and dies with it's own threat. Mutually exclusive with Flametongue Totem, so it's a tradeoff. It sees a lot less use in instances than while soloing.


• Bloodlust: Not really an emergency spell per se, but since I often save it for bosses, it's very often available when I need it for an emergency. Results in extra throughput on the healing, more threat on the tank, more dps... very handy. The only thing to watch out for is that it triggers the global cooldown on start, which is different from every other haste-effect and trinket I've encountered. The increased dps helps a lot if some of the dpsers are already dead.


• Nature's Swiftness + Tidal Force + Blood Fury (if you're an orc like me) + any trinkets + Healing Wave = big heal. Not nescessarily as big as the druid variant, though. Can also be paired with Hex if it's off cooldown, for some emergency crowd control. Like the druid counterpart, helps, but not nescessarily enough to prevent a wipe.


• Reincarnation: This is always a hard judgement; Wipe recovery or (attempted) wipe prevention? If I die while the tank is still alive, this can often be used to prevent wipes, provided I have enough mana to heal through the rest of the encounter. Improved Reincarnation helps, as does having Mana Tide Totem off cooldown. Since you're dead, you're out of combat, and thus you can also spend a Mana Potion provided it's one minute since you quaffed the last one. The downside if you try to use it as wipe prevention and fail, is that aside from being unable to use it as wipe recovery, you'll have lost 10% durability twice. Otherwise, it's an excellent wipe recovery, provided you died far enough away from any mobs still alive afterwards.

Paladins, like shamans, have some extremely powerful tools which doesn't require talents. In fact, I believe they're so powerful it explains why pallies don't have additional emergency buttons as talents.

• Divine Shield, aka the infamous bubble. In addition to the obvious effect of making you invulnerable, it also temporarily removes all threat. Incredibly handy. But wait, there's more!


• Rightous Defense: Slightly risky move, but you can taunt while invulnerable, and it'll cause the mobs to be forced to attack you, while you're invulnerable. I believe it forces them to attack you for 3 seconds, after that they move on to another target. But those seconds might make the difference between giving the tank time to build aggro and a wipe. The risky part is that it increases your threat to be equal to the highest treat target on the list, if that wasn't yourself, thus you're more likely to pull aggro after the bubble fades. It's a gamble, but a calculated one.


• Lay on Hands: Unless you've totally ignored stamina on your gear, this is an insanely powerful, instant, mana free heal. Also returns mana, if you use it on yourself or have the Glyph of Divinity, even more with the Glyph of Lay on Hands, which is even minor for additional fun. Add Improved Lay on Hands to increase the chances that the target survives for a bit more. Phew, how I envy this spell in PVP sometimes.


• Divine Intervention: Provided you have a second resser in the group, a fantastic wipe recovery. The fantastic part about it is that the paladin who uses this doesn't loose durability. I can't friggin' understand why I've never seen a single paladin (except for myself) use this in any 5-man. Okay, I have a theory. It's because being a healer myself, I don't often have a pally healer in my group, protection pallies can't use this because they *might* survive if they don't use it and thus save the entire wipe, and retribution pallies are just good at earning their name retrinoobs/rettards/whatever.

My opinion: Priests really needed an emergency button. Since I haven't really tested it, I don't know how good it is. Personally, though, I feel I can really make a big difference as a shammy, where there's less options available to a druid and priest.

Conclusion

As expected, choose your poison. Each class packs their advantages, disadvantages, and playstyles. While I often envy other healer's abilities, I may have found a match to my playstyle in the shaman way. Half a year back, I switched between my druid and priest all the time because I often banged my head into the limitations with each class. I encourage every healer that have felt something similar to try the other healers. While you love healing, perhaps another healer class might suit your playstyle better?

Having a playstyle that suits you is a hell of a lot more important than having a healer that theorycraftingwise is better.

Die, Death Knight. No wait, Die again!

Special thanks to Nhani for lending me the picture.

Okay, second attempt. After advice from Seri, I'm writing in Google Docs, and then copy+pasting into Blogspot. Phew... Keep thinking calm thoughts.

Death Knight survival guide

The first step towards defeating your enemy is to "Know thy enemy". Thus, here's a crash course to DKs for healers, with counter-advice rolled in. Terms to notice: DK = Death Knight. Core = abilitiy all DKs have. RP = Runic Power.

Resources

DKs have two types of resources: Runes and Runic Power. Almost all of their abilities cost runes or resources. None cost both. Some special abilities are free. From "idle", a DK has six runes and no runic power. Using abilities which require runes generate runic power. There's also a very common talent called Butchery which slowly generates runic power while in combat.

When a DK uses an ability which costs them a rune, the rune is put on cooldown for 10 seconds. Among the runes, there are three basic types: Blood, Frost, Unholy. An idle DK has 2 of each rune ready. There's also a fourth type of rune, Death Rune, which counts as any of the other. Death Runes are "converted" from other runes using either the core ability Blood Tap (notice the health cost) or through one of the Death Rune-generating talents, of which there are one in each tree. Blood: Death Rune Mastery, Frost: Blood of the North and Unholy: Reaping. Notice that these talents are "passive" in the sense that they work when you use some other ability. Further, all of these active abilities are melee-attacks, meaning the DK has to be in melee to convert other runes to death runes.

Why is this important? Here's the trick: Since each rune has a 10 sec cooldown, they can usually an ability requiring a certain rune twice before having to wait for the runes to come off cooldowns, and then they can't use other abilities which cost the same rune. I'll show in a moment which abilities this is most critical for.

There's also another ability to watch out for: Empower Rune Weapon. 5 min cooldown... but in PVP, you're bound to see it often.

Presences

Like a warrior has stances, a DK has presences. Like a warrior, you have no way of knowing which presence a DK is in unless you see him change it. The three presences are Blood, Frost (aka the tanking presence), and Unholy. Since it costs a rune to change presences and all abilities are usable from all presences, you'll see less stance-dancing than with warriors. In PVP, virtually every DK will use Blood or Unholy presence. The only thing we can really use from knowning this is that they have 1 sec GCD (like a rogue or a feral kitten) while in Unholy presence, which means that you can think of them like rogues in how often they interrupt your spells. Trading GCDs with them only works if they're in blood presence, otherwise you can't out-GCD them.

Diseases

DKs are based around the concept of diseases. A lot of their abilities deal additional damage based on the number of diseases the DK has on you. Note that only the DKs own diseases count, so two DKs or a feral kitties doesn't drastically improve a DKs damage. Good thing 75% of all healing classes can remove diseases... sorry, druids, DKs are meant to be your counter.

The two basic diseases a DK has is Blood Plague and Frost Fever. Unholy DKs also have an additional disease, called Crypt Fever/Ebon Plague. Almost all Unholy DKs will invest enough talent points to get the last disease, which is better. Notice that this last disease always comes with one of the first two. That means; if you remove the first two diseases, you also loose Ebon Plague.

The ability which applies Blood Plague is called Plague Strike. The core ability which applies Frost Fever is called Icy Touch. Frost DKs can also apply the disease using Chains of Ice with the talent Endless Winter, or with their 50-point talent Hungering Cold.

Since a lot of DK abilities scale with the number of diseases, a DKs dps rotation starts with Plague Strike and Icy Touch (or sometimes Chains of Ice in the case of a PVPing frost DK), then moving on to other more hard-hitting abilities. Now, here's a thing to notice. With the exception of Hungering Cold, which in any case costs a lot of runic power, all of their disease-applying abilities cost runes. Translated to a healer: If you remove their diseases, they'll be forced to either reapply the diseases, or use their other abilities without the bonus damage from diseases. In many cases newbie DKs will do the latter, because they don't react fast enough when a disease is removed. That's fine with me, I don't mind they using lots of rune on abilities which nets them far less damage than the optimal. If they choose to reapply the diseases, they're burning runes which they could've used for more hard-hitting abilities, and they may only do it twice before having to wait for runes (barring death runes and the like).

Note that you'll often run into DKs with the talent Virulence, which gives them a bit of defense against disease-removing abilities.

Bottom line; Removing their diseases is worth it. Here's a tip for some shamans and priests: If you don't have it on your hotbars, bind a key to Cure Disease (Shammy or Priestly version) in addition to Disease Cleansing Totem and Abolish Disease. When you first get diseased, use the latter version (which ticks), and then spam Cure Disease on the next disease. Well, at least in the case of priests. For shammies you can argue that it might be better to spam the totem because of the 1 sec gcd rather than 1.5 sec gcd on Cure Disease.

Healing debuffs

Luckily for us, DKs doesn't have a healing debuff (like Mortal Strike). What they do have is the ability to remove HoTs. Plague Strike, the same ability I discussed earlier, is garantueed to remove a HoT. Further, the disease Blood Plague which it applies has a 25% chance on each tick to remove a HoT.

Does this mean that it's pointless to use HoTs against them?

Not nescessarily. A DK can only use Plague Strike twice before waiting for rune CD, and it provides less damage than other abilities. Thus, it's not garantueed that all your HoTs will be useless. With that said, priests, who only have one HoT, should avoid using Renew, as it's often wasted mana and GCD. Shamans shouldn't worry about Earthliving, as it's essentially free healing anyway. Riptide provides half healing up front anyway, and is often worth casting anyway, since you can do it while moving.

Finally, Druids... DKs are your nemises, right? Actually, it's not so bad. Since you can easily load up 5 HoTs on the same target (Regrowth + Rejuvenation + 3xLifebloom), 6 if you really want to (+ Wild Growth), it's still absolutely worth casting them. A single DK is unable to remove them fast enough.

Edit:Comments on this post from Paendorrah and anonymus poster disagree a bit, but it seems that Plague Strike and Blood Plague ticks remove an entire stack of Lifebloom, rather than just one application. That's bad news for druids, of course. In that case, it's not a good idea to stack up lifebloom. Stick to a single application of Lifebloom for the DKs targets.

Paladins, lacking any HoT, isn't affected at all. It all evens out, somehow.

Snares

While DKs have some ranged abilities, most of their damage is from melee abilities. Further, if they can't get into melee, they can't generate a lot of runic power for their signature ranged attack Death Coil. To help them stay in melee, any smart DK will ensnare their opponent. Their only core snare is Chains of Ice, which is rather unique compared to other snares. Note that while you're 100% snared, you're not silenced and can cast anything you want, cast-time or instants. In addition to the snare, a frost DK will also apply Frost Fever with it, with the talent Endless Winter. Further, most Frost DKs and often other specced PVP DKs will have 30 yards range on the snare, thanks to Icy Reach.

So, how to counter Chains of Ice? Moderately easy, actually. Druids can shift ouf of it anyway, priests can Dispel it, paladins can Cleanse it (which also removes a disease, lucky you) or use Hand of Freedom. Shamans... will have to suck it up. Outside of the enhancement talent Earthen Power, there are few ways to get out of it. Sorry.

Also notice that Chains of Ice costs a frost rune, meaning a DK can only apply it twice in a ten sec period. And if they're not frost, that means they can't apply Icy Touch, meaning less incoming damage due to lack of one of their diseases. On the other hand, most DKs will early blow Chains of Ice and Icy Touch, but that means they can't reapply their best snare again very soon.

The other two snares a DK has access to are frost talent Chilblains and the unholy talent Desecration. Chilblains, as I see it, is a PVP talent designed to lightly snare the opponent for a longer duration... as long as Frost Fever lasts, up to 18 seconds with Epidemic. But since druids can shift out of it and all other healers can remove Frost Fever, it doesn't really seem like a giant threat to us healers. The other snare, Desecration, is worse. It seems to work like Frost Trap, which means the only real counter is Hand of Freedom and trying to move out of it.

Pulling

Outside of running up to their target, a DK has one way of getting into melee with an enemy... by pulling the enemy to himself. Enter the evil chain, Death Grip, a DKs staple tanking and PVP ability. Since it is instant and has 30 yards range, there are few counters to it. The only one I know of is Grounding Totem, and it might just as well swallow their initial Chains of Ice instead, as many DKs open with that instead. But that's not nescessarily a bad thing at all.

Though I said there are no counters, there are still something you should keep in mind. While flying through the air, there's nothing but your own reactions that prevent you from casting instants. And when landing, there's nothing that prevents you from running away, unless the DK snared you first. Your first reaction should be to cast some instant which will benefit you while being pulled, and then run right through them while using more instants.

A few suggestions. Paladins: Cleanse or Hand of Freedom. Priests: Dispel Magic or Power Word: Shield. You might also time a Psychic Scream the moment you land. Don't cast Abolish Disease until you actually have a disease on yourself, and priority on removing snares before diseases (unless you can do both at the same time). Druids: Nature's Grasp, Barkskin or shift to Bear, so you can Enrage and Bash the DK as you land. Shaman: Frost Shock the DK so he has a harder time getting you into melee or use Grounding Totem if it's off cooldown.

The huge danger of Death Grip isn't that you're getting pulled to the DK. It's that you get pulled to the DK and his friends. If that happens, you're probably screwed.

Snares... the other way around

Here's one of the DKs huge weaknessess.... they're very suspectable to snares themselves. They have no inherit ability to break snares, and only Death Grip to get into melee. A good frost mage will screw a DK around any day. Unfortunately, priests and paladins can't exploit that. Druids, on the other hand... ready to get your revenge? Root the sorry buggers. Shamans should keep the DKs perma-snared. Unfortunately, Chains of Ice is a better snare than Frost Shock and Earthbind Totem. However, it is possible to build up enough range so that they have to reapply Chains of Ice, or wait for it to come off cooldown. Toughness and Imp Ghost Wolf help a lot here.

Silence and interrupts

DKs, as the only class I know of, have both a silence and an interrupt at their disposal. Good thing they don't pack a lot of stuns as well. I know only of their pet ghoul stun.

First, their silence. It's called Strangulate and packs a 30 yard range and a 2 min cooldown. Okay, I can live with that. But then there's the Glyph. 20 yards additional range? 50 yards range on a silence? Are you kidding me? I don't know what blizz is thinking here. Earlier, they've reinforced a 30 yard base range on most ranged attacks with talents pushing them to around 36 yards, and a few a very few classes/specs being able to reach a bit above 40 yards. Healing has always been set in stone to 40 yards range. And now DKs can silence u s from 50 yards range? ... No, I don't understand what they're thinking at all. Okay, that was a bit of rant. Until they choose to fix it, we'll have to live with that.

Second, their interrupt. It's called Mind Freeze, and has (fortunately) melee range. Except the cost, it's identical to Pummel. Frost DKs can remove the cost completely thanks to Endless Winter. Notice that without being frost, the cost of 20 runic power means that a DK can't use it from the start of combat, and they need to use no less than two attacks to get enough runic power to use it. Translation: If they've got an empty runic power bar, you don't risk an interruption. You still risk being silenced, but juking/fake-casting won't prevent that anyway.

Health regeneration

All DKs have a core ability called Death Strike which will heal them for a serious amount when used. The good news about this one is that they can heal themselves in place of doing a lot more damage with other abilities. Blood DKs have a particular hefty amount of health-restoring abilities.

The important observation: Even if you see a DK on low health, chances are that he can get his health up relatively fast. Unlike a warrior, you can't rely on bursting them down while on low health, but it's still worth trying. Just make sure you keep your priorities in the right order, like trying to stay out of melee. Should they get you in melee, they can restore a lot of health.

Other stuff to know

Defensive cooldowns

DKs have a large number of defensive cooldowns. These are the ones to look out for:

• Icebound Fortitude: Core ability. Don't waste stuns while this is up.


• Anti-Magic Shell: Core ability. Prevents any harmful magic effect from landing, and gives the DK additional runic power. Short duration, only 5 sec, so wait for it to fade.


• Anti-Magic Zone: Unholy talent. Major pain for casters. Here's the big thing: It's stationary, so you can just pull the DK with you out of it.


• Bone Shield: Unholy talent. Also improves offense. Dispel or Purge it if you can, otherwise ignore it.


• Lichborne: Frost talent. Don't waste stuns or fears while this is up. Scary how they can chain Icebound Fortitude and this, giving them 27 sec of stun immunity. They're also no longer considered humanoid, meaning Hex won't work on them. But wait! There's light at the end of the tunnel. By activating Lichborne, the DK is considered undead. What does that mean? Good news for a priest or a pally. A priest can then use Shackle Undead on the DK for quality crowd control. For a paladin, some buttons suddenly become usable. Exorcism and Holy Wrath for quality burst damage (sadly, they're immune to the stun) and Turn Evil for crowd control. I haven't confirmed this, but if the DK is feared while Lichborne fades, the fade doesn't automatically break just because they've changed type again. What does this mean? Try to get in a Turn Evil right before it breaks, and watch them run around like chickens.


• Unbreakable Armor: Frost talent. Nothing particular to worry about for healers.


• (Glyphed + Improved) Rune Tap: Blood talent. There's no real way of preventing them from using it.

Ghoul self-res

Unholy DKs, and some off-specced Frost and Blood DKs with the talent Shadow of Death will, when brought to 0 health, automatically rise to unlife as a ghoul for a limited time. There is an important delay from when they die to when they're in control of their character again, during which the DK is immune to all damage. When you see it, run away. The best way to handle such the ghoul is to just outlive it, as it will die on it's own in a bit. They can still pack a good amount of damage, but seem to loose all their snares and Death Grip. If you're a priest, Shackle it. If they've got a pet ghoul, it will still be active until they die for good.

Ghoul pets

All DKs have the ability to Raise Dead. For non-Unholy DKs, this will give them a guardian for a limited time which they can't directly control. On the other hand, Unholy DKs with the talent Master of Ghouls will gain a pet without duration, which they can control for additional fun. At least for them. They also gain additional abilities, namely Leap (which means it's hard not to have this guy on top of you all the time), Huddle (which means that it's very hard to focus-kill the ghoul pet of a smart DK) and Gnaw (a DKs only stun).

The ghoul does a non-trivial amount of dps on their own. What to do about the pet? If you're a priest, Shackle it (unless the master is a zombie as well, in which case he makes a better shackle target). Also try to catch both when you Psychic Scream. If you're a druid, you can treat it the same way as a hunter pet, except that you can't hibernate it. If you're a shammy, you can (in BGs, not in arenas) use Earth Elemenetal totem to get him out of your face, but at the expense of other earth totems. Otherwise, you can try to Earthbind both the DK and the ghoul. If you're a pally, you may use Holy Wrath and Exorcism to try to burn it down, or Turn Evil for crowd control. However, the first two mentioned abilities have cooldowns, and it might be very handy to save those cooldowns in case the DK should activate Lichborne (see above). While Turn Evil doesn't have a cooldown, you need to weigh up the result against the risk that you eat a Mind Freeze, rendering all your spells unavailable for 4 sec. Apart from the ghoul stun, the pet is less of a treat against pallies with their high armor.

Mark of Blood

A blood talent which is worth worrying about. It's not dangerous to ourselves as we rarely melee enemies, but it can really be dangerous if they use it on your arena partner. Remove it if you can, otherwise try to convince your ally to hold back for a bit and mitigate damage until the mark runs out.

RP-sustaining abilities

There are two abilities whose duration depend on how much Runic Power the DK has/can generate, namely the blood talent Dancing Rune Weapon and the unholy talent Summon Gargoyle. These two abilities can last for a really long time if the DK can keep generating runic power. They vanish as soon as the DK run out of it.

CC

Apart from the pet stun, a DKs only CC is the frost 51-point talent Hungering Cold. It requires a lot of runic power, but has no inheret cooldown. Try to avoid being caught with your arena partner.

And that's all, folks. Hope you've learned something. I'll probably learn more myself too, in which case I might update the guide.

Edit: Thanks to all commenters, I've added edited the post with the clarifications you've shared with me.