Learning in Kara =O

First off, I just want to say, this post is dedicated to Rhoe! Thanks Rhoe, for all the hard work you’ve done! You’ll be proudly placed on my blog roll minutes after I’m done with this post.

ANYWAYS, I’m going to write a little bit about maximizing healing as a holy paladin in Kara with gear that destroys the place and a druid who manages to keep almost everyone in the raid topped 90% of the time.

So I was in Kara last night. First time with the new guild, and it was a very….enlightening….run. The group got up to Opera (fell short of their normal stopping point at Curator due to new people and starting late). A good deal of the raid was new to raiding or had never raided with the guild before. At least, that’s what I gathered during the run.

While I definitely won’t argue guild policies (especially being a new member and that being my first run) I will point out that the group had more potential than we used. Yes, we had 2 wipes. One of them was due to someone not knowing that Maiden has a very large aggro range and we were positioning for her. The other, a missed kick on Julianne (or whatever her name is o_o). These weren’t really skill issues though. The healers were all amazing (I’ll try to get the screen cap of the healing meters I took, I wish I had run recount, but I decided not to because it was my first run with the guild and I didn’t to be focused on something so trivial).

But all in all it was a good run, and I learned something I hadn’t ever really noticed before. See, I was a good deal, the best geared healer. Does that make me the best? Not by a long shot. I’ve out-healed plenty of people with better gear, but that has more to do with timing than with judgment. But EVERY other run I’ve been on to Kara I’ve been the low man on the totem pole of healing gear (except that time when we got replacements…but I refuse to call that a run :)). So I’ve always had to be fast on my heals, or else I’d be useless. I do mean useless, because I can barely recall any fight short of that PUG I went on that my heals were really *needed* and so I was more of a safety than anything else.

And I was maybe just a safety in this run too, but I was actually given a tank to heal, and I recall a few times where it was good I could toss a FoL over to the main tank, because he might not have needed it, but I’m sure both he and his healer wanted it. On that note, my FoLs matter because we had light on the tanks, and a tree in their group. My FoL crits were HUGE.

So my job was to heal the off tank and secondly to be a spot healer for the raid. Cool enough, I normally end up as a spot healer anyways. But man oh man is it different to know that you’re the back up to the druid and the main healer for the tank, instead of back up for the main healers and more in charge of dealing with the raid.

Judgment is much more important than timing now. As a spot healer, you have to just pick and spam. It’s not that hard, and it more requires cognizance of AoE damage, who is most likely to be hit, and who is already lacking a bit of health. Not difficult.

Tank healing has a different spin on it. You KNOW your tank is going to be damaged. You also know that the druid in the group is likely going to have a HoT on him, and he’s not going to be taking as much of a beating from the mobs as someone who wasn’t a tank would. So now judgment comes into play. You can focus solely on your tank, and only try to toss out a heal if someone looks like they are in an emergency. With a low mana pool, this might make more sense. But it makes for a bad healer.

Ok, ok, it’s probably not a case that the healer is BAD. However, you’re not contributing as much as you could. And that’s what limits potentially great raids. So what do you do? You use judgment.

Every single healer should have some form of UI interface that shows them everybody’s health bars. I use XPerl. I’m sure there are others. I think Blizzards basic interface even has a clunky version. JUST MAKE SURE YOU CAN SEE EVERYONE’S HEALTH.

Next, make sure you know the power of your heals. This is more important to what I like to call the comfort zone. I don’t like anyone falling below 80%. Anyone. And that is my comfort zone. If everyone has greater than 80%, I’m fine and dandy and skippy. When people start to fall below, I start to get more serious. I then start to pick my heals very carefully, because if they’re consistently falling that much, then I know I need to be watching more health bars more carefully. Maybe I should be starting to toss heals out more judiciously.

Let me give you an example. Maiden last night had 3 melee (2 rogues and a warrior tank), 4 healers (the main tank was a paladin and he stepped back to help heal), and 3 ranged DPS (2 warlocks and a hunter). I was assigned at the beginning of the raid to the warrior tanking Maiden. With 2 more free healers though (main tank to healer meant that his healer would be freed up) I was certain that I could more carefully watch my tanks bars and not be so worried with everyone else.

Not so. Not at all. I don’t really know what happened, but I think the main tank was taking a lot more damage than I thought he would, and the 2 “free” healers were mainly focused on him. That or everyone in the raid was taking a lot more, so the additional heals were needed to keep everyone up. Again, I’m not sure, but EVERYONE was taking some major heat from her. And only one person died (It was a warlock, and I think he got holy fired twice in a row, and we didn’t heal him fast enough between them). But I had to carefully watch much more than just the tanks. “My” melee to BoS was a rogue, and he was my second priority after the tank. Then I had to prioritize the rest. This is what I came up with.

Tank => “My” Rogue => Myself => Holy Paladin 2 => Tree => Prot Paladin => Rogue 2 => Warlock 1 + Warlock 2

Notice there is only 9 people on that list, the hunter was left out because of her position adjacent to me, and therefore, LoS’d due to a pillar.

And so I watched everyone’s health, and judged according to that list and their health to see who gets my current FoL.

I really liked how it worked out. I think I noticed a slight improvement on my mana efficiency (and considering that the tanks were getting for more, this was impressive) and I noticed lots of less overhealing, because I was letting the druid pick up those who needed a heal less.

So, great run, learned some stuff, got some badges (I think I’ll pick up the badge shield next, unless I get the Kara shield this run through, because quite frankly, I need that shield way more than I need any of the other very tempting pieces :)).

Here’s to Friday being just as great a run!