The Daily Quest: Filling the green bars
by Anne Stickney 
Jun 15th 2010 at 6:00PM
Here at WoW.com, we're on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment and you may see it here tomorrow! Take a look at the links below, and be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites.
My main's a rogue -- been a rogue since somewhere in the middle of Burning Crusade. But before that, in the days of Molten Core and Blackwing Lair when blood elves didn't exist, I was a priest. Not only was I a priest, I was the heal lead for our 40-man raid. The majority of my time healing was spent staring at and filling little green bars -- lots and lots and lots of little green bars. Healing's changed a ton since then, but I got my priest to 80. Partially because I missed playing her, but mostly because I wanted to see what had changed since the days of the little green bars. What's changed? Just about everything -- and today we've got a selection from the blogosphere about healing:
- Life in Group 5 talks about keeping a healing state of mind.
- The Bossy Pally has a few words on healing with a second holy pally in the raid.
- World of Matticus asks if healing classes are losing their individual identity.
- Moar HPS wants to know if there's such a thing as too much mana.
- Big Bear Butt talks about healing priorities.
Filed under: The Daily Quest
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Eregos ftw! Jun 15th 2010 6:30PM
http://fatchickenlazors.wordpress.com/2010/06/14/hiccups-the-cure/
fatchickenlazors talks about healing heroics as a caster dps.
Eregos ftw! Jun 15th 2010 6:31PM
Whoops, wrong article. http://fatchickenlazors.wordpress.com/2010/06/12/10-tips-for-healing-heroics-as-dps/ is the right one.
Pathian Jun 15th 2010 10:42PM
http://qqdnm.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/30-20-10-man-dungeons-a-completely-different-way-of-raiding/
My raiding-redesign ideas. Quite interesting, if I do say so myself ( ;) ) Check it out!
Lars Petersson Jun 15th 2010 7:50PM
I was reading Big Bear Butts post and had to reply to his dislike of Warlocks life tapping:
"I don’t understand the problem with Warlocks.
Surely having the ‘lock life tap away while running to the next group is good as it means less downtime?
Do you enjoy waiting between pulls or not killing mobs as fast as you could because DPS has run out of mana?
If ‘locks in my groups don’t life tap I tell them to do so or GTFO."
Really, you're running UK for the 134698735th time, surely you want it over and done with ASAP...
And healing as DPS? Why would you subject others to that when you can earn the 1k gold it takes to dual spec in a couple of hours...
Eregos ftw! Jun 15th 2010 11:54PM
Copy paste from my answer to your question on my blog:
Remember, people DO use offspecs for other things. As a druid, my OS could be one of 7:
Resto PVE
Bear PVE
Kitty PVE
Moonkin PVP
Resto PVP
Bear/kitty PVP
Priests can be:
Holy PVE
Disc PVE
Shadow PVP
Disc PVP
Shamans can be:
Ele PVP
Enh PVE
Resto PVP
Enh PVP
Ilmen Jun 16th 2010 6:18AM
about lifetap
yes it is a great tool to speed up yet another boring heroic and as a holy priest one renew is all it takes normally and im happy to provide this if it reduces downtime
BUT if you are a warlock and you lifetap in any of the following circumstances then i just hope your death will be quick and the walk back peaceful
1. You lifetap between pulls when there has been a mage table at the start of the run.
2. You lifetap when the healer is low on mana/drinking.
3. You lifetap when the healer is low on mana after having to ress and buff you. (pretty much the same as nr2, but in this case don't ever expect direct healing or resurrections from me)
4. You don't stop casting lifetap if your hp drops below 50%.
5. You lifetap and yell YO PREIST!! HEEEL ME!!11 I NEED HEEAlS!!1 at the healer (or whatever class is healing)
Dumbest warlock i have had the pleasure of not healing sofar only fulfilled the first 4 points.
Don't get me wrong here, i don't hate warlocks nor lifetap, but please don't be a jerk. And one more thing about when to cast lifetap, don't wait for your mana to drop low, i prefer to heal you more often (as in, once every 2 pulls ish) when one hot can heal you back to full over having to chase you all around trying to cast a flash heal when the tank tries to complete the instance in a new record time.
Lars Petersson Jun 16th 2010 8:16AM
@Eregos:
I see your point, but if you don't want to be a healer why queue as one?
Or put it another way, have you ever tried to heal a tank who's DPS specced and queued as a tank for the shorter queue time?
If not I hope you get the chance. It's great fun...
@Ilmen
1) Totaly disagree. Unless the others have to stop and eat that's just slowing things down. I want the runs over with swiftly so that 'lock had better get tapping rather than be sitting down drinking/eating while the rest of us are clearing the way.
Or do you actually enjoy prolonging the runs?
2&3) I kinda agree, but those go for everyone in the group. Including the melee DPSers who ought to be bandaging themselves if they can see I don't have mana.
4) I ought to be keeping the health up unless it's a particularly tough fight. If DPS is out of mana it's not really worth a whole lot.
5) Again, this one goes for everyone that yells for heals. If you're not getting healed it's not because I can't see you need it. It's because I either don't want to or can't heal you...
I have a shammy, druid and priest healer to 80 and with none of them can I think of a single reason why I shouldn't tell that 'lock to get tapping or GTFO so we can get going.
My pally healer is only 26 so I don't know what's in their toolbox yet.
Personally I'm against anything that slows a run down, and I have to say that your attitude towards life tap would do that. After running HCs for so long I can't stand them and just want them over and done with...
Kittens Jun 16th 2010 8:27AM
That Life Tap comment at BB made me cringe a little as well.
I see too many healers complaining about it, and I really wonder how much of it is justified. I play both a lock and a healer. I leveled the healer exclusively through LFD, and I have NEVER seen a lock displaying really bad Life Tap behaviour, tapping themselves to near death. Ever. In fact, most locks I've had to tell they could Life Tap as much as they wanted, as they seemed to be afraid to use it.
A good lock will use Life Tap right before the fight, and then every 40 seconds or so during the fight. This is part of our class mechanics, one of our best glyphs is designed for this and gives us an awesome buff if we keep it up: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=64248 , most locks you come across will have it. Sometimes after fights I will tap some more since in long (raid) fights your mana can run out. I generally don't tap more than 50/50 life/mana, but usually healers are busy healing people up anyway and I have a HoT ticking on me, so then I tap to full. I never really drink, unless the healer is dead or OOM and drinking as well.
Recently Life Tap was made to scale differently, now giving us much more mana for less life than it used to. I really only lose very very little life when I tap once. It's pretty silly for a healer to complain about that. I don't ever expect my Life Tap before a fight to be healed, as affliction I will get my health back through spells like Haunt and talented Corruption anyway (but on my healer I will heal it.. heh).
On the healer I will encourage locks to tap. And if they are bad locks and never tap during the fight thus draining their mana, I will still tell them to tap to full after the fight. I't a tiiiiny bit of healer mana for me. I am a healer, I heal people, that's my job. I don't care if the locks tap a little much, if the people are stupid, if someone got/lost aggro... I will heal. And if anything.. having people trying to kill themselves in instances makes the run a little less boring as a healer at least ;)
Eregos ftw! Jun 16th 2010 12:23PM
@lars
If dps queue times are especially bad, and you have decent gear (ToC 25+ iLevels, probably) it's easy to heal a random heroics as caster dps unless everyone in the group is still in quest greens. It cuts down about 10 minutes of queues, too.
Your remark about melee dps queueing as tanks to shorten queues is a weak argument. Since the SP change, caster dps have the SP to heal. There is no strength-defense stat for the melee. Also, caster dps items have alot of the same stats as healing items (SP, haste, crit, ect). Melee dps have no tanking stats on their gear.
Richard Jun 16th 2010 1:08PM
@Kittens You obviously haven't run LFD as a healer recently then. Levels 15-19 on my Resto Shaman I have had a Lock in each one of them (different Locks) and every single one of them would Tap to death unless I caught them. I had one Lock that would literally stand next to me while I was drinking and Tap until I couldn't see his health bar, then he would jump up and down in front of me until I started healing him. Having a small mana pool, a single slow heal (wtb 600 haste) and almost no mana regen (34 MP5, really?) makes keeping a Lock alive a royal pain in the back. If I'm sitting down drinking to regain mana, then the damn Lock better be too.
Kittens Jun 16th 2010 1:59PM
@Richard
On the contrary, this healer (also a resto shammie) has been leveled in the past two months or so :)
On the lower levels I tended to get locks that apparently had no clue about Life Tap at all. Which made me sad also hehe, and I tried to explain that they have those delicious lock abilities but some seemed to be deaf and sat down to drink after draining themselves completely each time.. Oh well ;)
I do agree mana regen is ...BAD at lower levels, but the biggest and main problem for that are more the lvl 20 tanks who think they are doing a never-stopping heroic speed run while ICC 25 geared or something. I will take some lock tapping over that every day, especially when they do it right and it's just one or two taps at a time.
And yes, I'd say that if a healer is drinking, locks can and should drink too if they are really out of mana (though I usually don't bother to eat/drink if I'm at more than 50% on mana/health, it's enough and I get it back in the fight anyway).
Lars Petersson Jun 16th 2010 7:37PM
@Eregos:
Ok, I see your point that it's not exactly the same and if you have a really good group you can get away with it.
Having said that, if I was a tank and I died because the healer wasn't healing specced, I'd either kick him or leave.
But since I always queue as a healer I don't really see DPSer wannabe healers very often...
@Richard:
I think you're missing the point. Or at least, you're missing my point.
someone like the lock you describe is a tool regardless of class.
What I don't understand, is why BBB wants to prolong a run by not healing a lock that life taps on the way to the next group.
visitingl337n00b Jun 16th 2010 11:29AM
Encounter from Wrath that could have been great but missed the mark:
http://whatswrongwithwow.blogspot.com/2010/06/near-misses-bosses-that-could-have-been.html