Tuesday, November 10, 2009

OMG a MEME

.

Well, she doesn't want it to be called a meme, so we'll call it a lovefest between healers. I like that. Hotness. HAHA get it? HoTness? Ahem. Miss Medicina started a, uh, lovefest that asks healers different questions about their class. Dreaming over at A Touch of Arcane tagged me, and so here I go.

So here’s how it works.

Post this questionnaire, with your answers, on your blog. Pick the healing class you know most about (or is the focus of your blog) for the questionnaire, and then send it over to another healing blogger you know and love who heals with a DIFFERENT class. Include a link to the blogger who sent you the questionnaire, as well as a link to the blogger to whom you are sending it.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

Averna, druid, main spec: resto badass, offspec: barky armed melee

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

At the moment, Av has been chilling in Dalaran, twiddling her thumbs, shooting angry glares over at my hunter, Carmina, who has been getting all the attention (she's so close to 80!). But when I DO log over to Averna, I'm mostly rocking out the 25s and 10s. Also, farming. Sorry, Av.

What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why? Oh my god, Wild Growth wins by a long shot. BOOM the melee takes damage and you're all like "WOOUUUSH" (you know that awesome sound WG makes? yeah) and then all the green numbers just start tumbling onto your screen and you're like helllll yeah. And then all the melee love you.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why? I never, ever use Tranquility. For a number of reasons. 1. If you use it, you're only healing your own group. It's rare that you're group is the only one to take massive damage, so most likely you're only healing a couple people who really need it, and the rest in overheal. 2. It's a channeled spell for about 7 seconds, depending on your haste. This means that you're wasting about 6-7 precious global cooldowns that could be spent on healing other people who actually need it at the moment. It's a poorly designed spell. I don't know how to improve on it though - making it a "smart" heal would be too similar to Wild Growth, and having it extend to the entire raid would be far too OP. Maybe they should make it weaker, but unchanneled. It's the channeling that really drives me away from using it - it's just too much wasted time and not enough benefit.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why? I personally think that our hots are what make us great as a class. We're your support system! You got the hit that beat the block, us trees can get that bass overload! We're like the wind beneath your wings! You can stand under our umbrella of heals! (.....ella ella, eh eh eh) What. What! Too much? Ok, I'll stop.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why? The damage we do in tree form is fairly sub-par. Barky arms in melee should do MUCH more damage. Just look at this wind up for a back hand! BuhBAM! WHACK!

This barky backhand should be doing at LEAST 3k DPS.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you? I'm a fan of raid healing. I DO think that, contrary to what some thing, trees can tank heal quite effectively, however, I'm all about healing the raid. I love prejuving people, I love timing the CD of my WG perfectly to hit just the right group and just the right time, I love spam nourishing 3 or 4 people in a row to get them back up to full health - I love everything about it.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why? I'm gonna get cheesy here for a second, ok? Be warned. I have no preference for class, but bring me ANY combination of our guild's healing team, and I'm happy. Pallymar, Eitri, Fuyuko, Aule, Clari, Taletha, Drya, Junia, Chandy, and even some of the hybrids who typically dps: Chain, Starflare, and Azoule - and even some who just recently switched their mains to healers, like Aerlyth and Drammy - any and all of these healers I would love to heal with. Our guild's healing team is AMAZING. We work so well together. It's a rare and beautiful thing. ./tear

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why? Shamans named Vicars. I bet when Vicars comes back to raiding, he'll heal Icecrown in Naxx gear and STILL kick my ass by facerolling chain heal. And then he'll send me a personal message on the forums telling me about how he kicked my ass. Damn you, Vicars! ./shakefist =P

What is your worst habit as a healer? Trusting my healing team. I DO trust them - I trust them implicitly, in fact. I've never met a set of more talented players, ever. But when we're on a hard mode, and I'm watching the tank's health plummet, it's so hard for me to divert my attention back to my own assignment and pray that they bring the tank back up. 99 times out of 100, they will, and it'll be without my assistance. It's my own issues that make me want to jump in and help - and I need to work on that. On hard modes, there's just not enough mana/GCDs to go around to heal more than your assigned role.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing? When someone states the absolute obvious. "Healers, you have to make sure you heal the tanks during [insert mechanic here], ok?" Oh, my god, wait. Really? WAIT. Heal the TANKS? Omg, I was just sitting here trying to heal the non-combat pets the whole time! It's so weird, they don't show up on my grid! And they keep standing in the fire but they still live, even though they're level 1! My heals MUST BE SO AWESOME.

Thankfully, this type of inanity happens rarely in guild, and almost always in pugs. Which I rarely do. Yay!

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing? I think so, yes. Some say we're OP, but I think we're juuuust perfect. =D

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer? I rely on the basic output of Recount far too much. It's a habit I really have to break. However, if something seems to be going wrong during a fight, I usually look on WoW Meters Online afterwards - we put all of our recount stats on there after raid nights.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class? People from the opposite faction see a tree and think, aw man, there's no way I can kill them. The thing is, you CAN kill us! You just to drain our mana first, and then drain it again because we probably innervated, and then chase us down cause we probably cheetah-formed, and then get the roots off yourself, and then drain our mana AGAIN, and then, well, at that point, you're probably dead from moonfire spam. So actually, I take it back - you CAN'T kill us.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn? For this question, I asked our resident warlock-changed-to-resto-druid guildmate, Taev. We have a totally sweet flashchat server on our forums that we use during the day to procrastinate during work keep in touch during non work hours. >.> I logged on and asked him this very question.

taev: Hardest thing for me is the vast difference between solo healing and 25 man healing
taev: You can't practice raid healing by doing anything but raid healing
Averna: so like, knowing who to heal and when and what spells and all that?
taev: right
taev: in 1-2 healer settings, I was largely responsible for a certain set of people, and I knew that if I didn't heal them, they wouldn't get healed
taev: so it's simple
taev: in a 25 man, you're competing/cooperating with 4-5 other healers of different types
taev: so learning which spells work well in the face of direct healers like pallies and priests, as well as chain heals... That's been tough.
taev: Another thing I'm having to learn is to predict damage
taev: Since the direct heal healers are all far more hasted than I am, I can't compete on that. I have to be hotting up those who are *going* to take damage, not as much the ones that already have.

Oh, and also, Corselle was in Flashchat too and wanted to be quoted as saying: "DROOOOOOOODS."

There you have it, folks. Straight from the horse's mouth. *neigh!*


Haste or Crit and why? Haste, haste and more haste. Also, crit! So basically, a balance of haste and crit, with an emphasis on haste. I remember healing with another resto druid once who was in comparable gear and had comparable ability - yet was totally kicking my ass. It was because they had more haste than me, and their GCDs were at one second flat, whereas mine were not. The 1 second GCD is a HUGE boon for healing. You get so many more heals out that way. Right now I'm working on getting gear that has more haste on it (although at this point, I'll take anything. Seems that whenever I raid (which isn't too often these days) NOTHING drops for me, boo.)

What healing class do you feel you understand least? Hm. After going through my 101 healing series (see side bar), I feel like I learned quite a bit about the different classes. I'd have to say shammies still confuse me sometimes, and I also find that keeping all of the auras and hands and blessings of the paladin class straight is kind of tricky.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing? Grid. Gridstatushots. Decursive. Clique. Hotcandy. All awesome add-ons. I would not be as good a healer if I didn't use these add-ons.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why? I stack primarily for spell power. Spirit is not as good as it used to be, so right now, I'm hoping to get gear with spell power, int, and haste on it.

AND NOW! I'm going to go ahead and tag the lovely Fuyuko from the Unconventional Priest! Take it away, Fuyu!

.

5 remarks:

lissanna said...

RE what else you would be doing: I can't heal totems. It says they are immune. I've tried. :)

That said, in PUGs, I bet part of the problem is that people with raid heals want to meter-snipe by ignoring the tanks & trying to raid heal - so they sometimes DO have to be reminded to actually heal the tank if the PUG wants to assign them to tank healing. They may also be nubs that don't know about the effects the boss does. So, while you are a genius that knows everything, PUG leaders never expect people like you to be in their raids. ;)

Averna said...

@Lissanna: Lol, you have a good point. And it's true - PUG leaders really shouldn't expect everyone to know exactly how the fight works, or what to do. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of pugs are made up of people who have mains in a guild, but are having trouble gearing up their alts (of most likely a different class or role) within said guild, and so they pug - OR, people who are not in a guild, but still want to raid. Both cases can (not always, but sometimes) result in people not really knowing what to do.

Miss Medicina said...

"lovefest between healers" is a perfectly adequate description. Or, "tree-hug-fest" since so many resto druids responded!

Vralk said...

Love the post, really helped me get a look at what will happen when I get Vralk to level 80 :)
I liked the haste/crit advice, as good, personal preferance is hard to find, so many people say 'this is good, but so is the other'
Thanks!
Vralk

Anonymous said...

OMG your barky backhand had me busting up! Awsome meme! And ya, I think I was lvl 50 the last time I used tranqility...