Ok, so from what i've seen many druids are slacking. I understand that many of the people playing WoW didn't come from EQ, and so i thought i'd post for those people.

In the high end, it becomes clear that it is vital that everyone in the group knows exactly what everyone else is doing at all times. it just helps the group flow more efficiently. Healers are no exception, so do your group a favor and sit down for five minutes and make a few macros.

Create a new macro and select the leaf icon for Healing Touch. Call it Healing Touch. then select create. open up your spell book and hold down Shift and click on Healing Touch (whichever rank is current) and it should paste a new line in your command box that says /cast Healing Touch(rank4) or whichever you clicked.

enter to the next line and type a message like /party Healing === %t ==== stay in range. the %t will be replaced with who or whatever you have targeted.

when it works you will begin casting your heal spell and at the same time a message will be sent to your group, informing them who is being healed.

i have a similar key for my rejuv and regrowth, as well as Faerie Fire and Rez....just so people know what i'm doing.

Restoration Druids are main healers, so look like you know your roll. plus it shuts up that shammy/pally that think they are actually healers. *cough* emergency patch healers *cough*

In WoW just like in EQ I don't want to hear constant party spam about who is doing what. I trust my group to do their jobs and I expect them to trust me as well. Now on raids where there may be more than one person that is doing the same job forming a channel for that specific duty and spamming it I can understand.

fair enough. that's why i keep the "spam" short and sweet. then again i'm a control freak when it comes to groups.

a healer with accute ocd....look out world.

If I'm the only healer in a group, then all they need to know is I will do my job. How I do it isn't important. But when grouped with another healer (which for me is frequently), it helps to announce heals. Otherwise I often find myself healing on top of someone else's heal, or vice versa.

Thanks Celzerias, I was wanting to get my hotkeys setup, this helps. As for the other two responses... sheesh, he's just trying to help. I find it very nice to know when someone is healing or when someone has root-parked a mob... these are textual messages that I see when I don't always catch the spell graphic. There are times even with my good friends that I know can play when they are having trouble in a group and are unable to get a heal off, so I know to take other measures if I don't see their heal message. Or, like Fall said, when there are multiple healers in a group.

You may trust everyone you group with, but I do not. I've had way too many experiences with crappy players to just trust everyone I interact with.

Fawnae learn the difference between criticism and opinion. If you wish to use macro's do so, if you feel the need to use them with your parties do so. I don't feel I am slacking (op's word not mine) in my job as a druid (in fact I know that I am not) simply because I don't like spam. Spamming spell messages is a distraction it becomes something that you ignore, and because you are unable to filter party messages so that you can highlight what is spam and what is non spam it's very easy to miss somthing that is being said that may be important.

When I am grouped with another healer we decide who is the primary healer and who is the back up healer. We discuss what that means. Druids HoT's stack with Priest HoT's. The only time we have a stacking issue with HoT's is if there are two druids. If a party memeber is so low in health that the backup healer feels the need to drop a big heal on them then overhealing is not a bad thing. At level 60 neither my Healing Touch nor a Priests Major Healing will completly heal a main tank. And I am aware enough of my party members to see their hitpoints fill up in order to back out of a heal if need be (hitting escape cancles a heal in process - moving doesn't always interupt).

Announce healing macro's are also counter intuitive of the way that I prefer to heal. I prefer to keep a single target (main tank, main aoe caster, or mob) on my target screen and use heal+f# to heal all others rather than to switch targets with f# and then heal. That's my preferance - it works for me.

If the original poster feels I was being rude I appoligize that was not my intent.

I disagree with ppl who say heal msg are spam.....that is an inexperienced attitude. I didn't get the point of heal msg's at first as a young cleric in eq, but learned they are valuable. You're warlock's pet is about to die, and your warrior is getting beat like a rented mule, they NEED to know the heal is coming for a few reasons.

1) they wont do something silly like try and run off (and oor to your heal) 2) wont waste a heal potion/healthstone needlessly. (they may need it later) 3) warlock wont waste mana healing pet 4) warrior wont switch a stance (wasting rage)in desparation to save himself etc...

Now add another healer into your group/raid. Believe me, communicating is key to sucessful groups/raids. Not wasting mana by avoiding 2 healers on the same target is a beautiful thing, saves you enough for that last heal to save the day in an ugly situation. You're party wanting to know the heal is coming isn't lack of trust in you as a healer, it's just info they need or like to have.

:) before this turns any uglier, a few things, Ndainye is an excellent druid and an experience healer and has shown it in many a group/party situation. I trust her when she says she doesn't need them.

I myself, I need them, not necessarily me spewing them out, but it's good if the priest i'm partied with or whomever uses them, it's saved me casting a healing touch many a time when it wasn't needed.

In a party of 5 with more than one healer, it's a good thing, in a raid, i can see where it could be distracting if not directed at a specific channel or something along those lines. Most people i've seen with announce macros put them in /say so they
a: show up a different colour to be distinguished from raid/party chat
b: only show up to those withing healing/hearing distance

and i've found it helpful. And as for the slacking bit, it's what i do best ;P Actually, I've been so busy working on my UI and other things that I haven't spent the time to sort out how I want to do them.

Let's try and keep things civil.

My priest friend uses macros more or less to let me know that he's healing (so I don't waste mana) or if I'm casting already, to stop. I don't use macros... because I'm lazy and haven't figured out how yet :P

My main is a 60 priest, and I use macros only for Heal and Greater Heal. I tend to spam Flash Heal mostly, because in most instances, I don't have time to wait for a bigger heal to land.

I've also used macros for the bigger heals on my druid when in an instance, but I don't feel that everyone should use them. I do it to communicate my intentions to my group, so that they know what I'm doing and don't waste a potion. However, it's probably not necessary anymore, since the people I group with all the time know that I will take care of them if I can.

In short, do whatever works best for you :-)

I would also agree with Ndainye, heal chats are largely not required, and if you only raid with close friends they are likely never required. When you're in a small guild getting invited out to play with the big girls and boys, however, sometimes you might need to flex in your personal practices.

As a Druid, we are able to stand on our feet as the groups only healer and as such, don't need to worry about others stepping on our turf. Even when sharing with priests and shamans, I find myself casting rejuvenation more than big heals so don't use a macro at all for it.

Having said that, I *do* use a macro for my regrowth (primary heal) in raids. There is a perception that macros are professional and a largely tags for those of us from EQ. To not use them doesn't imply you are a bad healer to experienced raid members. But, to those who aren't enlightened, they don't see your name very often and it's difficult for them to quantify your contribution. Additionally, I like my tanks to know who loves them, and who is responsible for making sure they don't die a single time. ;)

Having a macro on my main heal also lets the raid leader(s) know when the action is getting heavy for healing, and makes them glance up at my mana a little more often. In short, I would never macro all my heals and spam them to make it look like I'm useful. I know I'm useful, and so does the group. Having the macro on Regrowth is fluff, but even fluff can be useful. *chuckle*

~Aida

I announce heals (though only NT and Regrowth, never Rejuvenation, Thorns or FF), but I can certainly understand why people wouldn't like them. I use a .lua call file that accepts announcement to party as a toggle parameter, so it's easy to switch on and off, along with other options. The same macro file also uses a level appropriate heal for the amount of damage on the target, so I minimize over-healing, and conserve mana. Makes a difference, though not a huge one since in big fights my biggest heals are pretty much always needed anyway. Still, any efficiency gain is a good thing.

The WoW druid forum has a nice sticky discussion. The .lua file I'm talking about is presented on page 10.

Never use healing announce macros. I can see that it may become necessary on huge boss mobs a la EQ CH chains, but in instances I expect my party to trust that I'll keep them alive. That said, it helps that the paladin backup healer is my boyfriend and in the same room.

I ran into a little snag with the %t - most of the time I don't have the person targetted, I do "live targets". I normally have the mob(s) targetted and click-click to heal (click the spell, click the target). Unfortunately with %t my macro usually ends up announcing "--- Healing A-Random_mob ---"

Take this as advice from a non-player that's just sharing collected information along the way.

It appears as though the macro's in WoW are far more advanced and customizable for situations (and any game calls for good SA).

This post: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-druid&t=75723&p=1&tmp=1#post75723
shows some very interesting facets of the macro/scripting capabilities.

What I found most interesting is the ability to choose the strength of your heal, based upon the target's max hp. This along with the ability to factor out people (for Innervate for instance) and switching targets on the fly were quite surprizing.

Healing Touch (Will work correctly only for members in a party) EXPERIMENTAL
This spell is not affected by level caps but mana management is nice and important.

Without 'Gift of Nature' talent (pulled from Thottbot)
/script r=Spell_Rank;H=UnitHealthMax("target")-UnitHealth("target");S="Healing Touch(Rank ";SR={0,87,194,362,571,741,935,1198,1515,1889};for i=r,1,-1 do if (H>SR[i]) then CastSpellByName(S..i..")");break;end;end;TargetLastEnemy();

With 'Gift of Nature' talent (Only for level 46 Druid)
/script r=Spell_Rank;H=UnitHealthMax("target")-UnitHealth("target");S="Healing Touch(Rank ";SR={41,98,213,394,617,799,1005,1269};for i=r,1,-1 do if (H>SR[i]) then CastSpellByName(S..i..")");break;end;end;TargetLastEnemy();

I'm sure there'll be a way to probably target specific group members, or... should the situation allow it, look at UnitHealthCurrent (if this variable exists) to begin a heal of the appropriate strength. I'm pleased with the complexity & versatility available in WoW. I will enjoy playing it -- whenever my schooling completes.

~kiry

Yeah, using scripting in macros is very cool -- I've done some of it myself. The only downside that I've had is that showing spell cooldown with scripted macros is buggy sometimes.

There are addons that get into programmatic heals too... CastParty being one of them. It has an option where it auto-selects the best heal for the situation. It's almost scary how advanced some of them are.

As for targeting party members, you just use "party1" through "party4" in scripts... current health is UnitHealth, but, it only returns a number for party members or yourself... for people outside your party it just returns a percentage.

Informing your group or more specifically a group member that you are about to heal them is arbitrary. There is a point where announcing this can be a bit excessive, particularly if you're healing strictly from that Macro, versus announcing with the Macro for the initial heal then simply casting the spell separately.

Perhaps some healers, in this case Druids may be a little more self-conscious about announcing heals in that it may give the impression they are stating the obvious or perhaps drawing some attention to themselves, either way there is a reasonable and practical use for it.

Spam in my opinion would be that of people that have to give some drawn out announcement, for example “The healing touch of the Great Mother is being cast upon you, hold still other wise the spell won’t land and I’ll have to recast, thus causing me…..” I’ve seem some pretty annoying ones in EQ, to the point where I just put the person on ignore.

Speaking of healing macros do many people on other servers do healing Rotations ?
I find this best on high end mobs but the guild i am in does not do it and we are hitting maggy in MC ect and not winning trying to tell them this is the way to do things.
ahhh well i am comming from EQ where a lot more intence healing rotations and battles plus 1/3 Great guilds that work as a team on there own not 1 semi guild that has another semi guild alliance....

We don't really use heal rotations except on Gehennas and then we use a rotation with 3-4 healers in each of 3 groups healing till oom then call next heal group to take over. We do use raid assist and we all generally keep our large heals set for interupts at around 75% which prevents over heals.

The main reason that heal rotations were used in EQ was because CH had too long a cast time and one cleric couldn't land CH's fast enough to keep up with the damage being done on a tank. In WoW cast times are fairly short the main problem is overhealing, which can be prevented.

*edited*Wrong Snake*edit*

http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=543

Easy setup, very helpfull in grps