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Advice beyond the guidesFollow

#1 Jul 19 2010 at 5:51 PM Rating: Decent
There are some discussions on the main forums but I'd like some advice from a priests perspective. My situation is that I played an Alliance priest to 60 and did some raiding pre-burning crusades and then dropped out. So all my skills are rusty and I want to be a more casual player. So a friends description of the dungeon finder and the heroic level instances somehow gave me the idea that it might be possible that 5 manning with pugs might let you get a decently equipped character over time without adhering to a top guilds raid schedule. Please don't disabuse me of this notion in your responses. I want to be the best casual player I can be.
So I read the excellent "Ultimate all you need to know" guide and created a discipline horde priest and I've been poking along to level 22 without doing any real prep work just playing the game with dungeon finder. Now though I think I need to do a little homework and prepare a bit more. In Mozareds guide he touched on macros and mods but didn't go into a lot of detail. Is there a new standard out there now that I might as well get used to just in case i later on decide to raid? Four years ago I think everybody used CT Raid assist, is that still a "standard" and if you use raid assist to you also use an addon like Healbot, Grid or Pitbull? Also is there a discussion or a favorite web site on what macros everybody likes to use? I'd really like to be an efficient, competent healer so that when paired with a decent tank (and 3 monkeys for damage dealing) theres a chance of feeling the satisfaction of good teamwork and a well won victory.
#2 Jul 19 2010 at 6:27 PM Rating: Good
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Mod requirements have kind of changed since vanilla. We still use mods for basically the same reasons (ability warnings and better raid frames than the standard ones), but they've become more compact. Nowadays, this only must is BigWigs or DeadlyBossMods, possibly along with GTFO (all boss-ability warnings), and Grid(+Clique) or Vuhdoo or Healbot or Pitbull (all raid frames).

Still pretty useful but more optional is Dominos or Bartender4 for your bars.

Macro-wise, there isn't much that's specifically good for priests. There's the good old Shackle Undead focus/warning that's basically copied from a mage's Polymorph, there's an unused cancelcast macro and there's the 'compilation' macro compilation, where you group heals and offensive spells together and make the spell cast depend on whether your target is hostile or friendly.

I recommend googling all the raidframe addons I named and seeing which ones you like most, aesthetically. Play around and try them until you find what you want. Once you've got raidframes and a boss mod, you're a long way already.

Edited, Jul 20th 2010 2:27am by Mozared
#3 Jul 19 2010 at 8:14 PM Rating: Excellent
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Agree with Moz on playing with mods until you find one you like. There was a time when people were pretty much "Grid or GTFO" but that's not the case anymore. Vuhdo, Grid, and Healbot seem to be the most popular for healers. I just use Clique with my Pitbull frames. I recommend trying several to find what you feel most comfortable with.

For macros, I use them mainly for selecting who gets the heal off a key bind (find the friendly target among target, target-of-target, or self). As Moz mentions, the double duty macro (Renew on friendly, SW:P on enemy, for example) is also popular for saving toolbar space. Some healers like to use mouseover macros for their heals instead of a healing add-on, by binding their heals to keys that cast on whoever's frame you're hovering over. Most of these are covered in detail in this thread from the o-boards.


MontanaRugby wrote:
I'd really like to be an efficient, competent healer so that when paired with a decent tank (and 3 monkeys for damage dealing) theres a chance of feeling the satisfaction of good teamwork and a well won victory.


In that case, I might suggest, in the interest of that good teamwork, not dismissing any of your teammates as "monkeys." Smiley: wink
#4 Jul 19 2010 at 8:20 PM Rating: Excellent
Moz said it all for addons.

I'd like to add that Clique (an addon that binds stuff to your mouse keys and automatically makes mouseover macros for those) can be replaced by writing macros yourself, but that's just a lot of work.

In line with using Clique, I have cooldowns I cast on others (Pain Suppression and Power Infusion mainly) as well as PoH as mouseover macros but bound to keys on my keyboard due to lack of space on my mouse.

You can always make an ******* macro, as well. This is mostly for level 80. It could look like this:
/cast [target=player] Power Infusion 
/cast Inner Focus 
/use 13 
/use 14 
/cast Divine Hymn


This will cast Power Infusion on yourself, cast Inner Focus, use both your trinkets and cast a loaded up Divine Hymn. Usually Divine Hymn in itself is so powerful that I tend to only combine it with Inner Focus (mainly because its mana cost is really high), but this would save you from almost anything.


I'd like to add that CT_mod has not been discontinued but is not nearly as popular as it used to be and I think some of the functions simply aren't available anymore.

There's also some UI threads in here that are pretty much up to date and suggest some other addons that aren't mandatory.



Also, be warned. Heroic dungeons do offer pretty good rewards, but I've recently reached level 80 on another healer. At the start (read: three days ago) she didn't outgear the places so much they became ridiculously easy like they are on my priest. She's been 80 for three days now and is actually already at the point where heroics aren't much of a challenge anymore. Not the ones I can queue for on her, anyway (and this includes one of the newest and hardest heroics). They do enable you to gear up for progression raiding at a staggering pace, and you can stick to 10man raids if you want to stay semi-casual, but they really aren't much more enjoyable than any other grind and for the most part far easier than any of the level 60 5-mans used to be.


For a lot of info on priest healing as it is now (if you can bear the mathy bits in there and the length of the whole thing), check out this.

I'm actually quite frustrated that they are so slacky about priests at EJ. I mean, there's a lot of info, but the resto shaman compendium seems far better.
#5 Jul 20 2010 at 6:05 AM Rating: Excellent
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Grid or gtfo.
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idiggory wrote:
Drinking at home. But I could probably stand to get laid.
#6 Jul 20 2010 at 6:05 AM Rating: Good
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:)
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idiggory wrote:
Drinking at home. But I could probably stand to get laid.
#7 Jul 20 2010 at 8:09 AM Rating: Excellent
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4,074 posts
Horsemouth wrote:
:)


Smiley: lol
#8 Jul 20 2010 at 8:14 AM Rating: Good
If I wasn't so lazy I'd adapt Pitbull (or any other raid frames that are less annoying than Grid) to have Grid's functionality. I can't live without that. But I also want my raid frames to look like I want them to (be black, for example).
#9 Jul 20 2010 at 11:11 AM Rating: Decent
Thanks so much for the advice this was perfect information. I can't believe how the interface add-ons add to the functonality of the game. That Clique looks pretty amazing, WoW/Blizzard should pay them royalties and add it as a standard part of the game.
#10 Jul 20 2010 at 2:11 PM Rating: Good
MontanaRugby wrote:
Thanks so much for the advice this was perfect information. I can't believe how the interface add-ons add to the functonality of the game. That Clique looks pretty amazing, WoW/Blizzard should pay them royalties and add it as a standard part of the game.
Automated macro making? Sounds good. It's not really more than that; you can do the same thing manually, it just takes a lot more work.
#11 Jul 21 2010 at 8:36 PM Rating: Good
Great thread. Finding a healing raid frame you like will help you be a better healer at any level. Plus you get the experience using it prior to hitting heroics.

I'm sure between the different contributers above, we are running or have run all the addons mentioned. I'm in the Vuhdo camp, but all of the ones mentioned work great. Find one you like.
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