Take my cat, for isntance. When we was younger he'd find the most weird positions to sleep in. Nowadays he just curls into a ball and sleeps, like regular cats. Every now and then you'll find him choking in his sleep because he fails to realise he can't rest his head directly on his nose but I have faith he'll come to that conclusion sometime in the near future. Miles wasn't the sharpest knife in the kitty drawer but that's why I picked him. Makes me look smarter in comparison. That and he bit me when we met. "Payback time, sucker".
I too, have evolved my play style in WAR so it is now easy for me to spot those who have, as of yet, failed to do so. I'm not the best Zealot in Norn, by far. A big part of that probably because I lack the decent gear to do so, but it seems to me that some have gone all the way to the higher renown ranks with very little evolution under their belt.
Take this SC, for example. Halfway through I had to switch to semi-healing mode because, frankly I was tired of dying and of all the dying going on around me. Makes me feel sick. Makes my throat sore because everytime a WE dies I, myself, make the same sound they do. Out of all the Zealots in the SC I was the lowest ranked one. "Oh yeah, but you're a twink you get better gear and stuffz from your main". The only thing I ever sent the Donkey from my main was rk39 gear which I probably won't even use. So that excuse falls short. Order won spectacularly, with their only two healers dishing out awesomeness left and right. I managed to get killed 5 times. Other healers managed to heal as much as I dealt damage and me, a dps specced Zealot, managed to heal double of what they healed. So I keep asking myself: what are they doing wrong or what is it that I'm doing so right? And why do I get yelled at for DPSing? :(
I'll share what I've come to learn about healing, especially in scenarios.
I noticed some healers (some even in t4) don't know this but AoE heals aren't AoE. They're Group heals so they won't save that tank that happens to be in party 2.
When in SCs, if you're like me and don't use Squared or Healgrid or something fancy like that, the game itself has an option to show you other parties just like if you were in a warband. At the start of a scenario, toggle on every other party other than your own.
Throw HoTs (heal over time) around. This will really boost up your healing, especially if, like me, your AoE specced (I call it AoE cuz the damage abilities of the tree are AoE). It will also help healers in other parties keep their parties up.
Resurrect. If you're not getting hit hard, take the time to rez other players. This is crucial as it prevents our front lines from falling back and creates what I call the "wall effect". More bodies between you and them is always nice. Obviously, always rez healers first even if you have to let a tank or a dps die to do so and especially if any other party has only one healer and that healer bites it. That dead healer drastically diminishes the survivability of all the other 5 players that were depending on it. Bottom line, if you see me die, rez pls. :)
Strategic fall back. Healers have INSANE range. Nothing else has better range than a healer so stay back. If, however you depend on groupheals a lot, like me, you need to get closer because they nerffed the range on group heals. Just remember that, if the enemy charges, take a few steps back. Eventually, you develop a sixth-sense for wipes and you'll know how to pick your fights.
While on the topic of sixth-sense, we finally managed to do an LV run! It all came about when this Shaman, a fellow countryman of mine from D E C A D E N C E started yelling for an LV run. It was 2 am, I was bored, waiting for a lock that wasn't going to come, so I said "sure, I'll go". I got my Epikk and the boss to tag along and we found a DPS Chosen, Subah. For my delight, Silenz, this awesome sorc that I always try to heal in SCs cuz she kills lots and I want that assist renown, was also interested in coming so the party was set.
We get there and, what do you know, half the party had to go get the quest from Hellebron. So we wait patiently and when we finally get everyone back the Shaman goes "sry ppl gtg!" WTF, why do people start things they have no intention of finishing? The run wasn't obviously going to take the 10 minutes we had to wait for the quest issues. Still, we shrugged it off and found ourselves another healer, Kjx (who seems to have a very... interesting girlfriend). After he went to get the quest himself, he set off for the left wing. We get through all the bosses ok, with Nirvaesh MTing (MT stands for Main Tank if, like me, you don't know tankspeak) and Silenz sharing his/her wisdom on boss tactics. We even only wiped once on the big spider thingy and it wasn't a big deal because I always make sure we wait until I can slap on my Mark of Remaking (henceforth known as selfres or autores). In the end I finally got one (better than nothing) Darkpromise piece. It was only the belt but I also got a belt for Dex so it wasn't a total loss (too bad the weapons are bind on pickup because we got a weapon for Magus that was crappy but was alliteration goodness: Dekelex, Dreadstaff of Devouring). Too bad for the Shaman that he left because Shaman dropped twice. Mike also got 2 DP pieces for Epikk and a 3%crit choppa. He's now sporting 3 DP pieces and some conqueror, the DP weapon and the BS weapon. Sweet, sweet choppin.
So, why all the "sixth-sense" thing? At a certain point we were killing some random mobs that were a bit tricky and, all of a sudden, some rhino-like piggies come stampeding down. From the rate of our healing and the rate of their hitting I was sure after the first few seconds that we weren't going to keep up. So i slapped on the selfres and, sure enough, down we went. Just one thing about selfrezing Zealots. If you have one in your party and it dies and then your other healer dies or just isnt able to keep the MT up, stop trying. Like any rez, selfres gives you a 30sec timer. If the whole party doesn't die in those 30secs and the boss doesn't reset its quite pointless. So make with the dying.It was a pretty sweet run. We did all but the middle wing, even with half of us half asleep already. Nirvaesh's tanking was up to what I expect from him and Subah did an awesome job for a DPS Chosen, I must say. Kjx was a big help with his quicker group-heal to keep us up between my long casts and wasn't afraid to help DPS when needed. In the end, we managed to pleasantly surprise ourselves and The End, with all its highly-evolved players, made a good impression on these bigger-guilded players.
LONG POST IS LONG!
No comments:
Post a Comment