Atkins
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Triage - 2005/10/19 17:46
This is part of a draft article on healing. Please provide corrections, comments and questions. Thanks.
Sometimes healing a group is easy. Sometimes healing requires good reflexes and quick prioritizing of whom to heal (also known as “triage”). This means sometimes you must let one player die in order to adequately heal another rather than trying and failing to heal both. Decide in advance on priorities you can explain in a logical way when asked “Why didn’t you heal me?” so they don’t think you bear them ill will or are trying to “teach them a lesson” (unless you are doing so, which is only appropriate when a player has ignored repeated clear warnings to stop jeopardizing the group by pulling too many enemies or taking too much aggro).
Triage involves dividing players who need heals into 3 levels of priority based on class, current health, damage being taken, and tactical situation:
(Triage 1) Those who NEED to be kept up and also CAN be saved with immediate healing. Both conditions must apply. The main tank and healers need to be kept up, but if there is not enough time to save them immediately move on to heal a Triage 1 patient.
(Triage 2) Those who can be saved and continue to tank, damage or heal, but there is time to heal them after Triage 1. Most patients fall in this category.
(Triage 3) Those who probably can’t be saved or who can’t contribute much if saved. Examples are tanks there is not time to save and heavily injured mages out of mana – Triage 1 and 2 patients can become Triage 3 patients if healing is delayed. Putting a lot of healing on terminal patients with heavy aggro creates added healing aggro and serious risk for you when the patient dies. This can create a situation where you need to keep pouring heals in because you will be mobbed if your patient goes down (the “Mage aggro trap”).
* Check your own health frequently (or use overhead scrolling combat text). If you have serious aggro, healing yourself just makes things worse – it is better for you to stop healing and have a backup healer patch you up in order to avoid adding more threat, although sometimes you don’t have the time or HP left to wait. If you are soulstoned, OOM and near death, at times it is better to die and resurrect immediately IF that is needed to turn the fight around.
* Healers should help heal each other, mainly a secondary healer healing a primary healer. Don’t be an aggro miser – share the hate.
* Focus on healing tanks even if they have healing spells. It is not safe for a Druid tanking in Bear form to shift out to heal. Shamans and Paladins need their mana to cast spells that help tanking – they may heal themselves at times to help create Threat or relieve their healer, but this risks loss of aggro control. They are the “meat shield” between the mobs and the group – their health is the main healer’s responsibility. You do not need to keep them topped off – indeed, healing all the health you can creates additional healing Threat – but you do need to keep them alive.
* Intelligent Hunters and Rogues usually need only occasional light heals. They can do damage as long as they are alive, and they can feint, vanish, or feign death to lose aggro and give time to heal. They are rarely Triage 1, and when they are a small heal is often enough to let them shake off aggro. Because these classes can defend themselves and escape, your healing priority must be those classes that can’t.
* Mages and Warlocks are important patients. Mages do a lot of damage until their mana is low, at which point they can still have value for crowd control. Sometimes the best thing to do with an OOM mage who pulled a lot of aggro is to let him die rather than trying to save him and seeing the mobs come for you once the Mage falls.
* Warlocks are special because they can draw health from their enemies and can convert health into mana by life tapping. In order to take advantage of their combat regeneration, smart Warlocks life tap once or twice if their health is full and their mana is partly down. By spending more of their health they can obtain ample mana to do damage, and healing an OOM Warlock to enable him to life tap and continue doing damage is an efficient way of converting your mana into damage on target (this multiplies your healing ratio by their life tap and damage ratios). Warlocks tend to have high health, so I encourage Warlocks to life tap reasonably and leave room in their health bar for me to throw them a cheap efficient heal if I can spare one. Listen for the distinctive sound of a life tap and don’t be unduly alarmed by a Warlock’s health unless it is headed below half health (around 2000-3000 health for a well equipped 60 Warlock).
* Monitor players, not pets, and heal pets last unless the pet is the party tank. Pet owners can heal their pets or resummon them in combat, but that takes time from DPS. Heal pets doing crowd control/off-tanking first, then damage pets.
Post edited by: atkins, at: 2005/10/20 08:51
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