Situation Awareness and tanks
Good article on Tanking UI on nostockui.com. The real story is not the eye candy, but the need for a tank to have good SA – echoing the original post on SA and the others touching on the subject.
Are you a robot?
I read a post on WowInsider about the difficulties of playing a Ret Paladin. Someone commented that while DPSing as a ret paladin was pretty simple, there are very few who know how to use other abilites to prevent deaths, wipes, or other things that make raids go wrong.
This touches on a few things, namely situational awareness, but it also concerns how well you know your class, its specs and capabilities.
I’ve known a few people who play hybrid classes as DPS specs. But they played like their toon was a pure DPS class. Even more so, it seemed as if they wouldn’t press a button if it didn’t cause damage. I liked to call them DPS robots, since really, a bot could do what they do. To a certain point this is OK, but to really be good at your class and affect how your raid performs, you have to use all of your available abilities when they’re needed. Of course, this doesn’t just apply to ret paladins, but I’ll use this particular example.
I raided with a ret paladin who lived up to what I described above. He never did anything except press one of his three dps buttons (pre 3.1). He barely even wanted to cast blessings, but he at least cast Blessing of Might on himself because it boosted DPS. During raids, you would never see a self-cleanse, a blessing of protection on someone who had aggro, a hand of salvation. This same person usually died to void zones or fire as well.
Point is, there are a lot of abilities that every class has, that most people never use. The best players will learn how, when, and where to use them. Rogues can blind or vanish/cheap shot a mob. Mages can polymorph, frost nova, decurse, spell steal, etc. DKs can save a healer by using chains of ice, or death gripping and using chains. A feral or balance druid can barkskin/tranquility to save a raid. I don’t play every class, but I’m sure every class has these tricks that can save a fellow raid member, save him or herself, and even just make the raid go more smoothly. It’s up to the player to know these things however, and to use them without needing the raid leader to ask you, or to have it done before the raid leader asks you.
Even though you may be a hybrid class, it doesn’t mean that you should limit yourself to what your tree offers. Pure dps classes shouldn’t think that since they can’t heal or tank, that their class has no utility.
Void Zones, SA, and excuses
The topic of situation awareness in World of Warcraft – indeed, in any game – is one of the drums I bang loudly. Seri over at Snarkcraft have a great article on 10 lame excuses for dying to void zones. Replace “void zone” with “Heigan splash” or “lava wave” or “fire storm” and I think you’ve covered the bases.
Situation Awareness and You
Every role in World of Warcraft requires that the player track his surroundings, the flow of a fight, how that fight fits into the raid as a whole, the actions of others, and then determine what actions to take next, and what effect that will have on his and the raid’s future actions. This flow of observation, analysis, and action is all part of situation awareness (SA). The ability to take in all the data and determine next action is the differentiator between a good and mediocre player.
Every role in a raid requires the player to have situation awareness. Too often, a player gets locked into a task and gets target locked – effectively running with blinders on during an event. This can lead to sub-optimal performance, or even worse, knock over the first dominos to a raid wipe.
The classic example of lack of SA is standing in an AoE effect. Too often, I’ve seen players standing in a fire as they blindly keep attacking, casting heals, or tanking a mob. (In full disclosure, I have done this as well.) It is not enough to just track your task at hand. You must also keep an eye on your status and those of your teammates.
While each role requires SA, the overall picture and reaction is different for each. For DPS characters, this means keeping an eye on threat, ability rotations, positioning, and current status. It means knowing when to pop that potion, when to blow your long term cooldowns, when to move and when to stop attacking.
For tanks, being situation aware is a lot more complex. You have to be aware of all the mobs that are engaged, of your threat, of the threat of your DPSers, your rotation, the mana of you healers, and knowing what is coming next. You have to know when to pop that Shield Wall or Last Stand. We’ve all seen the bad tank – the player who thinks tanking means just standing in one place and having the mobs beat on him. A good tank is one that tracks everything and, most importantly, keeps his healers alive.
Healers may have the most difficult job with situation awareness. It is not enough for a healer to stand and spam Flash Heal on the main tank. The healer has to keep an eye on the health of his main target and, very often, the health of the other raid members – including his own health. He has to be aware of his mana, his rotation, and of any upcoming events like an enrage. For many fights, it’s not enough to react to a drop in health, but to proactively have queued up healing for a strike that will drop the tank’s or party’s health. It is often also the healer’s job to keep an eye on removing debuffs.
The removal of debuffs brings us to one last role – that of the hybrid. A good player adapts when needed based on his situation awareness. While a Retribution Paladin or an Elemental Shaman may be fulfilling the DPS role, finding the right moment to drop out of DPS mode and help cleanse or purge can mean the difference between a successful boss kill or a wipe. A paladin that drops Lay on Hands at a critical moment rather than continuing to blindly DPS to a wipe is demonstrating good SA.
This ability to take in the environment, process, and react is key to becoming a good player. It is one of the key components of successful raiding teams. Don’t be “that guy” that stands in the fire every fight. Learn, adapt, and succeed.
Myths concerning healers
Perusing our forums this morning I ran across a post by Oneear. He’s one of my favorite people and here’s one of the reasons why. Here… as posted by Oneear.
This is an opinion post. As such, it IS pure opinion. Feel free to post your own.
Every once in a while someone will say something really dumb about healing in WoW and it rankles me. Not because I love healing so much (but I do enjoy it), but because it is misinformed and frankly just inane. New players or players who have not tried healing are sometimes put off by what they hear about healing without having tried it.
Below are a few things I have heard. Both recently and for years now.
* Healers are elitist
Healers, decent ones, are usually in short supply. And are, by coincidence, in high demand. Some healers are egotistical, but then so are some tanks and some DPS. Healers are no more elitist than any other class. Because the job of healing is much less selfish than others in the group, I’ve found that the best healers are the ones who are the most modest. Especially about their own abilities.
* It’s always the healers fault or “Why didn’t you heal meh?!?”
Decent healers know when they have to let people die to save a group. Same with decent tanks. The adage of “if a tank dies it is the healers fault, if a healer dies it is the tanks fault, and if a DPS dies it is their own fault” is very true. Healers pretty much need to prioritize heals. And this priority gets more difficult with less tools (such as holy pallies with aoe damage). This priority also changes with encounters, gear levels, group composition, etc. Good healers know what to do instinctively. Which is required due to the speed needed to react sometimes. Just because you didn’t get a heal doesn’t mean it was the healers problem. Most likely you gave yourself too high a priority that was not shared by the healer.
* Healing is just playing whack-a-mole with health bars lol (aka Healing is boring)
If this is what you do as a healer…. you suck. Bad.
Since I know I can not convince anyone that something they don’t like is enjoyable, let me just put down a few things I look for in healers I play with to illustrate how narrow this view is.
Reaction skills to handle the unexpected (healing, IMO, is THE most reactive portion of WoW and
the top reason some healers are really bad). Knowledge of how to manage their mana (when to pop pots, flask/elixir selection, gear choice per encounter, mechanics of their class). Target prioritization (whom to heal and when). Foresight and knowledge of when to expect things to happen (good healers will KNOW when someone is going to take damage and can plan accordingly).
IMO, healing perhaps more than any other role in WoW, requires a lot of thought before and after the pull. You can be a healer by spamming a single heal on a random target. But to be a good healer, you MUST look at the entire raid and not just the health bars. And you MUST pay attention to the situation and have outstanding situational awareness.
* I can’t level or solo effectively as Resto
Simply untrue and shows a high level of n00bery. I’ve leveled my shaman from 60-70 and from 70-80 as pretty much all resto. No downtime. He never really dies unless I do something stupid. Killing something takes maybe 3-4 more seconds than if he was Elemental. But…. he. never. stops. killing. The only other faster way to level that I have seen is with my druid as cat. Lock, slower. Mage, much slower. I also tried my druid as resto for a while. Wrath and Roots was kind of fun and still no downtime (but cat is slightly faster). Priest, Shadow is interesting, but seems slower than smiting crap to death.
When I hear people say they can’t kill anything as resto, I always think to myself “N00B! L2P!”. I’ve soloed elites as resto on my shaman, my druid (in fact I respeced to resto so that I COULD solo an elite), and my priest. I can’t speak for holy pallies, but I don’t see it being that much different. Being able to heal yourself efficiently is a great big win.
* Healing isn’t sexy
Subjective, but I think helping your group win an encounter is sexy. Being an integral part of the reason why the group succeeded is sexy. Just being YET ANOTHER DPS is not sexy, IMO. Aside from a few exceptions, WoW encounters are setup as about 1/3 of the group tanks/healers and 2/3 DPS. So, if you want criticality of role, then each tank and healer is 2x more important than a DPS. Not to say that DPS is unimportant, they are. In fact, they kill the boss. But individually, they are a lot less important than tanks and healers. That means tanks and healers have more individual responsibility.
* Lack of healers is killing the game (aka I can never find a healer)
This last one is the reason for this post as I have been leveling my priest and getting group invites all the time. It’s true, there are fewer healers. And you are probably the reason why. Did you blame a pug healer for a wipe? Did you laugh at a healer while they were leveling for doing it as resto/holy? Did you whine that every priest/druid/shaman/pally should be Holy/Resto so they can heal for you (many healers level as other specs and switch back and THEY remember asshat comments like that)? Did you see a holy/resto healer clearing their way for a quest and ninja it from them and laugh (remember they may not have to stop, but they do go a little slower killing)?++ In short, where you an asshat to a healer or healer class at some point? Well, people remember.
++ – I admit that have sometimes done this to DPS while they were eating, drinking, or bandaging. Wink