Okay, never mind. I updated my video drivers and everything’s fixed now…things actually look a lot better than they have for a while!
Anybody else having trouble with the minimap stretching things all over the place when you’re “indoors”? It’s making it hella difficult to find my way around in caves and such when, every time I go around a bend, the map distorts.
Mister Rik thanks for the spec very useful.
I found Faldir’s Cove following directions from here too so thanks again, Achievement earned.
Turning on Projected Textures does restore the ground effects of consecration and it’s nice to have them back.
I had a few glitches last night mainly tearing and some odd sounds though I am not sure if these are new sounds added that mean something. Sagan looks much better too, they have improved the models and textures quite a bit or my settings have been changed.
My minimap is beahving fine though I do not have any addons enabled except Titan panel.
Well, upon further experimentation, it turns out that (1) I was right that the ghoul cooldown if sac’d to Death Pact is 0 but (2) Deat Pact has a 2 minute cooldown, so I’m not INVINCIBLE after all.
You’re talking about a macro where you hit it once to cast the first spell, again for the second, and so on?
That might be usable on my priest as I lay down all the DoTs, but with my mage the order varies. I usually pull with frostbolt (maximum slowing effect) and follow with frostfire, but it starts to vary then. Any time the target “freezes” I slam in an instant icelance timed to arrive right on top of the frostbolt or frostfire (they typically both crit, causing well over 7,000 in one slam). If the mob gets too close, I’ll freeze it manually and move away, unless it’s low on health, in which case I’ll use a cone or a couple of instants to finish it off. If I pull two mobs, it mixes up all over again.
Oh, yeah. I have WoW up right now and the Ironforge minimap is doing that. It does it in caves all the time now.
I used to pull with frostbolt like that, but found that I like the DOT effect I get with pyroblast, plus almost always have time to throw in frostfire bolt which has a similar (same?) slow effect as frostbolt. Forgot to mention that with Hot Streak (especially if I use Combusion) I often get to spam another Pyroblast, typically hitting for 5k+ additonal damage. Only annoyance there is that Hot Streak often procs just as I kill something.
This is my talent build, btw, feel free to offer suggestions on improvements.
Given that I’m new to being a Boomkin, can anyone recommend the most optimal DPS/mana conservation combo when i’m taking out single entities? Right now, I’m either starfiring then Entangling roots, then starfiring again till the roots break, and finally wrath to death with a moonfire thrown in if the damage needed is less than it normally hits for and I want a swift kill, or popping nature’s grasp, then starfiring till the mob hits me, backing off, starfiring until roots break, etc.
This patch was great for me.
My Shaman’s dual spec is Restoration, and I healed a heroic Violet Hold run for the guild. Healing was very easy; no trouble keeping up with damage and I never went out of mana. But the easiest set me up for the fail. We had only one wipe, which was due to me not healing aggressively enough on the tank. The final boss put out a huge amount of burst damage and I was ready for it. I’ll get better with practice. And I also was the second healer for a 10-man raid on the Vault of Archavon. I don’t think we had any deaths.
The buffs to my main Enhancement spec were nice too. I think it’s impossible for me to run out of mana now.
Speaking of healing…I have a question for you healers out there (particularly Priests).
My main is a mage. He’s very successful, and I’ve been focused for a very long time on putting out maximum damage. All my characters have been DPSers–even my death knight, who I’m in the process of switching over to be a tank. But the point is, my focus has always been dealing damage, not healing it. I’ve never run any kind of healer at all.
So I have this priest now. I leveled him using the Refer-a-Friend thing (I started a new account, created a buddy to go with him, and then leveled both buddies by dragging them through quests and instances using my 80 mage. They rocketed up to 60 in very short order, at which point I set the buddy (a paladin) aside and concentrated on the priest.
Because I wanted to continue leveling fast, I specced him Shadow. A friend showed me a good Shadow build and rotation, and he’s fairly successful at killing stuff as he levels–again, DPS. But ultimately, I want him to be a healer. That’s what I leveled him for. He now has a second Holy spec, which I think is pretty good (mostly Holy with some Discipline thrown in). But the problem is, I don’t know any of the tricks for Priest healing. That’s where you guys (I hope) come in.
Can you tell me the things that priests who level as healers learn? The little tricks, like when to use a big heal vs. a small one, or other stuff that I should know so I don’t look like a raging noob the first time I try to heal for an instance?
For addons, I have Grid, Decursive, XPerl, Quartz, NECB, Recount, Omen, and Deadly Boss Mods. My healing set is decent–I’m currently level 72 with the Primal Mooncloth set and a few Kara epics (my guildies dragged me through Kara pretty much the minute I dinged 70–and a couple of them groaned when Shard of the Virtuous dropped immediately for me, given the number of times they’d had to run it at 70 to get that drop 
).
Thanks in advance for any advice!
Winterhawk, are you talking about tips for raid healing, or more along the 5-man route? I know it may sound like a minor thing, but being the sole healer of a group requires a different mindset than being one amongst a group.
I don’t have much time, but here are some tips off the top of my head.
Fade is your friend for reducing aggro. Try not to catch aggro, but sometimes even with a good tank, you’ll get it.
Power Word: Shield is lovely for protecting yourself or another clothie, to give you time to get a bigger heal off if needed. It still produces the same kind of aggro as if it were a heal, so keep that in mind.
I pop Prayer of Mending on a tank before he goes to pull; from what I’ve read and experienced, the aggro from when that heal goes off on the tank does not register as being from you but rather from the tank, and so you won’t catch heat for that. Compare this to throwing a Renew on the tank and then he goes to pull - the MOBs note that you are healing him and may peel off onto you instead.
Also, what Calatin said - raid healing and 5-man healing are different. I actually spec’d Disc/Holy for tank healing in raids and Holy/Disc for raid group healing/5-man healing. You can check out those specs at my Armory listing (ignore the lame gear please, she’s not my main), I got them off the PlusHeal forums and the Elitist Jerk forums. Since you’re only 72, the tank healing spec won’t be as useful for you, but it’s something to think about for later.
Starfire is not terribly mana-efficient. I usually start off with roots, then starfire, followed immediate by a moonfire, then wrath til death. If it’s an elite mob, I’ll refresh roots as needed, keep moonfire and insect swarm up, and use wrath as the main attack.
Starfire is good as an opener or a finisher, but wrath (with moonfire kept up as well) should usually be the main attack. And there’s not much need to keep roots up after the initial cast. Moonkin have good armor, and owlkin frenzy only works when you’re getting beat on. Unglyphed, roots breaks too soon to be of much use anyway.
Hurray, a Priest question!
A couple quick rules of thumb for instances (these aren’t true for raiding):
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Always prioritize your tank and yourself over DPS. Heal DPS if you have the time and mana, but more often than not, it’s their fault when they take damage, and when it’s not, it’s usually an immediate threat.
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If they’re pulling mobs faster than your mana lasts or people are being careless, tell them. YOU are the one that needs to pace the run because your mana is what determines that, if you’re low on mana, the tank won’t live, and you wipe.
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Try not to heal reactively, instead, try to heal proactively. For example, don’t wait for the tank to get to half health before casting a Greater Heal, ideally it should be on the way before he gets to that point (takes practice).
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Get an intuitive feel for how much you heals land for, how fast they cast, etc. You always want to use the lowest mana cost that will get the job done, but you don’t want to get stuck using a heal that is too small or too slow for the job.
Some good add-ons, but redundant. If you’re using Grid or XPerl for your party/raid frames (though personally I prefer Healbot, with Xperl for raid management), you can set it up to do everything decursive can, so it’s just not necessary. Similarly, you absolutely should set up click-healing (which healbot has built in), but you can get to work on Grid or Xperl with an add-on like Clique, or by setting up mouse-over macros. You want to get away from target-hotkey because it’s slower and reduces your reaction time.
Also, pick up PowerAuras, it’s awesome for tracking things like Surge of Light procs, Serendipity stacks, trinkets, etc.
You really should avoid casting Fade when possible. It does temporarily reduce your threat to zero, but you still build threat while it’s up and you get it all back when it expires. Instead, try to stack at range and make sure to let your tank know when you get threat, etc. It’s still useful in some situations where adds can get a little out of control and difficult for tanks to manage (Gluth being a good example).
If you’re Holy, avoid casting PWS as much as possible, it’s just not mana efficient. Holy excels in throwing large amounts of pure HPS, but it has poor mana efficiency, so you’re better off using a Flash Heal and only using PWS if a Flash Heal is too slow which isn’t often. However, it is still a decent idea to PWS a tank before a pull and wait long enough to let the mana regen. That will give you a bit of a buffer to get position and avoid some potential healing threat at the beginning when it can be dicey if the tank misses his initial aggro builders.
OTOH, if you’re Discipline, throw around PWS liberally.
This is no longer true; threat for PoM is assigned to the healer now. As such, you don’t want it on the tank if it’s going to be threat sensitive because, again, if he misses his Shield Slam, but takes a hit, you have healing aggro and he only has prox aggro, so the mob is coming for you. However, with a decently geared tank that shouldn’t be a problem, and a PWS+PoM before a pull usually gives the tank enough of a buffer to hit at least SOMETHING before the PWS pops and the PoM procs.
Either way, I generally only do that on raid bosses where I can be sure that a Hunter or Rogue will be misdirecting, and even then, I let the Discipline Priest do the PWS (since his is better than mine) and I do the PoM (since mine is better than his).
I can’t access the armory from work anymore it seems (this is new), so I can try instead to give you a level 72 healing build for instances with wowhead:
That’s more of a focus on the regen and throughput talents while ignoring more of the multitarget talents that you generally won’t need in instances. I’m also a huge fan of Renew, so I picked up those talents and glyphs, but if you’re not, trade the Renew glyph for Spirit of Redemption, Prayer of Healing, or whatever, but Flash Heal is definitely mandatory. When you do get your third major slot at 80, I’d consider Circle of Healing mandatory as well. For the minor glyphs, I consider Shadowfiend mandatory, Levitate just too darn useful not to have, and the last slot is a toss up between Fading, Fortitude, and Shadow Protection. I tend to favor Fading since it’s the only one I really should be casting in combat when the others I can just drink or whatever after buffing.
From there, I’d grab CoH next, max Divine Providence, grab Guardian Spirit, and finally finish up Surge of Light, and that would put you at a solid level 80 Holy healing spec. Other than that, I’m still experimenting with the usefulness of some talents (I’ve heard people claim Healing Prayers is now mandatory in Ulduar, but I’ve yet to see that), so no guarantee it is actually an optimal spec.
Good point, I should have added that. I only use it when things get crazy.
cry
BTW, I’ve had tanks gripe at me about getting PWS before - warriors claiming they don’t get rage, a paladin claiming… I dunno, that it was blocking something (I suspect he thought it was like their invulnerability-type bubble where they couldn’t cast or whatever), etc. Do I get to tell them to shut up and deal? 
Oh… there’s an addon that shows the amount of potential heals on your target (if you’re doing the healing) or on you (if you’re the recipient), but I can’t for the life of me recall the name at the moment. It puts a big bar at the bottom of the screen, right above your various bars there, with the amount of current health in green, and then potential healing laid over the remainder of the person’s health bar - I think it’s yellow to fill their bar, and any overhealing extends past it and shows as red.
Agreed about the overlap in addons - I use Grid (and some addon features of it) plus Clique to heal/dispel/cure, having dropped Decursive and Healbot.
Even in BC, when it was kind of a problem, I would tell them to deal. DPS could always hold off a few extra seconds if the tank didn’t have enough threat, but the very start of a fight is the most dangerous time threat-wise for a healer. When it’s a difficult pull, like some of the BC heroics started out when I was still geared in blues and greens, then I would, or on a raid boss where the first hit would break it anyway.
As of 3.1, it’s a complete non-issue because Druids and Warriors actually get rage through a shield as if they’d been hit. The only real issue anymore is Paladins because they get mana from getting healed. However, I have never seen a Paladin have threat problems unless he outgeared the content or it’s one of those fights where the hard part is something else, like Heigan with dancing, so the boss hits like a little girl.
So, in my opinion, if a tank is complaining about the shields and clicking them off, they are either plainly bad tanks, simply haven’t kept up, or both.
Grid, Xperl, Pitbull, and Healbot all show incoming heals if configured for it; you shouldn’t need that. I could see that being useful for a tank though so he knows if he needs to pop a cooldown or not. I’m still fighting the losing battle of asking the DPS to install an incoming heal monitor so I don’t have to hear them go “OMG, I need a heal” when I have one casting, or when they could clearly see that we’re busy. I just love missing something important on vent–like one time when I missed an announcement on Sarth 3D and got slaughted by enraged adds when I otherwise could have faded–because someone is asking for a heal.
IMO, here’s the most useful add-ons for healers after the basic stuff everyone should have (like bag add-ons, bar add-ons, unitframes, etc), and you only need one.
Raid frames - they’ll give you a LOT more information about health, buffs/debuffs, incoming heals, range, etc. Healbot, Xperl, Pitbull, Grid.
Click healing - let’s you keybind to your mouse so you don’t have slow reaction with the target-hotkey combination. Healbot, Clique, or macros
Improved Castbar - Let’s you see how your lag interacts with your cast so you can get casts off sooner or effectively precast. Quartz, Xperl
Timers - Lets you see how long hots are up or, more importantly, how long your cooldowns are, all in one place and on multiple targets. Quartz, DoTimer
Proc notifier - let’s you see trinket procs, talent procs, mana situation, and various other things easily so you can make good decisions about how and when to use them. PowerAuras, SCT, ThankGod, countless others.
I personally use Healbot for healing frames and click healing, Xperl for my unitframes, improved cast bar and raid frames (since I’m an officer and managing the raid, so I have it organized with information I don’t want to see in my healing frames), DoTimer, and PowerAuras. I use to use Quartz, but it seemed redundant since I already had Xperl, and I tried SCT, but I found the visuals of PowerAuras better for me than text.
Oh, tangential to this - paladins in a group I’m healing always have Renew ticking on them if their mana is around 3/4 or less. (Definitely if they’re the tank, because they can expect to be getting hurt too; less likely if they’re DPS and doing OK on mana but I’m not.)
Thanks for all the advice! I’ll read through it and try to make sense of it all–this healing stuff really is new to me!
In answer to one question, I think probably the only raid healing I’ll be doing is off-night 10-mans (Naxx and maybe someday Ulduar after it’s on farm). Alts don’t progression raid in our guild, so this guy won’t be going to 25-mans unless he PUGs (and I hate PUGs!). Primarily I think 5-mans and heroics (once I reach 80) are my goal for the foreseeable future.
There are some addons that I’m not going to get rid of even if they’re redundant, just because I’m lazy and it’s really all about my main–the last thing I want to do is mess up his UI when I have it set up the way I want to. The priest will have to get used to working around what the mage needs, which means things like Decursive are going to stick around even if I don’t technically need them. I’ve got a 30" monitor, so I have room for some extraneous stuff around the edges.
I’ll pick up Clique–the healers in my guild recommend it highly as well. I already have PowerAuras (use it on the mage for catching Arcane Barrage procs and such) so I’ll see about configuring it for this guy too.
The click-healing thing is great advice–didn’t think of that. I hope it’s not too hard to get used to. On my mage my strategy is tab targeting (or targeting the tank target) and hotkeys (I have almost everything keybound–I don’t like to click unless it’s out-of-combat stuff), so it will be different.
I have a 24" monitor and run at 1920x1200, but as a healer and officer I just have so much more crap on my UI than DPSers do. I recently cleaned up and condensed it and it made a nice difference. Since you won’t need Decursive (and I highly advise against using a heal frame AND a cleansing frame), can you disable it? Even better, if you do use grid, you could set up a configuration for it on your mage with click functionality to act exactly like Decursive, and then you can even clean up your mage’s UI as well.
Still setting up PowerAuras for 3.1, but I’ll definitely say you need to track at least the following 3 things as Holy
Mana - Warn yourself when you get to a certain point so you know whether you need to consider using cooldowns. For me, that’s around 20-30%. I usually keep a close eye on it, but sometimes I get so lost keeping up with damage it gets away from me.
Surge of Light - You can’t use them if you don’t notice them.
Holy Concentration - This is completely redesigned so I’m trying to get myself accustomed to using it. I set it up so the aura changes color with each stack and I found it useful last night.
If you set up clique to work with Grid, that’s what you’ll get. The thing is, unlike with DPS, clicking is completely unavoidable as a healer. In fact, I have everything I could possibly cast during combat (other than the occassional DPS spell and my stopcasting macro) mapped to healbot, so all I use are my movement keys and my alt,shit,ctrl modifiers. So, if you get it set up in a logical and intuitive way, it can and will make a big difference. I think I saw a 20-30% increase in my healing throughput when I switched from target-hotkey to modifier-click.
I don’t know about him, but I sure would like some pointers about 5-man healing. My Shammy’s second spec is Resto - but I, too, have been a DPSer up until now. Elitist Jerks makes my head hurt - I guess I’m not much of a theorycrafter. I healed VH yesterday and did OK, but clearly I need some work even if the rest of the group didn’t thinks so. I mainly want to use the Resto stuff on heroics to get the emblems to get better gear - I figure as either DPS or healer I’ll have more opportunities to group. But only if I’m a decent healer.