BTW Kerruul, the reason I havent stole aggro on Broodlord the past few weeks is that I start eating blast waves at 40%.
I'm pretty sure that broodlord's deaggro is a single target attack on the current MT. If the blastwave was an AoE deaggro, he'd be literally impossible to tank.
I.e. you don't need to (i.e. shouldn't) eat a blastwave on broodlord.
The drake's wingbuffet attack on the other hand is a frontal cone AoE which you can eat for aggro reduction.
Make your other healers step it up and cover more of the healing.
And also realise that just because you CAN heal for a ton doesn't mean you should. Your other problem sounds like you heal for too much on transitions (whether it's because no-one else is healing- in which case they need to step it up- or because you just time better and get in a split second before other people's heals would land anyway, I can't say without being there).
I helped out a new raid group with their first Onyxia kill yesterday and had exactly this problem. I wasn't using any consumables whatsoever, I just outgeared everyone and (more to the point) healed better.
First attempt I came in for, I died on the transition after it took the tank over a minute to get aggro on phase 3 Ony, ankhed up immediately after a flame breath once the tank had solid aggro and it seemed there was a chance of grinding out the kill, moved out of the way, potted, and recommenced duties. I got healing aggro by 25% or so anyway.
Second attempt, I died at 25% (and still most of my mana) after someone got tailwhipped into the whelps and I got swarmed, the remaining 15 or so who survived that that limped in the rest of the way... and I was #1 on the healing meter for effective healing done despite being dead for the last 8 or so minutes of the 24 minute fight (and despite throwing a lot of lighning bolts in stage 2 and even a few in stage 1). The #2 was a priest who lived the entire fight, got at least 2 innervates, and was in 5/8 proph + benediction (so not a bluebie in devout). No-one else was even close.
I would say my standard strategy is reasonably similar to yours. I use HW 5 or 6 at a regular rate (mostly 5 on stuff like Ony), LHW 6 to react when needed for spot heals/tank transitions/unexpected spikes, chain heal when justified (ie. melee in phase 1 nef, triple ancestral procs ftw), and I like to time a nice high-rank HW to land right after a predictable spike such as a shadowflame or a chromaggus breath.
In my regular guild raids, this works fine, keeps people alive, etc. I don't take the -threat talents on the basis that I never get healing aggro on anything but untanked adds, even when tanks go down I'm usually behind a couple of our best druids or priests, and in any case better me than most due to the mail/shield/ability to heal myself issue that Gurg brought up. I'd rather a wymrguard come over and try me until a tank can get it back rather than said wyrmguard one-shotting a bunch of cloth-wearers.
If you were having trouble on broodlord due to multiple tanks dying, the tanks dying is your problem (and points to a failure of your other healers to react well enough or to keep all the tanks topped off). As for healing on transitions, you can't have one person doing 2k of healing in the first few seconds; you need to have 4 or more people healing for about 800 each. If you're routinely being killed by Nef on the phase 2 landing, Razor once he breaks control etc. you're healing too much too early as he lands and need to stop doing that. If you NEED to do it because no-one else is making those early heals, make other people do it. Go on holiday for a weekend if need be so you don't need to feel guilty if the raid wipes because you didn't do 3k of healing in the first five seconds of Nef phase 2.
I'm an efficiency nut, so a lot of the time I'm casting Heal2, or Gheal1 (2.5s casts) repeatedly and canceling when necessary. Since we have paladins in raid - they're often using their msot efficient spell, flash of light (1.5s cast) - which heals for enough that my heal2 or gheal is almost entirely overheal. Frankly, there are times when I've said to hell with it w/ regard to trying to slip a heal in under our paladins, and I simply look elsewhere.
Each point of healing causes 0.5 threat, forgetting threat modifiers. Overhealing doesnt cause threat. Most buff spells cast on friendly players generate a small amount of threat. Gaining Power (Mana / Energy / Rage) also causes threat in most cases, for example taking a healing potion, or gaining rage from Bloodrage, or Energy from Thistle Tea. Certain spells are exempt, for example mana from Blessing of Wisdom or a Mana Spring totem doesnt cause threat, and there is no threat from the healing gained from Siphon Life. For normal abilities, each point of Mana is 0.5 threat, Rage is 5 threat, and Energy is unknown, probably 5. In the scheme of things, threat from power gain is usually irrelevant, unless you have consistent or burst values, such as taking a mana potion or having Fel Energy running.
These forms of buffs all have infinite range; they will cause threat to all mobs on whose threat list you are on. Furthermore, the threat caused is split equally among all the affected mobs. If you are on one mobs threat list, a 1000 point heal will cause 500 threat to that mob. If 5 mobs are aware of you, the same heal will cause 100 threat on each mob.
So basically you can spread aggro 2 ways
1) across multiple mob aggro lists when they're available
2) across multiple healers when there is only one mob
Concerning 1, that's simply something you can start doing on your own.
But in regards to 2, according to what you've said, "Now speaking to a few other priests gave me another insight. If I am in there group, they stop healing the tank (as I can keep it up fine and anything they do is overheal), and instead start spot healing raid-wide."
Course, there could be other reasons, but I deduce this is the root of your problem; whether they choose not to heal your target in tandem, or you won't allow them to. Whether you're being forced to heal too much, or you're just trying to. These things also pertain to raid composition and strategy. I mean #4 on Broodlord when he's at 10% with Tranquil Air and Healing Grace and Subtlety? Can you do the math on how much effective healing that translates to for one person? Just ridiculous. Look at the effective healing meter and you must be doubling the 2nd place healer in order to create that much aggro. In our raid everyone is spread out pretty evenly in a steadily descending manner, including one of our Shamans with an Augur Staff who almost never pulls aggro.
Our EHM looks like this most of the time on fights where aggro matters:
Priest 100k
Priest 95k
Shaman 90k
Druid 85k
Shaman 80k
Etc.
This definitely would not allow a lone healer to be #4 on Broodlord.
Also the "Death" thing could be attributed to not using a shield. The shield is a Shaman's best friend! You can't do everything Gurgthock mentioned without a good shield, not even healtank in desperation.
I realy cant understand how is possible to take so much healing aggro. For example i am a shaman and almost every raid i am top 5 in effective healing and i rarely ( almost never ) take aggro, and said this i dont have Healing Grace talent.
My theory is this. Your method of starting a heal and cancelling if the tank takes no damage makes certain you are going to be the one with the first heal on target. If you are spamming fast heals and landing them first, and the other healers are cancelling their heals to avoid overheal, then all the healing threat will be on you. In this manner you get in the lead and stay in the lead, because you are beating them to the heal. If you skip a heal cycle and let someone else land a heal on the MT, then they will build up threat. I bet if you run healing meters you will see you are far ahead of everyone else. So instead of spamming heal every 2.5s and cancelling, maybe go one heal every 2.5s and alternate landing heals with another healer. My druid with his slow heal will come in late to the plate every time if you are spamming 2.5s heals. I think in general the healing meters are going to favor classes with quick cast heals and people who spam them.
As ex-healing leader for my guild i have seen the same thing - and tried to deal with it.
Its almost always shaman - they have fast heals and usually don't have any debuffing or other jobs to do when healing.
In my view the "healing hero" has several negative effects:
- Agro (as noted - this often makes a wobbly fight tip over into a wipe because the target runs off in an unexpected direction, into the heal pack...)
- Vast consumable bills (this is a raid issue in that if one healer is swigging 6 Major mana pots in a long fight others probably are getting into a bad habbit of not using any...)
- Either:
Demoralises the other healers ("i can't land anything but overhealing when teamed with X ... pass the TV remote")
or
Causes stupid inefficient healing to "compete"
At the end of the day its a trust issue - if the shaman feels he has to do 20% of the raids healing because the rest of the heal team won't pick up the slack if he doesn't - thats a trust problem (it may be justified, in which case its a guild issue or it may not - in which case the shaman needs to spend some time in a dps support/healing role to give the other healers a chance to show they can step up.)
As a druid healer ... in this kind of situation i just tend to sit back ready to dump NS+Big heal until others mana starts to run out - HoTs are pointless as the target will be being spammed to full health between each tick, and 3 sec heals are only usful in encounters where enemy cast bars allow you time time them exactly.
As was pointed out above, this can be an advantage. I find healing aggro as exceptionally useful on complex multi-mob fights where loose mobs hitting healers is a real possibility. Part of my job-description as a feral druid is to protect the main healers from adds when I am in a healing role. Shamans can do the same thing.
To avoid it, you want lots of healers using moderate to small heals at first instead of people using thier larger heals. Spread out the aggro, keep the same hps. The raid healing efficiency will also increase using this tactic. The temptation is often to go aggressive on healing as an individual early in the fight. However, unless you WANT to be the aggro magnet for control purposes, it will cause stuff to hit you occasionally. Nothing spells aggro-love like a druid or shaman doing a NS heal early in the fight because they panic when the tank goes low. You need to be able to trust the raid healing team as a whole so that you do not need to do this on a pull.
From a tank perspective, multi-mob/multi-tank encounters are sometimes frustrating in terms of healing aggro. If a warrior/druid misses the mob at first then a simple taunt may not be sufficient to retain aggro since you have minimal rage and you need to exceed the healer's aggro by 10% or so before the taunt wears off. It may be a tank issue instead of a pure healing pattern issue.
From a tank perspective, multi-mob/multi-tank encounters are sometimes frustrating in terms of healing aggro. If a warrior/druid misses the mob at first then a simple taunt may not be sufficient to retain aggro since you have minimal rage and you need to exceed the healer's aggro by 10% or so before the taunt wears off. It may be a tank issue instead of a pure healing pattern issue.
Recently (1.11.x), the behaviour of Taunt has been buffed slightly. It now does three things:
1) Taunt debuff. The mob is forced to attack you for 3 seconds. Later taunts by other players override this.
2) You are given threat equal to the mob's previous aggro target, permanently. Importantly, you won't necessarily get as much threat as the highest person on the mob's list, only as much as whoever is currently tanking it.
3) You gain complete aggro on the mob at the instant you taunt. Usually you would need 10% more threat to gain aggro (see section 3), but a taunt now gives you instant aggro on the mob. Of course if other people are generating significant threat on the mob, they could exceed your threat by more than 10% before the taunt debuff wears off, and will gain aggro as soon as it does. There is no limit to the amount of threat you can gain from Taunt.
I.e. taunt eliminates the need to exceed the 10% margin - if it lands.
As to heal aggro in multimob scenarios, if your tank understands how to play the multiple mob threat to his advantage, it can often be *easier* to hold aggro in a multimob scenario. This is because heal threat is divided by the number of mobs on your heal target's threat list. This is exactly why it is possible to train most of the razorgore adds using demo shout and never lose aggro to the healers.
BTW Kerruul, the reason I havent stole aggro on Broodlord the past few weeks is that I start eating blast waves at 40%. ;) Not true for Razor or Nef stage 2. Both ate my face Sunday. As did Skeram, Yauj, Vem, and 3 Fankriss worms.
Been meaning to correct this perception in guild. The blast wave has no de-aggro effect. It's the knockback he does to tanks (Which is why tanks stand in the corner) that does the deaggro. I've had to correct a couple rogues in the past who got high on aggro on the very point.
If it was an AOE deaggro the fight would be trivial: Have everyone stand in the blastwave and heal through it. It'd essentially be time lapse chromag without the 2nd breath.
I.e. taunt eliminates the need to exceed the 10% margin - if it lands.
Almost but not quite. You get to keep the threat from taunting. But if you don't exceed 10% of the current target's (pre-taunt) threat then that target will regain aggro after your taunt wears off. But now you only have to generate the "small" delta between your current threat level and 10% over the target with aggro, whereas before you would lose all the threat gained if you didn't get over 10%.
This, for example, makes it easier to pick up a boss after an MT dies. Have whoever gained aggro stop, you taunt, and at "worst" (well worst is something like firemaw where the AOE/shadow flame wtfpwns the raid, but ignoring that...) said target dies and you gain aggro next.
It's a nice buff, make no mistake, but it doesn't eliminate the basic facts of aggro mechanics: To steal aggro you need 10% (in melee range, 30% outside) of the current aggro target's threat.
I essentially use the same healing strategy as you, and while sometimes the aggro issue backfires sometimes, if you use it to your advantage it can be very useful to the raid in general. I generally start ramping up heals before tanks start taking damage, and then cancel if they don't or let it go if they do, and essentially spam heals for as long as I can (switching between Rank 1 Flash of light and Rank 6, depending on healing needed, with the odd jump up to top rank Holy Light for people that took alot of burst).
It's a little different as a pally, since I can wear plate, but a shaman can survive through some serious beatings almost as well.
The places I tend to notice myself getting aggro the most is on post-TE trash and the 4-abom pulls in Naxx. I've gotten pretty used to tanking 1-2 mindflayers for a good 10 seconds here and there on those trash pulls, as they MC the warriors tanking them and most of the time my priest is usually pretty thankful for it (for it to be hitting me and not her).
Almost the same thing with the aboms... a warrior gets a missed sunder/etc. and then warstomped and that abom often comes straight towards me so I run it out of the raid and take my 3-4 hits until the warrior gets there and pulls it off.
While admittedly it's kind of scary on say the Drakonid's in BWL (and those aboms if more than one comes O.O), it's almost always alot better to be taking the beating in plate/mail vs. a druid in leather or a priest in cloth... while still being able to heal yourself through it and often giving your warriors a chance to pick up the mob they missed.
[W:From] [Daorchuntard]: your my hero
[W:From] [Daorchuntard]: sick mount lol
The main reason you will pull aggro less by taking the blast wave is because you will spend that much less time doing something that causes threat.
Just for the record, I think this fact is being promulgated in purely circular fashion. We first saw it claimed by Gurgthock on these forums, and now we're propagating again in the same place. Where did it originally come from? Also, I'm pretty sure Kenco would dispute.
07/31/06, 8:27 PM
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