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10-19-10, 08:22 AM   #5
Flarin
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 290
Originally Posted by OldHarry View Post
I went into a raid with the ingame raid panels showing and it was a total disaster. For some reason they would not let me click through them. And there was no transparency to them that I could see or find in a hurry to fix. I had to say wait a minute, stop and disable then and restart healbot. I may have just been missing something never having had a need to use raid frames on a tank or a melee toon.

One of the things I find very unique to playing a shammy healer is with the cast times of the heals. I do a lot of randoms right now and the first pulls are and adjustment to see how the tank, gear-wise and skill-wise, takes damage and holds aggro. Every run like that is a different experience and each dungeon holds its own special challenges learning experiences. Yesterday I learned I would much rather heal HOR than POS. Were I to go in on a different toon and tank it would be the other way around.

As a non employable physically handicapped person one of the things I love most about this game is the way it keeps my mind agile and active.
I have not healed with a shammy yet, but I have healed with Druids, Pally's and Priests. Shammy is next for me - I am raising him up to 80 as Enhancement because it is so fast, then going to dual spec.

Healing is an adventure. I like VuhDo for heals - it seems to have served me well and I never have had any problem with lag.

I have tanked with all of the classes, and I kinda have it down so I know what to do. As a healer, I have found:

1. Good players playing tanks are easy to heal - doesn't matter which class they are. They know what they are doing, they hold agro and have enough gear to tank (doesn't mean necessarily elite gear, just the right stats and spec)

2. Pally's - As long as they are Prot, in my experience it doesn't matter if they are good players or not. As long as they have righteous fury turned on and they consecrate you are good. They only downside with bad players that play pally's is they won't know how to manage mana, so there will be big downtime between fights

3. Bad players (besides Pally's) - this is just a crap shoot. If you are uber geared you "may" be able to keep everyone alive. Be prepared for the tank to lose agro, be the wrong spec, have the wrong enchants/gems/gear. Be prepared (in randoms) to be blamed for the inevitable wipe. Be prepared for the DPS classes to pull agro like crazy. Your best bet is to get the DPS arguing with the Tank and stay neutral. Worst case they both blame you. Don't get trapped into the argument - it can be frustrating to try and tell them how to play, offer advice, etc. As I know how to tank all of the classes I have often fell into the trap of trying to provide guidance to DPS or Tanks, and that has not had good results. I even once got kicked from a group for suggesting the Pally turn on Righteous Fury and wield his shield. Yep, kicked.

Sorry for the rant, but, just wanted to tell you what to expect, and to tell you for the most part wipes won't be your fault.

Enjoy!
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