View Full Forums : Raiding tips for casual to not so casual players?


Seriena
10-14-2003, 11:57 PM
First let me say that this is only from my experience and that I’m asking for others to give input based on their experience.

I’m in a guild that I consider pretty casual, family and friends oriented. We teamed up with 3 other guilds with the same background about 2 years ago in order to give our members the chance to raid and see the end of each expansion. The majority of our members are college age or older, hold full time jobs, go to school, have families and other obligations and don’t want the pressure of a full time job in game. They come and go from week to week as RL requires and when they’re in game they want a good mix of being able to raid as well as time for hanging out with friends, explore zones, do quests, etc.

It works great, but the thing about it is we attract a lot of people from very small friend and family guilds that basically have no raiding experience. They pretty much solod or duo’d their way through the game and don’t know what is expected of them on raids and are to overwhelmed or afraid to ask.

Some things I come across is that druids are especially shy when it comes to being a casual raider. They don’t know how or when to assist heal, what aa’s to get, when to nuke or when not to or how to be in a CH chain (maybe not how to be in a chain but how to have the confidence to be able to do it).

So, as raiders, what words of advice would you give to a new casual raiding druid coming into your guild? What aa’s would you encourage them to get (remember it’s casual raiding so nothing is required)? How about spells? When to have up certain spells, when to use MGB and when not to, etc. Any other tips?

The biggest thing I expect out of new druids is for them to be communicative. Join the druid channel (I’m sure not everyone has one but we use one to organize debuffs, buffs, mgb sotw chains, etc.) without having to be told to join it. Ask if debuffs are covered and if they aren’t then offer to take one for the duration of the raid. If the raid requires MGB SotW work out the order and make a hotkey.

The most basic aa’s I would suggest are MGB, SotW, SCM, HA, SCR.

Effects I would put importance on are Flowing thought, Mana preservation, Improved Healing, Improved Damage, Spell Haste then Extended buff duration.

When raiding, our biggest problem is getting druids to /assist heal. When you see a summoned message that isn’t the MA or one of the back up tanks, target the mob and /assist to check their hps. If their hitpoints are dropping fast, don’t wait to see if the person in their group is healing, just heal. I put my patching hotkey message in /say so it’s not spamming channels but other healers can see who I’m healing if they want to.

If you’re going to be in a CH chain, try to be in between 2 clerics. Most of the time your heal will be enough but you never know. If the mob you’re up against has mana, try to get in a group with a necro so you can get extra mana regen from Mind Wrack.

If you're strictly on patching duty, heal smart. Don't just blindly patch and blow through your mana. Get spell haste by BoR and an item (mage summoned if you need to) and only patch when necessary.

Have PotN mem’d and buff people as they are rezzed. Announce it in channel so someone else doesn’t double buff.

Anything else? I know we have a pretty diverse group of people that visit this site, from hard core raiders, to casual raiders, to hard core soloers. What advice would you all give?

Quelm
10-15-2003, 12:50 AM
Get raid buffs: 9, symbol, focus, VoQ, Blessing of Reverence at a bare minimum. Brell's, stamina, Spiritual Dominion are good too. Resists when needed are Guard of Druzzil for MR, Protection of Seasons, and Talisman of the Tribunal. Blessing of Replenishment is good when you have the buffslots.

Make a hotkey with /assist, put it in the first hotkey bank, and use it. Watch for mobs turning, moving, or summoning, as these are sometimes indicators that heals may be needed.

Sildan
10-15-2003, 07:01 AM
When you see a summoned message that isn’t the MA or one of the back up tanks, target the mob and /assist to check their hps. If their hitpoints are dropping fast, don’t wait to see if the person in their group is healing, just heal

This is my method in this case and it can be suicidal like all druid heals BUT....

I target and cast heal immediately and then decide whether or not to duck. Preemptive healing!!

I duck out of dozens of heals on a raid. Those times you dont duck are those times when you get tells from chanters telling you how awesome it is when you seem to know to heal them before they even get hit.

Sil

Karanthal
10-15-2003, 08:19 AM
/assist healing in some situations is the only way of keeping enough people alive.

The worse place I've found for this is the spider isle in PoAir. Theres lots of spiders and they proc a stun/spin effect meaning tanks, particularly warriors cannot get keep them aggro'd.

Even with everyone working flat out to keep everyone else alive we still ended up with loads os resses while we were passing through.

I normally use F8 and /assist, or pick a melee in my group and /assist twice saves time clicking on smallish mobs amongst 60 people.

Turninng of autoattack when assisting is useful too, you dont want to be waking mezzed mobs with melee just because your checking whos being hit.


A bit about rampage healing

Druids also often get the job of rampage healing. It really depends on the mob how difficult this is. For VT mobs ill use TR or KR after the first rampage message, chances are they will have been rampaged a few more times before the 10 second cast is finished, and its more efficient than NI. VT mobs dont hit particularly hard but the fight last forever so you need efficiency over speed.

For the likes of magmaton or any elemental mob that rampages we setup a druid rotation on the rampage tank. Its worth having 2 pause durations setup should the previous MA die theres a good chance your now healing the MA until someone else can pull aggro from them, so youll need to drop to the shorter pause for a few rounds. Keeping the first rampage tank alive even if your burning mana for a little while is far easier than setting up a list and changing mid fight.

Other than elemental mobs I cant think of any mob that needs a rampage rotation.

Gneaus
10-16-2003, 06:43 PM
/assist healing doesn't cover it all.
Know who your warriors, paladins, SKs, other melee are and cycle through them. Ripostes, momentary gaining aggro, possible AEs can damage your melee. If circumstances come about such that your 3rd/4th/5th MT (you get the idea) in your lineup suddenly is the one with most aggro you want him to start out at full health. Rampage tank could die and suddenly the melee that no one has paid attention to is now the rampage target.
Just doing the /assist cycle between the MT and the mob leaves a lot that isn't being watched. And if I see someone being summoned, I type out /assist [person] (first 4 letters at most only.). They may not keep aggro long enough to get the /assist from mob, or be in a ping pong situation between some melee and the dress wearing victim.

In my old guild, we used the 9s/symbol combo for almost all classes. Druids paid attention to who was being ressed in and used druid chat to let others know who's getting rebuffed. We were almost to the point of doing races to see who could rebuff the quickest. (And it's really nice to be on a raid where after res you get nearly full buff before even starting to ask.)

Definately one of the biggest things in the game is communication. Druids should talk to each other and pass along any info they have. Compare healing styles, spell preferences, etc. I know for a fact that none of us are the pinnacle of druid skill.

Healing chains - don't hesitate. If the person before you hasn't gone almost immediately then go. Worst case - 2 heals are going to land. Don't feel like you're stepping on toes or getting out of line. If you even just suspect the person in front of you going to be late, go. They skip a round or you can duck out. Druid_01 calls druid_02. druid_02 doesn't respond immediately. druid_03 goes THEN. If you don't, you end up with this awkward pause in things where people don't know what's going on. Meanwhile, the length of time your target is not being healed grows longer.

Newking - like it or not, on raids druids are expected to heal when needed. All I know is if there is any chance at all I'm going to be called on to heal, I nuke lightly.

In general, I keep a pretty good reserve of mana at all times. I'm the stop gap measure between the clerics dying and the rest of the guild dying. A few druids with enough mana can keep tanks alive long enough for things to stabilize and get under control.

Iilane SalAlur
10-16-2003, 07:51 PM
Here's the secret sauce I use for raid healing. The key to successful healing is being able to quickly target only the people that needs healing. For this purpose, I have a bank of hotkeys solely reserved for targeting people.

Button 1 is always for sit/stand.

Button 2 is either single group SoTW or a MGB SoTW macro, depending on the raid target.

Buttons 3 to 9 are /target macros so that I can monitor the health bars of up to 7 people, usually the tanks. Button 3 is usually the MT, 4 is rampage tank, the rest are for tank mezzers.

Button 10 is my double /assist macro. This button has saved the lives of countless enchanters and shamans.

Typically I would cycle thru buttons 3 - 9 monitoring the health bars of our tanks. When a new incoming mob is engaged, I'll press 3 to target the MT, wait 3 to 4 seconds and press 0. The double assist macro ensures that I will assist my MT's mob. If the name that shows up in my target window is a enchanter, cleric or shammy, I'll immediately cast Nature's Infusion even if they have a full hp bar. Afterall, I can always duck out if their hp remains full.

alyn cross
10-16-2003, 08:17 PM
best advice for being a patch healer?

practice targeting in all forms.

/targ soandso ... type fast
/assist cleric x to get his duty assignment
f8, /ass to assist whoever got agro if the mt loses it
corpses retain a target. mezzes retain a target.

person a dies before your heal drops... duck, /ass, /ass, and press your blast heal, then decide if the mobs new target person needs it or not and duck accordingly.

i always have key 2 for blast heals, 3 is for tr/kr or nukes, depending on the situation, 0 is wood.

never, especially when you are getting used to raiding and being fast on the keys, never never NEVER put wood in place of a key you 'normally' use for something else, and never put exodus on the same slot on page 2-10 as your heal... just in case you end up on a different page and forget to switch back. those are 2 hotkeys you don't want to press by accident.