I levelled my priest as a shadow priest as well and I frequently still take a DPS slot when I group but my second spec is healing. There are only a few classes that can heal and there are a only a few classes that can tank and you can play your character any way you want but IF you don’t want people to ask you to heal then you might not want to play a healing class and IF you don’t want people to ask you to tank then you might not want to play a tank class.
While I don’t disagree (indeed, I outright agree), I believe the crux of the issue at hand is whether one is obliged to accept the invitation to do that; decidedly, the answer is a resounding no. I get all kinds of requests in game (some of which I wouldn’t repeat in polite society), but I’m hardly under any obligation to accept the invitation.
So, to recapitulate:
- classes may have a particular spec which others will find useful;
- those who play those classes may or may not, in their own discretion, choose to do so;
- the refusal to accept said invitation may negatively impact one’s advancement in the game.
I would just like to reiterate that I 'm not discounting the possibility of ever, tanking, just that I’d be a liability as I stand right now.
I’d love to “practice tank” with some of y’all (who at least know me and my limitations), and then after it’s over, get some kind of a “de-briefing” on what I should have done.
Or, even better while we’re actually in the fight, tell me stuff, if there’s time, such as “Q. Enable your mocking shout”, or whatever.
See what I’m trying to say? I can learn by doing and repeating, but I’m not so good at trial and error.
Everyone who doesn’t know what they’re doing is a liability, at least you know you don’t know what you’re doing. The people who think they know what they’re doing but really don’t are much worse 
But really, at low levels the worst thing that is going to happen is you fail completely at tanking, wipe because of this, someone calls you names and kick you from the group. It’s better to have that happen at level 24 than at level 80.
Well … I finally decided to do some grouping, with my blood elf paladin. I’d mostly avoided groups as I leveled my human paladin from 1-80, preferring to solo. While that was enjoyable, there was the unavoidable fact that I had to simply skip a lot of quests, particularly those that required entering instances. Most of the time I said I’d just go back and do those quests later, when I seriously out-leveled them, but of course by the time I was able to do that, there was really no point aside from getting the achievement, since I was too high-level to get any XP and the loot drops were useless to me. So most of them I never got back to (though I probably will at some point, since I eventually want that Loremaster achievement).
With this new pally, I decided I’m gonna break down and gather allies so that I can do those tougher quests and get the rewards while those rewards are still useful. So I grouped up a couple times in Ghostlands. The first time was for the quest to kill those two big elite abominations, Knucklerot and Luzran. I was lvl 18, I think. That group was pretty straightforward - 5 paladins (seems you can’t throw a rock in Eversong Woods or Ghostlands without hitting a paladin). We just ran up to the mobs and hit 'em until they fell down.
The second group was last night, and required actual planning and preparation beforehand. I was down to just one quest left to do in Ghostlands - kill Dar’Khan, the ranking Scourge officer there. I had previously scouted his position and discovered he was a lvl 21 elite, in a confined space, and had several “friends” in there with him. I concluded I wasn’t going to be able to take him down by myself (even at lvl 23), so I gave a shout-out in General to see if anybody else was doing that quest. I found a lvl 18 paladin and a lvl 19 mage. So we got together and discussed what we were going to do. They had both done the quest previously with other toons, so knew what to expect.
We came up with a plan, executed it, and completed the quest, though it was still tough. It was fairly straightforward. Since I was the highest level character in the group (the other two were under the quest’s level) and had picked up some decent gear at the AH, I essentially acted as combination tank/DPS. I kept my Retribution aura up while the other pally had his Devotion aura up. When we got to the chamber, I tagged the elite with Exorcism, hit him with a Judgment, then charged right up to him and started whaling on him with my 2-hand sword. That’s all I had to do - focus on the boss. The other pally followed me in, and it was his primary job to simply keep the other, non-elite mobs off of me, and his secondary job to throw an occasional heal at me. Meanwhile, the mage stayed on the stairs and out of the way casting her spells. Then as soon as the “trash” were down they both turned their attention to the boss and helped me finish him off.
I had fun, and got me a cool-looking sword out of it
I see your point.
I have no objection to people asking me to heal for their group when I’m playing a priest. It doesn’t bother me, and never has. What bothers me is if someone gets snitty about it when I say no.
I think that’s Quasi’s point, too. Do you see what we’re saying?
Okay, coupla things (and you may be amused or bemused at me, I don’t know.
PLEASE try to understand I might get some stuff wrong as I write, and say to yourself, “well that’s just Quasi”, okay?..
Thing 1: I had a priest elf level 23 challenge me to a duel, and I wrote, “yup, on one condition: when you win, please tell me what I did wrong and advise me how to do it better.”
He didn’t want to at first. Said he had a time problem. I guess all of y’all have a “time problem”, right?
So we duelled and he won. Twice. Did some disappearing thing and left his pet there as a distraction… I don’t know… anyway I chased him down, got in a few licks, de-moralized him and rended him, but nothing.
His question: “Why didn’t you try?”
So I told him the cliff notes version - way, about the AD.
He “listened”, so that’s something good.
- Thing 2 : I went to Moonbrook for some cash and of course, to see if I could make it to cutting off Van Cleef’s neck, and got asked to join… :eek: a group.
I accepted, and didn’t say one thing: just helped kill using shout and thunder clap, rend and rage.
We made it all the way down to that big round place with the little level 19 elite gnomes, and I died there.
I know, I know… just read, you don’t have to answer this. I’m just saying what happened. Okay I just laid there asking for a rez, but none was coming, so I eventually stoned out for repair (I was totally redded out).
Whereupon I got a “?” from one of the party, and I explained and he was cool widdit, and I thanked him and left the party.
That’s what happened to da best of my re-collekschun, my Honah!
Still don’t HAVE to answer me, but I kept getting paid and need/greeded after death, so I wonder if protocol/etiquette required I take a pass whem I’m dead.
I wanna get Wolkie one of those things you hang on the rear-view mirror of your car to wear around his NECK! :D:D:D:D:D
It was a fun day in Az for a change.
Q
Oh, looting fiascoes. How, um, un-novel these will become. It’s essentially this, in a pick up group (pug), you’re entitled to roll on anything that drops that is of interest and use to you (if it drops from a boss). If it’s a trash drop (not boss type of mob, usually a crappy green), then the custom is that everyone rolls greed unless there’s an enchanter in the group who can disenchant the item whereupon people will generally roll on whatever resulted from the disenchant bit.
As for boss type loot, you get two options: need and greed. Unless something is an upgrade for you, you shouldn’t need on it. It’s rude, and this “rule” is generally observed game-wide. There are always assholes who are exceptions, but you just learn not to run with them. Otherwise, if two people are interested in the same item, you both click need and let the RNG do its thing.
Or, you guys can all agree upon some instant loot system for that instance.
Being dead is irrelevant. You were there and did your best; you should get to roll on gear for which you have interest.
At higher levels, priests will be far easier for you to kill if you’re specced into mortal strike.
So your gear went red? Unless you died a lot that probably means you went into an instance run without repairing, that is bad m’kay. Of course there are people who do that at level 80 too, but do your best to fully repair before going into an instance.
As long there is some who can ressurect alive and present asking for a ress is just fine, but don’t do it if the resser also died. Expecting the resser to run while you don’t is just lazy and rude. (Not saying that is what you were doing, but now you know :))
Important
Do not, under any circumstance, release spirit until the fight is over(or the mobs have been looted if they drop blues)! If you do, you will not get a chance to loot!
Keep that in mind that leaving in the middle of a run for no good reason is very rude(doesn’t stop people from doing it though :mad:).
You just gave your life to kill those evil mobs, and in World of Warcraft you can take it with you
You have the same loot rights as everyone one else in the party, don’t feel guilty or something just because you died.
I have the fel iron sword now. I peeked at how it looked with the dressing room since I’m still too low to use it. It’s one creepy-looking red blade!
I am dividing my time between leveling my belf warlock and nelf hunter. If I remember tonight, I’m going to train my warlock in staffs, which I still haven’t done. She doesn’t use her melee weapon much anyway unless I forget to hit the key I’ve bound for wand use.
Yeah I get it. Im just saying that you can avoid the problem of people getting assy about it if you play a rogue because it takes a special kind of jerk to get mad at you for not tanking as a rogue whereas it only takes run of the mill jerk (and WOW is wall to wall with these) to get on your case about not tanking as a warrior.
I play a druid main and I can’t tell you how many times people get assy with me for not being a tank, or a healer or dps. My rogue on the other hand never gets hassled for just being DPS (his second spec is PVP). My priest is specced for DPS and healing and I never have a problem.
I’m not saying that its alright to hassle someone for playing a DPS warrior (most warriors are dps until they hit 80 anyways aren’t they?), I’m saying that if you play a combat rogue or affliction lock or abm hunter, noone hassles you for it.
You are likely to run through that zone for every Horde Alt because barrens is relatively cheap and too much of a PITA. Here are a few thoughts.
A reasonably equipped paladin can solo knucklerot and Luzran at 21 with relative ease (one of them is easier than the other and you can probably do it at level 19 or 20 if you have above average gear, pet classes can also solo them relatively early). Just watch out for the knockback attack when you are in the scar because it can knock you into a bunch of undead. I usually skip this quest because knucklerot can be a real PITa to find.
Dharkhan can be soloed by a 23 paladin or pet class with relative ease.
DharKhan can be single pulled from his room.
Remember to use the effect on the sword or orb that comes with the quest.
Clear out the temple (except for Dharkhans room) before you pull Dharkhan because he will fear you and you don’t want to run into any adds.
If you have a party have them set up camp up the ramp and around a corner so that when they get feared they won’t run into the Dhar Khan’s room (you don’t want to activate those mobs). DO NOT bum rush him in the room or engage him at the doorway to the room.
Pull DharKhan up the ramp and around the corner and start burning him down.
You are likely to run through that zone for every Horde Alt because barrens is relatively cheap and too much of a PITA. Here are a few thoughts.
A reasonably equipped paladin can solo knucklerot and Luzran at 21 with relative ease (one of them is easier than the other and you can probably do it at level 19 or 20 if you have above average gear, pet classes can also solo them relatively early). Just watch out for the knockback attack when you are in the scar because it can knock you into a bunch of undead. I usually skip this quest because knucklerot can be a real PITa to find.
Dharkhan can be soloed by a 23 paladin or pet class with relative ease.
DharKhan can be single pulled from his room.
Remember to use the effect on the sword or orb that comes with the quest.
Clear out the temple (except for Dharkhans room) before you pull Dharkhan because he will fear you and you don’t want to run into any adds.
If you have a party have them set up camp up the ramp and around a corner so that when they get feared they won’t run into the Dhar Khan’s room (you don’t want to activate those mobs). DO NOT bum rush him in the room or engage him at the doorway to the room.
Pull DharKhan up the ramp and around the corner and start burning him down.
If you want to be DPS, find a group who wants a Boomkin or Feral DPS Druid. We have a couple of Druids in our guild who are only Feral DPS.
Men can’t breast feed, but women can. Maybe we should just make all women who want to have children quit their jobs and stay home to raise them. After all, it’s what they’re best equipped for!
I’ve played with a number of Warriors who only DPS, unless all of our tanks, off-tanks, and off-off tanks are unavailable, and even then it’s their choice to act as a fallback tank of last resort. We even had a Warrior leave because we wouldn’t let her tank. Is Warrior DPS lower than it should be right now? Yes. Does that mean that you shouldn’t roll a Warrior if you don’t want to tank? Hell no. Blizzard will fix what they broke sooner or later, and even so, Warriors aren’t doing badly, just not as well as they should be.
Uh, how about a PvE DPS and a PvP DPS? I know Priests who never raid as Holy or Discipline, too–only Shadow.
Hahaha, playing a Resto Shaman will *totally *get you invited. If any Shaman spec is weak right now, it’s Enh, because of their relatively low health pool. (And my guild has a raiding Enh Shammy.) Do you even raid? Shamans, along with Druids, are the best raid healers (vs. Priests and Pallies, who make the best tank healers). And, as I’ve mentioned, I have raided with plenty of Warriors, both guild and PUG, who are coming strictly as DPS.
1.) It depends on the boss. Apparently you missed my earlier example of Sarth+3D, which was the hardest encounter in the game before Ulduar dropped, and literally *could not be done *by a Warrior.
2.) Even for single-boss fights with primarily physical damage, you’d only refuse to take anybody but a Warrior if you’re an extremely hardcore min/maxing guild. And something tells me you’re not in Ensidia. Blizzard has done a lot of work to make all tanking classes viable tanks for all roles and all healing classes viable healers for all roles.
Maybe because Warrior and Rogue playstyles are completely different? Maybe you should ask yourself why you feel the need to shit all over someone’s perfectly legitimate choice of role and spec.
This. This times 50. Well put.
Actually, Holy Paladins are considered to be the best tank healers right now.
So people should have to structure how they play a game around other people being lazy and rude? Just because another player has a stupid expectation doesn’t mean anyone else should be restricted by it.
1.) Random point: they’re goblins, not gnomes.
2.) When you die, unless the entire group goes down, the healer (or another class who can rez) should rez you. Unless they’re not high enough level yet to have their resurrection spell. It’s okay to ask for a rez if one isn’t incoming.
3.) If there’s no one alive in the group who can rez you, or if everyone dies (known as a “wipe”), you will have to run back. This can be tricky when you’re in an instance like the Deadmines, which has a kind of confusing entrance.
4.) To run back, first click the “release” button. Then, instead of running back to your corpse, you run back to the entrance to the instance and zone in. Once you zone in, you will be alive again, and will have to run forward to join your group.
5.) Often, patrols (“pats”) will respawn inside of instances between the entrance and the rest of your group, so you should be careful if you’re going to join them alone. If you see a pat coming, run back the other way, and announce the pat in party chat. Then the rest of your group knows to come get you.
6.) Always repair before you come into an instance or a raid. That way, generally speaking, everyone’s armor will “break” around the same time.
7.) It’s okay to roll on items once you’re dead. In fact, this is why you don’t want to release if you die on a boss–if the group manages to kill them, you can still have a chance at the loot you helped everyone obtain. Unless they’re in the middle of fighting something, your group should wait until you are rezzed/release and run back to join them to proceed.
Yeah, and no one will hassle you for being an atheist if you go to church every Sunday, and no one will hassle you for being Black if you have enough European ancestors that you can pretend you didn’t have any African ones. :rolleyes:
The more people stop catering to these stupid attitudes, the less prevalent they become. So how about we work to *change *them instead of *enable *them?
I call shenanigans. Holy priests are still topping the healing meters. The only person I’ve raided with who gives me serious challenge for hps and overall healing is oddly enough a holy paladin. In a pinch, I can pull out 7k hps for about 2 minutes on my priest. I haven’t seen a druid or shaman getting near that.
There was a time there in the beginning of WOTLK when priests were rather handicapped, and we still are, but to a lesser extent now. Our spells are very expensive, and our mana regeneration mechanics are completely retarded: shadowfiend still does what it wants to; hymn of hope has no guarantee that it will restore any of my mana, and my spirit-based mana regeneration was gutted to such an extent that after the patch, my out of casting MP5 was 300 MP5 less than my previous in-casting MP5.
Our spell coefficients and scaling are worse than any other healer in the game. The only thing that makes us viable is that we have more spells to choose from than any other class in the game. Priests have a healing spell for every conceivable situation; fortunately, they’re now smart heals which helps a great deal with our throughput efficiency, if not our mana efficiency.
This is just me WAGing, since I have no experience with raiding yet. SFG made a distinction between Shamans and Druids being the best raid healers, with Priests and Paladins being the best tank healers. I presume that’s because Shamans and Druids have better access to AOE healing, and AOE as a general rule tends to be less effective per person than single-target. If the single-target healers, Priests and Paladins, are focusing on the tank (i.e. the one taking 90% of the damage), then it makes sense that they’re going to be healing a lot more damage a lot more often, while the AOE healers are doing better at casting a wider net and keeping everyone else alive. In such a situation, I can see the Shamans and Druids still being highly useful while the Priests and Paladins are still putting out the most HPS.
I may be making some incorrect assumptions, so correction is welcome.
1.) From what you’ve posted here, you should know better than to quote healing meters. Anyone who knows anything about healing in raids knows that healing meters are even more useless than damage ones. They don’t tell you anything about who’s healing who, whether or not that’s the person they’re supposed to be healing, whether they were doing other things they were supposed to be doing (like cleansing or decursing), whether they used any abilities that prevented damage (hi Disc Priests, we love you, too), and you have to skip over to a whole 'nother meter to see overhealing.
2.) Re-read what I said. Shammies and Druids are great raid healers versus tank healers–i.e., keeping the health of the raid up, versus healing the tanks (single target). I’m not saying Resto Shammies are oh em gee teh bestest evar, just that they’re completely viable healers, versus the other poster’s claim that you coudln’t even get a raid invite with one.
3.) Holy Pallies are the other big tank healers right now, so it’s no surprise that one would challenge you on the meters.
ETA: Bosstone, you got exactly what I was going for. Thanks for helping to clarify my point.
No worries. My Paladin is coming up on 80 pretty quickly now, where I’m going to respec into Holy, so I’m trying to pay close attention to discussions on healing.
A random question for anyone who’s played Holy Pallies as tank healers or has seen them in action: do they go with cloth gear for the caster-centric stats, or just stick to plate that’s geared toward Paladins? I know Tier sets are separated by class, but I was wondering about non-Tier gear.
This occurred to me because of a passing comment by a guildmate the other night that if I was going to go with Ret for my other spec and do DPS, I’d want leather instead of plate. I got to wondering if the stat buff distribution on the various armor types were really all that varied that I’d want to use something other than plate if I’m not tanking.
Holy priests, which is the spec under which I raid, don’t usually do much tank healing. Yes, we can do it, and we can do so reasonably admirably. But, a holy priest will not as good of a choice to be a tank healer as would a holy paladin or discipline priest. If a tank is taking 7k dps, then something’s not going well.
Holy priests are usually in the role of raid healing, which we’re quite well-suited towards spell-wise. For instance, my prayer of healing will hit everyone in a group within 40 or so yards of my target and will heal each person in that group (and any pets they may have) for a little bit more than a flash heal would heal a single target. That is to say that my prayer of healing crits can hit right around 12,000, while my flash heal usually tops out around 9 to 10,000. My greater heal tops out around 25,000, unless I use all of my cooldowns, and all the conditions are amenable to my talent points receiving their full effects. If that’s the case, then my greater heal can crit for almost 40,000. To do this, though, I have to burn every cooldown I have to maximize the healing buffs I can place on a tank.
This includes using my divine hymn for a 10% increase in healing, using guardian spirit for a 40% increase in healing as well as having the target be below 50% health for an additional 12% healing. If the tank in question is a paladin, then I’m in luck because they can spec to receive an addition 5% (I think?) healing. So, that’s my base healing plus 67% increase in healing, if I get a crit. To better effectuate that, I would use my inner focus to make that greater heal not only cost no mana, but also have an increased 25% chance to crit. Given my raiding crit chance plus that, I have about a 54% chance that the spell would crit.
All in all, it simply doesn’t do to paint all healing priests with the same brush. Discipline priests have a completely different healing priority than do holy priests. They also have an entirely different healing style, gear requirements and a reasonably well-patterned healing algorithm. Holy priests have no such animal because raid healing is pretty much a game of whack-a-mole.
A shaman is a very competent raid healer. However, they have a limitation not foisted upon either resto druids or holy priests: they primarily cast only one type of heal. Their entire resto tree is built around chain heal.
Resto druids have many HsoT (heals over time, commonly written as HoTs). They have one aoe heal (well, 2 if you count tranquility), but it has a very limited range: it will only heal the target and people very close to the target.
Holy priests, on the other hand, have prayer of healing which has a 40ish yard radius from the target upon whom it’s cast. However, it’s restricted to only people within that person’s group while neither chain heal nor wild growth have that restriction. To compensate, holy priests have circle of healing which heals the target and anyone close to him (within about 10ish yards). Unlike wild growth, circle of healing is a direct healing spell, which means it delivers all of its healing ability in one shot. Wild growth is an AoE HoT.
Priests also have prayer of mending which is a goofy creature I love. What it does it set on a target and waits for that target to get hit. Then it does its heal and bounces to another person in the raid and waits for that person to get hit. This is the most mana efficient heal in the game. My prayer of mending costs 411 mana and will heal up to 6 targets for up to about 9.5k (13k if they’re below 50% HP). So, we’re talking about on average somewhere around 50sih thousand healing done for 411 mana. No one else comes close to that kind of efficiency.
Unfortunately, that’s the only mana efficient spell we have. My prayer of healing costs about 1400 mana, but it has no hard cap on how much healing it can do. The total amount of healing it can per cast is dictated by the health deficit of party members, and the number of pets they have. Now the overall healing per mana of prayer of healing is wonderful, but the spell itself is expensive to cast even though its ability to heal could theoretically be around 120k healing per cast. In general though, that isn’t the case. It will do around 50k healing per cast, which is about the same as the prayer of mending, but at more than 3 times the mana cost.
Anyway, that’s the short version of life as a holy priest.
Well, the only healers restricted to only one type of gear is priests. Best in slot is best in slot despite what class of gear is. I’ve seen paladins wear cloth, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
The only people who are absolutely restricted to a particularly gear type are tanks and casters. Everyone else can mix and match as needed to optimize their stats.