Priest and Pilot is back.
I'm about to pick up a
full time crew and step out of the job I've been doing for nearly two
months. Up to this point, my Afghanistan experience has been 6 days a
week in the "mission planning cell," or tactics shop, supporting our
daily theater tactical airlift missions as the deputy chief of tactics.
All that means is that I am responsible at night for the development of the
products our crews fly with, and occasionally I get to fly.
How does that relate
to the common theme of this blog?
Well, I have had a
consistent schedule, and I've made some time to play a game here and there in
between my work shifts. In contrast to Balad, Iraq, where I spent my
first two deployments, this place has "high speed" internet in the
rooms.
This time around, I
set up the small form factor desktop and I use the same USB adapter as before,
the AWUS036H that I used in Iraq. Since the routers are close to the
room, I ran the simple omni-directional antenna outside the door to my pod and
mounted it using a magnetic base. (I will create a separate entry for the
LAN work I've been doing here to optimize my connection.)
So, the end result is
that I have a decent connection which allows me to game online, to varying
degrees. Since arriving, I have taken my priest from itemlevel 485 to
530. I've managed to complete every raid via LFR, with the exception of
the final boss in Siege of Orgrimmar. The 400ms-1200ms connection makes
effective healing a challenge for sure, but I have even completed the Legendary
questline through the metagem. Now, I am patiently gathering the final
pieces to earn the Legendary cloak, which will be the first orange item I have
ever earned in WoW.
One important lesson I learned early on was that
I could not compete as a reactionary healer. With limited bandwidth
and “red” latency, you need to fill a role that either prevents damage or
automatically selects heal targets at the server level. If that
isn’t possible, you need to be able to direct heals as quickly as humanly
possible. These parameters drove me to atonement healing as a
discipline priest, and forged the way I heal raids technically.
Atonement priests deal a portion of their
healing via Smite, Power Word: Solace, and offensive Penance. The
damage is directly (and automatically) duplicated to the raid according to who
needs the healing. The value is great; it maximizes effective
healing, reduces overhealing, and removes the time required for choosing
healing targets. When your latency is high, a player may be already
healed by the time you select them and cast your direct heal, but atonement
healing allows you to be just as effective as the nerd spamming chain
heal. Now, add Halo, Cascade, Spirit Shell, and Power Word: Shield
to atonement, and you have a viable healing platform with moderate to high
latency.
Addon-wise, some important things had to happen
as I ventured into LFR (and later in flex raids through oQueue). I
researched macros for smite, shield, and my direct heals. I am only in the rookie phase of macro use, and I combine that with a clean UI called "LUI." These
macros all include a mouseover function, which blends nicely with any raid
frames. I happened to settle on Grid2, primarily because of the
simplicity and minimalist nature. Thus, when I place my cursor over
the tank’s “square” and hit the key for my PW: Shield, it will shield him even
if I’m targeted on an enemy, another raid player, or
myself. Likewise, if I select the tank as my target and cast smite,
it will cast against the tank’s target. Built-in logic allows me to
quickly select heals without having to spend valuable time searching for a
target. How a healer would ever succeed at high levels without these
tools, I have no idea, but I met a disc priest today in Flex that uses more macros, no mouseover, and focuses on higher atonement dps and healing. I should also mention that yesterday I ran a Flex
10-man Siege of Orgrimmar (SoO) and was the top healer of 3 healers, and my
latency was consistently higher than 850ms the entire time.
And so begins the technical discussion on
atonement healing in current raids, both 25-man Looking For Raid (LFR) and
10-man+ Flex raids. What sets some disc priests apart in the raid
setting in Throne of Thunder (ToT) and SoO? It all comes down to two
elements: HPS (healing per second) and damage prevention. The former
includes a proper management of your available mana, appropriate stats on your
gear, and simply keeping people from reaching zero. The latter
requires a knowledge of the fight, situational awareness, and appropriate use
of preventative spells, such as Spirit Shell. I’ll be talking a lot
about those elements of healing over the next few months while I’m out here.
