Taking the Lead: Preparations for Giving Healing Assignments
We had a guild meeting last night to discuss some of the issues that are coming up for us in terms of raiding such as attendance and progression. It was a good discussion in which everyone who wanted to was able to ask questions and make suggestions, and my hope is that we made some solid decisions about how to handle raiding for the coming weeks to best benefit the guild. Following this meeting, we had an extended conversation amongst some of the officers in regard to raid healing. While I won’t get into all of the details of that here, I can report that one of the outcomes is that I am going to get my feet wet as a lead healer so that I can backup the people who usually handle healing assignments and fill in for them in a pinch. Because I’m a Virgo and simply can’t help myself, my preparations are already underway. Here’s what I’m doing to get ready for the job…
Reviewing healer assignment mods
I was actually a little surprised to learn how many mods are out there whose sole purpose is to help with healing assignments throughout a raid. I’ve found some good articles discussing various options, such as this one from Matt Low (World of Matticus) on WOW Insider, that gives a rundown of some of them, and also gives advice as to how to setup macros. The healing leads in my guild currently use Heal Organizer, so I am reviewing that. Another of my co-officers suggested Getting This Healed, which seems to offer more functionality than Heal Organizer that makes me currently lean in that direction. Specifically, it seems highly functional in terms of allowing you to set different assignments for different phases of a fight. Pretty cool stuff, IMO. The jury is still out for me, but I’m sort of leaning toward Getting This Healed at this point. However, I want to look carefully at the different options and haven’t been able to really dig into all of them, so I may change my mind.
Reviewing healing class abilities
Luckily, I wrote a series of posts within the past couple of months detailing the healing styles of holy priests, discipline priests, shaman and holy paladins in order to educate myself and other druids as to how these classes get the job done. I’ve re-read these guides, and also poured over the patch notes since then to learn of any changes to each healing class. I already had a pretty solid general idea as to what situations are opportunities for each healing class to perform at maximum, but I wanted to brush up in order to make the best possible decisions with my assignments.
Reviewing Healer Performance
I’ve also spent some time looking through our past WWS reports to get a feel for how strong each healer in our guild has been with various assignments on the different bosses because, regardless of the potential for a class, true output is very much dependent upon individual personality, gear, and playstyle. I cannot predict how any healer will do on any given night with any given assignment, but I can look for trends that will be at least resonably strong predictors of relative success.
Reviewing Healer Specs
I haven’t gotten this far yet, but I’ll be spending some time in the armory looking closely at how each of our healers is specced and taking some notes which should help to guide me in making decisions on the fly in Naxx.
Reviewing Boss Fights
My trial run giving out healing assignments will be in Naxx on Tuesday, I believe. Although I sometimes feel as though I know Naxx like the back of my hand, in fact, I don’t. Not really. I know Naxx inside and out in terms of my own abilities. For example, I know off the top of my head which bosses need decursing or have poision effects, but I am more shaky on which ones need magic or diseases cured. Therefore, I intend to go through several strats for each boss there over the next day in order to take some notes that should help me when assigning the correct healer for each fight. One of the decisions we made in terms of healing assignments is not to micromanage the healers, switching up the assignments for every boss and, sometimes, trash pull. We’re hoping to move more toward a model where we give out assignments for a series of bosses, with exceptions as needed. I am hopeful that my added research will help me to think about in advance, for example, the needs of a whole wing of Naxx when deciding healing assignments.
I have my work cut out for me, don’t I? Although I’ve given healing assignments in the past, it has been very informal and not on a par with the standard that has been set by our healing leads. I want to do as much studying up as I can so that my raid leader, my raid, and the healers I work with are confident in my ability to make good decisions and keep the raid alive. I hope to post on Wednesday a sort of walkthrough of my experience on Tuesday night, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Wish me luck!
There are 9 Comments to "Taking the Lead: Preparations for Giving Healing Assignments"
That was a good read. I had to read through several of the things you linked to, and really enjoyed those too. I love mods, and look forward to trying out GTH after work today. (Which is, by the way, Getting *Things* healed, not *This*)
I’m a new reader, and appreciated the links to your earlier posts on the healing styles of other healing classes. I really enjoyed those guides! For the sake of your readers that are not Trees, would you consider adding a Part V of that series, about resto druids?
You eager beaver you, go get ‘em!! Can’t say I envy you.
I would like to see this as well.
Part V in the works. =) never occurred to me that it would be useful to complete the series with a post about resto druids, but I’ll be happy to throw one up. Less research needed than for the other posts! =)
Hi !
Nice links about the other healers. That will be helpful and enable me to better understand how each healing class runs.
I’ve got a hunter as my main character but I at last got my little tree up to 80. Now, I need to know how the healers team works !
And I too would be interested in a “Part V” of your healing class about druid because I’m not sure I exactly know what I’m supposed to do in a raid…
Keep up with the good posts,
Cheers,
Nef
Nefernet’s last blog post..Scary…
Thanks for the kind words, Nef! The post I’m working on is an overview of druid healing very similar to the snapshots I gave of the other classes. I’d also really recommend that you take a look at this guide to resto druid raiding on Passport to Shandris: http://pptshandris.blogspot.com/2009/03/intro-to-druid-healing-3-raid-healing.html It’s excellent! Good luck with your baby tree! Remember, lots of sunlight, lots of fresh water, and stay away from axe wielding classes. =)
Thanks for the tip !
I got her a few shiny purples too… She loved it !
But about axe wielding classes, I’m afraid I disagree : she cannot go out of town without her dwarf prot warrior… You never know what could happen in the wide world to me fragile little bonzaï.
Nefernet’s last blog post..Scary…
So…
How did it go last night?!?! I bet it was fabulous!
Beruthiel’s last blog post..Hey, Watch that Shadow Crash! Thinking through General Vezax.
[...] So that’s the quick and simple lesson on healing lead. For more detailed information about organizing and leading your healers check out Too Many Annas or Rolling Hots. [...]