Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Severe Weather

I apologize in the delay of posting Part 2 of my Choose It: Your Healing Class post. We have had some severe weather here in my state and it's not supposed to let up until Thursday. We've had property damage and flooding on my property and at the moment we're trying to dig trenches to get better drainage from our property out to to road.


I'll try to have my next post up later this week if we get a break here. 
Till then,
Blue

Monday, April 18, 2011

Choose it! Your Healing Class: Part 1

This is the first in my series "Choose it!", where I will offer you suggestions and tips in, well, choosing it!

Whether you are new to the game, looking to spice things up by changing mains, or just looking to roll an alt, picking the right class for your healer can be challenging. Looking over the class descriptions on the right hand side of the character creation screen can often make it even harder to choose, especially for new players.These descriptions really only function to group classes into hybrids or damaging classes (DPS), and that's after you dig through all of the flavor text.


You may get an idea for what your leveling and basic grouping experience would entail, but it certainly is not the best source to get a grasp on your end-game class experience and the expectations you will have to meet in order to perform at a competitive level.

Holy Power? Shapeshifting? Spiritual Leaders... wait what?
How did I choose my healers? My first choice, a Druid, was easy! I loved the opening cinematic to Vanilla (original) WoW with a Night Elf leaping through the forest and then turning into a panther. I love animals, nature, and thought being able to fill any role in the game was awesome, so my Night Elf Druid was born! It was, admittedly, a lucky choice and the class has fit me well over the years.

My second choice for a healing class was not as easy. I had dabbled with all the healing classes by the time WotLK was in full swing, but picking a healer that I thought I could enjoy as much as my Druid was hard. I finally decided on a Holy Paladin, not because of complex healing mechanics (obviously!) but because the class offers so many raid saving cooldowns which my Druid completely lacks.

Your first step should be focusing your search:

If cosmetic elements such as shapeshifting, spawning wings or flashy gold cast animations aren't enough to convince you on what healer to play, then you should start your decision making process by asking yourself some basic questions! 

  • First, what aspect of the game are you planning on focusing on the most? Healing rated battlegrounds and arena, or for raiding and dungeons? 
  • Second, what do you expect from your healer? Do you want to have powerful single target heals, or flashy AoE heals that heal many targets at once? Do you want to bring flexible buffs to your group, or strong defensive cooldowns? Do you want bursty fast heals or steady stabilizing heals?
  • And third, do you plan to gear up an offspec? If so, what secondary role would you prefer: Melee DPS, Tank, or Caster DPS?

Let's start by answering the first question!

Picking a Healer for PvP

If you want to focus on healing battlegrounds and arena, then this section is for you! I would like to start this with a disclaimer that I am by no means an expert at PvP and focus much more on the PvE aspect of the game. If you're more interested in bashing people's faces in rather than facing scripted boss encounters, here are some things to consider to help you narrow down your PvP class choices.

Team Representations and Compositions

 A huge problem with choosing a class based on the current raiding or arena tier success, aka "flavor of the month", is just that. The glory days of the class or spec in that specific realm of play may be short lived- whether it lasts a week, a month or even a year. Unfortunately that phenomenon has been and probably always will be a part of World of Warcraft (for both PvP and PvE). However, it still can be very helpful to look at class representation in your desired bracket of play. 

Using a site like Arena Junkies will allow you to see the most successful team compositions, players' specs, and lets you look at Arena, Rated Battle Grounds, or everything combined on their individual player rankings. For example, if you want to play mostly 2v2 or 3v3 arena, look at what specs are successful and well represented, as well as what classes they are playing with. Playing a desired healer in that bracket will not only help you to find a partner, but it will potentially give you some room for error as you get used to your character because the class is particularly strong. Inversely, picking a class that is not well represented can be an uphill battle for getting decent ratings against optimal team compositions and when trying to find partners.

The site can also be useful if you want to play PvP with a friend or guildmate that plays a particular class. For example, if you are leveling with a friend that has rolled a DPS Warrior and you both would like to do 2v2 arena, you can filter your search with Warriors. At the time of writing this, Restoration Shamans and DPS Warriors are well represented in top ranking 2v2 arena. Just remember, class balance is constantly in flux and your powerful Resto Shaman may be weaker next patch. 

Class Abilities

Most importantly in your search for the 'perfect' healing class, you should consider each classes' strengths and weaknesses, and what offensive & defensive abilities are at their disposal. This is by no means an exhaustive comparison of the classes, but it should be helpful with deciding which class would best fit your playstyle:


PvP Healer Comparison
Paladin
Priest
Shaman
Druid
Offensive Dispelling
X
X
Limited
Stuns/Interrupts
X
X
Limited
Damage Mitigation
X
X
Limited
Self-Only
Crowd Control/SnaresLimited
X
X
Defensive Team CDs
X
X
Mobile Heals
Limited
X
Limited
X
Damage Dealing
Limited
X
X
X

Using this table, we can then get an idea for each healing class' basic strengths, weaknesses, and group synergy. If you've looked up the team ratings of say Priests and Shamans, and are torn between which to pick, let's go down the checklist. Both are offensive dispellers, and while Priests have limited crowd control and lack interrupts they can be much stronger with mobile healing. 

If you think interrupts, snares, and Hexing all look especially fun and wouldn't mind giving up mitigation and some flexibility with mobile healing, then you should probably give the Shaman a try! Just remember; having the ability to interrupt, dispel, crowd control, etc, comes with the expectation from your teammates that you will do so!

That's it for Part 1, stay tuned for Part 2 of this series where I will be focusing on the PvE aspect of healing with tips for choosing your best raiding healer!

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Welcome to Leaf and Hammer!

I'm still trying to get the site's features formatted properly, but Leaf and Hammer will be up and running in a couple of weeks hopefully! This blog is mostly dedicated to World of Warcraft, focusing on healing from a Resto Druid and Holy Paladin's point of view. Stay tuned for more!