oneHoTnelf

I’ve been really slack lately, but there is new material on the way! I’m currently working on three posts:

• Easy-mode Shattered Halls
• Easy-mode CoT: Dark Portal (Black Morass)
• Raids: Healing with a Druid

I have no idea which one will go up first, but they’re all on the way. My easy-mode series has been a bit slow since Shadow Labs, simply because I don’t know any other instance quite as well. Seriously, I wrote the Shadow Labs guide in about 2 hours without reference to any maps, other sites, or WoW itself. Other instances, I’m finding I’m having to actually run a few times to come up with all the tips, and catalogue all the trash properly. Okay, maybe not BM, I’ve just been lazy there.

Anyway, see you all soon!

Last week, I was side-lined for Kara. We have a couple of extra players for our main Kara team, to cover for absences, but if everybody shows up, there just isn’t room. I offered our second team my services (they’re struggling through earlier bosses), but DPS was their main problem, not healing.

So I was looking for some raid action for the week anyway, and out of the blue, some guy I healed a run for weeks (or maybe even months) ago whispers me, asking if I’m still resto. It turns out their guild team is still working on downing Attumen, and they were chasing some extra heals. I was a bit worried about getting saved to another guild’s run in case FFJ needed me later in the week, but I went along anyway.

I accept the invite, and Grid shows up 11 people. Okay, that’s fine, I figure someone is sitting out for a bit, or something. No biggie, we do that sometimes too. I run into Karazhan, and moments later someone says in /ra: “It won’t let me in.” I look at grid: 10 people in range. 10 people in the instance, one trying to get in. I patiently explained in /ra that Kara only allows 10 people in, and offered to bail if they wanted all 10 except me. I was instantly kicked from the raid, no thanks or anything, and about 30 seconds later got a whisper saying something like “Sorry, we’d like to let you run with us but have to prioritise guild members.”

Whatever. I don’t care, I was asked to come help out, I was only there as a favor anyway. Fine.

About ten minutes later, I get a whisper asking if I’ll come back, because the guy who was trying to get in still can’t. Against all wisdom, I agree, take the summon, and once again find myself inside Kara with a strange guild. I look around to see our CC. One hunter. Hmmm. I ask in /ra about our CC. “Oh, we have 3 rogues, a hunter, and a mage.” No priests. No paladins. One CC, an inexperienced, under-geared group. So I look for an off-tank. Rogues, mages, … rogues… Two classes who can tank. One guy, naturally, is their MT, the other is a fury warrior. So we have 1 CC and one mediocre OT.

Most of the trash went down okay, right up until we got to the 5-pull just before Attumen. They mark up one DPS target and the trap target, and pull. Three unassigned mobs, and as expected, about 3 seconds in they all come straight for me. Main healer down, backup healer down, wipe. I piped up once again, asking what they were doing with the unassigned mobs, and if maybe we could set up some off-tanking or something.

And suddenly I see “You are now the raid leader.”

They promoted me to leader. Not even assistant. A second later, the old leader says in /ra “You seem to have more experience than me, can you lead the raid?”

So I’ve gone from “Sorry, we have to prioritise guildies on the run” to raid leader in about 15 minutes.

Anyway, we never did make it to Attumen, so all my anxiety over getting myself saved to another guild’s instance was for nothing. What I DID do, is manage to get completely off-topic for this post, and I promise you, I’ve finally landed where I meant to. Unassigned mobs, and the “Cross Fingers and Pull” mentality.

Now, I should have suspected any guild who is just starting to try Attumen right after 2.4 of being a bunch of fresh 70s who aren’t keyed and can suddenly get into a raid instance. I didn’t, but in hindsight that’s exactly what they were. A guild who’d managed to get 10 level 70s together, were probably still trying to down Vorpil to get their first key frags, and suddenly found out they didn’t need to get keyed. A group full of not only under-geared toons, but inexperienced players. People who’ve possibly never suffered through shadow labs (at least not successfully). People who, for all I can tell, have never even stepped inside a level 70 instance. People who needed ME to explain to their KARA RAID GROUP what a threat meter was.

Off-topic again. Damn. Okay, let’s re-group. As a healer, I get this nasty AoE-style threat whenever I heal. Us players in the know refer to it as “healing threat”. When I cast a heal, the threat gets spread out among every single mob I’m in combat with. What this means is that if there are loose mobs running about with nobody generating other threat against them, I will quickly become their main aggro target. This is why “Cross fingers and pull” doesn’t work. When you just CFaP (as I’m calling it, because I’m sick of typing it out), this is exactly what will happen. Your healers get a heal off, your loose mobs run up and gank them, and you wipe.

So what’s the right way to do it? Basically, you have to assign somebody to EVERY MOB in the pull. Every mob must be either tanked, CCed, or kited. End of story. If you fail to deal with even one mob, your healer will get ganked, and you WILL wipe.

So, back to my crappy Kara group. Given 1 CC, 1 MT, and one OT, how do you manage a pull of 5 elites? Honestly, in this case, I’m not sure. The group only had one more shot in them, and they weren’t listening too carefully anyway. I assigned our MT (a warrior) to grab two mobs and switch between them. Our OT was to grab one, with careful healer attention, and that was the main burn target. Our trusty hunter was to trap one, and kite one back towards the entrance. Tricky, and demanding, but the only way I could see it working. Kill two was the kite, and hopefully the hunter could then re-trap in time to let us down the two MT targets next, leaving the trap until last. What actually happened was the hunter didn’t run fast enough and got ganked, a mage pulled aggro straight off our OT a few seconds in, and the second mob the MT was meant to be hitting on came for me about five seconds in. Wipe, bail, end of run. Which suited me just fine, because about five minutes after one of our officers asked if I could jump into Kara, because one of our healers never showed.

We downed everything but Shade, Prince, and Nightbane within about four hours, and came back the next night to 2-shot Shade and 1-shot Prince and Nightbane. We dubbed that group the “Dream Team”, and I thanked GOD that my first ever attempt at leading a raid hadn’t resulted in a single boss down.

I’ve been seeing a few other druids out there re-talenting lately, and it’s a while since I’ve touched my spec. Maybe it’s time for a change, particularly in light of the experiences (difficulties) I’ve been having in heroics lately.

Now I have about +1500 healing unbuffed these days, thanks to some BoJ rewards, PvP epics, enchants, Kara drops, and so on (I was somewhere between +1000 and +1200 when I started this blog). This still doesn’t seem enough to comfortably manage heroics while relying on Regrowth, Rejuvenation, and Lifebloom. If my tank is well-geared, I’m usually fine, but if my tank is a bit light for heroics I sometimes just can’t keep up. Okay, so this is really the tank’s problem, not mine, but it would be nice to be able to be able to heal just about anyone through a heroic, instead of having to potentially ditch a run and go find a decent tank. Also, the tank dying is ALWAYS the healer’s fault (just like DPS pulling aggro is ALWAYS the tank’s fault), and I hate looking bad. Even to nubs.

I’ve been experimenting with ditching ToL form in some runs, and running a combination of HoTs and HT. This lets me keep LB and other HoTs ticking (albeit slightly less efficiently), and still throw in a big HT when the tank starts to drop low.

You know what? Healing a crappy tank through a heroic is suddenly much easier. Even if my HoTs just aren’t keeping up, and my Swiftmend isn’t packing enough punch, when my tank gets down below about 40%, I just toss in a HT and begin the gradual creep downward again. I can keep Insect Swarm up, which helps with damage reduction. I have so much mana regen I just don’t know what to do with it anyway, but… I do struggle with mana. Because, you see, I skipped ALL of the HT talents. And to boot, untalented HT is PAINFULLY slow to cast. So I’ve decided to see if I can’t put my current talent spec on a diet, and squeeze in a few HT talents on the way through. My goals are:
1. Maintain full HoT talenting (as I still see this as the core of my healing) and keep ToL (for most bosses, because mana efficiency is usually king there).
2. Talent HT as fully as possible, to improve mana efficiency and reduce casting time.
3. Take 11 balance talents, because I love insect swarm (particularly for tanks who take the occasional crit).

Now in the past I thought I was ditching HT to leave room for some balance talents, but it turns out there is some extra wriggle room. I’m considering this build, and below is my (ridiculously detailed) explanation of each decision. What I took, what I skipped, and why. I’ve listed the high hopes I have for this build at the bottom, so you at least need to skim the talent list.

Balance: 11 points

Starlight Wrath: 5/5. My core DPS involves spamming Wrath or Starfire.
Nature’s Grasp: 1/1. I needed to find 10 points to get Insect Swarm, and the occasional CC proc is nice.
Improved Nature’s Grasp: 0/4. I only took NG at all ’cause nothing else was better.
Control of Nature: 0/3. Needs 2 or 3 points to be worth it, too expensive.
Focused Starlight: 2/2. The extra DPS definitely won’t hurt.
Improved Moonfire: 2/2. Moar DPS.
Insect Swarm: 1/1. Moar DoTs. Also, this is basically pre-emptive healing by damage reduction (increased chance to miss), and druids are all about pre-emptive healing.

Feral: 0 points

I’m a healer, and everything I do and have is about casting. This complements balance DPS, but not feral. Anyway, I’d only manage a point or two, and the first level talents are useless for me.

Resto: 50 points

Improved Mark of the Wild: 5/5. A no-brainer if you don’t use feral forms.
Furor: 0/5. Duh.
Naturalist: 5/5. Half a second is a long time if you’re having to resort to HT, so I feel this is important for my new HoT/HT build.
Nature’s Focus: 0/5. I just don’t expect to be casting these while a mob is beating on me. Even when I’m grinding, I tend to just throw lifebloom into my DPS rotation.
Natural Shapeshifter: 0/3. I couldn’t spare the points, and I just don’t expect to be in and out of ToL a lot in any one fight anyway. If I’m out it’s because I need HT to keep up, or I have to decurse.
Intensity: 3/3. This is the core of druid mana regen, because we almost never get outside the 5sr.
Subtlety: 5/5. Threat reduction is great. If stuff attacks me, I don’t heal OR dps as well.
Omen of Clarity: 0/1. This would be nice, and I took it last time, but I just don’t use it much, and it doesn’t seem to proc often anyway.
Tranquil Spirit: 5/5. Improved HT mana efficiency is the whole reason I’m re-speccing.
Improved Rejuvenation: 3/3. This is one of my main HoTs, and it gets a LOT of use.
Nature’s Swiftness: 1/1. Good panic button for when your tank just got crushed. Macro with HT.
Gift of Nature: 5/5. Bonus healing on all spells is a no-brainer.
Improved Tranquility: 1/2. I get picked on for this, but tranquility is a great panic button, particularly on trash. I’ve always had 2/2. Mine ticks for over 2000, and that’s on everyone in the group. BUT, I hate saving a wipe only to go down myself (which then just leaves us short a healer, which leads to a wipe anyway). I’m going to wait and see how the 50% works out, and maybe borrow a point from Subtlety if I still tend to get aggro.
Empowered Touch: 2/2. My +healing is around 1500. 20% of that is 300. Bonus 300 +heal on HT. Rock on.
Improved Regrowth: 5/5. When Regrowth crits, it crits hard. A few crits on Regrowth here and there is a lot of extra healing.
Living Spirit: 3/3. More mana regen, more +heal. Some people skimp on this one, but I think it’s too good to miss.
Swiftmend: 1/1. Central to a HoT build, and using it every time it’s up can seriously up your HPS, at the expense of saving it for a panic button.
Natural Perfection: 0/3. I shouldn’t be copping too many crits myself, and 3% crit just isn’t worth the 3 points. Sorry.
Empowered Rejuvenation: 5/5. Can’t miss this.
Tree of Life: 1/1. I am oneHoTnelf, and a HoT build is all about the ToL.

So there you have it. My new build. My hopes are:

1. I’ll maintain full HoT efficiency. I can’t see why I wouldn’t, I’ve managed to keep all of my mana and HoT talents.
2. I’ll still be able to do some decent DPS, particularly with my DPS gear strapped on.
3. I’ll have a much easier time throwing some Healing Touches out there without blowing all my mana. The motivation for this was to make heroics easier, but…
4. Have a built-in “rescue mode” for raiding. We usually use a druid (for HoTs) and another healer (for burst heals) on our MT. I’m hoping that if our burst healer goes down, I can keep most of my HoTs up and still get some HTs in there as well. Ideally, the raid healer won’t have to panic if our MT burst healer dies, because I can fill both roles at once. Mana will still eventually become an issue though, especially if it happens early in the fight. However, I can fill this role until I’m low, then get the raid healer to switch to the MT. I have enough mana regen to roll lifebloom AND rejuvenation indefinitely if I save enough to switch back to tree form, then we just hope we can keep the MT AND the rest of the raid up long enough to finish the fight.

If anyone has any tips, I’d love to hear them, but I think I’m probably just going to jump in and give it a try tonight.

A couple of weeks ago, I went out and did my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th key frag, so I finally got my Master’s Key. Lo and behold, my guild needed another healer that very night for Karazhan, and so I got my first look inside. We’re just progressing to Gruul’s Lair with an ally guild, and we’re running 2 Kara teams, so there’s an increasing number of slots coming up (I desperately hope to get my usual pally tank, Amathyst, in soon as well.)

There were a few things I was prepared for that people might not be, and I knew about them mainly because I read blogs like mine, so I guess this blog, being a blog like mine, better have tips like these (hopefully that wasn’t too circular.) I’m not talking about tips for INSIDE Karazhan. I’ll save that for another time. I’m talking about tips for BEFORE the invites even go out.

So here’s what to do to prepare for your raid (this took me well over half an hour, so get cracking well before the scheduled time.)

1. Make sure you’re actually signed up. We had one guildy who missed out on that first night, because the officers didn’t know he intended to come along. He thought someone else had signed him up, but they hadn’t. Whether you use Guild Calendar, or your guild’s website, or whatever. Be on the list, and if you’re not for some reason, talk to an officer about it well ahead of time.

2. Consumables, consumables, consumables. Unless this is farm content (and we’re not quite farming Kara yet, especially having just split our core Kara group to make 2 groups), take along all the consumables you can think of. Know your guild bank policy, and don’t feel guilty about grabbing pots/elixirs/whatever from the guild bank. It’s usually there to help supply raiders anyway.

• Food. Not just for health, either. Find the best damn food buffs possible. For healers, your options are Golden Fishsticks (+heal) and Blackened Sporefish (MP5). I’d suggest at least a full stack of 20 of each, and pick the buff you need for each fight.
• Elixirs (unless you’ll be using a flask). One guardian and one battle elixir, and take at least 5 of each. 10 would be better. Remember, if you don’t need that many, you can just save them for next time.
• Flasks. If you’re expecting a lot of wipes, take flasks which persist through death. They’re pricey, but they replace both your guardian and battle elixirs.
• Weapon Oil. Take at least 2 or 3 charges worth, and remember, these also persist through death. Don’t skimp here either: Brilliant Mana Oil is expensive, but every little bit of +heal helps.
• Potions. Take the appropriate mana or health potions you need. At least one stack of super, and one stack of down-ranked (I use the unstable mana pots from the BEM dailies.) If your mana regen is low you may need more.
• Scrolls. Nobody thinks of these, but if your stats are a little on the light side, scrolls are fairly cheap, although various buffs will overwrite them. I usually don’t bother, but worth a thought.
• Bandages. Even healers should really have 375/375 first aid, and a stack of Heavy Mageweave bandages. If you’re in a light damage section of a fight, bandage instead of healing a player or two to grab some time outside the 5SR. Non-healers need bandages, and should use them when possible without dropping DPS or threat or whatever. Save your healers some mana.
• Water. Take some full-ranked water, just in case your mage is late, or (heaven forbid) you don’t have one. At least 2 stacks, and I’d usually have 3 or 4 myself. The new Naaru Rations are very nice.
• Consumables. For your group buffs, battle rez, pally greater blessing, whatever. Brez you probably only need a stack. Druid group buffs, I’d have 2 stacks, and as for pally greater blessing reagents, who only knows. Lots.
• Anything else you can think of. Stratholme Holy Water. Whatever might help that you have lying around, or can farm.

3. Repair. Don’t be the loser who has to run off to repair after the first wipe. Oh, but if, at some stage, someone does run off to repair, think about going along. Nothing is worse than having to stop the raid over and over for different people to run off and repair at different times. Druids, if there’s a summon back available, use moonglade: there’s a repairer right near where you zone in.

4. Have time. If you’re running Kara, and each person orders pizza delivered and has to get up at some stage to answer the door (let’s say 3 minutes), that’s a wasted half an hour. Interruptions happen, but do your best to get them out of the way BEFORE the raid.

5. Know the fights. WowWiki and BossKillers both have good write-ups. Find out beforehand which bosses your raid expects to do, and be familiar with them. Also find out if your guild has a guide as well, which might explain the particular strat you’re using. For example, on Moroes, instead of trying to CC a few of the mini-bosses with kiting, off-tanking, and so on, our pally tank just tanks all four at the same time as Moroes.

6. Have all your extra software ready. Know which add-ons your guild expects (Omen will almost certainly be on that list). Have Ventrillo or TeamSpeak already set up, and be able to connect to your guild’s server. The rest of the raid doesn’t want to wait around for 15 minutes while you fiddle. Lately, Omen has been very fiddly about requiring everyone to have exactly the same version. Double-check which version your guild is currently using.

7. Show up. Be at the summoning stone ready to help summon others, at least 5 minutes before the scheduled raid start time. If everyone sits in Shattrath waiting for a summon, then there’s nobody to summon. Be one of the prepared ones.

8. Don’t be in a group when invites go out. For a 10-man it isn’t such a big deal, but your guild officers are busy trying to get invites done, arrange groups, assign raid duties, explain the instance to new players, get everyone on TS, and do about a million other things (mostly because half the raid didn’t follow some of these steps, and aren’t ready). In addition to having their own character ready to raid. Don’t make them whisper you to ask you to leave your current group so you can get an invite. REALLY don’t reply saying “Just finishing H Ramps, gimme 10 mins”.

9. I could go on. Go to the bathroom, so you don’t need to call bio half-way through Attumen trash. Get yourself a giant-sized drinking glass and super-size your vodka and orange, so you don’t have to keep going to the kitchen for refills. Clean the fuzz off your mouse-ball (really, if you’re still using a ball mouse, get with the times…) It basically comes down to respect for the rest of the raid. Sure, some other raid members will probably be less organised. At least now, you’re part of the group rolling their eyes at the ill-prepared ones, not the group being eye-rolled AT.

Just basically be ready. It’s simple, really.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I Hate Shadow Labs. But, to get to hate it quite so much, I’ve had to run it quite a few times. And there’s only so many times you can run an instance before you start to learn a few tips. So, in line with my last post on “Easy-mode” instancing, I thought I’d start to put together a few tips on “easy-moding” particular instances.

Group Make-up
First thing first. Group balance. You have this boss in slabs called Blackheart the Inciter, and every thirty seconds or so, he mind controls the whole group. You all start running around hitting each other, and if your T6 rogue gets too close to your blue/green holy priest, it’s all over. Every member of your group needs to be somewhere in the same league gear-wise, although it’s less of a problem if your tank is over-geared or your healer under-geared than if you have a mage who can one-shot anyone else in the group.

If you DO have one or two over-geared players, they can always take some gear off for this fight, so it’s not a huge issue.

This may be personal bias speaking, but BRING A TREE. The boss fights are mobile (trees can heal while running), and Murmur has an ability which can put your healer out for 8-10 seconds (HoTs get your tank through this nicely). Also, there are a couple of fights where you can last long enough without a tank to get your battle rez off, so losing the tank to an unlucky spike might not mean a wipe. Also, for the mind-control bit, your tree will run around doing four-sixths of nothing at all. No damage, and no burning through mana.

All that said, I’m sure plenty of priests, pallys, and shamans have gotten groups through slabs smoothly.

Take a tankadin. Again, bias comes in here, ’cause I usually run with one. Consecrate is great for keeping aggro on the bigger pulls, and you can stand right in the middle of the AoE to make sure those damned Assassins won’t gank you in Blackheart’s room. Then again, druids are better for the extra DPS on Vorpil (bears do great damage), and warriors are better at getting clear of Murmur’s nasty AoE. Hey, tanks are hard to find, take whatever you can get.

DPS/CC is really important in slabs. If your DPS is too low, you will NOT make it past Vorpil, and you will NOT get your Kara frag. If your DPS are all in green/blue gear, you’re wasting your time (in my experience). Take along at least two blue/purple DPS. Also, there are times when you may be pulling up to seven elites. Take plenty of your favourite flavour of CC (rogues, mages, hunters, warlocks… No real special requirements here.)

Problem: I have a guild full of fresh 70s wanting to come along on slabs for their key frag.

Solution 1: Tell them to get busy gearing up for Kara. They aren’t getting into Kara with their green/blue gear mix anyway, so point them at some target blue/purple gear and tell them to come back in a week or two. The later frags are easier to get anyway (in my opinion), so it’s not like they’ll finally get their first frag and then get stuck on later ones.

Solution 2: Get a stronger group together and clear slabs for rep or gear or whatever. Make sure the trash repops are cleared again at the end, and swap out a few players to bring people in for the key right at the end. If you have a warlock, you can even summon them to the chest without having to worry about repop. Just make sure they know not to loot the fragment until EVERYONE who needs the key has arrived.

Solution 3: Let them get a lightly-geared group together, and have a few better-geared guildies swap in just for the Vorpil fight. That’s the main one that’ll wipe a green/blue group over and over. Again, warlock summons make this part less painful.

My personal pick is the last one. The people after the key take the pain, and get to learn the instance. Also, they’ll learn to hate it so bad that they’ll perpetuate solution 3 because they don’t want to spend any more time than necessary in there running fresh 70s for the key frag.

Consumables
This ain’t Black Temple. Bring along some super (mana / healing) pots, and a few down-ranked ones. You’ll mainly need them for Blackheart, if he burns your mana right down / beats the crap out of you while the healers are MC’d. If you need flasks or oils or whatever, you’re probably doing something wrong.

Entrance
If you have trouble here, so help you. Walk into the instance, hang a left, and clear along the wall. Watch the group of imps: your tank will take a bit of spike damage here until a few of them are down. Tell your first-timers that they can’t get to that quest they can see on the mini-map without going right around and downing the first boss, and move on.

Ambassador Hellmaw’s Room
Start with the casters who are chanelling in groups of three. Watch out for the Fel Overseers who are patting around, and LoS pull each group WAY BACK into the corridor. Sap works here, but could aggro a pat when it breaks if you’re unlucky. Sheep or maybe Seduce is probably safer, once the mobs are in the hallway. Traps are tricky because the mobs are casters, but a good hunter can pull off amazing stuff.

Once the first three groups of casters are down, it’s time to tackle the Fel Overseers. These guys are actually a bit nasty. They have an AoE fear centred on themselves, so pull them back into the corridor, and have your healer and ranged DPS stay well back. They also tend to charge random players, and tanks seem to have trouble getting aggro back, so your healer needs to be ready to rescue players. Also, it’s not really that far to corpse-run: if you die, START RUNNING. You may be back in time to help finish it off.

Continue as necessary to clear the room (and the overseer who pats the corridor to the next room), but make sure you leave a group of casters ’til last. After you down the final caster, Hellmaw himself will aggro, and you probably want to rest up before the boss. So unless you’re finding these groups of casters super easy, pull the last group back to the corridor you came in through. Once the last one is down, have everyone run into the corridor, and after a few moments, Hellmaw will reset. Once that happens, rest up, and go take him at your own pace.

Ambassador Hellmaw
When he resets, he runs way back to the end of the corridor opposite the one you came in through. Tank him way down there, against a wall, because he has a big-range AoE fear. If you tank him out in the open, and your healer and tank run in opposite directions during the fear, your tank may be down before your healer gets back in range. If you’re up in the end of the corridor, you can’t go in opposite directions. Also, the healer must be ready to rescue DPSers who pull aggro right after the fear. It seems to happen a lot. Also, if the tank tries to keep Hellmaw facing away from the group, it’ll help avoid some damage from his acid spray.

By and large, this guy is pretty easy.

Blackheart’s Room
This sucks. There are some big pulls, nasty Malicious Instructors patting everywhere, and stealth Assassins who turn up at the worst possible moments. Pull carefully, CC everything you possibly can, watch out for breaking CC pulling a pat, be wary between pulls of the Assassins, and pray to your favourite deity that everything goes smoothly. The malicious instructors are tough, and have an AoE which will keep your healer busy on the tank AND your melee DPS.

You must completely clear this room before you take on Blackheart.

Blackheart the Inciter
There are a few basic tips, and this guy should be easy. First of all, have any players with over-geared DPS strip some gear off, so they won’t take out lesser-geared players during the mind control. Burn all of your DPS cooldowns early so they won’t be used against your group members (rogues, I’m looking at you).

The tank needs to tank this guy up against a wall, because he has an AoE knockback which is VERY nasty out in the open. Everyone else but melee DPS should move back to max range to avoid the AoE (if this knocks your healer halfway across the room, it could be all over before she gets back). HoTs all around before the mind control is a nice touch, as is having a tree druid who walks around doing nothing until it’s over. Once the MC is done, everyone needs to wait a moment until the tank has aggro back. If you do get targeted after the MC, run TOWARDS the tank. The number of casters I’ve seen turn and run AWAY from everyone in this bit is just astounding. If you lost track of the tank, stand still. If you’re the healer, you’re probably WAY out of position, so hustle back in range of the tank, and try to heal DPSers back to full. Don’t leave someone low, because they may go out on the next MC, or cop a charge or AoE.

Blackheart also randomly charges group members, but there’s nothing you can do about this, except once again, have the healer keep everyone topped off.

It sounds scary, but this boss has always gone down fairly easily for me.

Next Room and Vorpil’s Room
Nothing to see here, watch out for the skeletons. In fact, from here until you’re done with Vorpil, there are groups of skeletons and piles of bones which will jump up as skeletons lying about. Watch for them, AoE them down (the healer needs to be ready to heal whoever is AoEing, the damage can be a bit spiky), and deal with the other pulls as usual. There’s nothing really new here until you’ve cleared right to Vorpil himself.

One tip: there’s a 4-pull (or maybe 2 of them?) which pats around BEHIND Vorpil. Don’t try to pull them until you’ve cleared the groups in front of Vorpil. Why you’d try I don’t know, but people seem to.

Grandmaster Vorpil
This boss is a REAL pain. There are heaps of strats out there, but I’ll give you the one I find easiest (and most likely to succeed, in my experience). Note: ALL OF THE STRATS REQUIRE GOOD DPS. You can quite possibly clear all this way here but not have enough DPS to ever kill Vorpil. If this happens to you, you can appeal to any high DPS guildies/friends who are on to swap in to down this boss, and then let your original group members back in. Or just ditch any low-dps people who’ve had enough, whatever works. Try to be fair to people who’ve been through the pain of clearing this far.

There are two tricky parts to this fight. Firstly, as soon as you start the encounter, portals open up which start spawning voidwalkers. These voidys start walking towards Vorpil, and if they reach him, they explode, dealing AoE damage and healing Vorpil. If too many get to him, it’s all over. Secondly, every 30 seconds or so, he teleports the whole group and himself to the platform he starts on, and does a channeled AoE which ticks for LOTS of damage.

There are all sorts of kiting strategies you can try, or you can try the good ol’ “ignore the voidys and just DPS the hell out of him”, but the strategy that seems to work best is to kill the voidwalkers. They won’t aggro or attack, they just move slowly towards Vorpil. So…

Tank Vorpil where he starts. Put one DPS behind him, up on the platform, and one DPS on each side of him, on the stairs (this strat works best if at least two of your DPSers are ranged). DPS is focused on Vorpil when possible, but each person deals with voidys from their direction. Tip: Set Vorpil as your target, and then face your camera away from him, to see voidys as they approach. Once you’ve dealt with an approaching voidy, get back on Vorpil by targeting your tank (short-cut: use F2 through F5 keys for this) and hitting assist. Make sure your character is facing the right way for what you’re killing. Dagger-specced rogues are great here, because they can stay behind the voidys, which will just keep walking towards Vorpil.

Your healer can stand up on the platform, near the tank, and stay in range of everyone.

When the teleport happens, everyone (including the tank) must immediately run out of the AoE. Once it’s over, everyone heads back to their spots, and you continue as before.

An alternative to this, if you’re finding that some people aren’t dealing with their assigned adds, is to tank Vorpil over to one side of the platform, “in the wings” as it were, on the other side of a set of stairs. This means all voidys have to come through the same approximate area, and one good DPS (maybe your dagger rogue) can run about and deal with them all, calling for backup if they start to come too fast. This person just needs to remember to make sure the area is clear enough to get Vorpil through after the teleports. If you’re STILL having trouble with too many adds getting through, you could try alternating which side you take him to after each teleport.

Murmur’s Room
Vorpil is down. Cheer, rest up, and move on, ’cause it isn’t over yet. There are some nasty pulls in the next room, but at least the end is in sight. If you need advice on the trash pulls by now, you’re probably still wiping three rooms back, so deal with those and get up to Murmur. Swap in anyone who needs the Kara key, and get it BEFORE you do Murmur. This saves an unlucky disconnect, server crash, or whatever leaving you hours into Shadow Labs, all the pain over with, and no key frag because you wasted time working on Murmur.

The only exception here is if you’re hoping for a drop from Murmur, you have someone who’s “just along for the run”, and you’re worried they’ll grab the key and ditch you before you down Murmur.

So head for Murmur, but go over to the left and around the side of his chamber. Hug the wall to avoid aggroing Murmur (uh, he was attacking the trash mobs at the back of his room, but doesn’t aggro you only yards from his ring? Whatever…) Jump up onto the platform, loot the container, down the elite that spawns, and grab your Kara key frags. Celebrate briefly, then head back for Murmur.

Murmur
Congratulations. There’s only one thing left to kill. Unforunately for you, it’s a powerful sound elemental, and he has some nasty tricks up his, uh, well wherever it is sound elementals keep their tricks. There are basically three things to worry about with this boss, and then it’s loot time.

Sonic Boom
This is a nasty AoE which extends out a little beyond Murmur’s ring. You get a visual effect and an emote to warn you (I don’t recall myself, but WoWWiki says the emote is something like “Murmur draws energy from the air.”) When this happens, there’s only one possible response: GTFO. Melee DPS and the tank need to REALLY MOVE FAST. If you have any warriors, they can intervene to a player outside the circle. Bears can pop kitty form and hit dash if they’re late noticing the emote. Other classes might want to look at any speed-up options they have before the fight, and it may even be worth throwing on any run-speed gear you have. Ranged DPS and healers shouldn’t have a problem here, although do make sure you’re well outside the ring when it goes off.

Resonance
Problem two is that if Murmur goes for too long without something to melee, he starts stacking a seriously painful nature debuff/DoT. When your tank needs to run out to avoid the Sonic Boom, he only has a few seconds to get back before this starts, and it can easily cause a wipe.

If you’re having trouble getting the tank clear of the sonic boom and he’s taking the damage, he may need to wait a few seconds for heals to go off before he can survive running back into melee range. These few seconds can trigger resonance, and you’ll quite possibly wipe anyway. If you just can’t get the tank back in soon enough, but you have someone who can off-tank, leave the off-tank outside the AoE area for most of the fight, even if it means losing some DPS. As soon as the boom goes off, have this OT run in and grab aggro. You’ll only need it for a few seconds for your healer to get your MT up, but you’ll probably need an off-healer as well, or a main healer who can keep the OT up AND top off the MT (maybe a druid?) Once your MT is topped off, have him run in, your OT run back out, and wait for the next cycle.

Murmur’s Touch
A random target gets this debuff every now and then. You’ll see rings run up and down around your character, and see the debuff on your screen. If you’re not the tank, you need to run into the little tent that was on the right as you approached Murmur. This will save a lot of the fall damage you’d otherwise take, but you’ll still cop a 6-second silence. If the tank gets it, he can’t afford to run out of range of Murmur (unless you have that off-tank ready to jump in), so he needs to shout out so any melee DPS can run away (the explosion when the debuff runs out damages and silences nearby players as well). Oh yeah, you have 14 seconds from when you get the debuff until you explode. The 14 seconds plus the 6-second silence will be tricky to manage when the healer cops this one. Take a tree with you (instant HoTs which she can apply while running to the tent, AND keep ticking through the silence effect), or have a shadow priest or other off-healer.

As a healer who has little confidence in some DPS’s ability to pay attention, I often stand a little around the ring, away from ranged DPS. This way, when one of them doesn’t notice their Murmur’s Touch, I don’t get blown up as well. I can keep the tank up, and hopefully save most of our DPS as well.

Celebrate!
If you managed to get your tank out of the Sonic Boom, or heal after the damage without having Resonance go off (too many times?), and everybody paid attention to Murmur’s Touch and a half-asleep caster didn’t blow up your whole ranged group, you’re done! Loot your Kara frag if you didn’t get it before you downed Murmur, then celebrate!

Everyone knows about normal instances, and most people have heard of Heroic-mode. What most people don’t know about is Easy-mode.

Normal mode is open to everyone who can walk through the instance entrance. Some instances need attunement, but even that can often be skipped by most players (when it’s key-based, only one person in the group needs the key).

Heroic mode is a bit tougher. You need to grind out some rep and buy the heroic-mode key (usually for some insignificant amount of gold). Since Blizzard dropped the rep requirement down to honored, most players probably don’t even notice the “rep grind”.

Easy mode requires something much tougher than attunement or rep grinding. It requires finding five people with common sense, awareness of their class role, suitable gear, and an understanding of how groups work. It also requires a leader who is familiar with the instance, and the correct class balance for the instance being run. Fortunately, the drops and quest rewards are the same whether you’re on easy-mode or not, and heroics also have easy-mode versions.

So how does this easy-mode work?

Well, first of all, you need people to fill a few clearly-defined roles, and fill them well.

The Marker
Marking is central to playing on easy-mode. Everything that is going to be killed should be marked first, from the single-mob pat to the seven-mob pull. If it’s only one or two mobs, it will take you about three global cooldowns to mark them, so why wouldn’t you? If there are seven mobs, with three CCs happening, and your DPS have to burn down one or two before the combined damage overwhelms the healer, it’s worth the extra time.

Oh, and have a kill order. If everyone switches from the first kill target to different mobs, your aggro will go everywhere. Sure, your tank can generate some threat on a few mobs at once, but he needs to focus his main threat generation on the same target the DPSers are going after. Also, you reduce the overall number of mobs faster, which reduces healing needs (and the faster you’re down to one or two mobs, the faster your healer can jump into DPS mode and down things EVEN FASTER AGAIN).

A set kill order helps for breaking CC as well: if you have a trap, a sap, and a seduce, you don’t want all 3 CCs broken at once as soon as the non-CCed mobs are down. One at a time makes life easier for everyone.

The marker needs to know the limitations of CC, and the pulling plan. Avenger’s Shield pulls mean you want three mobs on one edge of the pull free of saps (and preferably traps). Rogues don’t want to be sapping a mob right in the middle of a group. And for goodness’ sake don’t make your hunter trap a caster. If you’re not sure how a particular type of CC works, ask.

Good marking is hard, but it makes for very easy runs.

The Tank
We all know we need one; the tank’s job is to hold aggro on all the mobs. The easy-mode tank also needs to be aware of what the dps are doing, and what Crowd Control is being used. He or she needs to be ready for CC to break early, and know what to do about it. Gear needs to have enough damage mitigation to let the healer keep up, but also provide for enough threat generation that the DPS aren’t sitting on their hands the whole time. A good tank has a damage mitigation set and a max threat set, and is prepared to mix and match to get the right balance.

Good tanks know about healing aggro. Us healers generate threat against every mob we’re in combat with when we heal. This means that if there are three mobs not CCed, the tank must generate more threat than us AGAINST EVERY ONE OF THOSE MOBS. Focused threat on the current burn target is important, but so is spread-out threat on everything else.

The Puller
No, the tank doesn’t have to pull. Particularly if he or she is a pally, there might be no good single-mob ranged pull. Avenger’s Shield is awesome, unless it breaks sap. Or bounces to a different pull group. Organise who’s going to pull, and have them do it the same way every time. Make sure they know what to do to let the tank grab aggro, like “shoot the skull, then run across the pally’s consecrate”. If someone other than the tank is pulling, it should be with something low-threat. I’ve pulled as a healer using faerie fire, running the mobs across the pally’s AoE.

The Healer
A good healer is critical. Gear is important (as you would expect), but awareness is even more so. There are plenty of people who can watch the group pane (or their raid frames) and cast heals on people who are dying. An easy-mode healer also needs to watch what is going on: “Sorry, you went out of range and I didn’t know which way to run” is not acceptable. Easy-mode healers can stay mobile and still heal effectively. They aggressively use the assist key to find out who the current burn target is focused on (or have a target-of-target-of-target frame). They watch for the CC to break early, because they know how much aggro CC generates, and they know the mind-controlling priest is only seconds away from a ganking.

A good healer also knows when to stop healing. This is easy-mode, remember, so your tank may actually be holding all the aggro, the CC might all work, and your rogue may be keeping the burn target stunlocked: there might not actually be all that much healing to do. Ditch tree-form, or pop shadow-form for a bit, or whatever, and do some DPS. After all, mobs down faster = less damage, so just think of it as a different type of healing. Just be ready to go back to healing if necessary, and don’t you DARE go OOM burning mobs down. I’d hate to have angry tanks leaving threatening notes on my blog because my tips caused a wipe.

The CC
Crowd control is there to make life easier on your healer and tank. Thankfully, easy-mode CC is pretty easy to manage. Make sure the CCers know their marks, make sure the tank and healer know when CC is likely to break and whether it can be chained, and go for it! Some groups say things like “quick CC-less run” when LFM, but I think they have it wrong. More CC means less healing, which means your healer can do more DPS. That in turn makes mobs go down faster, which means you finish the run quicker. It takes a second or two to do your CCs at the start of a pull, and it saves far more.

I know, I know, healers DPSing = more downtime between fights. DRINK. Innervate. Whatever. In those 10 seconds you’re spending drinking, the leader is busy marking and organising the next pull; you’d just stand around doing nothing anyway. If you’re worried about the cost of drinking EVERY PULL, go queue for an AV, ninja a bunch of manna biscuits from one of the mage tables that are almost always around at the start, and afk out. Or, you know, have a mage in your group.

On the note of CC, there are a few “bonus CCs” most people don’t think of. A good rogue can sap one mob, and stun-lock the burn target. CC that doesn’t break on damage ROCKS, and lets your healer DPS. Warlocks can chain-yoyo-fear (a good one can control fear quite effectively). Druids have emergency-cyclone (yes, it does work in PvE too), Hibernate (beasts and dragon-kin) and Entangling Roots if you’re outside (everyone forgets that druids have CC, even druids).

Warriors and feral druids get stuns, and they aren’t just for interrupting spells. A mob stunned for a few seconds means a few seconds of no damage, which once again means your healer is DPSing and not healing. Oh, speaking of interrupts, interrupt spells. Really. Especially heals. And mind controls. And fears. Actually, pretty much everything.

DPS
Everyone is a DPSer. Your tank is busy smacking the mob in the face with his hammer. Your healer is looking for a break in the damage to throw out some DPS. Your DPSers are, well, DPSing. Killing mobs is everyone’s job: after all, that’s why you’re there. DPSing isn’t just about hitting the burn target, though. You have to do that right (WRITE THE KILL ORDER DOWN NEXT TO YOUR KEYBOARD), but you also need to be aware of what’s going on. There are plenty of boss fights involving non-elite adds, and these will generally be the job of the non-tank non-healers. Think Black Morass, think Grandmaster Vorpil.

Also, have a threat meter, and don’t pull aggro. If the aggro is on you, then the healer is busy healing you. You take more healing than the tank, and so the healer can’t take time to DPS. Also, all those hits you’re taking, and that running around you’re doing, mean your DPS drops too. Your tank is in rescue-mode, your melee DPS is out of range, and you’ve just ruined four-fifths of your group’s DPS. Don’t do it.

Speaking of running around like an idiot: when you pull aggro (and no matter how good you are, some boss-fights are set up so it Just Happens), don’t start kiting the mob all over the place. Your tank can’t catch you, and your healer just went out of range because you were running too much: You die. Be calm. Run towards your tank (you’re paying attention, so you know where to go). Your healer is in range of your tank, so running towards the tank can only help. DON’T RUN AWAY (I’m talking to casters in the Blackheart the Inciter fight here).

TL;DR
By now you’re probably thinking this isn’t easy-mode at all. It’s complicated. How can I ever remember all this stuff? How will I ever find other group members who know it? I can’t exactly cut-and-paste this whole article into party-chat, and even if I did, everyone else would just tl;dr me.

So you need a tl;dr version (that stands for “too long; didn’t read” btw). Now, a few of these things you never need to communicate. Take on marking yourself (I’ve hardly ever run into someone who actually WANTED to mark), and nobody else needs to know all of that stuff. Organise the pull yourself: I’ve lost count of the number of groups I’ve been in where someone marks everything, and we all stand around for a minute or two wondering when someone else is going to pull. Then two different people pull different mobs suddenly, and … well, we marked up, so it’s not chaos, but it could be better. Trust me: most groups will be relieved when you pipe up and organise the pull. Don’t dictate, be gentle: “Hey, StealthyRogue, would you mind rifle-pulling the next few groups? The tank’s avenger’s shield will break your sap.”

You’re marking, so you’re organising the CC. Throw out a few tips. ONE BIG WARNING: Don’t tell people how to play their class. “Hey huntard, I’m marking the triangle for your trap. Make sure you lay it out of the way so AoEs don’t break it. Be ready to chain-trap, they sometimes break early. Oh, don’t forget to hit your trap mob a few times to get aggro, or it’ll just run to the tank. But stop hitting it before it gets to your trap: the trap breaks on damage, you know…” will not be well-received. Try “Triangle’s your trap, CrazyHunter. Let me know if I mark a caster by accident or anything.”

Oh, and don’t forget to tell people the kill-order. Gently remind the tank that kill order isn’t just for DPS: “Hey guys, tank and DPS, kill order is …” If your tank doesn’t already know about healer aggro and primary target threat, you’re probably wasting your time anyway.

As for DPS, just give people a gentle reminder of any adds they need to burn down, and ask if everyone knows the boss fight. If everyone says “yeah, we’ve downed Vorpil heaps lately running guildies for the Kara key”, you just need to quickly tell people which strat you’re using, assign DPS to different jobs, and get on with it. Or maybe even ask their advice… They just might know more than you or I. Tanks particularly like to pick the strats for boss fights.

As for general strat, just throw a few tips out there early on. “Remember guys, interrupt heals.” “Can you rogues stun-lock the main burn target to let our healer do a little DPS?” Stuff like that. Keep it light, and once again, DON’T TELL PEOPLE HOW TO PLAY THEIR CLASS.

Oh yeah, the healer. Sometimes I forget that I should write tips for how to deal with us. Don’t give the healer that “maybe you can DPS” idea straight up: wait for a few pulls. If the healer is coming out full of mana, and nobody’s dropping too low on health, then throw it out there. “Hey TreeGirl, you look bored. You might be able to manage a bit of DPS if you want, just watch the kill order.” If they seem to be struggling, don’t even give them the idea.

Also, remember healers can be a bit touchy sometimes. If they don’t wanna DPS, don’t push it. Never annoy your healer: it hurts you right in your repair bill (”Oh sorry, I didn’t notice you took a few hits there, I was too busy healing the tank. Bad luck. You’ll have to corpse-run, I’m saving my cooldown for the boss fight.”)

So there you have it. Easy-mode. Hard, isn’t it?

I healed Shadow Labs last night.

For the record, I detest this instance. There are AoE fears, threat clears, big pulls, mind control effects… It’s basically one big “Pay Attention” instance. The second someone screws up, you’re at risk of wipe. I don’t think I’ve ever managed a clear without 8-10 wipes, although thanks to some tips I picked up last night, I’m beginning to think I’ve just been running with under-geared players. See, the problem is that slabs really requires 2-3 well-geared level 70 dps classes, but the people wanting to run slabs are usually fresh 70s chasing their Kara key frag.

Anyway, that’s beside the point.

One of the group members last night was a green/blue mix hunter. Definitely under-geared for slabs, in my opinion. Particularly for Grandmaster Vorpil, you need plenty of DPS, and he was CC-specced. Sure, he could chain-trap, but (given our other 2 dps were also fresh 70s) we just didn’t have the DPS for the bosses. He whined a few times about how we didn’t have the DPS and fights were taking too long, but seemed to get that he was a part of the problem.

Anyway, at least he knew the instance well. You know why he knew the instance well? He was “farming Murmur” for a drop.

So here’s the point: If you’re wearing a bunch of greens, don’t farm Murmur for a drop.

Slabs is notorious for taking hours to complete, for whatever reason. Sometimes (so I’ve heard) it can go smoothly; other times, people drop out, your puller keeps aggroing multiple groups, you start a boss fight just before honor lag, your tank keeps walking just a touch too far back before consecrating and breaking traps, your sap breaks early every pull, and generally Murphy kicks you in the teeth every time you turn around. The assassins keep ganking your healer, your rogue keeps pulling while trying to sap (come on, I know you guys can get this right, I’ve seen rogues who can), … You get the picture (See? I really do hate this instance.)

Add to this the fact that everyone has a different theory on how to kill Vorpil (Kill the adds, Kite the boss, Kite the boss II, Kite the boss III, Ignore the adds, Kite the boss IV), and all of them seem to require at least two well-geared DPSers to work, and most people (having downed Vorpil) run in, grab their Kara frag, and never set foot inside slabs again.

I’m getting side-tracked again, kind of. This hunter of ours, farming Murmur. For his Sonic Spear.

Now, I’m sure this is a great weapon. One helluva blue. But it has an 11% drop rate FROM MURMUR. This means, on average, you’re going to have to run slabs FIVE TIMES right to the end. Now, our little hunter tried to tell us that we couldn’t get the Kara key frag until we’d downed Murmer. I knew perfectly well this was untrue, and I said so. He insisted on downing Murmur first. Then I pointed out that, in our little group, our healer (me), our tank (my regular prot pally), and our shadow priest (a guildie) were all after the frag. Our rogue was also a guildie, and definitely on our side, and he was on his lonesome, wanting Murmur but not the key frag.

So, a quick trip ’round the side of the room, one dead elite later, and three of us are celebrating our first key frag. Then our tank goes offline.

Now I can understand that the hunter was a little freaked here, but this was a technical difficulty, I can assure you. Laptop problems. Anyway, a tank was quickly found to replace her (a druid, so stealthing past the repop was an option), and Murmur went down on our first attempt. Naturally, the sonic spear did NOT drop, and the hunter was upset. Five hours wasted for our poor little hunter (although a primal nether dropped for me!)

Yeah, 5 hours. We lost a lock early on (full epics + several fresh 70s running slabs = nasty repair bill), and had to waste time replacing him. Then we just didn’t have the DPS for Vorpil, and ended up booting two players (temporarily) to get two DPS epiced guildies to finish off that boss. Then there was repop to deal with bringing our original players back in, and one of them had flown off to who-knows-where and we needed to run out to summon him. With all the wipes (mostly due to bad pulls) I had to run out TWICE for repairs, both just after wipes to save on running. But of course other group members didn’t take the “hey, maybe we should repair now we’re back at the start of the instance anyway” hint I gave, and ended up having to RUN back out before boss fights. Admittedly, this group was on the bad end of disorganised, but at least we did end up clearing (most slabs groups I’ve been in have wiped a few times on Vorpil and called it).

So, back to our hunter. Let’s say only a third of his groups bail, and 2/3 of the time he makes it to Murmur. He’s obviously paranoid over people grabbing the Kara key and bailing, let’s say that happens 1/3 of the time as well. And just to be really generous, let’s say groups are over (either called or cleared) in an average of 2.5 hours (a bit low in my experience). This means that for every actual down of Murmur he’s had to run 3 slabs runs, at 7.5 hours total. Now, at 11% drop rate on his spear, he’s probably going to have to down Murmur about 5 times to score his spear, and it could be rather more than that (although it could be less). This is pushing 40 hours of frustration, and I’m guessing his repair bill ran to about 15g for our run (mine was rather higher, but my gear is better and I don’t have Feign Death), so that’s 45g per down of Murmur, or towards 250g all up. Ok, let’s say these estimates are way over, and it’s really closer to 25 hours and 150g, particularly given you earn gold while running instances.

Come on.

I have epics that were much less costly to get. 25 hours of game time is A LOT of gold (even just questing at 70 you should be able to pick up 40g or more an hour). I’m happy to farm Steam Vaults, Black Morass, or any number of other instances for blues, but I just can’t see farming Murmur for a blue weapon. Surely there are better epics that wouldn’t be much harder to find? How are you gonna feel (having spent literally days of time farming) when you pick up an epic BoE to replace it for 1000g? Or when you start running heroics for a couple of badges an hour, and discover a nice epic badge reward to replace it?

Ok, maybe I’m missing something and this spear is really worth all the effort. But I’m just not convinced.

So, I guess my point is, sure, aspire to great gear. Troll the gear lists. But keep it in perspective: sometimes you’re just better of taking second best, and moving on. There aren’t many gear pieces out there that are SO INCREDIBLE that you’re not going to replace them eventually.

“LF1M mage”
“LF1M lock”
“LF1M pally tank”

Some classes seem to get all sorts of LF1M love, and some seem to get none at all. Druids, I suspect, are somewhere near the bottom: I have been head-hunted for groups (and raids) before, to deal with something situational like needing HoTs to tick during CC, but we’re not quite as “must-have” for most instances as, say, a mage. Because we seem to be seen as one of those “situational” classes, I thought I might go through some of the situations you need us for (I’m focusing on resto-spec here, but most of this applies to every spec to some degree.)

Why you need a Resto Druid
Why would you want a resto druid in a 5- or 10-man? Well, it really depends on the druid, but I’m going to talk about me. I have a bunch of different gear-sets with me at all times, and I’ve done time on all 3 specs. I am:

• A main healer who is just as burst-heal capable as a holy priest or pally when necessary
• Heals which continue to heal while I’m feared, stunned, or otherwise CC’d
• On-the-run heals: I can kite a slower mob and still heal at full capacity
• Combat rez, de-curse, cure poison
• DPS (or backup-DPS/off-healing) with my balance gear-set, if we have another healer or a healing-light pull
• Channeled AoE
• Crowd Control against dragonkin and humanoids, and all non-ranged if we’re outside
• Off Tank (or Main Tank on easy stuff) in my feral gear (I can MT trash pulls in Arc with a good healer)
• Stuns and interrupts, if the group can do without healing for a bit
• Stealth, but no sap
• Most importantly: A player who understands EVERY role in the group, because she does them all

That last one’s important. I know what to be ready for when a mage runs in to AoE (rescue healing), because it’s what I need when I run in to AoE. When I’m DPSing, I know not to pull aggro, because I hate it when DPSers do it to me when I’m tanking. I know not to DoT the CC, because I hate it when people do it to my hibernate mark. Beware: I also know about taunts, so I know you’re just being lazy if you’re our tank and you can’t grab aggro back at least some of the time.

Keep in mind that multiple gear-sets are the key to this versatility. A pure-resto druid with no other gear-sets is not going to be able to tank nor dps effectively. Don’t expect your druid to jump between roles mid-fight either: when I’m in my healing gear, I have bugger-all armor and virtually no crit. Caster gear: heals are way down, so is armor. Feral gear? I’ll go OOM in no time flat. We need to gear right for the pull, BEFORE we get stuck in combat. If I do get stuck, I can still DO the other roles, just not so well. Balance DPS and healing have complementary gear (it’s all about mana, and +dam gives some +heal and vice versa) but feral and casting don’t share well. If I’m tanking, my heals will suck, and if I’m casting, my tanking won’t be up to elite mobs.

Druids rock particularly hard in BM. We can help dps the Rift Lord or Keeper. When some adds get through, we can CC them, DPS them down, and jump into bear for some light tanking if necessary. Heals and DPS on boss fights. Travel form for getting between rifts, or chasing down adds. In short, if you get a good versatile resto druid for BM, try and find a second healer: we’re too good to waste spamming lifebloom.

Watch out for the leveling-service druids. They paid for their 70s, and you can guarantee the people who do the leveling pawn off every off-spec bit of gear that turns up. Also (assuming this is a leveling-service resto druid) they’ve probably read on a blog that it’s all about LB, Rejuv, and Swiftmend, and they know how to sit there and cast those. They don’t know how to respond to unusual situations, because they don’t have the experience. They DEFINITELY don’t know how to switch to DPS, throw in some CC, swap to healing when the holy priest gets ganked, and throw out a brez when there’s a free few seconds. Please don’t think we all need to l2play just because you get stuck in a group with a leveling-service druid once. That said, who actually pays a leveling service to level up a druid?

So, there you have it. Druids: We Rock.

ps. Yeah, I know, other classes rock as well. You could write just as great a list about why groups need shamans. Or ‘locks. Or why no MC raid is complete without a fire mage (huh? sure…)

I’m a Druid, and that means bag-space.

Huh? No, I mean it. Bag-space. I have a feral set, for when a guildie is desperately hunting for a tank for Sunken Temple or BRD or something else I can manage. I have a balance set, for when I just can’t get a healing gig (yes, it does happen) but someone will take off-heals/light DPS. I (obviously) have a main healing set, and I’m slowly putting together a resilience set for PvPing. I’m even hanging onto a blue-healing set (Why? Read on.) There’s shockingly little cross-over between the sets, although I only have slots with durability in my blue-healing set, and my PvP set so far uses a lot of my main-healing gear. Once all my sets are complete, and I’m getting close, I will have upwards of 60 pieces of off-spec gear sitting around. That’s three primal mooncloth bags worth of stuff to lug about. Add in a bag full of consumables (healing pots, mana pots, down-ranked mana pots to save some cash, Golden Fishsticks, Blackened Sporefish, a Demonic Rune or two, bandages, multiple stacks of food and water…), and you start to wonder where you’re going to put any loot you pick up. Sure, some of the stuff can go in the bank, but you get the picture.

Why do I do it? Because I love the multi-role aspect of the druid. I’m a healer at heart (I suspected it right through my 40s and 50s, and having made the switch, would never go back), but if I just enjoyed spamming heals I’d have rolled a … well, I’d be off playing a cleric on Everquest or something. I love being able to jump in as a tank occasionally (for lower content), or play some balance, or even go kitty and get up close and personal with my enemies. Sadly, I have to burn piles and piles of bag space to do it really well, but that’s the price I pay for getting what I want out of my class.

Now, what comes up a bit is that somebody needs a healer for something that’s absolutely cake in my main healing set. This is where gear sets start to save me gold, and this applies to EVERY CLASS, whatever your focus or spec. You’ll be asked to do your main role, in a setting which you’re over-geared for (this can have other problems too: see my previous post).

Now, I’m already talented out the wazoo for healing, and if it’s just a light gig, I don’t really need to be wearing my Purple Epic Healing Bra of Really Expensive Repair Costs (WHAT? A new underwire costs HOW MUCH?). This might be less an issue for a tank, but for a healer or dps, unless the instance is really WAY below us, we don’t actually have that much control over wipes. Sure, we’re healing great, but if our tank cops a couple of crits in a row from a multi-mob pull, well… Sometimes tanks just die, and it’s not really anybody’s fault, and sure the healer was over-geared, but she was actually just recovering from spilling her Vodka and Orange in her lap and didn’t realise we were pulling, and oh sorry, your FULL EPIC SET repair bill is how much per death? Because those mobs hit hard, and your 480% armor bonus from items will only go so far when your items have virtually no armor in the first place, and if you’re a mage along to DPS and it’s a boss with 200,000HP left and the healer just couldn’t keep the tank alive… That’s a DPS race you can’t win.

So take off your Epic Bracers of the Gold Void and strap on your ratty old Blue Bracers of Mediocrity. You don’t need all those extra stats to run Stratholme. Particularly if you’re a glass-cannon DPSer, they’re completely wasted anyway: you may be massively out-threating your tank even in blue gear, and when you pull aggro anyway, at least the mobs will only be busy beating the snot out of YOU, and not your bank balance.

I had a bad experience with a PuG last night. I know, I know, duh. But the difference was, this particular PuG could have been oh-so-good. We were running Shadow Labs for the first Kara key frag, and our little group was as follows:

Healer: Yours truly. I’m decked out in mostly blues and some epics, and am more than up to healing SLabs.
Tank: Amathyst. My pet tankadin, mix of 70-only blues and greens. Easy to heal, a little short on threat generation still.
CC/DPS: Hunter, dinged 70 yesterday, pre-70 blues and (mostly) greens.
CC/DPS: Rogue, dinged 70 yesterday, pre-70 blues and (mostly) greens.
CC/DPS: Mage, decked out in S2/S3 Arena Epics.

Perhaps some of you see what’s coming. Perhaps I should have too.

We have a DPS in full PvP epics, and our tank is in mostly PvE blues and greens. This means our mage can generate much more TPS (Threat Per Second) than our tank. This in itself isn’t a problem: the mage has a number of methods of not out-threating the tank. The problem? The way the mage got all his epics.

There is a big difference between PvP and PvE. As a PvPer, our mage was used to kiting. In fact, he was extremely good at it. Unleash max damage, if it starts hitting on you, kite it about a bit. Frost Nova, Cone of Cold, Sheep, maybe an Ice Block if things get desperate… In spite of repeated requests to tone things down, he kept pulling aggro, and he was good enough at kiting to generally not die, so the usual healer technique of ‘Let them die a few times’ wasn’t helping at all (generally the prospect of a huge repair bill has them listening and toning down their damage). Ultimately, we wiped a few times on Grandmaster Vorpil and decided to call it a night, sans key frag. Nobody was happy, but the MOST unhappy was little Mr PvP, our mage. “The tank wasn’t holding aggro.”

See, what you DPS types need to realise (and most of you do) is that tanks don’t have this constant battle to hold onto their threat. No, their threat level just keeps rising, even if all they do is stand there and not die. They don’t “do something wrong” and “lose aggro”. For aggro to change, in most cases, requires somebody else to make it higher up the threat list than the tank. This person has then “pulled aggro”. It wasn’t something the tank DID, your threat just got higher.

Speaking of threat lists, I should have been DOUBLY nervous about taking a PvP-epiced DPS with NO THREAT METER. Seriously, if you’re a tank or DPS class, get either Omen or KLH. If you’re a healer, people often say it’s less important. In my (admittedly limited) experience, they are WRONG. When someone beats my tank in the threat race (it’s not ACTUALLY a race, people), they probably have HoTs on them before the mob has even turned its head in their direction.

Okay, we’re getting there, but I have two points left to cover.

One. Play the group you’re in. If you’re in full T6, or running a complete S3 arena set, and you join a group full of blues, YOU ARE OVERGEARED. This isn’t a bad thing, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t join them. It just means that, unless you’re the tank, you’ll have to watch your threat. Carefully. Because your tank can only generate so much threat, and it’s very gear-dependent, so you can generate a lot more. What you (probably) can’t do is soak up the damage like your tank can. So scale things back, wait a while before you join in with your DPS, and take a break if your threat is shooting too near the tank’s.

That brings me to my final point. Why your Healer cares. A well-geared tank (or even a poorly-geared one) has all this Damage Mitigation. Armor. Shield. Dodge. All sorts of ways to make each hit he or she takes hurt a bit less. Less damage means less healing, which means less stress on your poor little healer, and more mana for when things go wrong. Sure, I’m geared up a bit, I’ve even healed Zul’Aman, healing SLabs is cake. I finish boss fights on full mana: WHEN THINGS GO RIGHT. Don’t look at my Mana Bar of Never-run-outingness and think “oh I can grab aggro sometimes, we’ll be fine, my healer can just throw some heals at me and everything will be okay”. This is fine near the end of a pull, when a mob’s about to go down, but in a tough pull or a boss, the difference between a full mana bar and an empty one can be a single aggro switch. Here’s a snapshot of what happens on my end when you pull aggro, and instead of standing still for the tank to grab it back, run around kiting the thing all over AND CASTING BLINK DAMMIT.

Mage pulled aggro. Damn. Panic buttons. He’s taking damage FAST. Nature’s Swiftness-Regrowth. Rejuvenation. Swiftmend the Rejuv and reapply. A Lifebloom or three somewhere in the mix. Keep running about ’cause he’s kiting and I keep going out of range. Woah, all that burst healing pulled aggro from an add the hunter’s pet was tanking, no big deal, LB and Rejuv on myself. Crap, the boss is back on my tank, no HoTs are stacked at all (because I was out of range to renew my LB stack from chasing the mage), and my NS and Swiftmend are both on cooldown: I need some burst healing. Out of tree form, full-rank Healing Touch. Nearly out of mana, mana pot, tree, stack my three lifeblooms back up, health is down again waiting for the HoTs to work their magic, so throw out a regrowth. Finally, everything is back under control, but I’m still low on mana (time to Innervate now in case the jerk does it again). Meanwhile, the hunter’s pet died from a second add, and the hunter is about to follow. Rejuv-Swiftmend-Rejuv-Lifebloom. Don’t forget to re-apply lifebloom on the tank, and on myself, ’cause that hunter’s pet is too dead to growl that add off me, and the tank’s too busy yelling at the mage. Heal-off-tanking FTL.

So we went from my mana bar full, rolling lifeblooms on the tank (I actually GAIN mana over time if this is all I’m doing) and spot-healing the rest, to down a pet, tank nearly died, mage nearly died, I’ve blown all my cooldowns and a Super Mana pot and am still shorter on mana than I’d like, there’s a mob hitting on me that wasn’t before, and one more stunt like that and we may very well wipe.

This is an extreme example. But let’s take even a minor one: no kiting, no real panic, easy boss, just a bit of aggro occasionally on a rogue, the tank grabs it back in pretty short order. Instead of rolling LBs, 1 cast every 7 seconds and my mana slowly going up, I’m still having to roll my LBs, but I have to keep panic-healing the rogue. The rogue, who, by the way, takes a significant amount more damage each hit than the tank. So I’m actually having to heal the rogue for much more in that 10 seconds than the tank. I’m blowing cooldowns on Swiftmend and possibly Nature’s Swiftness, burning more mana, and never getting even a single tick outside the 5SR. All this means that instead of being on full mana when that pat nobody noticed runs into us, I’m below half. Instead of having all my panic buttons ready when that stealth mob tries to gank a caster, I’ve got nothing.

I know you guys like to play the DPS-race game. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have some fun: just try not to frazzle your healer. Leaving the aggro to the tank could turn a 6- or 8-wipe run, which everyone bails on at the second-last boss, into a quick run where you wipe twice getting your strats right and generally have a lot of fun. Grab the key frag, swear to never run SLabs again, and move on with your life. Save the wipes for the boss fights which you just haven’t worked out how to beat yet, not stuff you should be farming.

Oh, and those mana pots? Expensive. I don’t appreciate having to blow them on easy stuff.