Monday 8 February 2010

Silence! I wipe you!

After playing a mage and now a healer, I have come to hate something more than a knockback and the dreaded whirlwind. Silence affects, getting spell locked or locked out of a certain set of spells. I hate them.

I mean, it's not that bad when I'm on my mage - I get spell locked on the big skeleton guys in ICC if I'm not paying attention to when they're casting their annoying Shout, so I use Frostfire bolt, and it's become a noticeable thing, usually followed by "Krinkal, did you get locked out again?" in /ra.

But on my shaman, being a healer... it's like a mini-panic attack.

For example, on Ignis, I completely forgot I wasn't a rogue and kept casting even after the big fuck off warning I get across my screen to tell me to stop casting. I got locked out and actually had a mild heart-attack.

I mean, it's something you've got to be on your toes about. Not only do you have to keep people alive, react to the amount of damage they're currently taking and at the same time, worry about yourself you've also got to pay attention to your surroundings. I'm telling you, when I was raiding as DPS the healers made this shit look easy but actually doing it is a whole different story...

So, after my mild panic attack and my abilities had come back to me, I blew my Oh shits and topped the add tank, the melee and myself up. Panic attack over, lesson learnt you'd think...

No. I wasn't. I didn't learn until the third Flame Jets. It's a bloody good job the other healer was on their game or we'd have wiped.

Fast forward to today. ICC25 failboat of a PuG. I wasn't expecting much but the reputation was good and I got some practice in on healing a 25 man raid, which is pretty damned fun as a shaman. We get those big annoying skellys out and the tanks do well, grab them, turn them away from the melee etc. I've learnt from my mistakes, I'd unconsiouslly decided I was going to look after this particular warrior tank during this fight and was healing away, when I noticed my warning, I immediatly got a Riptide and a Lesser Healing Wave off and stopped. Let him cast and continued. The other healers, however, didn't. So while they were having a mild panic attack while I was shitting myself trying to keep the tanks up.

It's definitly getting some used to and at times it can be damned hard but I'm loving every second of this healing lark!

6 comments:

  1. Woo - grats :)

    I actually dislike spell-lock mechanics as well not because they're hard to manage but because they're arbitrary and a bit boring. It's like a "tick this box to show you're awake" mechanic.

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  2. Zero Punctuation's aversion to quicktime events comes to mind. Press X to not die!

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  3. I suppose I've just got to get used to NOT ignoring anything that silences someone. Comes with the territory of melee, I only have to worry about a whirlwind and I know which bosses/trash mobs have those :D

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  4. i occasionally have an issue switching between tanking and healing on my druid... but more often than not I'm casting instant-cast spells anyway, so it usually doesn't affect me, but every once in awhile it messes me up.

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  5. Hah, and you have been slagging healers off for years! Expect pay back! Good to see you've come to your senses. ;)

    And silences don't worry me, I've got my HoTs rolling before the silence. *flex*

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  6. damn you ercles, damn you and your smug little druid heal over times! :P

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