Much time has passed since it was released, but I still like the concept of Looking For Raid. I keep running it on varying characters, and overall I have a good time.
The only thing I haven’t enjoyed is the long wait time as DPS, at least on characters that don’t have a farming profession.
Even as a tank, the wait time can go ten minutes sometimes. Maybe the average is three minutes, but I have seen as high as ten. It happens.
Each time I queue, I’d see the Healers with their estimated 3 second wait time and /envy them.
I’d think to myself, ‘I gotta get me some of that.”
Well, I did.
I leveled my poor, long-suffering Priest to 85, ran instances choosing Spirit gear for all upgrades, and built a complete set of spirit healy gear (with just a couple 377 PvP items, like shoulders), and figured I was all set for LFR.
Before I ran LFR Dragon Soul as a Priest healer, I asked around on Twitter for feedback on what spec I should choose, Holy or Disc. Then I specced Holy, actually reforged so I had a chance, and ran a few Heroics to tweak my Vuh’do and learn timing sequences and synergy and this whole ‘Chakra’ thing.
I did pretty well, and yes I am saying so myself.
At least, I did pretty well for Heroics. Kept all the things alive, no wipes, that sort of stuff. Thank Elune we’re able to drastically overgear content now, because obviously I had NO skill or experience in mana management. My goal was to keep the stuffs alive, and I did so, using tools that I know overhealed for a higher mana cost than I needed to use to get the job done, but it was a start. A REAL healer would know what heal to use to get the job done while conserving mana.
The hardest lesson I had to learn as a former Druid Tree healer was NOT to cast spells. I’m used to HoTting things up right before the damage starts. I am used to casting while the bars are all green, doing the preemptive healing thing.
As a Priest, there are a few preemptive heals like Renew and Prayerof Mending and the HoT from Holy spec Mastery, but most are reactive. You have to wait for a bar to start dropping before you react to it and cast some heals. Or see what target the boss is attacking so you know who is gonna be taking the hit. Or know what AoE is about to hit the group and lay down the Holy Word – Sanctuary (also known as pretty sparklies).
It’s a bit of an adjustment, my instincts are to cast, not stand still waiting for the bars to drop. I found myself wishing the tank would take more damage. Maybe that Mage could go stand in the fire for a minute? Please? No? Fine. I’ll just stand here and Renew the tank. Again.
For those not aware, the guild I’m in has three seperate ten person raid teams, named ‘Team Wanda”, “Team Snuffleupagus” and “Team Teddybear.” I’m not in any of them, I’m a persistent floater. 🙂
My next intended step as a healer was to venture into LFR, after a little Mage leveling.
My plans did not survive contact with my friends, for the call went forth from TheRedDeath, Team Snuffleupagus’ Raid Leader.
/guild channel “We need a ranged DPS and healer for Dragon Soul.”
Cassie immediately tells me I should offer to DPS on my Hunter, to which I replied, “My Hunter is my second favorite character to play, I love playing my Hunter just after my Druid. But my Hunter is my worst geared DPS character. So, no. Red needs better than a crap hunter. He’s used to Cross, and Cross rocks.”
So I remain silent, and Red finds a willing ranged DPS quickly (This really noob Mage, omg he was so lemon fresh he squeaked, named Ursimage or something like that. Noob.), but still needs a healer. I don’t know how the subject comes up, but when asked I say that I can’t heal because I actually LIKE Red, and I wouldn’t want to subject his team to my brand new undergeared ignorant healing.
The answer I got was somewhere along the lines of, “C’mon, how bad could it really be.”
Really? You’re going to go there. oooh, that’s just asking for it, man.
So into the Dragon Soul rode the ten raiders, and hell rode with them.
Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t hell. It wasn’t even purgatory. It wasn’t surf and sand and 12 ounce steaks on the grill with a tropical drink with an itty bitty umbrella in it, but it wasn’t bad at all.
See, Team Snuffleupagus are very good raiders. In fact, almost everyone in Band of Misfits are very good raiders. When someone can’t make a raid night, they never seem to lack for volunteers. They kinda do this a lot, and do it well.
So I joined them with the trash on Morchok, and for the next five bosses we had a lot of fun. The pace was fast and smooth, everyone did what they were supposed to, bosses and trash died, and much joking was had by all. Everyone stayed focused on the goal and hustled without rushing, if you get my meaning.
By the time Ultraxion died (OMG I two healed on Ultraxion with Silarkias!) I was kinda liking this whole Holy Priest Chakra Healing thing.
All that hullabaloo about Chakra healing, and changing optimization on the fly between single target and AoE healing, plus Holy Word changing states is all pretty awesome once you get into it.
Yes, I know I’m the last idiot left in the game to try Chakra healing out. Sue me, Bears don’t give a Chakra.
I love playing classes new to me in a game I’ve been playing forever. The whiff of new car smell on a model I know and love, what could be better? Now with Priests being enjoyed, that leaves Warlocks and Monks as the last two unexplored countries to look forward to.
Not only did the raiding with Snuffleupagus go great, but I walked away with 2 pieces of Tier gear. Turns out, their team didn’t have any Paladins, Priests or Warlocks in the group that night, so anything that could dr9op for Tier was destined for me.
Please don’t hurt me.
So, a great night, right? This healing thing, pretty fun. And short queue times! Rock on!
So, let’s try out LFR, how bad could it be?
The horror. The horror.
Dudes. Seriously. GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE FIRE.
What is wrong with you people?
I now know why the healing queue time is so short.
Tanking and DPS are straitforward roles, their enemies are the NPCs.
For the healers, the PLAYERS are the enemy.
How smooth or challenging a run the healer has is based directly on whether or not the other players pay attention, stand in the healing circles, run out of the fire, move to proper range, close in when appropriate, etc.
If the other players just stand there and don’t give a shit if they’re taking damage, the crowd is thick enough that it’s hard to tell why they’re health is plummeting. All a healer can see is a bar dropping, and take frantic steps not to lose them. If time allows, then a combat log can be scanned to see wtf was going on, but by then it may be too late.
A tank grabs what a tank grabs. DPS kills this, DPS kills that. The worst skill-type behavior I’m used to noticing is how lost people STILL get if nobody holds their hand and calls out colors of oozes.
But I never could have imagined the impact lazy DPS and tanks have on a healer in LFR.
I’m not saying the groups wiped, I’m just saying people doing stupid shit like killing EVERY DAMN TENTACLE on the Spine of Deathwing and spawning every possible add SUCKS.
And then, omigod and then, on the last plate for Spine, NOT HAVING ENOUGH DPS TO KILL THE TENDON, so we have to do the last plate all over again? Really? I’ve never even seen that happen before, not killing the tendon, just wtf.
I walked away in disbelief.
Sure, there are 25 players in LFR versus 10 in the normal raid I went on, and yes the AoE spells I used have upper limits on effectiveness based on number of people needin’ the healin’.
I don’t care. It really is true. It’s more annoying to heal LFR than normal because it really is that damn annoying to heal through stupid, and there are oh so many stupids to have to heal!
Or worse yet, heal through “I don’t give a shit”.
It doesn’t have to be that damn hard.
Hey, ranged DPS, when it all goes to black and the tentacles flail, CLOSE IN TO THE CENTER WHERE THE GLOWY SPARKLES ARE.
I feel so bad for healers that see the joy other pe0ple boast about in LFR, and then zone in to deal with that crap on a daily basis.
I don’t want to accentuate the negative, but I’ve been thinking on how LFR could be modified or tweaked to make it a little better for healers, and I’ve got nothing.
In my opinion, LFR is tuned just fine the way it is. If anything, it’s tuned so loose that players can stand in the bad shit and get away with it because the healers can keep up.
Maybe we need harsher penalties for bad behavior.
I’ve noticed that when something is an insta-kill, like running into an ice wall on Hagara, why holy crap, people don’t run into the ice wall on purpose anymore. But if it just causes lots of damage for the healer to heal through, hey, that’s not my concern, right? Let the healer deal with it, that’s their job.
Maybe LFR simply needs more things to be insta-gibs. Maybe if DPS don’t kill at least one ooze out of three, everyone simply dies. Or if you stand in the black blood of the earth on Morchok, one tick and then dead, next time move your ass.
I dunno. Clearly, the current system is working, but at what cost? Are people encouraged to learn the mechanics? Do people who honestly want to know what to do see the results of their actions and learn from it?
I knew healing was intense this expansion, and I hoped it would be fun to try, and it is. But hoochie mama, I had no idea LFR was just THAT irritating.
It turns out, you CAN heal stupid, but I don’t want to.
I wonder, is there an addon that marks players that stand in the bad on my Vuh’do bars, so I can see to stop healing them?
You know, I use Vuh’do, I’ve got whack-a-mole going. If someone were to stand in the bad a few times, I’d love an addon that just recognised that, and colored their entire bar something obnoxious like nuclear red so I know not to ever click on that bar to heal it for the rest of the run. Just let him die and die and die until he leaves in disgust.
Tanks excluded, of course.
I’d so love that. Just notify me that they’re acting stupid, even if I can’t see them doing it in the crush of the crowd, so I can save my mana for someone who cares.
We could call the addon “Heal Nazi“, and when it goes off it whispers the affected player, “No heals for YOU!”
Or maybe that’s a bad idea.
The BigBearButt 
Yeah, I recently leveled a disco-priestess up “real quick” – my first healer… Also the first time that I installed “GTFO”, because it’s usually me that stands in the bad while whacking Vuhdo squares. (renew the tank YES, a lame RENEW on the tank, pain-suppress the DK and bubble the warrior)
Why is it OK before Hagara to stand in the damn blizzards?
At least I’m disc. If the damage already got to you, I can’t help you anyway 😉 I also can’t heal you through the fail-fires in HoTs, I can’t brez, and I don’t interrupt (not a belf!)
I think the problem with LFR is currently that we’re seeing the alt’s alts running in there. Those are the “totally different class/role” toons that often have the attitude of “yawn, 2 of my toons have done this and are geared, this is lolezmode” and then get destroyed by a mechanic that the other two toons never encountered. Or because their clothie has no mitigating armor/shells/bubbles. But I really don’t know why people all of a sudden stopped single-targetting the little flaily things on platform four… In short, I think that right now we’re in the “arrogance kills” phase of an expansion/patch…
Back to letting the dps warrior die because he needed on an agi-cloak…
LikeLike
One thing BBB forgot in his post about being able to do something midfight is that we really need a way to stop people pulling bosses/starting encounters when they know they’ll get kicked. I mean the cd between being in fight and being able to kick people is long enough that you can just keep pulling bosses/trash and the raid has no real possibility to kick you if you really want to be an asshat.
LikeLike
And this is totally in the wrong blog posts comment. It was actually meant to the newer one. Shame on me for reading both first and commenting after 😦 So mod, please just remove this and my comment, I’ll go repost it in the right Dalra thread.
LikeLike
LFR Ultraxion. You always get at least 5 DPS who think they’re special, special snowflakes who are exempt from hitting Heroic Will and can just carry on dpsing Ultraxion through the Twilight. Now the thing is, if one person makes a mistake, or two, it’s healable. If upwards of 10 people have decided they are special snowflakes and are deliberately sitting through the Twilight desperately trying to whore a few more points on the dps meters, that’s half the raid that needs to be healed from 10% health, including keeping the tank/s alive who is usually taking a hell of a beating.
And if the healer dares tell the DPS to hit the button? You get a self-entitled clown who then aggressively sneers, “L2heal” “It’s LFR and you can’t heal through that?”, etc.
And if you don’t heal them? Sadly, your fellow healers do. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s AOE healing. Perhaps they think it’s part of normal mechanics. Perhaps they’re also meter whoring. Who knows?
….Yeah, I have issues with LFR.
LikeLike
Well Ultraxion seems to bring the worst out in healers also. First I was annyed when I came across healers who took 2 or all 3 of the buffs and then gloated the hps they were able to do. The sad thing is that these days I’ve gotten so used to it that I don’t care anymore.
LikeLike
Is it really necessary to call someone you assume to be a woman ‘your bitch?’
No. It isn’t.
Yes, she was being stupid about it, and I’m a dedicated reader of yours, but it is never necessary to resort to misogynist terms to get your point across.
ANYONE can be an asshole about things. Doesn’t matter if the toon or player possesses a vagina.
LikeLike
Well, you went somewhere I didn’t intend to go, but I certainly understand from the blog discussions on asshat male behavior and attitudes going on why you might assume that is what I was doing and what I meant. I appreciate your writing a comment here to talk about it rather than bringing the discussion somewhere I wouldn’t have a chance to see it or address it. Maybe I can’t help, but I would like to talk about the words I used, and what I actually meant by them.
A little background on this. I use terms of gender as to calling a person “him” or “Her” based on the sex of the character, without making assumptions as to the actual sex of the player. I myself am a man in real life, and the majority of the characters I have in WoW at the moment are female. I do not play characters I personally identify with as my alter egos, I play character personalities from a role playing standpoint that are not me. I am not playing as myself in the world of warcraft, I am directing someone else’s actions. I have never had a problem enjoying a great story told through the point of view of non-male characters, including the Dragonriders of Pern novels, or the Honor Harrington books, both series being on my favorites list Im putting together by request for a bloglist. As such, I do not make the assumption that other characters represent the people at the keyboards playing them. I never assume another avatar is a direct physical representation of the player.
I do not think that a naked female night elf dancing at a mailbox in Stormwind is a representation of the person at the keyboard.
In fact, I tend to err in the opposite direction, which is admittedly just as bad. I tend to assume that characters played in stupid, offensive or outright trolling ways are automatically being played by 14 year old boys with anger issues, and frankly, that is just as wrong of an attitude to have. I know it is, and I am trying to work on it. I guess that is one of my prejudices on display right there. I don’t expect mature adults of any sex to act like that, and I don’t really expect women to be trolls or asshats. Which is sexist of me, but I’ve never really known but one troll asshat female in real life, so my sexist belief that most women are actually nice or mature enough not to be trolls has an honest foundation, even though I know intellectually that it’s wrong. I’ve seen far more asshat men in my life. FAR MORE. I’m working on my attitude, though. I am doing my best to come to grips with the knowledge that women can be just as douchey as men, and not just assume all asshats are men be default.
That brings me to what you seemed to be saying, that I assumed the person playing Dalra was a female just like the avatar, and thus addressed her ‘the player’ in derogatory terms aimed at hurting a female. That I was talking about making her, ‘the player’, my little bitch, with the feminine quotient of ‘bitch’ being intended.
that was not the case.
I called the avatar ‘her’, because I was discussing the avatar. The avatar’s name was Dalra, and was female. It wasn’t intended to imply the player was, too. I get that you could take it that way, but it wasn’t intended.
As far as the term ‘bitch’ goes, in the world I work in, making someone your bitch is now gender neutral, much as someone being a gimp.
In our Iron Foundry, pouring molten metal and getting dirty and dealing with idiots, I run a service sector of the plant. My techs report to and aid, or ‘serve’, other employees to resolve their problems. Therefore, joking that someone whose job is to report to another and help them is going to be that persons ‘bitch’, is using the term bitch to mean a menial slave, and is used much like ‘bring out the gimp’ from Pulp Fiction. Hell, I just told one of the other supervisors a few days ago that Barry would be his bitch for the day, knowing Barry would come right back with a smartass line, and Barry did not disappoint. The joke in it is that Barry is NOBODIES bitch. Which is why it was okay to use that term in that situation.
When I used the term, it really was not intended to imply any thought towards the real players vagina or the existence thereof.
Now, that being said, the actual use I made of ‘bitch’ comes directly from offensive male behavior, and for that I totally get where you are coming from. It comes from an implied meaning of ‘menial servant or slave’. That making someone your bitch can have grown to mean making that person your slave is a deplorable fact, and this is where I absolutely get your point. If I was really thinking of the player as a female, and then started using language about making that person my menial slave, that shit is VERY offensive. Hell, I would have used far more angry terms when directed at myself for it.
That you took it that way was unintended by me, and I apologize to you. I absolutely get where you’re coming from.
I used the term because it was appropriate to what I was doing to the player behind Dalra, regardless of and without consideration for, whatever gender the player actually is, but since the character is female, I can totally see why you would think that was where it came from.
I do understand that feminism and gender hate is a very prominant topic in the wow blogosphere at the moment. It was not my intention to add to those concerns here, and I hope that by taking the time to talk about some of the thoughts behind the word usage I chose you’ll, if not forgive me, at least understand that it wasn’t intended as being directed at a real female.
And I stand wholeheartedly behind making the player controlling Dalra my slave to the use I put him/her in the blog post, in getting some actual benefit out of that trolling asshat. I used him/her to make my point, and I think it worked very well.
LikeLike
Hehe. “Heal through stupid…” nope, I don’t think so. Not for me (Wellborn) anyways!
I usually don’t even try to heal folks standing in fire, I’ll give them the courtesy of warning them if I can but if no improvement (even slight) is made then down they go! Actually when Cata first hit this was just a fact of lfg. If a priest, druid, shammy, or pally had just started healing a random Cata pugs most likely he/she simply weren’t able to heal through it. Too much damage and not enough high-end gear to help compensate. Plus with all of the changes to mana and regen from Cata, initially I nearly gave up on healing completely. Too painful. But gradually things were nerfed, buffed, tweaked, etc. and it got better.
LikeLike
Pingback: Single Point of Blame | Screaming into the Vacuum
What i normally do when i find a particularly nasty idiot that can’t move out of bad stuff:
– wait till we get to Hagara
– wait till she pops those ice waves, while making sure i am 1 ice wave back(or before) the designated idiot
– target said idiot
– cast the life-grip version for priest so that said person goes flying through the ice wave and instantly killing them
– then announcing that as karma, hilarity ensues through the raid and said person might be a bit miffed (ok, most of the times enraged beyond belief).
I know it is very harsh, but i duely believe this teaches things and said person has learned something 🙂
LikeLike
Hehe, nice post once again BBB 🙂
On the positive side of things, more stupid to heal through, the more you can test your mana management, your cooldowns effectiveness and your overall healing output. So yes, it’s stupid, but it does give you the best circumstances you can wish for if you want to test your healing to the limits 🙂
Think happy thoughts!
Some normal 10man fights are actually boring to heal by now. No such thing in LFR, there’s always something to heal in LFR 🙂
See what you can do and flex your digital healing muscles!
LikeLike
I like challenge. 🙂 However, whether you’re a healer, DPS or tank, if the other people do not perform well enough, you have to get better in order to pull through the fight, so I would say LFR can be challenging for any role if there’s enough people who decide to take a nap mid-encounter; it’s not just healers.
I liked the idea of avoidable effects that punished players in other manner than damaging them (Malleable Goo that Meebs mentioned). I heard they have stopped being added because nobody likes being afflicted with a long incapacitate effect but I don’t know whether this was claimed by an official source or if it’s just a conspiracy theory. I agree nobody likes it but the conclusion never occurred to me; to the contrary, I would like to see more of these effects in LFR rather than one-hit kills as they allow players to recover from their errors.
LikeLike
BBB were you running that at the end of the (raid) week again?
But I understand your predicament from a healing perspective. I always feel like you can’t save the day as a healer (well since Cata) – you can be a good dps, doing dps, doing the other things you have to do and you can see the rewards. You can be a good tank pick up the stuff, take less damage, do more dps… and solo your way through kills, but healing – if you have a bad tank and bad dps all you can do is heal constantly to try and keep people alive… sustaining the stupid for that bit longer.
That said – there are two reasons I don’t heal in LFR much (apart from having a tank heavy line-up):
1. My one healer is a holy pally… and spirit plate abounds so I don’t really need many drops (apart from token pieces), and I have the weapon (and that shield never drops!).
2. I actually find it boring to do so… because it is (almost) literally holy radiance, holy radiance, holy radiance, Light of Dawn for the whole 2 hours… and even then I spend half my time just sitting around doing nothing because if people aren’t being stupid 6 healers is too many for LFR.
The other factor is… I’d have to respec out of my holy pvp spec to do so … and I’m lazy.
LikeLike
But I ran one on the first day, and it was just as bad!
LikeLike
I have posted a number of times on various forums, despite the difficulty I genuinely liked the 4.0 idea of if you stand in something bad, we are going to give you lots of warning but your going to die if you don’t move. You got one shot? Its not a healer problem. But no, lets nerf the boss and now the tank pops a cool down and lives with 10% hp for 1.2 more seconds and suddenly it a healer problem because he was not healed up and because he was only at 95% before he got ht.
LikeLike
Ive healed for years on my priest and sometimes I just let people die, on purpose, for being dumb! (actually more like f-tardism)
I got that rep in my first raiding guild in Vanilla, I let one of the tanks die, no heals for him as he was supposed to be tanking the doggies in MC. It was a complete mistake but I ran with what everyone else said… lol, the fun! Now Im ruthless, if your being really stupid then bugger you… Im not healing!
In Hagara, if they run into the ice they die, Im not even going to lift an eyebrow to save someone (except my mates). Ive even thought about using the speed boost from shields in Holy spec to speed people up into the ice… thats me being all warlocky.
Talking about LFR, last night, such an awesome run, whole bunch of guildies and another mate – known for years (sadly hes Australian) – and I were the tanks, the entire run goes so smoothly when the tanks know what theyre doing and both of us were tanking on DKs, we both have Druid tanks and I have a pally tank. Maybe one or two deaths from things glitching… compare that to the horror of doing lfr on my warrior… please make it stop /cry (on an Oceanic realm – mains on an American server)
LikeLike
Im doing LFR as I write, what Im really sick of is this “This is only LFR” attitude… some of us dont get to go raidy with the best so this is it…. it annoys me greatly that this is the general attitude of the most vocal…grrr! (You can probably guess this has just been shown in the LFR Im currently in) 😦
LikeLike
Hey Tri-B!
Great post! Don’t think I ever want to do the raid heal thing but you did a great job for us! Wanna come for seconds?
Team Snuffy all the way!!
LikeLike
Yes I would, but that means I have to venture in LFR again to try and get more upgrades. Crap.
LikeLike
DAMN YOU RED!
I go into LFR for the first half just now, and it’s the group from hell AGAIN! People pulling ooze adds intentionally, pulling bosses while still fighting trash, people standing watching as others do nothing, eating all the oozes instead of even trying to kill one, just AAARGHHHH.
On the plus side, I did win the 384 healing trinket, Seal of the Seven Signs.
Don’t think that makes it better, thought! You can’t bribe me with shinies! Well, you can bribe me, you just can’t shut me up.
LikeLike
how about this
a) you start with a “loot buff” of 3 gold tokens
b) if you are hit by GTFO stuff you loose one
c) if you don’t have a token left at the end of a boss fight a window pops up – not eligible for loot, you stood in fire
*hysterical giggling*
Rauxis, chosen of CAT
LikeLike
Yes Rauxis, *this* would be wonderful.
LikeLike
Have tried LFR on 4 different toons, including a holy priest. With a few notable exceptions, wipes are uncommon (most runs = no wipes). The system can handle a combo of 5 noobs/jerks.
I try to pay attention and if someone is doing stupid stuff repeatedly, I generally make it a point to not heal them again (besides incidentally, on multi-heals). In fact, I see it as my obligation to let them die if they’re mis-playing an fight – nothing like death and a corpse run to learn what not to do.
Agree w/Hyperious: in 5-mans, the healer does hold some cards. Queues are short and when tanks are antsinpants and pull three groups at once when heals is low on mana, I turn and hightail for the instance entrance. I guarantee the next healer will be less capable of healing through stupid, if they want to try.
I’ve also found that joining pvp as heals can really help move the dial – in most BGs, heals are lacking or aren’t that good. I also think holy priests are OP in BGs: very hard to kill.
LikeLike
At the heart of this hilarity is this: when we are hanging with those we love and respect, and the feelig is mutual, a multitude of sins are forgiven. Comparing a cracker-jack team of functional raiders is such a far cry from an LFR group. And dude, you are killing me softly with that song. I take lovely Zep the Holy Priest in there weekly, praying to the RNGs to give me some Shadow Priest love, just once, just once, so I can go all glowy-smoky, and yet, no. I am compelled to heal, and watch the POP of wings time and again. Healing is a lot of hurry up and what OH SHIT YOU”RE DYING for me. I am just hoping that my new macro that Lizzyuh told me about, when I hit Holy Nova and go naked will distract a few dwarfs from my lack of mana.
One of these days, someday, I will find that guild that wants me geared holy, shaman, mage, and tank. Someday. But till that day comes, I will work for justice and vendor points like the rest of the slobs out there, and have fun digging in pretend dirt.
LikeLike
The whiff of new car smell on a model I know and love, what could be better?
Love it.
LikeLike
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA – laughed until I cried….at work!!!
No heals for YOU!!!
Thanks BBB =D
LikeLike
The tuning on the lfr seems fine, especially when I can occasionally get a group that barely beats enrage timers.
For the most part I get pretty good players in the lfr with just a few who always stand in the fire in each group.
So far, only set foot in the lfr as a druid heals or melee dps, paladin heals and holy priest.
Looking Girard to getting in there on some if my dos chars soon.
LikeLike
Hi BBB,
I love Pugs too…
But, I definitely can relate to your frustration. At times it doesn’t bother me; I mainly play healers it is what I enjoy most within WoW; it’s what I’m good at doing. However… there are times when I want to virtually grab every single pixelated fool (that stands in stuff, won’t move, or stay because they healers got my back) and virtually give them a good shaking, or worse…
The great thing about having a solid guild such as yours, even with those fail experiences, hopefully, it gives you satisfaction knowing you can go back and run something with them, and you can always vent about those awful experiences in chat/Vent. 😉
I haven’t played WoW in a few weeks, I’m so busy these days; gardening, additional clients, volunteering, can’t afford to add anything else to my plate at the moment. It’s been even longer since I PvP’d or raided, never seem to have the time when I’m online. Met some amazing guildies, so chat with them on Vent and via email, downtime will come at the end of the year, looking forward to the new expansion.
LikeLike
Sadly, it seems bad behavior runs rampant in cross realm groupings and people are like that because there aren’t any consequences. Many dps run with the thought that they don’t have to switch to adds because someone else will and they don’t have to move out of bad things cause the healers will save them. That in mind, there were some great debuffs in ICC like Choking Gas Explosion and Malleable Goo that punished the dps for not moving. Don’t move out of bad things and your dps goes down and it hurts no one except for you. (I think you had mentioned something like that in a previous post.)
Of course, as a priest, if you can figure out who’s not standing in a good place, you can life grip them where you want them. Even more fun if they’re mid cast XD
LikeLike
Blizzard should build in something like the addon gtfo for lfr hard to ignore that noise for very long of course you could turn the volume off..
thinking of that gtfo feeding into vuhdo would be awesome
LikeLike
I know the feeling all too well…
My main is my Paladin, and he levelled Holy from 1-80. I take my healing very seriously. I love healing. I also, however, love the unimaginable power that a healer has over the group. When I was running heroics during Wrath (when they were still gear-appropriate), I found that if a tank was being ultra-bad (read: LET ME GET MY MANA!) or a DPS wasn’t removing themselves from fire or assisting the tank, I would let them die.
But not just regular dying. No, allowing them to die arbitrarily doesn’t teach them anything and can inadvertantly punish the rest of the group.
Nope, when the boss is at 5% health and the tank’s taking a beating, suddenly the heals stop. Tank dies, boss dies two seconds after thanks to the DPS continued burns.
I dubbed it “The Healer Special”. Only healers can judge the incoming damage, outgoing damage, boss health, tank health, and time required to pull it off. The tears of bad tanks fuel me…
LikeLike
I like your ideo of that add on. I always thought that there should be a minus on their loot role for DPS that take too much of a certain kind of damage. The only thing they pay attention to in LFR is loot roles.
-Pally, Priest, Druid and Shaman healer
LikeLike
It seems to me that feedback is and always will be an issue. Instakill puddles will help a bit, but even there, players need to know what happened. Sometimes it gets lost in the shuffle. This really does sit on the back of game design and even UI design. Some is making sure players actually care, yes, but it also needs to be absolutely clear why players failed and how not to do so in the future. They did make some “bad puddle” mechanics in the leveling content like Deadmines, so they are trying, but it seems like situational awareness just isn’t important enough in most of the game to translate well to players who are new to raiding. Maybe we need more instakill puddles *outside* of raiding, too. And consistent graphics. Healing puddles and killing puddles have to be different… and I think they are for the most part, but I’ve heard of some confusion here and there.
…and now I’m wondering if it would be good to let healing puddles flatly override killing puddles, so you don’t have to deal with competing ground effects.
LikeLike
The addon GTFO should be built into the default UI. That obnoxious alarm it plays when you stand in bad encourages good behavior.
LikeLike
Not particularly helpful for deaf players or those who don’t play with sound for whatever reason. It needs to be visual.
LikeLike
In that case, combine GTFO with Power Auras Classic to create visual warnings instead of audible ones.
LikeLike
This just clearly explained why I don’t heal unless it’s for my guild, atleast I know they aren’t stupid or lazy.
LikeLike
Glad you enjoyed Holy. It really is a lot of fun 🙂
It is the right of every healer to refuse to heal the chronically stupid. The good part is no matter how much they rage, they are already dead and you aren’t going to rez them! As such I think that perhaps a debuff for chronic stupidity is the way to go. If you don’t manage to hit Heroic Will 3 times in a fight, then you go boom. Complete with a suitable on-screen feedback loop – You have failed miserably and the Great Lord Bashiok has punished you – that kind of thing.
LikeLike
In LFR, some classes don’t need to use Heroic Will. As an unholy DK, my Anti-Magic Shell means I take no noticeable damage from Hour of Twilight. So why should I exit when I can get a nice full bar of runic power that lets me do more dps?
Now I am completely of the view that people who don’t get out of the “fire” should be punished. Instant-death effects are okay, but why not hit dps where it hurts? Have a makes-you-do-1%-dps “fire”, and you will see dps moving like you wouldn’t believe.
Some effects that make the main boss go immune to damage during add phases would be great too. Had a rare case where another unholy DK did similar damage on Ultrax, ship, and Spine–and I was enjoying the competition–but then he pulled ahead of me by about 20% on Madness. Now he was 10 iLevels higher and did have the tentacle sword from Deathwing (which I still desperately needed at that point), but I didn’t understand why he was suddenly so far ahead. Looked at Recount afterwards, and found that he’d never switched to the adds. Bastard.
Overall, I actually find healing LFR the least stressful role…so long as half the “healers” aren’t dps who queued as heals without actually having a healing spec.
LikeLike
I think you can add in custom icons based on debuffs in vuhdo. I recall messing with this on my priest a while back, but the issue is you’d have to set one up for every dang bad thing they could stand in…and there’s so many…
I miss my priest…
LikeLike
http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/fatality
Fatality kinda works like that
LikeLike
You’re just bitter, cause I needed a dedicated healer to deal with all the fricken boulders I ate on the first boss 🙂 I saved the team by tanking those boulders!
LikeLike
For the healers, the PLAYERS are the enemy.
At last, BBB, you have learned the true zen of healing. Now you must learn the ancient art of triage.
To the ignorant, triage means identifying the most damaged and healing them first. But the wise understand that triage is about identifying the people who must live, and keeping them alive at all costs, while letting the others die. Your tool for triage is that most reviled of all tools: the damage meter. The 2 tanks and the 8 or so people at the top of the meter must be kept alive. Everyone else, heal if you can, but do not grieve if they fall.
Or just spam AoE heals and hope that’s enough.
Maybe LFR simply needs more things to be insta-gibs. Maybe if DPS don’t kill at least one ooze out of three, everyone simply dies. Or if you stand in the black blood of the earth on Morchok, one tick and then dead, next time move your ass.
This is the thinking that led to difficult heroics and raids at the beginning of Cataclysm. It was deemed a failure, and now the DPS ride freely on the backs of the healers and tanks. As it was in Molten Core, so shall it be in LFR, until the end of days.
LikeLike
I like your idea for an add-on. I will be keeping my eyes open.
LikeLike
A quick follow up. I’m at work so I could only spare a few moments for a search, but this looks like it may be solid. I will do some testing when I get home.
http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/ensidiafails#t1:description
LikeLike
It works well. Does attract trolls to you like flies though, especially if you let it announce. 🙂
LikeLike