The Queue: Easy heroics and reverse DPS
by Alex Ziebart 
Nov 29th 2008 at 3:00PM
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.
Another day, another Q&A! Now, without delay, let's get to the questions.
Ven asked...
Another day, another Q&A! Now, without delay, let's get to the questions.
Ven asked...
In looking at badge rewards, a couple guildies and I noticed that there are more rewards and item types available for 25-man badges than for 10-man badges. Is this intended? Are the heroic and 10-man level badges relegated to stacking endlessly once you have the two or three pieces of gear you need from them? Or is Blizz planning on adding more gear soon? Compared to BC badge gear, there is very little available.
That badge gear built up over two years. There was hardly any gear when The Burning Crusade launched, if there was any at all. Then more was added with Zul'Aman, then even more with Sunwell Plateau and patch 2.4. If Wrath of the Lich King launched with as much badge gear as The Burning Crusade ended with, I would be really, really worried.
DJScythe17 asked...
For those of us who never saw BC raid level content and now are reaching WotLK heroics in Northrend blues, which heroics are easiest for newcomers? Which should I avoid like the plague until I get much better gear? Or are they all equally difficult?
In my experience, Violet Hold is the easiest Heroic by far, though it can be a bit harder or easier depending on which of the random bosses you get. It's still the easiest no matter what, I think. Instead of feeling like a Heroic, it feels like a hard-hitting level 80 Normal dungeon. This is a place every caster is going to run on Heroic, too. The ones trying to get their hit cap back, anyway. Cyanigosa drops Mark of the War Prisoner, which is a hell of a lot of hit for one item.
Tarean asked...
I've had a Warlock main for the ~4 years I've been playing WoW and so I'm used to playing a DPS role in raids. With the new expansion I want to start a shaman healer but the concept of keeping track of what totems are up, who to heal, which heals to use, etc. is confusing to me, is there anyway to ease the transition of being the DPS to healing the raid?
The biggest thing to ease the transition is mods, so I hope you're not against addons. For Shaman specific abilities, TotemTimers is your bread and butter. It makes all of your cooldowns, timers, elemental shields, all of that really easy to watch and organize.
For general Healing use, try out Grid and Clique if you don't mind investing a little time into your mods. They're kind of annoying to figure out and set up, but once you do the Healing experience becomes much more enjoyable. As for what heals to use, just do some reading. It's all situational, though Chain Heal is your bread and butter heal as a Resto Shaman, it's your biggest strength.
To make the transition from DPS to Healer easier, just imagine you're DPSing your friend. Instead of their health going from right to left, you need to make it go from left to right.
Clifton asked...
Do vehicles like the motorcycle and mammoth count towards the mount achievements?
They're learned just like mounts and go in the mounts tab on your character screen, so yep!
Tanglebones asked...
Can one mail enchanted heirloom items to alts? Do the enchants scale?
Enchants do not scale. You can only put pre-BC enchants on them, because heirloom items are considered level 0. They're definitely below the level 35 or level 60 requirements on some enchants.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: Shaman, Analysis / Opinion, Wrath of the Lich King, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Dan Nov 29th 2008 3:35PM
I've been looking through the raid loot on wowhead and noticed that only t6 tokens drop from any of the raids. This varies a lot from TBC, where all three tiers were available in raids upon release. What does this then mean for future wrath raids? Will it just be one tier set per instance? If so will these instances be larger then normal or are we looking at about one token per boss in the later raids?
Heroic Helper Nov 29th 2008 3:51PM
There are two different tiers, although they are considered both tier 7. Valorous has a 213 itemlevel, whereas Heroic has a 200 (Required ilevel for Epic achievement is 213, requiring 25 man instances or high end heroic difficulty raid boss loot) Will they be adding more to those same instances, or to badge vendors, probably not. But when Ulduar hits, there will most likely be tier 8 and "8.5" (ilevel 213) set.
TheSporkWithin Nov 29th 2008 4:28PM
When TBC launched the only raids that were open were Karazhan, Magtheridon and Gruul's, which encompassed Tier 4. The rest were added in content patches. Just like what happened in original WoW, just like will happen with Wrath.
Heroic Helper Nov 29th 2008 3:46PM
If you want an easy heroic, just do an instance that was meant for lower levels. The Nexus, Utgarde Keep, Violet Hold. Stay far away from The Old Kingdom and anything with a gauntlet until you know your group can handle that many level 80-81 mobs on a tank.
Bromnir Nov 29th 2008 4:18PM
Interesting - that's different from my experience in TBC, where the level of the non-heroic version of an instance didn't seem to be an indicator of heroic difficulty at all. We never did manage to finish heroic ramparts, (normally a 60 instance) but heroic mechanar (a 70 instance even in non-heroic) was a cakewalk.
It always seemed a little silly that Mechanar scaled so little and Ramparts scaled so much. Has Blizz now tried to even out the scaling from normal to heroic a little?
Antonino Nov 29th 2008 3:54PM
Okay. I'm not normally the type who flames; in fact, I hate people who do that. But this comment:
"To make the transition from DPS to Healer easier, just imagine you're DPSing your friend. Instead of their health going from right to left, you need to make it go from left to right."
Was simply retarded. Sorry for being frank.
Simons Nov 29th 2008 4:27PM
What? I thought "reverse DPS" was a great analogy for healing. Sure, it doesn't capture the real subtleties and nuances that make healing hard, but the purpose of this statement wasn't to set a mantra for how to be a great healer - it was to provide some guidance to turn the player's thought process around from DPS to healing. To that end, "DPS your friend, but the bar will go the other way" is a great starting point. In the end, healing IS like negative damage.
P.S. If you don't want a negative comment to be flaming, all you have to do is include a brief explanation of your position - why you think this sentence is retarded, in this case. That's the primary difference between flames and disagreeing discussion. I'd love to hear why, exactly, you disagree with this statement, as I'm pretty much taking a stab in the dark with my response as to what you feel was poor about it.
jbodar Nov 30th 2008 6:00AM
The advice about addons and "doing your homework" was spot-on, but the "reverse-DPS" thing just came off as cheesy and fairly worthless to me. Maybe I'm just not one for mantras, but it just sounded empty (almost condescending) and didn't add any real value to the response, IMO.
It's not the concept of healing that's tricky when you first start out, it's the execution: being mana-effiecient, knowing which heals to cast at which time and on whom, etc. I'd like to think we all get the concept.
Good column otherwise.
Schadow Nov 30th 2008 6:20AM
I also thought the reverse-dps thing was a bit odd.
I don't know how well it works for a shaman, but for a Paladin I find healbot to be a great add-on to start healing with.
I am sure Grid and Clique make a great tandem, but Grid has about a bajillion different modules to it and no real guideline to tell you which are actually useful. Then there's the configuration and integration of Clique into Grid...
I've installed Grid and uninstalled it so many times I've lost count. I don't mind doing some configuration to get something to look and play great, but with Grid and all its modules I just don't know where to start.
Healbot is fairly plug-and-play, and turns the complicated business of learning to heal into a game of extreme whack-a-mole.
It's not a good thing to get addicted to, and you need to learn the subtleties of healing, but it will help to give you an easy interface that will slice out a lot of the initial confusion and allow you to focus more o the job at hand.
Healing is a complicated business - particularly with a lot of damage going on. I think it is good to simplify it initially so you can spend more time learning the basics of triage and mana management and less time struggling with your interface.
Llaewynn Nov 30th 2008 1:54PM
No, I agree. Thinking of healing as "dpsing your friend" isn't very useful advice to most people transitioning from DPS because most DPS focus on one target at once. You rarely hit one target, wait til he's 25% down, now switch to another target who's almost full and get him down 10%, etc.
I like the analogy people use of calling it a game of whack-a-mole. Using something like Healbot (which is what I use and love) you just have to get into a rhythm of knowing how much each heal heals and how fast they are to get off, and then playing whack-a-mole with the health bars using the appropriate heals to avoid going too much over but not taking too long either. :)
shaman healer Jan 6th 2009 7:10AM
Re: Advice given to the Resto Shaman.
1. If you are just starting out I Reccommend HealBot over grid/clique. Its virtually plug and play.
2. Chain heal is NOT your bread and butter. You are in blues, and are progressing through 5 man heroics. Instead, when the tank has taken some damage use Riptide. The HoT will give you some time to assess the situation and finish dropping totems. LHW is your best friend in 5 mans. When 5 manning, if your not sure whether to use CH, dont. Instead use Riptide and 2 fast LHWs. This will put the most healing possible in the least time which will stop you from panicing.
3. Consider this spec, which it targetted to 5 mans: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hZ0xxIZxcezqxoxkrIRt
This may change in 3.08 slightly.
4. Along with that spec use the following glyphs:
a. Glyph of Earthliving Weapon
b. Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave
Review these once you move into regular 10mans.
5.
Always have earth living up.
Always have your water shield up.
Always have earth shield on the tank.
6. Good luck
ender Nov 29th 2008 3:54PM
i have to say this is my fav part of wow insider right now! i love the interactivity with this. but i do have a question. what in your own oppinion is the easiest faction to start to grind on for rep as a new level 80, i know there is the "championing" but with dailies etc, what seems to be the easiest?
Naithin Nov 29th 2008 4:06PM
While not the easiest, one you definitely want to be aiming for regardless of your class or spec is Sons of Hodir. It requires quite a hefty quest chain in the Stormpeaks to unlock the ability to even earn rep with these guys, and you can only earn it via dailies (3 at friendly, +2 more at honoured, +1 more at revered). But! They offer shoulder enchants, much like the old scryer/aldor ones, but you can straight up buy them once you have the required rep. You can buy blue shoulder enchants - roughly equivalent to the old exalted scryer / aldor ones - from honoured.
So yes, you will want that. The 'easiest' of the reps are any of the championable reputations, which are Kirin Tor, Knights of the Ebon Blade, Wyrmrest Accord and the Argent Crusade. This assumes an ability to run lv 80 instances / heroics of course, but if you can, there is no easier rep than these. It's just a matter of which has the items you want the most first.
If you can't do these either by time, or lack of people to group with and an intolerance for pugs, then the daily quest factions like Hodir may well be easier after all. :P
Ven Nov 29th 2008 4:03PM
No offense, but I think you misunderstood my question. First off, drawing comparisons to the BC badge mechanic doesn't really work. Badge rewards were a new idea then and none existed at launch. But to clarify my original concern, I'm asking about the quantitative (not qualitative) gap in 10 and 25 badge gear. Have they said anything that I've missed that would indicate whether they intend to keep said gap or to eliminate it?
onetrueping Nov 29th 2008 9:19PM
The gap is staying. It was stated since well before launch that the Heroic raids are intended to reward gear that is significantly better than the regular raids, as a reward for the increased challenges involved.
GreatLich Nov 29th 2008 9:31PM
In regards to quantity: A quick glance at wowhead reveals 118 items bought with Emblem of Heroism and 87 items bought with Emblems of Valor.
furthermore, the heroic items are of a greater variety than the raid items, no wand bought with valor tokens exists, for example.
nor any weapon for that matter.
Which prompts me to ask a question of my own: How much fact checking is done before answering question posted by users of the site?
Because i.m.o. it's a real shame to see questions like this: ", is this intended?" being treated seriously; opposed to debunking the false statement, that's ok, obviously.
Alex Ziebart Nov 29th 2008 10:05PM
@GreatLich: That's what confused me actually, and why I didn't answer the question as it was. I wasn't sure what was meant by it.
Ven Nov 30th 2008 3:40PM
@ GreatLich and Alex, let's take a look at the number of items available you listed. You said 118 for heroism, which is correct. However you didn't look into it farther and see that only 41 of those items are raid gear, and that's counting multiple tier tokens. Whereas 33 of the 87 Valor items are raid gear, not counting the epic pvp gear that could conceivably be used in raids depending on class and stat allocation. The percentages aren't much different, and Valor does hold a percentage edge of a few points. But that's fine.
To be as specific as I can, there are additional item types (bracers and boots come to mind) available for valor that are not there in a reduced heroism form. If that's is how it's going to be in the long run, fine. I'm for Valor having it better. My inquiry was simply whether Blizz had said something about it and I missed it. Just a passing curiosity more than an actual concern.
I appreciate the column, and like reading it. And I appreciate all the work everyone at WoWInsider does. Perhaps in the future one would seek clarification on a question and avoid the mess of misrepresenting it.
Scaramanja Nov 29th 2008 4:09PM
For a beginning Shaman healer I would use the following addons:
Decursive
Healbot
XPerl Unit Frames
You can set up Healbot to also decurse but I find it easier to have them separate. Grid and Clique are over the top complicated imo. Healbot also has really nice BG settings that make it easier to heal in PVP. Xperl simply to better monitor mana and their group and raid frames are really good if you want to use them. Just my 2 cp.
epsilon343 Nov 29th 2008 5:16PM
As a (formerly and soon to be again) Resto Shaman, I agree.
I tried to get Grid going but I honestly thought it just sucked and switched to Xperl. Healbot is a lifesaver and would be my first suggestion for any new healer.