Do Healers Have A Bad Attitude? (via Falling Leaves and Wings)

I think there is some solid points in this post. I find it exceptionally interesting that this comes on the heals of similar sounding posts at Pugnacious Priest and Spinksville.

This past weekend I made the decision that I was going to finally follow through with leveling an Alliance character through the WotLK quests. I usually do try to see the “other” side of each expansion to see how things are different. Having transferred almost all of my alliance characters over to the horde (FOR THE HORDE!), rather than transferring one of them back I opted to resurrect a character that hasn’t been played since Vanilla. My level … Read More

via Falling Leaves and Wings

Filed under: awesome, blog, Blogroll, healing, heals, pug, rant, tank, tanking, warcraft, wow, blog, heals, pug, reblog

The Tank/Healer team and 2 way streets

This is not an invitation to tell me I’m doing it wrong. You might be a better paladin tank than me, and I’m totally cool with that. I’m a pretty happy tank given decent people in my party/raid, and that’s all I want, to do my job and be happy.

I own a lot of healers, and a lot of tanks. I learned to play World of Warcraft with my bear tank, and then spent a lot of time learning to heal with the shaman, discipline priest, druid and finally paladin. But on my Battlegroup there is a severe tank shortage (actually I believe this shortage might be in the game itself, overall) so my daily random (heroic or otherwise) is often spent tanking on the four characters of mine that can actively tank in-game. So, I know what tanking is, and I know what healing is. And I really enjoy the dynamic that grows between tanks and healers. I know the Wrath dungeons backwards and forwards. Gearing 4 raiding toons will do that, and I’ve levelled 3 others besides. I like taking a random pug and leading them on a merry chase through the dungeon without stressing a healer (sometimes it’s me, the healer, wanting no stress!) It’s a mark of pride to me to have no incidents and no issues. I can usually tank and spare a few cheerful words in party chat, too!

This was the situation that found me zoning into heroic Violet Hold on my protection paladin with my partner in crime’s demon warlock, and a party that included a Discipline priest healer. Now, I love discipline priests, I love healing as discipline (I have never touched holy and don’t intend to). But in certain situations, a discipline priest can make a protection paladin’s life hell. I learned that the hard way with my partner in crime’s paladin tank. And it’s not the player’s fault, it’s the mechanics of the game that make protection paladins and discipline priests abilities and mechanics just not mesh well in some situations, which leads to stress for me!

If you’re a disc priest healing a paladin tank and they have no mana, don’t bubble them. Because you’re supposed to be observant and know how your spells work, and I’m letting you know how paladins work. They will love you if you do this.

So what are these mechanics that don’t always play nice together? For protection paladins “Spiritual Attunement provides the paladin with a percentage of mana, based on ability level, each time they receive healing.” -wowwiki and for priests “priests deeply specced in the discipline tree, their strength lies in preventing damage.” -wowwiki

Those two sentences hopefully point out the problem here. Preventing damage means no health bars to fill, no healing received. Get it? Discipline priests have the goal of keeping everyone alive by preventing a majority of the damage, and the tankadiin has the responsibility of using his mana to hold aggro on all the mobs in the instance. Typical healer/tank combo. But mitigating the majority of the damage is cross purposes to what the tank needs to keep his mana bar full, to hold aggro on more mobs. In raiding environments this isn’t an issue because things simply hit so hard there. In a majority of instances, the paladin tank can just pull a few more mobs to dodge/block more or take enough damage to eat through the shield and really do some damage so that a heal that pushes health up also increases mana stores. But in situations where the tank has no control over more mobs (Brann encounter, Halls of Stone; Violet Hold timed mob spawns) or simply when the mobs die too fast (overgeared dps, weak mobs) that the tank gets absolutely zero chance to dodge/block or take damage.

I found myself in the perfect storm situation of both of these problems. I had no control over the mob pulls, and they died so fast I barely had a chance to dodge/block. My mana regeneration comes from a few places.

1. Blessing of Sanctuary (Places a Blessing on the friendly target, reducing damage taken from all sources by 3% for 30 minutes and increasing stamina by 10%. In addition, when the target blocks, parries, or dodges a melee attack the target will gain 2% of maximum displayed mana);

2. Judgement of Wisdom (giving each attack a chance to restore 2% of the attacker’s base mana);

3. Divine Plea (You gain 25% of your total mana over 15 sec) 1min cooldown

4. Glyph Seal of Command (You gain 8% of your base mana each time you use a Judgement with Seal of Command active) My judgements have a cooldown less than 9seconds, thanks to 2/2 Improved Judgements.

5. Seal of Wisdom (Fills the Paladin with divine wisdom for 30 min, giving each melee attack a chance to restore 4% of the paladin’s maximum mana)

I was facing a lot of crowd pulls (just my luck) of 4 mobs, and despite all these tools I was barely hanging onto mana. I didn’t have time to stop and drink because the mobs keep spawning and they were spawning far away from each other. I had to run instead of drink to the next pull. I didn’t want to switch to Seal of Wisdom because Seal of Command became my threat when I stopped consencrating, and was glyphed to give me mana anyways.

So I asked my priest to try to avoid Power Word: Shield on me. It was my last hope to try and retain some mana. They tried, but they were totally confused why I would ask such a thing. And I was too busy really to try to explain that I NEEDED to take damage to get my mana up, that my other abilities just weren’t cutting it. I felt really bad about that, because knowledge is power and I feel they’d just be a more informed healer and possibly could make their next paladin tank’s life less hell in situations where their tank’s mana isn’t cutting it.

And that’s what this comes down to. Tanking and healing is a partnership. Healers want their tanks to respect their mana pools at all levels of the game, while leveling, while pushing through stockades, while in a heroic dungeon, while raiding. And tanks want healers to respect their pull strategies. And, in some cases, tanks have mana pools that need respecting too!

Lovely Ambrosine over at forthebubbles.wordpress.com got to this topic before me (I am a pathetic excuse for a blogger) and there’s a bunch of commentary there. Every comment from someone who both has a disc priest and a paladin tank, or is part of a duo of very close players of those two classes, and weren’t end-game min-maxers that barely do random pug heroics, were helpful and understanding of this situation. I love her blog and tweets quite a bit. But you won’t ever catch me taking gear off my tank, reducing my hit/expertise/crit immunity.

I think I was not violating some silly sacred cow that seemed to erupt on twitter in response to me asking the healer to try to avoid voluntarily bubbling me. Previously tame tweeters acted like I was laying down the law on the poor priest on how to do their job, when all I did was ask them to not bubble ME because it was interfering with MY job. 99% of all the hullabaloo that followed had no bearing on the specific situations where a paladin tank is really at the mercy of the game because the dps are awesome and kill things too fast or the mobs are limited and the priest is too good and mitigates all of the minimal damage the mobs deal. And a majority of the tweeters, not knowing that my twitter question was posed neutrally, but that I was the tank in question, assumed the tank (hi, me) didn’t know how to play, didn’t know what they were doing, didn’t understand discipline priests, etc.

Dear disc priests. I know how you heal. I love how you heal. You should learn how I tank and get mana. Then go do it in heroic violet hold with uber dps. Maybe you’ll consider your words a bit more carefully before lynching someone you feel is beneath you because they were struggling with mana.

I did love that naked-outfit idea in the comments at For The Bubbles though…

Filed under: drama, healing, heals, paladins, pride, pug, QQ, rant, tank, tanking, bubble, disc, mana, paladins, priest, PW:S, tank, twitter

In a mood

I really hate failing. I’m my worst critic, in almost everything I do. Sure I can distract myself with fiction, with warcrack, with deviant art, and avoid pondering the magnitude of my failure in all sorts of contexts. I still hate doing it.

As a tank, their deaths are on me

Last night I made some pretty simple mistakes that I feel horrible about. Me, a pro shadow priest that had to MC tank the Razuvious fight in 25man Naxx many many times, totally forgot to release and reMC my tanking mob. I’m left feeling horrible, that I should have known better, that my awesome Raid Leader DID MENTION IT but I didn’t process what he said. In my defense, ick do I have to go through every boss encounter in DXE and turn on all the bars for tracking stuff? Last time I faced this fight I had DBM.

And now for some fun!

That shield is still damn sexy!

Tanking info for Embri

I intended Embri to be a healer the whole time..

I often joke about the multiple personalities of my toons in my guilds. I love my main 3, and the 4th hybrid (paladin) is really growing on me. After listening to the RaidWarning Totem Recall podcast, and their promotion for magelo, I went and redid my free account there. And this is why I did it.

Zarixaanu

Lheaf

Thank you magelo!

I really really like these.

Filed under: alts, paladins, priest, screenshot, specs and loot, tank, tanking, trinket, warcraft

More reason not to tank

Let’s set the scene.

This week I was handed a very forceful, er, painful reminder of why I stopped tanking and that aside from heroics I should probably continue to avoid it. I tried to jump into a 25m pug for ToC that sort of fell apart and turned into two 10mans. They needed a tank. So instead of trying to get gear on my priest, I ended up bear tanking. Painful lessons, I tell you!

Aside from people not knowing fights and the problems that ensue from that, I realized that green goo is damn freaking hard to see when one is tanking Dreadmaw. Ugh! Needless to say, I had superb threat control, but went splat (sometimes before everyone else, sometimes not). Luckily I dodged getting saved, as I think my guild wants to do something different tonight with guild ten mans, a new development!

So, after that disaster I spent most of the week agonizing over bear upgrades which are few and far between. I hate fucking armor penetration. I don’t want to play cat. I want to be a bear tank. I would give all the gold on my level 35alt (heh) for gdamn freaking TANK GEAR. In fact, the tier pieces piss me the fuck off with their green stats, while I stare longingly at the (2) and (4) bonuses. I ended up keeping my godforsaken trollwoven shoulders, with mental notes to upgrade belt for sure with crafted gear. Some day. When I’m rolling in crusader orbs and my main raiding gear has already been upgraded.

But, all this was really just lead in. Kalon has been my go-to druid-tank blogger since I stumbled across his blog. I throw his addy at would-be bears in every guild I’ve been in. It’s good stuff.

Right now he’s working on a series of posts to contradict, calm, or explain in depth some of the theory, worry, fear, and possibilities for bears in Icecrown.

Me, I’m a big yellow belly bear. I hate change. I grew roots and brownish leaves and went tree when I spent my entire TBC career swearing I’d never every NO NEVER heal because of the armor/stamina changes that happened when Wrath came out. Threw in the towel on tanking. Eventually I remembered how useful it is to have an offspec when the server seemed to suddenly swim in healers (not all good). Plus, it helps me and @xparanormalityx run the daily heroic on all our toons when we can heal/tank 2 of them together.

Why do these changes from “Chill of the Throne” terrify me? Let me tell you. I’m a versatile druid. I had the most fun in TBC in Zul Aman because I was required to use every single trick in my bag, constantly, on almost every boss fight. From battle rezes to innervates to add tanking to dpsing when the other tank had the boss. It was superb fun. But now there’s this debuff.

For Icecrown Citadel, we are implementing a spell that will affect every enemy creature in the raid. The spell, called Chill of the Throne, will allow creatures to ignore 20% of the dodge chance of their melee targets. So if a raid’s main tank had 30% dodge normally, in Icecrown Citadel they will effectively have 10%.

That blows. I started this by saying that I’m not a theorycrafter and I’m not a main-tank in a raiding guild. I tank heroics. So take all my thoughts with my limitations in mind, please.

I understand druids could tank naked. We don’t need defense. Our only mitigation is dodge. Dodge and the silly crit bubbles we have now. Both of which hinge on agility. So, when it comes to bear tanking, primary stats are STAMINA, AGILITY, and then the green bonuses of MORE DODGE, EXPERTISE, HIT, ATTACK POWER, CRIT. That’s how I would rank the green stats. Pretty simple compared to warrior tanks, pally tanks, deathknugget tanks. They get crap like Defense that actually does something, parry, block if you’re not a DK, these other mitigation forces.

I see it like this. Druids need a lot of dodge because it’s really our only mitigation. Stacking stamina is not mitigation, btw. Other tanks get the dodge inherent on their gear, but they also get those other mitigation stats.

Let’s compare @xparanormalityx‘s prot paladin and my bear druid, shall we?

Armor:	24189 (61.36%)	Resilience:	0.00
Defense:	540 (-+5.60%)	Def Rating:	690 (+140)
Dodge %:	25.89	Dodge Rating:	561 (+12.40%)
Parry %:	18.38	Parry Rating:	188 (+4.15%)
Block %:	16.88	Block Rating:	103 (+6.28%)

Armor:	7324 (32.47%) 28127(64.87%)	Resilience:	0.00
Defense:	417 (-+0.68%)	Def Rating:	86 (+17)
Dodge %:	29.86 / 38.86	Dodge Rating:	285 (+6.30%)
Parry %:	0.00	Parry Rating:	0 (+0.00%)
Block %:	0.00	Block Rating:	0 (+0.00%)

(I had to edit this because the in game bear numbers were different)

prot pally stats vs. my druid’s 40% dodge in bear form.

So, with “Chill of the Throne” my bear will drop to 20% dodge. Pyh’s dodge will drop to 5% but he’ll still have those other mitigation factors.

Armorylite is being a pain and not catching my druid’s tank gear, so I’ll update this soon once the changes happen.

Needless to say, I don’t like having zero options to be a decent tank unless I do nothing but stack stamina. And this change will force druids to do that yet again, while as we geared up we were able to play with expertise, hit and arpen for threat generation.

I did say I was resistant to change, right? I like what Jacemora said.

All I know is I am glad I am not tanking anymore and I don’t have to worry about it

Filed under: bears, druid, tank, tanking