click to enlarge	General The first screen you see when you open HealBot is the “General” tab. From here you can disable HealBot, choose to put it on your mini-map, ect. Nothing really exciting here that needs to be changed!
click to enlarge	Spells The second tab of HealBot is your spells tab. This is where you assign heals, cures, etc to different mouse click and key combinations. If you have an on-use trinket, you can use this to auto-cast it with certain spells. I have my Sliver of Pure Ice on auto-trinket to maximize the mana I get back from it. Also, you can assign a macro (instead of a spell) to a click so you could include your trinket or other non-spells into HealBot this way. Holy Nova (for example) is not cast on another player, but so that I could cast it more quickly I just assigned a key combination to a casting macro in HealBot on my priest.Also on this tab is “SmartCast when out of combat” which I choose to use for quick buffing and resurrecting while out of combat. You can enable it using the check box.
click to enlarge	Skins – Healing Next, we are going to look under the Skins tab, in the subsection “Healing”. This is where you choose who to have on your HealBot bars. You can see right now I have “Focus” selected because I set Valithria Dreamwalker as my focus target when healing that fight, and want her included on my bars. I usually have the boss set to focus, but it only includes friendly targets on HealBot so it’s not a problem to just keep this checked. I choose to ignore pets when raiding, but on my leveling characters running mostly 5-mans I have that checked.
click to enlarge	Skins – Healing – Raid Under the Healing subsection, is another subsection called “Raid”. This is where you can choose what raid groups to show. Sometimes we have D/C or on-call people sitting in group 8 and I can choose to not show them here.
click to enlarge	Skins – Icons The Icons section on the Spells tab lets you show what spells are currently rolling on your targets. I have mine set to show druid HoTs, but only the ones cast by me. I have found that I frankly don’t care what everyone else is doing, I keep HoTting the raid, and I don’t want it all junking up my bars. But it IS very helpful to see what HoTs I have rolling on what people, and since the icons fade as the spell gets close to fading, I know who needs a refresh. Also, HealBot does pickup rejuvenation cast by your t-10 bonus, so you can see that too!You can also choose to show raid marks from this screen. Since DBM and other raid mods often put raid-symbols on people for a healing-related reason, I find it is useful to show these marks on my HealBot.
click to enlarge	Skins – Bars This is where you setup what you want your bars to look like. Here is what mine look like: As you can see I choose to have long and narrow bars, and I choose to show the mana bars of my raid members. But you might like a totally different style, and this is where you change that
click to enlarge	Cure – Debuff Under the Cure tab in the “Debuff” subsection you can setup HealBot to show you people with debuffs. I have it set to check the raid for poisons and curses, as taht is what I can remove… and of course have a quick key setup for the appropriate curing spells. Make sure you actually check the box to “Monitor to remove debuffs” and “also in combat” or it won’t do you much good in a raid
click to enlarge	Cure – Custom You can also choose to monitor debuffs that aren’t curses, poisons, etc. One example of something I choose to monitor is “Mark of the Fallen Champion” so that I defiantly make sure I don’t forget who has it, and they get a lot of my healing focus. You can add any debuff you think will be helpful on this tab, and also select a color for your custom debuffs.
click to enlarge	Buffs I hate people who have to be told to buff. Or people who have to be told to rebuff the guy who died. You know, THAT druid? So I use the “Buffs” tab to check the raid for MotW. I also check for Thorns on the tanks using the “Name” option. HINT: when entering the names of people to check, separate them with commas and do NOT use spaces. If you use “SmartCast when out of combat” (on the Spells tab) then you can one-click buff people in need.

If you have any other questions, or if I missed something that you’ve been wondering how to do, leave a comment and I’ll try to update this post to include your question!

So… About a podcast…

A friend and I were kicking around the idea of doing a podcast.  We would basically discuss what’s new in the blue-posts but… that just doesn’t seem like enough.  If anyone has any brilliant ideas for what to talk about, leave a comment, your suggestions are appreciated!

OMG 10 Man!

I’ve been threatening to make a 10 man guild for a long time now… cuz well… I love running 10 man content, and it seems like it’s going to be totally viable in Cataclysm.  Plus, so many guilds are falling apart right now, maybe I can snag a few people?!? So… I’m doing it!  Interested?  Check it out!!

So as you know Ruby Sanctum opened up yesterday  I have a video for you but I haven’t talked over it yet… give me a day or so, that takes a little more time!  But I wanted to mention some quick tips here for people who are still working on this:

1.) Make sure you add these debuffs to your healbot (or whatever you use): Mark of Combustion and Mark of Consumption

2.) The above can be dispelled as either magic or a curse, so…. in short WE can dispel it.  BUT be careful not to dispel it on top of the raid, make sure the debuffed raider gets out first, and FAST

3.) Avoid all sorts of bad stuff on the ground including the circles dropped by people you dispell, the fires, and the circles that tell you where the meteors are gonna land.

4.) Inside the portal… the 2 balls connect, so just find a ball, and follow behind it.  That makes this part SOOOOOOO easy.  Honestly, just follow a ball, have everyone do it, it negates all thought.

5.) Resto druids are better inside than out in p3, there is AoE damage and we can heal while moving.

I did the video below with our tank, Cosain (his website) so you can see the switching perspectives.  When we go into p3, you’ll see that I’m inside the portals and he’s outside so you get a look at both.  Basically outside is a copy of P1 and inside is a copy of P2.  Enjoy!

Real Names for Friends: Your Real ID friends will appear under their real-life names on your friends list, when chatting, communicating in-game, or viewing a character’s profile. Real ID friends can also see who’s on each other’s Real ID friends list, making it easy for players to connect with other people they know.

My real name is “Angela” and my character’s name is “Angela” so I’m not too bothered about this.

Cross-Realm and Cross-Game Chat: With Real ID, friends can chat cross-realm and cross-faction in World of Warcraft, and will be able to chat across future Blizzard games such as StarCraft® II.

Yeah I like this.  I plan on playing Diablo 3 when it eventually comes out so, that will be handy.  And cross-realm / cross-faction, that’ll be nice too.  It seems so many people I’ve played with are now scattered to the wind and it would be easier to keep in touch with this.

Rich Presence: See additional info on your friends list about what your Real ID friends are up to in World of Warcraft and upcoming games like StarCraft II in real time.

I thought Facebook was the only tool a cyber stalker needed, now I see they also need to know exactly what everyone is doing while on WoW.  OMG if I don’t know that you’re in the auction house, when your status says “Ironforge” then we aren’t  really friends are we?

Broadcasts: Broadcast a short status message for all of your Real ID friends to see, whether you want to issue a call-to-arms or let your friends know about an important change of plans.

Um, Ok… but you know I’m probably on vent with them anyway so… eh, whatever

Friend Once, See All Characters: Real ID friends will automatically see all of each other’s characters on their friends list – even characters created in future Blizzard games – helping players stay connected with the people they enjoy playing with most.

I occasionally have a hiding character that nobody knows about, and this will sort kill that huh…  So very sad.

All and all, I guess I don’t mind it.  I think I like it more than I dislike it  What do you guys think?

Here it is again, a WoW lull.  I really think it’s a combination of things.  For one, summer is here!  Summer just changes things… some people move back home, some go on big vacations, others just like to get out and enjoy the weather.  People just miss more raids.

Then add on the fact that we can sort of see Cataclysm from where we’re standing.  Yeah, it’s a ways off but… we know its coming.  We know it’s only a matter of time before all this stuff is obsolete.  And a lot of people have hit raiding walls.  Your guild has downed all the content it will probably do.  Wiping week after week on the same stuff (when you’re probably training new raiders every week cuz… it’s summer) only to hope that with the next 5% buff you can down one more thing… well a lot of people just give up hope.  So either you’ve downed all you expect to down in ICC, all you’re capable of downing, or you’re just plain bored of running it by now.  Either way, your interest dwindles.

And maybe none of that applies to you, and you’re still raring to go… but as you see the friends and raiders around you dropping one by one… well… it sorta kills your drive doesn’t it?

At the end of Burning Crusade when they talked about having 10 man raids I was really excited.  I loved having and running a guild, but honestly I just don’t like that many people.  I thought it would be great that in WotLK I could finally have a 10 man guild!  Well, as you know that just didn’t work out, people wanted the better gear.  Now here we sit at the end of WotLK and Blizzard is making it look a lot like my hopes are finally coming true.  Ten man content that drops the same gear as 25 man content!  I know a lot of people aren’t a fan of that idea, but I am.  I’d love to be able to raid with a tight-knit group of 10!  Honestly, I’ve half considered starting a 10 man guild right now just to be “ready” for Cataclysm.

So what can I do to keep my interest until then?  Well I ticketed all my BoE gear over to my Alliance server (*fingers crossed they do it*) and hopefully it’ll arrive tonight.  I might piss around with leveling something new… maybe I can convince some friends to join me? Hey, maybe you wanna join me?  Leave a comment, we’ll talk!  I’m thinking a disc priest… that might be fun!  Although I’m sure the last thing I really need is another alt.  Hum… who knows.

Now I’m in the process of gearing up this new tree.  Actually it’s not going too badly considering I don’t have the endurance to really badge grind, and with all the raiding on my main I don’t get to raid much on the new tree.

Anyway, to the subject.  If you’re a new tree and you want to put out numbers, dear god don’t stack spell power.  Please, just don’t.  What you need to focus on is hate and regen.  Gem spirit, gem haste… spellpower is absolutely useless when you’re OOM.

Rule #1 of being a good tree: Always be casting!  From the 10 seconds before the pull till the boss dies, you should never stop casting in any fight.  Now, if you aren’t able to do that because of mana, then you need to fix your problem. SPIRIT my friends. Its great when you’re geared, but its godly when you’re not.

LoL Min Maxing:  I have an issue with this term being used for healers… more spell power does not = more healing.  Yes, for damage that may be true, but it’s not true for us.  Hell half of it is just going to over healing anyway.  Healers have to be more balanced than that.  Regen, haste, mana pool, spell power… all important.  I understand if you DPS on your main it’s hard to wrap your head around the idea of having balanced stats.  I know that in a lot of fights when things go your way, you can do fine will all SP.  But on the really hard fights or  when things mess up and you are recovering, that sort of thing… trust me on this one, you don’t wanna be THAT tree who is now useless. I’d Brez but I don’t have mana, can I borrow someone else’s innervate? If you’re that tree, I don’t like you.

LoL Gear score:  The same person playing the same character on the same fights in the same raid will do better with better gear.  As someone who started ICC with a 3500 GS and still out healed the others, I rather think GS is retarded.  They probably sucked.  But hey, you can’t tell they suck from GS, nor can you tell I don’t.  Please, don’t be a GS Nazi, I don’t like them either.  You can always kick people later muhahaha.  In my experience an under-geared alt of a good player will pwn an geared main of a bad player any day, be it in dps, healing or tanking.

/endrant

Happy Tree-ing

What is it?

Basically this is a place for not only me, but my good healing buddies (Youki, Cerenitee, and temporarily Piptooth) to hand out little bits of healing advice, and hopefully (if you submit any) answer your questions!  We don’t plan to sugar coat anything, but hopefully we can be helpful

Where is it?

The website is at HealingCouncil.com or you can send questions directly to questions@healingcouncil.com.  So please, ask us a question, we need stuff to blog about, and hey… one of us will probably have your answer!

I’m going to start by saying that I made a video of this, which I talk over to try to explain the strategy and how to do things.  I choose to use our 10 man kill for this because I think things are clearer with less people running around!  So without further ado, here is the video:

Basically, for the first 70% of the fight she alternates between ground phases and air phases.  While she’s in a ground phase, she will cast a debuff called “Unchained Magic” on two people in ten man and five people in twenty five man.  As a healer what this does is form a stacking debuff, that will damage you 7 seconds after your last cast.  The more you cast, the higher the stacks, and the more damage you will receive.  While you have this debuff, heal only when absolutely necessary. I would not recommend going over six stacks.

She also periodically pulls everyone to the center.  When she does this, run out!  She will cast blistering cold which does a ton of damage to everyone within 25 yards.  You are considered outdoors, so as a druid you can pop travel form to get out quickly.  I also suggest using barkskin incase you (for some reason) don’t make it out.

When she goes into an air phase, she will choose two people on ten man, and five people on twenty five man to put into iceblocks.  If you are chosen you will get a blue arrow over your head.  We had our people run to the center, where they then spread out, as to not kill each other with the ice block damage.  If possible, have someone in raid with a mod that will mark her targets so you can apply HoTs to them before they go into an iceblock.  The iceblock damages them, and once inside they can not be healed, however pre-existing HoTs will continue to tick even inside the ice.

Once they are in ice, everyone runs to the middle.  You will see white circles on the ground that you need to line-of-sight using the iceblocks.  If you don’t get out of LoS you probably won’t get one shot, but you will take a lot of damage.  This will happen four times per air phase.  After all four have gone off it is okay to break the people out of the ice.

Once she hits 30% she will no longer have air phases.  At this point she will pick one person at a time to encase in ice.  Our raid stacked in the middle, and had the first debuffed person going to the right, the next to the left, etc.  During this phase she will put a debuff on the entire raid called Mystic Buffet.  It will increase the magic damage that you take by 10% per stack. You can remove the debuff by using one of the iced people to line-of-sight the boss. Once your stack is cleared you can go back to healing or DPSing.  Unchained magic is also still occurring during this phase, as is blistering cold. Between 10 and 15% depending on your group you will want to pop heroism and burn her down, paying less attention to breaking people out of the ice and more attention to maximizing your DPS.  If people are standing out and getting a lot more debuffs during this phase, its a good time for barksking and other personal cooldowns.  If you have a paladin, its also a great time to bubble-sac.

Good Luck everyone with this fight!!

Also, I haven’t forgotten about a Valithria Dreamwalker instructional video… I just thought I’d do this one first!  Also, its 5:30 AM, so I apologize for any typos you may find, I’ll probably find a few to edit out after I’ve slept!

Ok Basically there are four things going on in this fight…

1.) Healing Valithria Dreamwalker - Since the main objective of this fight is to heal her to full, all spare heals should go on Valithria.  This applies to healers and DPS hybrids alike.  I use healbot and was able to set her as my focus, and have my focus on my healbot grid, making keeping full stacks on her fairly manageable most of the time.  If I was a paladin, this would pretty much be my #1 job, all the time.  More on that later!

2.) Basic Circles of Death - There are two types of these in this fight… a light blue one which will explode up with a column of frost damage, and a dark purplish one which will suck your mana dry in a heartbeat.  See circle -> move out of circle –> win.

3.) Lots and Lots of Adds -  There are lots of adds that spawn.  As a healer all you need to know is that some of them do quite a lot of AOE damage, so be ready for it.  But… for the record, here is more information on the different types:

–> Suppressers die fast but reduce the healing Valithria Dreamwalker takes so assign someone to kill them quickly!

–> Kill Blazing Skeletons first, they cause big uninterruptible raid damage

–> Aboms debuff tanks and spawn worms when they die that healers will aggro, so stay back

–> Risen Archmages mass frost bolt for 4k damage, and slow, but it can be mass dispelled

–> Blistering Zombie debuff the tank and shoot out large raid damage

4.) Portals – During this fight portals will open up… if you go into the portals you will find yourself in her room, only with these sort-of floating orbs.  What you want to do is fly right though the center of the orbs.  Doing this will explode them, and give you a stacking buff.  The buff increases healing by 10% and mana regen by a crazy amount.  When they explode they hit and buff all the people immediately around them so its best to travel as a group inside here, and not compete for orbs.  Make sure you’re low to the ground when you’re about to phase out or you’ll fall to your death!

Putting it all Togeter

Here’s the thing… you’re never going to outdo a paladin at single target healing on Valithria, and well… there is a lot of raid damage, and someone has to stay outside healing it while everyone hops into those portals… so suck it up and do it.  It’s your job bitch… I mean… It’s your job tree.

In our particular strategy we had 2 holy paladins who went into every single portal and spammed Valithria Dreamwalker like mad the whole fight (while beaconing a tank.)  Towards the end when the portals were spawinng faster, they were able to get their +healing stacks over 20.  They also got power infusion when available.  They really dominated this encounter!

Then we had three holy priests.  Now, the coolest thing about holy priests on this fight is that you can cast Guardian Spirit on Dreamwalker.  The 40% increase to heals really helps, especially when timed with paladin CDs, heroism, power infusion, etc.  They mostly went into all the portals but took turns occasionally sitting one out to help with raid damage.

Then you had a disc priest and myself.  Shields and HoTs = the anti-raid damage.  I didn’t take any portals because I found that my mana-regeneration was sufficient to last the entire fight without the buff, and because I kept healing raid damage while our palis where inside charging up their über heals.  Just be careful not to get caught in any of the black voids, they’ll suck your mana dry pretty fast!

My advice to trees is to play to our assets.  We can raid heal, we have great mana regeneration… so do that.  Sure, keep full HoTs stacked on Valithria, but keep your main focus on healing the raid and let the other classes focus on her.

I do have a video of our kill but it isn’t very good.  I had been recording my interface so you could see what was happening, but after a lag-out-crash it reset my settings and the interface didn’t get recorded  I promise I’ll get a better recording of this when we do it in 10 man this week, and I’ll even talk over it again!  The one good thing about this video is you can really see how chaotic this fight gets towards the end.

Linkage: Healing Valithria Dreamwalker from a Paladin perspective, Valithria video from a Paladin perspective

As I mentioned at the end of my previous blog, our ten man got the Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion achievement this week.  I was a bit worried going into it, but we ended up getting it on our second try!  Probably would have one shot it if not for a string of bad luck.  This being the case, I was a bit dumb and didn’t get any of the important parts recorded… sorry!  Anyway… you probably want to know how we did it!

In our setup we had two tanks and two healers.  I’m not entirely convinced you can’t do this with three healers, but I guess it depends on your DPS.  In our setup it was me and a holy priest… I also think a disc priest would be amazing on this fight, but any good healer should work!

Most people’s strategy for Professor Putricide involves a lot of running back and forth across the room depending on what color slime will be dropping out next.  When we do this fight normally that is what we do, however for the achievement we chose to camp under the green faucet.  When the green slime came out, we assumed we would probably get hit. The most important thing to remember here is to stack with your backs facing towards the wall! The reason for this is that when the green slime explodes, you will all fly in generally the same direction.  If someone is facing a different direction, and flies off alone, you most likely won’t have time to re-stack on that person before the slime reaches them if they are chosen as the next target.  All and all this really wasn’t that bad.  Sometimes the slime didn’t even explode… and when it did, the raid was all pre-hotted and the damage was very bearable.

When the orange slime spawns you are already at nearly max distance since you are on the green side.  You will still need to kite, those suckers go FAST!! Us druids can kitty-form and dash, rogues can sprint, engineers can blow their rocket boots, priests could spec into body and soul, you can enchant minor run speed… etc, etc, etc… you get the idea  Any speed increase helps!  Also, although the abomination was not slowing the ooze at all, he was DPSing these orange ones so they would die faster!

Other than this, all the same basics of the fight apply.  Avoid flasks, avoid flying ooze, don’t stand in green puddles, etc.  If you reach phase three, it is identical to the non-achievement version of the fight.

Good luck everyone!

I have to say, I was a little disappointed that I ended up exchanging a lot of haste for crit by upgrading from my t9 to t10.  As you know, right now haste is really important, and crit is sorta… well sorta blah I guess.

That being said, I still wanted four piece so my first four purchases were/are/will be:

Lasherweave Legplates
Lasherweave Pauldrons
Lasherweave Helmet
Lasherweave Gauntlets

Now this is where things get… shall we say… not thrilling. Going from 258 gear to 264 gear is well… technically an upgrade… but it’s such a trivial one it just seems not so worth getting excited about. I know I know, all the little upgrades add up, and you should do it, etc etc… it’s just… you know… not exciting. Plus, where I go from here is also dependent on drops. Regardless of drops I want four piece, but the rest is up in the air.

I’ll end up getting Vestments of Spruce and Fir over the Lasherweave Robes for the haste. Not that I probably wont pickup the t10 robe too eventually, cuz… well.. I collect sets!

I think that the cloth belt Circle of Ossus completely pwns the leather belt Belt of Petrified Ivy, so I’ll be getting the cloth one.

I’ll probably pickup Idol of the Black Willow too, but as its 256 spell power (32×8) and my current Idol of Flaring Growth is 234 and is always up… its not an amazing upgrade either.

Trinkets… hum… Purified Lunar Dust… seems a lot like my Solace of the Defeated only with *less* spell power… something is wrong here!

The cloaks don’t interest me at all…. you can ether go with spirt + crit on the Volde’s Cloak of the Night Sky, or go with mp5 and haste on Drape of the Violet Tower… No Thanks! I’ll stick with my better itemized Shawl of the Refreshing Winds for the time being.

So yeah… badges… not thrilled

Fishing Fun!

In other news, I am now SALTY ANGELA Yep, I won the Northrend fishing contest yesterday! It was my third week of trying, so not so bad. I’ve had all of those other fishing achievements for ages, I dono why I didn’t try the tourney sooner… oh well!  I picked up a Dread Pirate Ring that I sent to an alt for that nifty 5% to experience.

Link Exchange

Finally… you may or may not have noticed that I now have a significantly shorter blogroll.  This site has been around for awhile now, and gets a fair amount of traffic, I think it’s only fair that links should be reciprocal.  That being said I removed sites that didn’t want to link back.  If your site is linking to mine, and I missed it, please let me know and I’ll add you to my blog roll!  Or if you have a related site and want to exchange links, thats cool, visit my link exchange page!