Using Crowd Control doesn't mean you're "weak"

I heard a tank say the other day in a heroic PUG "Do we need CC or is the healer good?"

Excuse me, what? Whether we need CC or not has some to do with me, but it is not the only criteria? How about:

• Can the DPS manage to all hit the same thing the tank so only one person is tanking?
• Can the tank manage to keep aggro on multiple mobs at once?
• If there's fire or poison or something else nasty on the floor can everyone avoid standing in it?

Let me just come clean right now and say that not using CC doesn't make your epeen any larger. Especially the particularly "easy" to apply (and re-apply versions) like sheep or trap? (Yes, I'll forgive you for not putting anyone through the exercise of CCing via Seduction with a Succubus.)

It honestly doesn't matter whether I "can" or "cannot" heal through the lack of CC. It's sort of like Pascal's Gambit. Either you need CC or you do not need CC. Either you will wipe or not. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that using CC when it's needed will assure us of success. The choices work themselves nicely into a table.

Pascal's Gambit of Crowd Control

CC Used?	CC Needed?	Result
No	No	Success*
No	Yes	Success*
Yes	No	WIPE!
Yes	Yes	Success*

* Success means probable success. Bad things can always happen.

The only time you're going to assuredly wipe is when your group (not just the healer) needs CC and you don't use it. You don't lose ANYTHING (other than maybe a little time) using CC when it's not required.

I know on fights where CC isn't used, I'm much more likely to burn a cooldown (BOP/LOH or the like) and then not have it available for the boss fight in 30 seconds. So. Please people. If you have CC in your heroic groups and there's a question about its necessity. Play it safe.

P.S. Don't know how often I'll post here, perhaps just when I'm moved. But I'm still around.

From Billowy Face Melter to ...

Healbot. Ugh. I've gone ahead and made a concession (for the time being only) for my guild. I'm the only priest at level 80 in my guild. I levelled (apart from the sporadic instance or group quest) alone. I've ground and fought and face-melted my way to the maximum level. I've carefully collected gear along the way to help me DPS endgame. I've disenchanted countless "healer" pieces along the way.

And now I've volunteered to heal (at least for a bit). It was a calculated decision. After waiting around in Dalaran for a number of consecutive nights with all of a group except a healer and then never actually going anywhere, the solution seemed obvious. I needed to provide a healer (if I could) to my guild. I also decided to offer rather than be asked. Now, in my guild, I'd probably NEVER be forced (or even asked) to respec. But to me, it was better to offer to heal rather than be asked. Additionally, by it being "my idea" to heal, it can also be "my idea" to go back to shadow.

So, I've begun to look at gear with Spirit or Mana Per Five in a new light. I've re-enchanted and re-gemmed some gear. I've rolled on things that were only moderate DPS upgrades, but allowed better sustained healing. And I actually downloaded (but haven't completely configured) a healing addon (Healbot).

My first several attempts at healing (pre-Healbot) were just this side of disastrous. I've not played a healing role for close to six months. I am, perhaps, just a tad rusty. And I had just a few issues with my UI as it's currently set up. When I tried healing "by hand" I was often a little too slow on key heals. Most of it was practice, but some of it was bad set up of my interface for healing.

After downloading Healbot, I didn't trust it (completely) and was getting used to spell rotations. I found it MUCH easier to cast most heals, but when it got really hectic I went back to the manual healing. After a couple runs where my healing was just bad, I embraced the healbot. On my first several runs, I healed things I know I couldn't have done a few days before. It was a lot easier to keep up, keep folks topped off and not let the tank drop like a rhino on a bungee jump.

I really miss the billowy, face-melty part...I'll be back Shadowform!

The Kill List

I was having a conversation with Baby the other day about healing, and the term he offered up was determining the "Kill List." Since his new blog is about all things mage, I don't think he'll mind if I steal this topic from him.

I don't care if you're a priest, shaman, druid or paladin. If you're healing, you've got to have a pretty good idea of the kill list. "But Bremm," I hear you cry, "the DPS kills. I just heal."

Well, sunshine, we're not talking about that kind of kill list. I'm talking about you setting the order that your own team will (be allowed to) die in.

As a healer, you're a subset of the group or raid. In five-mans, you may be the only healer around. As such, you'll need to make some instantaneous decisions about who gets the heal when too many people need it. Under the best circumstances, you'll never use this list. But in the event that some bad stuff starts going down and someone is going to die, you can often let the "right" person die and save a wipe.

If someone on the kill list must be expended, they'll quite often say "You forgot to heal me." I never forget to heal you; sometimes I decide that you must die for the greater good.

My kill list goes something like this (From Most Likely to Least Likely to be allowed to die):

1. Pets (except in the rare circumstances where they are tanking). Sorry hunters, you're beloved animal buddy is going to bite it first. It costs nothing but a rez and a piece of food to get them back in the game. Pets never have to repair, thus they can die.
2. Damage classes who have a means to dump threat (feign death, feint, soul shatter, etc.) and are not performing repeatable crowd control for this pull.
3. Damage classes who do not have a means to dump threat and are not performing repeatable crowd control for this pull.
4. Damage classes who have a means to dump threat and are performing repeatable crowd control for this pull
5. Damage classes who do not have a means to dump threat and are performing repeatable crowd control for this pull.
6. Other healers
7. Me
8. Tanks

There seems to be a nasty clump in positions 2 through 5 where it's hard to see who is whom. Lets look at the classes and expound

Category 2 - classes who have a means to dump threat (feign death, feint, soul shatter, etc.) and are not performing repeatable crowd control for this pull.

Hunters, (shadow) priests, rogues and locks have some means to dump threat. Of these, only hunters (freezing trap) and priests (mind control, shackle) have repeatable control. If you're not doing this things, kill em in this category.

Category 3 - classes who do not have a means to dump threat and are not performing repeatable crowd control for this pull.

Druids (apart from cowering), mages (invisibility takes too long to cast), paladins, shamans and warriors have no threat dump. Only mages and druids (hibernate, cyclone, eventually entangling roots) have repeatable crowd control. If you're not doing these things, kill 'em.

Category 4 - classes who have a means to dump threat and are performing repeatable crowd control for this pull

See Category 2. Kill the crowd controlling hunters and (shadow) priests here.

Category 5 - classes who do not have a means to dump threat and are performing repeatable crowd control for this pull.

See Category 3. Kill the crowd controlling mages and druids here.

And that's the whole kill list. And having this available, makes explaining your choices that much easier.

Assignment: Healing

No. This isn't some bizarre game where I give you homework. Instead I want to talk about healing assignments for raiding. I'll look at why you need to do this, some ideas about what makes sense as far as assignments and why you should start the moment you touch a raiding situation.


A story

Once upon a time a raid group went into Karazhan with 2 tanks, 5 DPS and 3 healers. Since this is a fairy tale about healing the healers are Crouton (a priest), Tigerlily (a druid) and Throm (a paladin). If the raid leader isn't aware of healing assignments here's what will happen. Everyone heals the people who need topped off. Inevitably, this means that Throm who can spam flashes of light with almost no impact to his mana will heal everyone as quickly as possible. Tigerlily who's faithfully staying in treeform and healing with her super-powered druid HOTs is also healing as needed. She's also keeping lifebloom stacks on the tank(s). Throm, having read priest blogs before, is using his POM like a pro and casting greater heals on needy targets. Our intrepid band of adventurers moves on to Attumen, and after several attempts ending in wipes, the raid leader calls a five minute break to let the trash finish respawning before their final attempt of the night. During the break, Crouton looks at his healing meters and sees his overhealing is running around60%. He's a little depressed because he knows he's not wasting that much mana and he's feeling like it's his fault they are wiping. Tigerlily also looks at her meters and sees she's also overhealing. She's not as overcome as Throm, because she expects to overheal some. But her overhealing number of 45% feels a little high to her. Throm, on the other hand, begins sharing in the healer channel what his numbers show and how he is singlehandedly outhealing the other two healers combined. He's quite proud of himself and his contribution to the team. The raid re-assembles and the raid leader asks for a debrief about what's going wrong. Hesitantly, Crouton asks if maybe the healing responsibility for the tanks shouldn't be split between he and Throm and have Tiger pick up the raid heals. The raid leader immediately agrees and assigns Crouton main tank healing, Throm off tank healing and Tiger to pick up the raid. They clear again, engage and kill Attumen. The healing meters now show that while there was still overhealing, it was in the 20-30% range and the distribution of healing overall was more equal. Additionally, only one of the healers needed to drink a potion, and the innervate is available for later.

So, what can we learn from Throm, Crouton and Tigerlily? Probably lots of things, but let's start with:

• Paladins have a short casting time heal that can cause other healers to overheal. There's a reason they are considered the best single-target healer.
• Druids should expect overhealing higher than other healers. In tree form, they live on HOTs and HOTs can tick once the recipient is at full life. If druids are casting the longer direct heals, they can land huge heals, again increasing the overheal.
• Priests should expect some overhealing due to Renew and POM.
• Not determining healing assignments exacerbates the problem of overhealing. Additionally, it's more costly to healers (at least some of them) in terms of raid consumables.

Did the raid leader assign the healers correctly? Probably. While it's probably an entire post on its own, healers have things they do best.

• Paladins - Single target heals, cleansing, nearly limitless mana supply. Excellent main tank healers.
  
• Shamans - Multi-target heals. Totem love. Some cleansing. Good raid healers.
  
• Druids - Heals over time. Innervate. Battle Rez. Good raid healers.
• Priests - Not best at any one thing, but most versatile healers. Good tank healers.

But, why does it matter who heals whom in a stupid ten-man instance? It might not. Having healing assignments is almost always more mana efficient. And if ten-mans are where you stop, you can quite possibly get away with never doing assignments.

However, mana conservation and proper healing becomes more prominent later. If you or your guild has any thought of moving past Karazhan, it makes good sense to get into the habit of assignments now. It's sort of like house training a puppy. If you correct bad habits early, you're not stepping in it when the dog is full grown.