Keepers of the Glade

I am really disappointed that this has been dropped and given no attention.

I posted a week ago . .and not one response to this.

Sorry you didnt get feedback Vdayan. It does appear that there are occasions when we do seem to take more deaths than what we need to. As we will shortly be working with harder mobs, i.e. Anguish (and ToB may be similar to Anguish in terms of mob toughness), I agree that some changes probably could be made and everyone needs to be "on board" with whatever is decided. So I hope folks seriously consider what you are trying to do. Thanks.

Will see what can be done about getting people to look at your comments. We have different strategies for different targets. Sometimes there is no option but to use a cheal rotation and another time a cheal rotation can wipe the raid. It is hard to set healers so that all are always healed, but we still need to do better than we have been.
One part of the problem is when you read about a target one write up will say use one strategy say a cheal rotation, and another will say spam heal, yet another will say you should not use a direct heal or the healer will be summoned and killed. The only way to know for sure is to guess and see what happens. This means we will make mistakes as well as correct guesses.
If we take 3 clerics 3 druids and 4 shaman on a raid of 5 or 6 groups, some of the groups will have druid and shaman healers, and if we have a cheal rotation some healers will not be able to heal themselves or their group.
I think the biggest thing we are doing wrong is not communicating with the raid so they know we are short healers at times. You know we have several with alts that can change characters to give us better healing coverage and perhaps a cleaner win with fewer deaths.
In my opinion every member of a raid deserves the best healing we can give them. Sometimes that is not as good as we would all like.

Quote:I give 110% every raid, expect no less. I am eager to adapt to any method of healing. Learning is good, dying is not, prepare for both lol, miracles you may or may not experience from our heal team..

From Ribb

Dying is not good. No one expects miracles, but they do expect clerics to do their utmost to keep them alive. Thinking people do is taking them lightly. Too many times, certain clerics who will remain nameless, heal only the MA and their own group is forgotten. Their group dies, the raid dies. Personally, whoever those clerics are, I find this unacceptable and makes the raid a miserable experience for many people, not just me.

Now . . .here is what i said at the meeting and should be taken into consideration:

Cleric Thing

As many of you know, I play Vdayan. I am going to give a TOTALLY Objective view tonight. These are MY observations, no one elseâ€â„¢s and I do not wish to be drawn into any internal politics or conflicts that may or may not exist within this group. Please do not pull me into politics.

Please understand, I am NO power gamer, I am not a whiner, a loot whore, or someone who cries because of how much experience I lose. IF I were, I might be 75 by now. I am not. I am still 71.

I WAS a raid cleric. I was asked to come here tonight as I also play a cleric, that before I joined KoTG, I considered to be and played as a CO main. Due to the rules and DKP of this guild, I have had to set Tiairia as an alt. This sucks; I strongly disagree with it but I deal with it. I like the guild.

I want to make absolutely CLEAR, I feel that looking backward, pointing fingers and naming names IS detrimental to this Team. I want to provide Solutions and NOT be part of the problem.

I will be honest and say that several people (non healers) have observed that the cleric team as having some sort of problem. It should be noted by all that EVERY one of you is liked.

No one is angry, but rather we are bummed that we die consistently for the same reason, in the same exact way, 2, 3 and sometimes 4 times on a raid. I am really starting to dread coming on raids because of it. I do not receive heals, I do not get any cures.

Simply âہ“SOMETHINGâ€Â is not working in âہ“the planâ€Â to heal on raids. It APPEARS to me the MA is getting healed. People die. They get dotted, but never cured. Entire groups die. It makes them sad, they are NOT MAD, but it makes raiding very not fun for a lot of us.

SOLUTIONS:
Recognize and use individual clerics strengths and minimize the effects of their weaknesses.

It is apparent to Me that some clerics think a simple Complete Heal chain is the ONLY technique to use on raids. This is OK . . .but since we are dealing with mobs that now hit for a LOT more damage, this needs to be rethought. It is not working.

LET it be known, that I recognize, I am NOT the best Complete Heal Chain cleric. I get nervous, adrenaline goes and if ONE person misses the chain, IF one beat is missed OR the mob hits too hard to match the CH chain, the entire raid falls like dominos. This happens, I observe, on most of the tougher mob raids and we wipe.

For this reason, and to accommodate everyone . . . I feel a Combination Technique should be used. A CH Chain AND spot healers. Those who are NOT comfortable and at ease in the CH chain, should be made spot healers. This ensures the MA stays up. It should also allow for Every cleric to heal their group as needed.

I recommend every cleric Ensure they work on and have Radiant and Resplendent Cure AAâ€â„¢s. There is also a New TSS one. Tia is working on that now. It cures your Entire group of Curses, Poison, disease and most dots. It is momentary to cast.

Great post Vdayan!! Thanks for sharing it in here

I do Not want to be in any chain heal..
I can not handle it..i will no longer try to.
If i could handle it, I would never have left my
last guild..
I joined Keepers caus i knew peeps
in Keepers, and they told me druids dont
have to CH on raids.
I have pureblood and
remove greater curse and the druid aa's to
cure my group.
I keep my group alive as best i can, i damage shield
the MT , heal his cleric and i /assist mob and heal his target if i can.
if my group has a cleric or other healer,
sometimes i dot or nuke the mob but i have seen
I draw aggro fast , so most times i do not .

I too have seen clerics heal only the mt and not even
keep their group alive. this thankfully doent happen much.
All in all, we have an awesome heal team.

unfortunately, regarding healer only healing main tank, it has happened to me a lot, a long streak of raids as a matter of fact.

Again, i am not pointing fingers, but there is a problem here. I don't recall 'druids' ever being asked to be part of the ch chain in an guild i have belonged to, and I have not seen it in this guild either. <shrugs>

The past, what people thing they "do" and defend themselves as doing, is not helpful. In fact, such a discussion does not help in making things better. We need to get past that and progressively move forward.

What does matter is finding solutions to this huge problem so that raids become more fun for those who are not healers and bear the cost of this.

So . .. what do people think WILL make this bettter?

Vday you havent been in a high lvl raid guild have you? Well as somone who has been you are a bit wrong on some things. Its NOT the clerics job to keep there group alive when there on a rot or in a quick heal battle. If the RL puts all melee in a grp or all melee and 1 cleric then its his fault not the clerics. You put a druid or shaman in there grp also and have them take care of the group. The grp with just a cleric will always die or they will cause the MT to die. The heal team here is a awesome one from what i have seen. I will keep an eye out also though at what your talking to before i come to my stern conclution.

In raids I have attended, this guilds as well as others, the healers focus is on keeping the tanks up, because if those tanks go down life suddenly becomes a lot more uncertain for everyone else in the raid.

As a druid healer, I often keep an eye on the main tanks and clerics. Their well being takes precedence over other classes. I do try to keep those in my group up alive and well, but it is not always possible. If the tanks go down because I patched up a squishier class then how long is that squishy class going to last when there is not a tank to be what Fare often calls the "meat shield"?

I am quite aware that there have been times we have lost our tanks and still managed to prevail, but it was often by the skin of our teeth. And for the wins we managed when the tanks all fell, I can assure you there were many more wipes when we lost our tanks.

It takes all of us, every class, to win a raid, and I agree no one like s to experience death on raids. However, we will never succeed if we dont prioritize where the main thrust of healing should be. Those tanks have a job, and it s to keep the attention of the mob focused on them because they are better equipped to get beat on. That gives the rest of us the opportunity to do our jobs, whether is it DPS, healing, crippling, whatever.

It has not happened to me often personally, but I have in the past been asked to be part of a CH rot, both in and out of guild events. I don't do it often and I have to confess I share Grammies anxiety over my ability to perform well in a CH rot.

Ru, hate to say it, but You are not the only "all knowing" high level raider. <rolls eyes> I have lead high level raids, and been a high level raid cleric. But please, for your sake, I will try and not appear too much of a newb. It will probably be very hard for me, but i will try.

Sorry . . .

Unfortunately, dying 3 and 4 times on a raid and never receiving a heal is unacceptable. Several are to the point of not wishing to attend raids, because others do not feel they receive any heals.

To prioritize as to who gets to die 3 and 4 times, will take a toll on raid attendance.

That is unacceptable. And I know several people who have already stopped attending raids already or are at the point of stopping attending because of this. And some of them are healers.

Now, as a cleric, I heal the MA and i manage to keep my group alive.

So . . . what is this group going to do to resolve this issue this before raid attendance starts to drop off?

Where do you suggest we move forward other than to continue the status quo of letting half the raid or the whole raid die because the other dps is not important to heal?

I mean do let me know if you feel the status quo of letting people die and raid wipes is ok. The Status Quo and philosophy of "we need to heal the main tank and if others die, so be it . . " Is not working.

I am attempting to communicate here, raids are not fun for a lot of people because of this ideology. People hate coming on them and it IS talked about.

What I am attempting to do here . .is enable 'healers' to see how absolutely miserable raids are for those who are let die numerous times. and it DOES happen. People DO notice 'healers" taking the view of "you mean nothing" to us to heal on a raid.

What can we do about it? What can we do to make it better?

If you wish success on raids, and attendance . . .there are those tired of having to suck it up every raid and "deal with it."

I will be honest there were several times, after the 3rd death last night, it was All i could do to not /Q

I have never ever done such a thing either. I stayed there and I took death after death after death.

What can be done to make this better?

Are you refering to dieing on the main event or dieing on the crawl? I intentionally set up groups with no healers or with only hybrids to heal because the event required it to keep teh tanks alive. Remember if the tanks die the raid dies and some strategies require that dps dont get healers.

Idealy we would have 2 healer classes per group in each raid but it doesnt alwasy happen that way. If there are not enough to cover the CH or fast heals on the tanks and the groups, sometimes groups have to be sacrificed. No one but the tanks shoudl be getting hit by anything other then AEs, If you are you are pulling to much agro or not following the mobs actions (ie if you died to the infuriate or enrage).

I do welcome suggestions on how to set up groups and try to have healing covered. I think we did extremely well on Ikky3 last night due to the fact we were missing 2 of our raid clerics and 2 raid tanks.

Finally, We are going to die and die a lot on raiding. Everyone needs to expect to wipe at least once on each new event attempt. GoD endgame is tough, MPG and Anguish are tough and Plane of Blood preraids are even tougher (expansion is 3 expansions old and the top guilds on server are still trying to finish it).

I think there is always room for improvement. Vdayan has some good points. A combinatin c heal with enough clerics in it so that they have time to group heal in between would be great. Doing it depends on how many clerics we have. It's certainly something to consider.

We want to keep eveyone from unnesessary deaths and I really belive that every one is in their own way trying to do that. It's true that we are learnng as we go and the raid writeups leave some information up to our imagination and we have to just jump in and see what happens. I personally know that we usually do have to do a raid at least once or more to just get it figured out. This usually ends up with wipes. I see both sides, as a not great sham healer, and listening to Meboom growl each time he dies. I have missed heals. I get upset with myself for doing it but the raids are pretty high mobs and if someone gets the mobs attention its very hard to get a sham heal on them fast enough to save them. As for cures I use my group cure a lot but it takes time to recover. So hopefully no one gets it again before I get it back and if i dont get the dot I dont know any one has it. Cure curse is a one person cast only. If the whole group starts going down and I am the only healer I have my hands full because sony didnt give shams a group heal except for a heal over time which is not good enough in a raid. I agree with Vdayan tha we should all be getting the cure aa's. I am going to do the last one soon as I finisht getting level 75 so I can do a group dire buff. Seems I have too many priorities. I would recommend though that soon as any healer can work it out they should get it done.

I expect that druids have their healing glitches as well.

I do think we have to use good heal stategy. As Caeni said we have to have c heal rotaions some time. Last night was one of those times. We are working on making the stategies better and seeing that no one dies if we can help it. I died at least 4 times last night. Once I died my group died. We just didnt have enough healers for 2 in each group last night and we had to have two on each of the tanks and sometimes that wasnt enough. Mana has also been a problem at times. Rampage is not healable. If you get rampage expect to die unless your a tank. There are so many reasons why people die in raids, so I really need to know if someone feels that they are dying unecessarily so that we can find out why. This is more than just a heal statagy issue. If you feel clerics are ignoring their group then we need to know so we can make other arrangements. No one should take the big death over and over each week with out just cause. I and Omegga certainly arent counting who has died how many times. Well I do with the puller sometimes which makes me cringe. Our tanks die often too and I know the clerics assigned to them are doing the best they can. But it seems the problem discussed here is the people in groups.

Our cleric leaders are working out problems and trying to "come together" with solutions. It's not always easy for people to work together and they have had some differences of opinion and I am hoping that is coming to an end.

We have some of the best clerics in the game and I love them all and well we Won last night lol so we may not be perfect but we will keep trying.

Thank you all for your comments. Let me know if the dying keeps up even if its due to me slowing mobs and getting agro and not being able to heal because my spell bar hasn't come up in time. I am a sham first and an awful healer and I admit it.

Bim

I have a suggestion, but its really late. No, I don't mean on the "crawl" i mean on the main mob.

You know that one in Halls of Honor for Christye we got a heck of a lot farther and the entire raid lived longer than the original healing strat that was tried on the first two attempts.

Meggs, you do have the option of asking people to log in their clerics.

As far as sacrificing groups, or the belief that you have to, I don't believe, as someone who has been a raid cleric, I've never seen any other group i raided with believe sacrificing groups is going to get us a win. The idea is for the MA's to hold aggro (as you know) and the DPS and Damage to be able to do their job. If the Damage is sacrificed, and the people doing it die . .well the raid wipes, but you know this. You cant sacrifice damage either or the mob will never fall.

When i have raided before, it has been as a guest of the likes of Dragon Council, Omani (the OLD one, not the one now) and Order of the Scattered Winds (which was an awesome megga guild on the Bertoxx server).

Honest, i am not Name dropping . .but i do have some ideas on how to make this better. In Fact, i don't particularly enjoy raiding with DC or Omani, nor do I have fun. But i do see strats.

Number One - If a cleric is needed we have about a kazillion of them in the guild. They should be asked to log in.

I personally pride myself on actually NOT being an Alt on Tia, and have actually learned the cleric class.

I would like to request, humbly, that I log on Tia and try with the clerics some tactics on a raid and lead a strategy.

I am not a cleric, but i play one on TV, hehe(actually i have a 54th alt cleric)

Just to let you know, when we get to Uqua, letting someone die will not be acceptable. Each death causes a ghost thing to spawn for 30 seconds. If a cleric, or whatever healing class is in that group(myself, shaman, included) lets their group die either to a mobs AE or to the zone wide AE, that is up to 6 adds in the middle of the raid.

If that happens, we will wipe.

As some people know, high end raiders have wiped within minutes of zoning in, and these are people that know how to high end raid.

Vdayan has some valid points, and i think we can all agree that our healing strategies need to be near perfect in Uqua, and other higher end zones, or we may as well stop GoD progression now and save ourselves the frustration.

However, i do not want to stop progression, so i am willing to go, and die as often as necessary to succeed. I am sure most of the regular raiders are willing to die to learn the event.

They are not however, willing to die because someone did not heal their group of an AE that had steadily been eating away at their HP's.

Optimally we should have a cleric and a druid or shaman in each group. If not a cleric, 2 druids or shamen in the group, or one of each.

Unfortunately, we only have the luxury of whoever chooses to come on the raid that night, so sometimes we only have one healer per group.

If there is only one healer in a group, they should NOT be in the CH rotation. I think the CH rotation should only be for clerics that have an alternate healer for their group.

Just my 2 CP.

BTW, if you all need me to level my cleric and replace Qum with her, let me know. As you all may know, i do make a lot of the raids, especially the progression ones.

Vda when did i say i was "all knowing"? i never once said that. i was stating what i felt as a high end raiding shaman. congrats you raided a few times with DC and Omani!!!! I never said you were a newb or that you were inferior i was just simply stating what I knew not you or anyone else. please keep your babbling to yourself and words i DIDNT say out of your mouth. I even added the part at the bottom that i would keep an eye out for what your talking about before making a conclution! i will no longer be doing that because i think you just want somthing to bitch about. keep this convo civil dont turn it into a cry fest. I do not raid in the guild not because i die but because of people like you who take this game TOO far. get over yourself i would like to see a raid led by you just once. I will be removing myself from guild once i get time to log on, I do not like playing with people who take things the wrong way and twist words to fit what they want them to say. have fun with this crazy cleric i will not be any part of it.

Another thought on groups dying because of the only cleric in it only healing the MA,

What if the mob has 1,000,000HP and the two biggest DPS groups in the raid die?

Do you believe a tank and 6 healers can beat it down before all clerics are OOM?

Ok, time to calm down everyone.

Rutul, please reconsider leaving, we enjoy haviong you in the guild.

I said that sometimes DPS groups have to sacrifice healers. The Ikky Raid had a special circumstance where we needed 4 tanks to tank hard hitting mobs which required me to dedicate 2 healers to each of the tanks. Yes there was an AE but it was mostly a non issue. We also had the issue that the dps on the mobs needed to be all healers.

Read thought the posts on Ikky 3 and you will see most guilds have problems with it and never want to do it again. Ikky3 is a bad example to base our healing on. In the future, I will try to build the tank groups so they have all their healers in them.

You are correct in that DPS needs to be healed, but DPS also has to learn how to take care of themselve. Each tank can only hold so much agro and DPS needs to learn how to control thier agro. If they are out agroing the tank, they need to back off periodically and stop attacking. This hurt us on Tallon Zek the week before as he kept fliping due to over agro. Also any melee who dies to enrage, its thier own fault. By now, every melee should know that a mob enrages at 9 % and even the best cleric is not going to save a ranger or rogue who flips a 2k hitting mob who is enraging and quads themselves to death. I plan to address the melees with these problems on the next raids as we had several dieing at the enrage of the Acolytes.

So if the melees control themselves, all we need to worry about is AE damage and damage from adds before they get controled.

Rutal and Vdayan,

Please dont take each others comments the wrong way. Remember when we are typeing you can't see the persons expressions so all you have to go on is the typed words. A lot of times when we type we are just trying to get our point across and not thinking about how someone might take the words the wrong way.

Its good to have open discussion but please try not to take it personally. If we are doing something wrong, I want people to be able to comment on it without feeling they will be attacked in response. We have several people who have been in endgame guilds or have raided with endgame guilds and we will be finetuning our strategies.

Well, here's some perspective from a tank's point of view.

Granted I am not able to raid as much as I'd like to due to the time difference, but here is what I've observed on the raids I've been on.

Many times I am placed in groups without healers and many times I am asked to be the main tank as well. With no healer in my group, I am depending on ???? to heal me. Many times I just don't know who it is. On a lot of these occassions I usually die, which is to be expected, but it always seems to take an inordinate amount of time to get res'd and rebuffed so that I can engage again safely. When I do have a cleric in my group it seems that the heals are regular and reliable. I don't like having to watch my HP bar throughout the entire event and have to yell for a heal from the raid somewhere. My job is to keep agro and absorb damage which I think I do well.

I do understand the concept of "enrage" and it's a simple key stroke to turn my attack off when it happens. The next person on the agro. list just needs to be prepared when this happens. Sometimes accumulated agro is enough to keep the mob angry at me and sometimes it's not.

(Ru, monk, cleric forum . . . hmmmm yah . . . m'kay)

I really did try to find the post on Ikky. In raid planning I found sign ups, and info on progression, finding a strategy for that is not easy the way things are posted. There are SO many threads all attempting to do something different. I did find the strats on the MPG trials and I did read them thoroughly. I do read them if i can find them. That is a different subject.

Thanks Yorag for adding to the perspective. That is how I feel also. Although most of the time, in my case, I am placed in a group with a cleric that does not heal or cure the group at all, focusing only on the MA.

Ok how about letting people know before hand they are to be sacrificed?

Honestly, I really have a hard time gaining aggro. Honest, I read the strategies you posted if i can find them. What i was doing was singing Haste, AC, MR and Healing/Mana regen. It was not AoE. EXCEPT when the raid leader said to load up and do resists which I did. Some of those are AoE.

It is my way of playing to stop attack if I get aggro and back off. However, there was no time in this instance to back off, I received no heals, and therefore died as i attempted to move backward.

I don't know how standing there, even singing those song (which were not AoE BTW) got me all that aggro every single time. I was just doing what bards do. After the 2nd unnecessary death and receiving no heals, I stopped attacking and just played songs. I still died.

There are people that get sacrificed every single time.

If only I did good dps. I don't feel like I do.

People dying 3, 4 and 5 times on raids, not just Ikky is honestly not fun. It happens on many raids.

It is not enjoyable. I lose a lot of exp when i dont get to play that much. its not fun.

I am honestly NOT trying to be critical. I am trying to say there are other ways of handling healing.

The reason I started this thread was NOT to criticize how people are doing things, but to try and get people to think outside the box, and rethink that there may be a better way. AND to have some empathy for those who eat unnecessary death after unnecessary death.

Heck I KNOW dying is part of raiding. That is Cool with me. but the extent to which it happens . .well, it really is no fun to those who have to suck it up and eat it. I am not just talking about me.

Glad to be a monk and not have to turn off attack at 9%.

Monk Aura = No enrage for the group.

fullic is a monk that rocks

Yorag,

I try to put the Main tank, rampage and Secondary tank in with clerics. If you get taged to be main tank and I dont have you with a cleric, send me a tell so i can fix it. Usually Meboom or the lead cleric will tell me but sometimes it gets missed.

Vdayan,

I did say before we went in to the 4 golem event that I had moved many of the healers into the tank groups and that druids and even rangers (the paladins were needed for the tank groups) might need to heal.

On the Marader Golem, the healers were set up outside and the first attempt got jumped by a roamer respawn at the same time the roamer golem got respawned. Also due to healer positioning, you may have been out of range. Its hard for me to analyze why you died if I dont know exacly when your deaths occured.

Finally we are going to have to accept deaths as we try strategies and see what works for us. The first time we tried it 2 weeks ago we died 3 or 4 times trying to figure out a good strategy. It enabled us to come up with the one that worked this weekend. I will take a look a the raid dumps and see i could have built the groups better to provide protection for the DPS.

We have stepped up a notch from PoP now. PoP was designed for level 65s while GoD OOW DoN and PoR endgames were designed for level 70s. We are not going to be able to roll right over content like we blew though time first try. Expect to die, Expect to wipe a lot, expect to pick up and keep trying.

Everyone lets try looking at things from all sides. Grammies made a valid contribution when she said she wanted to help her group not be part of a complete heal rotation. That is a valid and needed responsibility.
In most cases every group deserves a healer who will TRY to heal the group on a major fight, and we have had that duty handled by a beast or ranger on occasion.
I want to stress that every target requires some research so that we use the best healing strategy for the fight. Sometimes that is a cheal rotation and sometimes it is spam heals from all healers in the raid. It does not matter what we do there are some deaths that occur on raids. As I understand it the main issue is not will people die as much as will they die with no attempt by any healer to keep them alive. I am sorry but I feel every raider deserves a chance to be healed. Maybe it is a throw back to doing Caprin where we had the nasty skellys spawn when we died but I like for as few deaths as possible to occur as all are needed to win some fights.
As a Cleric I see all the dps die and then I get summoned and die. The more healers we lose the more likely we are to wipe. All of us have importance in the final outcome and we need to keep as many alive as is possible.

There are sometimes on our raids a lack of healing classes. You can't always cover everyone. It would be ideal to have double healing in every group, but as a non mandatory raiding guild that scenario may not happen.

Not everyone has an alt cleric flagged for the zone we go to, or one of sufficient level. Even if their alt is able to go, the main may be needed that much more. Its a balance Omegga or whoever is leading the raid has to take into consideration.

Its an issue for us to work through, but please everyone be kind in your "voice" on the boards to keep from causing unneccesary irritation. Frustrated emotes, while understandable, do nothing but set off tempers. Getting good ideas to help with areas that have difficulties is great and we can't do that without conversation.

As far as sacrificed, with the exception of an occasion I remember Omegga and Faremoni both having to die on order to keep being rezzed to key in the raid in Plane of Air, and there may have been one or another time where something specific had to happen. But it was certainly discussed with the individual.

We certainly don't go to the raids planning on whole scads of people dying. I think each and every one of us has empathy for everyone's deaths. No one likes to die. Its not just the so called "rank and file" that die, our leaders do as well. It seems to be the feeling I have been getting from reading this thread that its only the regular members who die. I ahve seen a flattened Bim and Omegga often, and my own toe hair has gotten muddy frequently from dirt naps. Its a frustration we all work through on raids.

Regardless of any healing strat employed, the end result will have to be that the main tanks are kept up, even if individual group members fall. If those main tanks fall then so do we all. I have seen a bit of chatter regarding the Cheal rot, but having been in the healing channel also, I have witnessed both cheal rots used and other heal strats used.

I have been on raids where mana was drained away by mobs. Group members died because every spare ounce of mana I had was being eeked out to help keep the tank and hopefully a cleric up. I have seen a tank get a quick zong from my heal when he was below 10% HP and it was just enough for the tank to stay up long enough for the cleric heal to land. Feel bad when I couldn't spare a heal for a group member and they died? You bet I did. I hate for anyone to die. I threw as many heals across the board as I could. But I think too many are relying on someone else to take care of them rather than looking for ways to help carry the burden.

What alternatives do you have to suggest Vdayan? One suggesstion I can pass along that Faremoni has long espoused and in fact uses himself is to bring along HoT pots. I know some of our pullers use them. As Omegga stated, all of us have to learn to be a bit more self reliant. I have brought HoT pots and used them when I could not spare mana to heal even myself. They are GREAT when hit with a dot, like the ones we have seen in Time and other places. It would be my thought that if everyone had a stack or so of their own HoT pots they could click them in emergencies, thereby assisting clerics or other healers with the time and mana to take care of thier duties of trying to help us win.

HoT potions may be fine for most but they are quite ineffective for a tank during a raid. I do use them when not engaged in battle and typically carry about 50 in my first potion slot. The best HoT heals for a max of about 769 hp every 6 secs. and averages more of about 700.
When you're getting hit for 1200+ every few seconds they just can't keep up and just consume another buff slot where perhaps a better heal could land.

Yorag, my intent was for those folks who don't take quite as much damage as the tank and are the support personnel, such as healers or other dps in the raid who are taking less damage that a HoT pot could be beneficial for.

Ikky 3

When in the room with the 4 golems the first time we did the raid, i was getting hit by a room AoE that keep breaking my FD. It was not a nice AoE, it was doing more damage a tick then my heal pot could heal so since they heal around 700 a tick I would guess the Room AoE was around 1k a tick. I was the only one in the room and was FD getting corpses, plus anytime someone else ran into the room and agroed the Golems the AoE went off then too.

This might have been what was killing people, like Vdayan that was not doing damage to the golems.

Excellent point Fulic. We are growing up in that our targets are harder. We had many of our usual raiders missing when we won Ikky3. It shows how much we depend on those with alts that can fill in and how important it is to work as a team on these raids.
Yurda you are right. This is supposed to be a "What can we do better" discussion not a "you did this wrong" one. Potions are a good idea as a back up for that heal that is about a second too late, but no one should have to rely on potions on a raid.
Everyone has had a great deal of useful information and thoughts for us to use as we formulate healing strategies for the harder raid targets to come. At the start of Ikky3 I got healing agro and died. Rather than make the raid wait for me to get mana, and to save a divine rez which would give back full mana, I chose not to rez the corpse. That is one of the options that sometimes seems best for the raid and is acceptable to me. Death is not the issue here, it is needless death or lack of communication. If there is a healer in a group and they are in a cheal rotation, letting the group know would avoid people feeling their healer was not paying attention or afk for the big fight.
As we move on to harder targets each responsibility needs to work as a team so that we have the best chance to succeed. Each healer sees their task a bit different and this can be used to create a strong efficient heal team where all do what they are strongest doing.
I think we need to start over and look at our strengths and build on them so that we become stronger as one of the vital parts of our raiding successes.

I want to be clear the suggestion of hot pots was not meant to take the place of true healing, but rather to be there as an emergency supplement to give the healer a chance to try to heal by hopefully keeping the wounded up extra moments.

Mana drain mobs, ...with those I am sucked dry of mana, and I can sit and try to med to regain the teensiest bit mana possible to cast one heal, then am out again....if someone is using a pot it may be just enough to keep them on their feet long enough for me to help.

Thats the point I am trying to make. Not that pots are the end - all solution, but that they are a tool which can be used in certain situations. Everyone should carry them for emergencies, clerics included.....clerics can take a quick swig for emergency hp boost in a furious fight which might be enough to keep themselves up long enough for a crucial heal to have time to land on the tank or anyone else and the best part is you dont have to switch targets to target yourself for a heal when you drink the pot. That means you dont have a delay in retargetting the tank or whoever you were watching oveer.

Yes heal pots are my best friend. On most every boss we fight at the first loss of 20% health i click a heal pot from my potion window. In long fights I may use up to 3 pots. I feel the less strain I am on the healers in my group the better chance we have at staying alive to make that hard kill. Some people may not have the plat to keep a supply of heal pots for a raid but that small amount of 30 plat for 2 pots to win a fight might be the time that item you wanted to bid on will drop. I think my supply of pots is low if I drop below 100. I have used upwards of 40 pots on a raid before.

Caeni wrote: Death is not the issue here, it is needless death or lack of communication. If there is a healer in a group and they are in a cheal rotation, letting the group know would avoid people feeling their healer was not paying attention or afk for the big fight.

I agree with the above, that seemingly pointless deaths are the most aggravating and frustrating. I was not going to comment on this topic but feel I need to, not to hurt anyone's feelings but to point out things we need to consider to minimize the number of deaths we all take.

Point in case: at ikky3 when we were on the 2nd try for the shammy mob, the named was killed and the shammy mob spawned. Had 2 healers in the group and a shammy. As the shammy mob was about 20% or so, the cleric mob spawned elsewhere in the room. Up to that time heals on me were perfect and there were no issues. When the cleric mob spawned, all of a sudden the healing stopped and eventhough I was not attacking, I still had agro :shock: . So I died then the shammies finished killing the mob. The only thing I can think of is that the clerics left to kill their mob thinking the shammy would heal me....well guess what?? the shammies were too busy killing and didn't think of healing since there were 2 clerics in the group and probably didnt realize the clerics apparently left. I am not sure why both clerics left, once the cleric mob was down to 25% or so, the tank should have been in agro mode only with no attacks until the clerics killed it. I asked what happened in group but all I got in response was dead air which was interpreted as "who cares". Ya, it was only one death but I seem to suffer a lot of them and some I feel are pointless.

Other seemingly pointless death scenarios occur even with trash mobs where we get a bunch of them and I use Vortex Blade to briefly capture their attention so others don't die and melees can come to help but I die almost immediately, the first and only death in the fight. This makes me feel like I need to die before some folks realize we are in a fight. I sometimes use the voice Heal command....usually it only goes to group but sometimes, if I know my healer is dead or LD/stunned/being attacked or something, I will use the voice Heal command to the raid hoping that anyone who hears it can help heal me. Sometimes it works...sometimes not.

Another scenario is when we have melees all seemingly vying for agro for each and every mob. The MA is supposed to keep the agro and for some of us, it is a challenge. Melees should set up their bandolier with both agro-procing weapons and non-agro weapons. Unless a melee is the MA, they should only switch to agro weapons when they need to grab and hold agro, the rest of the time the non-agro weapons should be used. I only bring this up since some groups will have 2 melees and a cleric and with some mobs, the time it takes a cleric to realize they need to switch heals to another person, cast and for the heal to land can result in a death..simply because someone refuses to put aside their agro-procing weapons.

I don't mean to hammer anyone here, only that we need to always be ready for the unexpected in raids and practice the things folks are advocating in this thread to do better to try and lessen the "needless" deaths. Let me know what I can change or do better in raids if you have comments.

Thanks.

Thank you Meboom. I truly appreciate your post and all of its content.

I have not replied further, because I was talking about all raids on the whole and NOT specifically about "new" targets or Ikky 3 last week.

Meggs, I agree with what you say on new targets, however, "what meboom said".

I have great respect for our leaders, however, I do not feel that healing strategies and trying to come up with efficient ones are regarded with importance. They should be.

Its not just about new targets, its about healing on every raid and needless deaths.

No, I do not feel that we should rely on healing potions as a method to heal. Rather healing potions should be ONLY a contingency, not the accepted norm.

I don't mind using a healing potion, but when i am draining my bank account to buy them so that I actually receive a heal of some kind on a raid, well that is a problem.

Again, I like you guys and I respect you. Healing strategies are as important to any raid as the attack strategy.

Meggs, i understand and agree with you on 'new" targets. I will say that a lot of people were not paying attention to what the strat you were trying to convey was last weekend. That contributed.

I have been having a hard time reading alot of these posts and not makeing smart alec comments that would only make things worse but maybe now that things have calmed down it will be ok to say that some of the people that are dieing repeatedly every raid are not supposed to have agro in the first place. As a cleric there is nothing as frustrating as being in a chrot and watching your group go down when all you can do is click your shield and hit darb to help them even when you have told them dont get agro i cant heal you. When I was living with Ivaan and raiding with tut he used to yell into the room and say get ready to heal me im going to nuke this thing (he was raiding with his wizzy then) i had to let him die several times before he stopped taking advantage of having a cleric in the next room to bail his butt out. So I guess what im trying to say is that not all of the deaths are faulty healing strategies but might also be atributed to people refuseing to control thier agro.

My main was Meeshka (ranger) but Caeni asked me to level my cleric, Ribbitta, so we would have more clerics in the raids. Since I try to make the raids but don't play for regular experience as much, my cleric has turned into my main toon.

I agree that we need more healers on the raids, but until we have more, we need to make do with what we have. I think the healing pots are an excellent backup plan.

My CH rotation strategy is to let my group know I am in CH rotation, and if there is another healer in the group, I ask them to heal the group. If there are enough clerics in the CH rotation, I also let my group know that I will use group heals when I can, but they need to be in range. (I can still keep MA as a target that way.) Unfortunately, we are normally so spread out that group heals only hit a couple of the people in the group. Quick heals have the farthest range, but if I do I quick heal on a group member, not only can I not see the MAs hp, but it takes time to target the MA again. Is there any way we could better organize the raidforce so the groups are in range for group heals?

No one wants anyone to die - it is frustrating and wasteful. The people who die, lose experience, aren't contributing to the effort, and can't contribute right away after they are rezzed. I feel guilty anytime someone in my group dies.

I believe Omegga does an extraordinary job in researching and coordinating the raids. We also have excellent pullers and tanks. Our other dps are also great, and the healers do their best to work together. Everyone in the raids is doing their part to the best of their ability. We need to keep doing what we do well, and improve on our strategies.

Ribbitta

Wow. Disappointment. Bards dont' draw aggro. I cant even grab aggro to kite. I try hard to. Aggro does not happen, at least with me. So that does not apply, at least in my case. Hmmm, a simple statement, no blame on clerics, everything MUST be ok with how everyone is healing right? So I guess we should not NOT try and think of ways to improve Healing and the strats for doing so?

Why is aggro pulled? Perhaps that is something that also needs to be looked at and addressed. I SURE am not drawing aggro, or even attempting to.

I am really disappointed in the assumption that those who die, such as myself, die because they pulll aggro and should not have it. I cannot pull aggro however hard I try. I never posted this thread to place blame on anyone. It was never my intent. With some un named clerics, I don't get healed at all on raids is what i was talking about and I am not pointing fingers at anyone. My intent was to make things better, come up with healing strategies and look at why heals do not happen (at times, in my case many times). I don't mind dying on a raid, but 5 times really is NO fun for me. I don't mine taking one or two for the team, but COME ON?

I really wish the discussion we held had been posted. It was about healing strategies. I am disappointed that it is not felt the topic is worth looking at further. The in game conversation we had that evening, was a good, very helpful and valid discussion that was totally lost. Many people made many good points that were lost. I did also post how to find the log.

As far as there being a shortage of clerics, we had 17 at the meeting. Where are they all on raids? Of a third showed up, we would be ok. I am very willing, I have said many times to play Tia but it is never requested. I wish it were. It certainly would help us all out, especially when we are knowingly short clerics on a raid. I also think Tia, should be considered a co main. I play the character that helps the group or raid out the best. That is why i have a 73 bard and a 73 cleric with equal AA's.

Warmest Regards,
Vdayan Windrider, The Keeper of Songs
Tiairia X`Lottl, Goddess of Evil