Underhealing Dragon Soul

[Stoove 347]

Hi everyone,

I just thought about something - since Icy Veins has healer guides and such, would you be able to make use of some blogposts I've been making about underhealing in DS10N? They've received positive feedback from a fair few people, so I'll share them if you like. So far I've posted about Zon'ozz and Ultraxion and I've got a Spine post coming out soon.

Let me know if it would be useful!

Stoove

[Damien 1,514]

That would be very useful indeed! You should definitely post them here. Do not hesitate to post backlinks to your blog as well ;)

As I have just posted on the resto shaman post, our guides are meant to remain a bit general. The idea is that everyone should benefit from them, even people who just want to have a short overview of what they should be doing. For more complex or sensitive issues, the forums are finally there and, in the future, we will link useful threads (such as the discussion on resto shaman stats) in our guides under a "Going Further" section. Hopefully, we will do the same with your "Underhealing in DS 10N" posts and our encounter guides.

[Stoove 347]

Thanks for the response, yes I'll post them - I'd love some advice on how to do it. I can copy/paste the text into individual topics (or make one ubertopic with all the posts) or just link and post the general summary I have at the start of each. Up to you!

[After some Googl'ing I actually found out what Backlinks are - yes, I will thanks. I'm new to this blogging thing.]

If anyone wants to preview the posts and give me some feedback before posting the content here, you can find Zon'Ozz at;

http://stoove.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/2-healers-1-boss/

.... and Ultraxion at;

http://stoove.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/2-healers-1-dragon/

Spine is coming soon. Needs it's edges smoothing a bit before I'm happy to publish it. Hardmode guides coming as and when I feel confident enough to talk about it. Cheers for the reply Damien!

[Damien 1,514]

Your writing style is very engaging, I enjoyed reading your articles. It shows that you've learned how to organize your thoughts, so I never felt lost or anything (and believe me, I often do when I read something that doesn't make enough sense )

For Mists of Pandaria, we will maintain a list of stickies with tips and extra resources for the new dungeons and raids, so we'd be happy to list you there.

Btw, you should make "Stoove.wordpress.com" a link in your signature:

Blablabla Blog Description

[Peelyon 416]

Apologies for me sounding dumb, but by underhealing do you just mean solo healing / 2 healing encounters that would normally have 3 healers etc?

[Stoove 347]

Yes, Peelyon, underhealing means 2-healing in this context.

[Stoove 347]

Thanks for the tip BTW Damien, appreciated! And thanks for the feedback on the blogposts, I don't get many people giving proper feedback like that! :o

I think I'll be doing lots of tips and things for raiding and/or speedruns in Mists as well! :D

Edited June 7, 2012 by Stoove

[Vlad 411]

I like your posts, and I agree with Damien.

To me, "underhealing" means not overhealing, that is making sure that none of your heals are wasted on full HP raiders. Oh well, I can't think of a suitable alternative name :)

[MadMonk 154]

I have a question Stoove, do you only make these blogs for 10-man? I'm in a 25-man guild and would be interested in reading something about that specifically. We've been 3-healing ultraxion heroic for quite some time now, and with the 25% nerf we were thinking about 2-healing it next week. Got any ideas on that?

[Peelyon 416]

The majority of this expansion we have had to 2 heal quite a few encounters. Fights like Maloriak, Cho'gall, Al'Akir our dps was always way too low. This continued into Firelands and then finally Dragon Soul, 2 healing Ultraxion, Warlord, Spine and Deathwing. Healing has never seemed to be a problem for myself and the other healer, we just always struggled beating encounters with our somewhat lack luster dps.

I never gave much thought to it, it was a nice achievement 2 healing a lot of the encounters but we just saw it as something we had to do to increase our dps. We always saw taking out a healer a better option to 3 healing and 1 tanking fights like Deathwing, especially for 10man fights, having the extra tanking cooldowns and 4set bonus etc helped alot.

[Stoove 347]

The majority of this expansion we have had to 2 heal quite a few encounters. Fights like Maloriak, Cho'gall, Al'Akir our dps was always way too low. This continued into Firelands and then finally Dragon Soul, 2 healing Ultraxion, Warlord, Spine and Deathwing. Healing has never seemed to be a problem for myself and the other healer, we just always struggled beating encounters with our somewhat lack luster dps.

I never gave much thought to it, it was a nice achievement 2 healing a lot of the encounters but we just saw it as something we had to do to increase our dps. We always saw taking out a healer a better option to 3 healing and 1 tanking fights like Deathwing, especially for 10man fights, having the extra tanking cooldowns and 4set bonus etc helped alot.

To a lot of people I've met on my server though (with the same problems), I've suggested underhealing to them and they've instantly told me that's impossible or stupid or too hard or too unlikely (and many other variations thereof). I think that's why I started writing the guides - so that I could prove to people that not only is it possible, but that it's pretty easy once you put some thought into it. My congratulations on 2-healing a large portion of the expansion, I've only done it when we really needed to or when I was bored myself (like basically all of this tier - Dragon Soul has been a snoozefest).

I have a question Stoove, do you only make these blogs for 10-man? I'm in a 25-man guild and would be interested in reading something about that specifically. We've been 3-healing ultraxion heroic for quite some time now, and with the 25% nerf we were thinking about 2-healing it next week. Got any ideas on that?

That's a good suggestion. So far, I only really blog about what I know - right now, that means 10-man normal mode healing from a Shaman perspective. I have raided 25's in the past, so I can probably speculate on good strategies in 25's, but I won't be able to back it up with any experience since there are very few 25man raids on our server. Nevertheless, if you want to get some ideas bouncing around I'd be happy to contribute to a thread on the topic. At some point I'll be doing a post on the primary differences between 25man and 10man (from a healer's perspective).

[Stoove 347]

Here's the Spine of Deathwing version of the post!

http://stoove.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/2-healers-undress-dragon/

I'd have shouted about it sooner, but I was away on business :) Enjoy and feel free to provide feedback. I'll work on converting these into a short forum-guide this weekend, if you like.

[Peelyon 416]

Another enjoyable read! We found it necessary to 2 heal spine due to the lack of burst on the tendon, always preferring 3 smooth phases rather than having a 3rd healer and having to repeat a phase if not repeat a few phases!

By he time we had reached spine, 2 healing encounters felt really comfortable, mainly due to communication between myself and the other healer. Knowing what your partner is likely to do even if you haven't spoken about it (they lay on hands rather than me using guardian spirit) etc makes it so much easier on mana and cool downs.

Look forward to reading more of your stuff, get yourself posting in the other forums as well reckon we could us your input other issues as well :)

Edited June 15, 2012 by Peelyon

[Damien 1,514]

Have you thought about adding wowhead tooltips to your website? It's really easy, you just need to add

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.wowhead.com/widgets/power.js"></script>

within the

<head>...</head>

tags on your pages.

Then Javascript magic takes over and every link you make to wowhead.com will have tooltips.

[Stoove 347]

Thanks for the feedback Peelyon. I agree that one of the major advantages to 2-healing regularly is that you build up a nice relationship with your partner (that or you fail) - This leads to more open discussions about tactics and coping strategies, which is an excellent bonus.

I found, while doing the research for the guides, that the Paladin I was healing with became a good friend and someone I knew I could rely on when needed. I have to say, you build up a lot of respect for people like that when you 2-heal. Now I've started 2-healing Heroic bosses (take that, Blackhorn and Ultraxion!) I think I'll be able to extend some of what I've written into Heroic versions as well - not forgetting to mention my new healing buddies' prowess!

Damien, thanks for the tip. I'll certainly look into it. I'm not really very knowledgeable about the behind the scenes bits (my sort of coding is Fortran), but I'll experiment with it. Thanks! =D

Finally, converting these posts for a Forum guide is still on my list of to-do's. This weekend I spent most of my time writing a Power Auras guide (soon to be published here and later on my blog). Will try and do it in the coming week ^_^

Edited June 18, 2012 by Stoove