Healing for Fun and Profit

I’m going to be adding pictures to this post over the next day or so, but I wanted to get this up for people to have a look at.

One comment I hear a lot after an instance run is this: “Boy, it sure makes a difference to have a good healer around.” I take it as the compliment that it is, but it makes me wonder if there are a lot of bad (or at least inexperienced) healers out there. So I figured I’d go over a few things that make me a better healer, in the hopes that someone can learn something from what I’ve found.

For now, I’ll concentrate on party healing, since many of us in AIE are going to be doing 5-man instances for the foreseeable future. Later on, I may post more about raid healing, which is a completely different animal altogether.

First, my UI setup. This really is key for good healing. As a healer, you need to know as much as possible about what’s going on to your party members. I use Xperl Unit Frames, for a couple of very good reasons. I know that the choice of unit frames addons is almost a religious choice for people- it’s really hard to convince someone to change from, say, AGUnit Frame or even the standard Blizzard party frame. Let me talk for a bit about what Xperl offers, however, and maybe you’ll be convinced.

1. Healer Mode hit point display. As a healer, I don’t really care about your health number as a percentage, or as a fraction (1352/1673). “80%” doesn’t mean that much to me, because my heals don’t do percentages. I know that my Flash Heal (right now, at level 33) does about 350 hp worth of healing. It can crit for about 600. Similarly, my Heal does about 650-700 points of healing, and it can crit for 900-950. So it’s much better for me to be able to plan when I’m going to cast a heal if I can see how many hit points you -don’t- have, rather than a percentage or a fractional number like 1264/1753.XPerl does exactly this- the only thing I see on your health bar is a 0 if you’re at full health, or a number like -378 showing me how many hp would take you back to full health. This also lets me plan out a heal better. If I see you at -450, I’ll go ahead and start casting a normal Heal, because my Flash heal won’t get you back to 0, and you’re probably about to get hit again before that heal goes off, so I might as well compensate for that.
2. Aggro display. Xperl shows me instantly who in the party has aggro by giving their frame a red border. This is important for a couple of reasons. If I can see that someone (a rogue, for example) has pulled, taken a few hits, but then transferred aggro successfully to the tank, then I may not have to heal the 200 or so points of damage he took- he can take care of that with a bandage or have a secondary healer give him a Regrowth or the like. I can keep my attention on keeping the main tank healed. Likewise, when I see that some mage has drawn aggro, I can slap a Renew or a Shield on them so they can do what they need to do to transfer aggro back to the tank without worrying about getting one-shotted.
3. Magic/Disease display. If you’re affected by a magic effect or a disease, my party frame shows that by shading your frame in blue (for magic) or green (for disease). Similar shading is available for curses and poisons, for classes that can dispel those. Since I’m a priest, I have it set to only display the effects that I can dispel. So when I see your frame in blue, I know that I should cast Dispel Magic on you, and when I see green, you’re getting Cure Disease.
4. Renew/Class Buff display. When I put Renew on you, Xperl gives your party frame a pulsing blue border. (If you also have aggro, the border is blue on one side and red on the other.)
   If you don’t, for some unfathomable reason, have Power Word: Fortitude cast on you, then your party frame has a white border to remind me to buff you. (This setting in Xperl is for “your class buff”, so I imagine it’d work the same for Mark of the Wild and Arcane Intellect.)

Now that seems like a lot to digest, but the advantage of all these things is that they’re very visual. Your eye is immediately drawn to the party member with the red pulsing frame, and you can easily watch his hit point number go up until you need to pop a heal. Similarly, when aggro transfers, you know it instantly, even before the new target gets hit (it’s looking for the change of target, not the initial damage). It makes keeping up with who actually needs healing that much easier.

Another addon that I absolutely cannot live without is BeneCast. This mod is simple, and brilliant. It gives a small, configurable casting bar to each member of the party (and my target, and my target’s target, if I so desire). You can see it in the example images above, as a small bar of buttons at the top of each image. It allows me to cast heals on party members without having to target them. This is incredibly useful, and it saves so much time during a fight, it’s almost unfair. If you’ve ever been frustrated because you couldn’t click on someone in time to target them for a heal, this mod is for you. It takes a bit of setting up, but it’s definitely worth it.

While out of combat, it automatically hides spells you don’t need to cast (such as Dispel Magic on a target that has no dispellable effects, or Cure Disease on an undiseased target). However, when you go into combat, the bar changes to show these spells as greyed out, due to the changes made by the 2.0 Addon-Apocalypse, which made it impossible to change action bars while in combat.

Life is expensive.

March 11, 2007

I took a trip this evening to Orgrimmar to train with the priests at Spirit Rise. I have learned much from them before, and thought I would be able to again. It seems that their prices have risen markedly since the last time I visited, however. In fact, they told me I could not learn everything they had to teach with the sum I had for an offering. “Choo come back wen yoo haz more gol’, honeychil’… den we tells you everythin’.”

I wonder sometimes exactly how devout these priests are.

I simply don’t have the time or the inclination to deal with these matters myself, so I’ve entered an arrangement with a friend of a friend. He’ll stay in Silvermoon City and take care of finances for me, and I’ll send him whatever I can’t use. He seems to have a way with numbers, so hopefully he’ll be able to make enough so that I can take care of my needs without worrying about such mundane things as money.

Light and darkness

A preface: This is my first shot at writing anything at all in-character. I think it turned out OK, mostly because I’m not trying too hard to make up a story. One of the things that makes games like World of Warcraft so great is that they are vehicles for stories to happen. All that’s left for me, then, is to tell the story.

A week or so ago, Scott and Andrew talked about a documentary about live-action roleplayers, and made the point that they thought they were being someone completely different when they roleplayed, but in fact, they were who they were, whether roleplaying or not. I think that’s what’s going on with Secondaid. I know that solo priests should use shadow spec for leveling, and that’s what I’m doing. But really, what turns my crank in WoW is healing. So when I get the chance to do that, I really enjoy it. On the flip side, I really don’t care for long stretches of solo grinding. In-character, then, Secondaid finds herself alone most of the time while exploring, but she really enjoys those times when she’s called on to do what she sees as her true calling.Here’s a snippet from her journal, then, after what must have been way too much introduction.

[Sunday, March 3]

Sometimes I wonder about my place in this world.

I am, and will remain, a priestess devoted to the Light. My people have seen and known darkness, much more closely than many of our allies in the Horde will admit to themselves. It is my duty to protect those around me from darkness, and I am proud to serve.

But as I walk in Azeroth, the path of darkness is always around me. It is, as it has always been, the easier way. I find that the more time I spend alone exploring this land, the more I use the powers of Darkness to survive.

I was reminded of this today when I met a Paladin who goes by the nom de guerre “Warcrusher”. I met him in Thousand Needles, and it turned out that we had several goals in common, so we joined forces for the evening.

As I watched him, and healed him, and was even revived by him, I saw the Light working through him. And through me- it felt good to draw upon the power of the Light to help my friends, rather than draw upon the darkness to defeat my enemies.

I was sad when we finally parted at the end of the night; all our work done, all our challenges met. Of course, I enjoyed the company. But I also knew that I would be alone again.

And when I am alone, the darkness seems to be my only friend.

Beginnings

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft for a while, but I’ve never been motivated to write about it. Then I started playing with the good folks of Alea Iacta Est on the Earthen Ring server, and Desdemina, one of my new guildmates, started a blog. I suppose I’ll start one too, but be warned: I am not good at this. It may ramble, it may be obscure, it may not be worth reading. After all, I’m not entirely sure who’s reading this, or what it’s for. It might be for role-playing, or for me to ramble on about something for a while, or for me to get something off my chest. Hopefully it’ll be interesting often enough for you to come back every now and then.