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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsRaid Rx: Tell your raid to stand in glowing circles
by Matt Low 
Oct 22nd 2010 at 11:00AM
Seriously. I've seen it happen several times now where priests drop Holy Word: Sanctuary or something and people just reflexively move out of it. Granted, that type of automated movement comes from years of standing out of Void Zones and other such nasty effects. Now we have to train the rest of the raid to recognize these new AoEs and stand on it to benefit.
To be honest, I don't know how else we can help other players "get it". I only have two ideas and they're just painfully obvious.In case you haven't seen them yet, scroll down to see what friendly circle is beneficial to you. Standing in them provides extended life! They're all virtually the same. What will vary from spell to spell is stuff like cast time or mana, but people standing in will get gradually healed up.
Holy Word: Sanctuary
It looks like a big glowing white disc. Very hard to miss Holy Word: Sanctuary. Available only to Holy Priests but they need to have the Prayer of Healing Chakra activated.
Power Word: Barrier
On one hand, any damage dealt to players that stands inside it will get absorbed. On the other hand, with the glyph, it increases the amount of healing done to players standing inside it. I wrote some thoughts about it wondering if it was better served for players to stand within it absorbing the impact of a spell or for the barrier to go up after a major attack buying time for healers to heal up.
Healing Rain
A majority of players will not have seen it yet. You can see a preview of it above. It's a giant blue circle! Healing Rain won't be available until shamans hit level 83. Unlike Holy Word: Sanctuary, it takes 2 seconds for it to cast with a 10 second cooldown.
Efflorescence
Efflorescence will only activate after Swiftmend is used. The issue with this is that the bed of flora will appear on the person who you placed Swiftmend on. It doesn't give you a lot of flexibility for spell placement (which is the only real knock I have against it).
What about paladins?
Although paladins do have AoE healing spells at their disposal, their spells aren't exactly something players can stand in.
Now, what can we do to help players stand in the good mojo?
Solution 1: Just cast it directly on players
It is the easiest solution! However, that means that most of the time, melee players will benefit the most. If you think about it, they're rarely going to move on typical encounters since they're at point blank range of the boss anyway. If the boss needs to get kited around or something, then that might not work so well.
The problem is with players at range. I've seen people who actively move out of them. They're not trying to dodge an incoming missile or spell either.
Solution 2: Repetition, repetition, repetition
I don't even know if this will work. Perhaps with repeated exposure, players will see it and realize that they're not taking damage from it. Maybe constantly telling them that they're allowed to stand in it will help. I don't know if encouragement will actually work but I can't think of anything better. If only we could put a little treasure chest in the middle of it.
I'm actually at a loss here. What can we do to train players to stand in glowing circles?
Need advice on working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered. Send your questions about raid healing to matticus@wow.com. For less healer-centric raiding advice, visit Ready Check, and don't miss our strategy guides to Icecrown Citadel and Halion/the Ruby Sanctum.Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Analysis / Opinion, Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 6)
Possum Oct 22nd 2010 7:55PM
I would have no problem standing in the first two. Yellow and sparkly? It must be good! The blue wavy circle would probably give me pause but you could bet your boots if I wasn't familiar with it I'd be running the hell away from that glowing green thing!
Josin Oct 22nd 2010 11:08AM
Has anyone else noticed Power Word: Barrier seeming a bit underwhelming? Our priest threw it on us in a Naxx25 achievement run the other night, and the thing dissipated in like 2 seconds.
Vladeon Oct 22nd 2010 11:12AM
Yes, I've seen this happen before too. When we were doing H Festergut the other night, our Disc Priest threw it up on the raid and in a flash it was gone. Half the people stopped doing what they were doing just because they had no idea what had happened.
Lloren Oct 22nd 2010 11:46AM
It disappears after it has absorbed its maximum amount of damage. In a situation like festergut where a ton of damage goes out on everyone in the raid, the barrier simply did what it was designed to do and is now gone. It will take some getting used to, but I've had a lot of fun with it even in just running heroics with my newly 80 priest. Basically buys me a free nap during Loken's Nova spell in HoL.
Pamoya Oct 22nd 2010 11:42AM
Don't blink or you'll miss PW:barrier. I'm the priest casting it, and I can barely see it--it's gone that quick. I have been casting it primarily on melee in 25 man groups, so it is just getting absorbed super fast. Which also means that it is being used, but at the same time, if it is used that fast I am sure the main thing it is doing is causing a lot of overhealing in the 2 seconds it is up from all the HOTs and AOE effects of other healers. It is not up long enough for you to feel like it is actually *saving* anyone.
I think it was a lot more useful in PVP, for example cast over two or three people standing on the flag in Arathi Basin. I also think it will be more effective in a 5-10 man group.
pinteresque Oct 22nd 2010 11:51AM
The amount of damage absorbed by PW: Barrier is affected by mastery, a stat we don't have full access to yet.
It may be underwhelming now, but I'm betting it'll hold up just fine (or better, anyway) come level 85.
Sarku Oct 22nd 2010 11:55AM
As of right now the barrier is a lot more effective to use on one or two targets (namely the main tank).
On some fights you can just throw the barrier up near the MT and they can use it whenever needed.
jessie Oct 22nd 2010 12:02PM
As some have pointed out, it will get better probably. And right now, it may not be great in Naxx, but it's a real pain in PvP (speaking as a non-priest who spends way too much time lately trying to eat through those darn things). A priest in a bubble designed to take raid damage for multiple people? Yeah, that's hard to kill. :)
Ahoni Oct 22nd 2010 11:09AM
Blizz needs to make some uniformity with the new AoE healing circles. A nice little red cross symbol floating up out of them would work. There are far too many "don't stand in bad" fights for players to take the time to distinguish one AoE graphic from another. Also consider that players with less than current video cards may have a hard time seeing the circles anyway.
r0bby_r0b Oct 22nd 2010 11:11AM
they are noobs then.ive seen raiders in beta actually run into Efflorescence.
Groth Oct 22nd 2010 11:10AM
Macro it to announce it? Then once everyone's used to it, you can make even more friends by getting rid of the announcement.
AlternatingReality Oct 22nd 2010 11:29AM
I'm finding a macro call-out to be good for pugs at the moment.. Start off with a /RW then after a while you shouldn't need it. We trained them to not stand in AoE effects whether it's fire, shadows or puppies so we can train them to pay attention to the helpful AoE's :]
Hal Oct 22nd 2010 11:29AM
I like the idea of a macro. I'm not sure how I'd macro Holy Word: Sanctuary, though, since that spell doesn't turn on until Prayer of Healing Chakra is active.
I guess I'm just bad with macros in general.
djblayde Oct 22nd 2010 11:49AM
Hal -
I'm not sure how the spell works, since I don't play a priest, but just because it's a proc off Chakra doesn't mean it's hard to Macro.
Open a macro and shift click the spell in your spellbook, or you can type /cast Holy Word: Sanctuary in, but shift clicking ensures the name is put in correctly. Then hit enter, and type /ra Now Casting Holy Word: Sanctuary! Go to the light children! (or whatever phrase suits you..)
If you have raid assist or lead, you can do /rw and get the nice on screen pop-up. You can also do a /p instead of /ra for those 5 mans. Or if you have an chat addon that supports "smart group" chat, you can probably do a /group (or whatever the addon supports) and have it go where it needs to.
If you REALLY wanna cover you bases, do a /ra, /p and /rw and just know that you'll be spamtastic.
Hal Oct 22nd 2010 1:13PM
Well, that's the funny part: Holy Word: Chastise becomes Holy Word: Sanctuary when the Chakra is active. Otherwise, it doesn't appear in your spellbook at all, except under the "Revelations" portion, which can't itself be linked.
But I'd want the /yell (or whatever) component to only go off when I place the zone, not while I'm still positioning it.
Aaron Oct 22nd 2010 11:10AM
Ahhh Efflorescence now I know the name. SCARED THE CRAP OUT OF ME!
Vladeon Oct 22nd 2010 11:10AM
I saw this happening a bit in ICC when our druid healer would cast Efflorescence. Some people would instinctively move out of the way. Even I, as the tank, wanted to kite the boss away from it before I realized that it was healing the crap out of anyone standing in it. Exposure is the best way to get people used to these things. I've seen dps move around just to stand inside of it while on festergut. Our mages stack on festergut now so they can gain its benefit.
It also helps that our druid healer yells over vent, STAND IN THE GREEN CIRCLE OR DIE.
donald-tR0ll3 Oct 22nd 2010 11:12AM
The healer(s) can tell the group members to stand in stuff? They could possibly test the abilities at the start of the raid/dungeon so that the group members know what the "good stuff" looks like. I'm sure most people will get used to it after a while.
Also, when I'm on my resto druid, the graphics for Efflorescence tends to not show most of the time. Weird.
Rob Oct 22nd 2010 11:54AM
Same here. I can only assume our spell detail is too low.
donald-tR0ll3 Oct 22nd 2010 1:25PM
I can see it sometimes, though.