So, the Blogfather is away this weekend. Therefore, my ego demanded I took the top spot, as the official President of the European Paladin community. Hopefully, you'll enjoy today's blog, and as ever, any comments, criticism or complements will be accepted with the greatest (Paladin in Europe)/humility.

Top Tips to Improving your Healer play:

Now, you’re stuck. You’ve pushed hard, but you just cannot break 2k. What you really need to know is: How can I improve my play? It’s all very well blaming your partners and anyone but yourself, but there is always something you can be doing better. There’s a lot I myself need to work on, I’m perfectly aware of this. Recognising what you can do better though is always the first step to improving.

If you’ve ever wondered why so many low-rated players seem insecure and angry, to a much greater extent than good players, it’s because insecurity goes hand-in-hand with an inability to self-criticise. Instead of thinking “well, I could have positioned better to avoid that swap”, they’re thinking “OMG WARRIORS R SO OP”. That may be true, it may not, but regardless, there is always something you can do to make the situation more favourable.

General Tips:

1)     The most important part of playing a healer comes from practice – anticipating and dealing with damage. You need to be able to anticipate switches and prepare for them. That’s more of an insight than a tip, but it’s definitely the most important part of playing a healer, as your job is, primarily, to heal. Know when to use your fast heals, and when to use your big heals. Against a team such as elemental/destro/priest, pre-casting and cancelling your big heals can be effective (if you’re not liable to get interrupted by spell lock or wind shear). However, against Shadowcleave for example, it can be much more effective to simply spam your faster heals.

2)     Positioning Positioning Positioning. Never EVER be wasting movement, if you’re stood still doing nothing then you’re wasting a resource – movement time. If you’re playing a priest or druid against a warrior cleave team, you cannot afford to be stood out in the open, so get your instant casts up and move. Pillar positioning is an art form, you need to position just so – so your partners can efficiently peel off you and you can easily get away around said pillar. A classic example of good pillar positioning is in warrior/paladin mirrors. These are won by getting on the other paladin and dropping him. If you’re on the back foot, you should be by the pillar, so as soon as their warrior charges you, yours can charge him and you can completely waste their switching chance.

3)     Communication. Your teammates should always know what is happening. You should be calling whenever you’re controlled, and calling whenever you’re having problems keeping your teammates up. At least in 2v2, you can call when you want your partner to use his defensive CDs (for example, playing war/pal vs hunter/druid I’m going to spend a long time in control once they start it, so I’ll pretty much immediately call for a shield block when I’m put into freezing trap). Also, practice coordinating CC – more on this later.

4)     Know when you can play aggressive, and which comps you have to play very defensively against. Understanding how other comps play against yours is vital to understanding how you’re going to beat them. If you know they’re unlikely to switch onto you, and that you’re going to be the aggressor for a long period of time, you can chase their healer looking for the fear/HoJ/Cyclone/Shear. However, if you’re playing against a comp with much more potent WTF factor then you may need to be concentrating more on prehotting/preparing for the burst. A good example of this is playing the priest in an RMP against Beastcleave. There WILL be moments when you can afford to play aggressively, but on the whole you should be positioning carefully, and instead of attempting to align the fears, wait for the fear opportunity to come.

On a more class-specific level:

Priest:

1)     Experiment with using your defensive cooldowns. Personally, I’d advise staggering them rather than using them all at once. Don’t be afraid to use power infusion defensively if you feel that the extra healing will be needed. Pain Suppression earlier rather than too late, even if you get minimal use from it, that’s better than no use at all.

2)     Don’t just fear because you can. Unless you’re playing a very CC-heavy comp, blowing fear just because you’re next to the other healer is a waste. Instead, use it to multiply your pressure rather than to start it. If you have the enemy at 100% and you fear their healer, he might only drop to 50%, particularly if he’s fast using defensive abilities. However, if he’s already at 50% and expecting a heal to be incoming, that fear interrupting the heal makes their situation much more desperate, and means he’s likely to be that much slower using, for example, shield wall or divine shield.

3)     Know when aggressively dispelling is worthwhile, and when not. When playing my druid, I’ve seen some priests purging very badly, so instead of increasing pressure by removing my HoTs, they’ve actually helped me survive. This isn’t always a good rule, but I generally try to stick to purging only when the druid or the target is below 60%. That way, he’s trying to recover from damage, and has to heal more than the initial damage.

4)     Pre-Mass Dispelling may be fancy, but don’t go overboard with it. A lot of priests pre-dispell way too early, don’t be one of them. If they block at high health, then MDing it is pretty worthless, instead wait for the block/bubble at low health and that’s when you should have pre-dispelled instead of burning mana pointlessly.

5)     Use Shadowfiend when you have pressure. If you end up burning it late merely as a mana tool, then you’re not only making it more likely to get controlled, you’re also wasting the rather high amounts of damage it puts out.

Druid:

1)     The single most important thing that most druids do is nourish too much (myself included). Know when to Nourish, and when Cycloning will work better. Obviously, you need to keep track of when they’ve used their trinket, as otherwise you may end up cycloning only for the dps to trinket and kill the target. Simply put though, cycloning prevents their damage for 6 seconds, in which time you can get another two or three nourishes off with only one (instead of 2 in a 3v3 situation) DPS beating on the target.

2)     Don’t waste Barkskin, but use it early, not only when stunned. When switched to by a caster cleave team, a lot of Druids wait till they’re deepfrozen or shadowfury’d to use barkskin, but by then you can easily have lost 8k health. Get it out early, particularly if you’re positioned badly.

3)     Use travel form. This may see a no brainer, but I do my best to watch streams, and a lot of people streaming seem very reluctant to actually use travel form. Get a few HoTs up, then get into travel form and kite the damage off. You’re not a tank, you’re a druid. You particularly shouldn’t be casting (cast-time spells) much with DPS on you, as unlike other healers, you don’t have a talent reducing interrupt/silence length, so you’re punished more if you screw up your fake-casting.

4)     NS early rather than late. Depends on your comp, but myself I like to use NS early to deal with a switch rather than waiting for my target to be beyond help. Similarly, don’t be afraid to NS that cyclone if you’re pretty sure it’ll cause a lot of pressure. I won a lot of games yesterday on the NS-Cyclone.

5)     Use roots in 3v3. I’m serious, it is useful. So many druids slack on the control in 3s, thinking they’re only there as a healer. If they only wanted a healer, they’d be using a paladin. Get that dps roots’d, particularly if your team has a lot of trash buffs/UA.

Paladin:

1)     The number one thing I’m tiring quickly of paladins doing is using sacrifice merely as a crowd-control breaker. You don’t have pain suppression, but sacrifice is the next best thing. Chuck your sac effect up, watch your own health but enjoy the reduced burst on their nuke target. I mentioned it last blog, but I really want to hammer this idea home.

2)     Once again, use your cooldowns early. I don’t mean bubble (those of us who played paladin in TBC realise that bubbling far too early is almost as bad as bubbling too late. It’s not a mitigation effect like shield wall, it’s an immunity, you can wait before using it). However, use Aura Mastery early if you’re the only player on the team to benefit from the use of it. If you’re playing with a caster, still be greedy with Aura Mastery. You’re more important than them.

3)     Protect your pleas. Don’t use it on CD, but use it when you have pressure. That means you’re less likely to get Zilea’d and have it dispelled before you can LoS. Also tell your partners you’re intending to plea, they may be able to control any dispeller on the other team.

4)     Position aggressively if your comp will let you. If you’re playing a high-pressure comp such as beastcleave or TSG, then get in the middle of the action, get that JoJ/HoJ down and do your bit. I played against a good beastcleave yesterday, but the paladin was way too defensive and suffered for it. A good idea can be to divine sac early for damage reduction so your team drops slower, and take the opportunity to play aggressive.

Shaman:

1)     Positioning is more important, in my opinion, on a shaman than on any of the other healing classes. You’re not much more durable than a priest or druid (if at all), but you rely on using your wind shear/purge, they really are your main tools. Find a balance between a good aggressive position and a position you can effectively escape a switch onto you with. Take advantage of ghost wolf in this respect.

2)     See point 3 under Priest on Aggressive dispelling.

3)     Pre-HoT using riptide. So many shaman don’t, but it is worthwhile. The HoT may not be fantastic, but if you have it, why not use it?

RMD – A comp with some potential?

Last night, I found some randomers to play some RMD with. I haven’t really played Druid much this season beyond an early rush as war/ret/druid. I ended up, after some testing, with a mage who hasn’t really played in WotLK but was, I’m told, excellent in TBC, and a decent enough rogue who although is not perfect, has that very important talent of being able to listen to what he’s told.

The comp plays very differently from RMP most of the time. You’re not going to play in such a rushdown manner, instead you’re going to concentrate on coordinating CC between the druid and the mage. You have a huge advantage in that although you have three relatively squishy targets, you have the capacity to keep two players controlled for a good 80% of a game. One thing I would note though is that you can play rushdown effectively, don’t shy away from it like I instinctively did.

Specs:

Rogue: I’d advise Envenom here as you’ll find yourself sitting on warriors a fair amount of the time. However, it’s very possible to succeed with plain muti/prep. Heightened Senses is a must, because you really do want to sit on enemy rogues.

Mage: Pure and simple, frost. I haven’t tested arcane yet, but the reduction in novas could probably damage the playability of the comp.

Druid: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0EG0zbZZf0IubuxrdA0sio

Different from your standard Druid build in that I really would advise having 5/5 Starlight Wrath. You will often find yourself wanting to play aggressively, so those fast-casting wraths are the be-all and end-all.

Tactics:

Vs RMP:

I’d give a good RMD a 50/50 chance here. You don’t have the same capacity to burst their rogue down as they do, but you have so much more control. Begin sheeping priest and cycloning mage, switch CC, and pressure their rogue hard. Use blind early if they use a trinket. Keep your rogue fully HoT’d (it plays different to an RMP mirror in that they cannot really go on your healer, as you have much more lastability than a priest in this situation and it’s much easier to escape their damage with travel form.

Vs WLD:

Very, very easy. Sit on the lock hard and CC warrior. Switch warrior, CC lock. Roots warrior reswitch. Either score a kill by RNG or by outlasting their druid’s mana. Not at all difficult if you prepare for their bstorm. One RNG factor from the pet dispel on polymorph, but with winter’s chill and faerie fire up, any lucky RNG should be recoverable from.

Vs Beastcleave:

Strangely, you have a much easier time of it than RMP, probably because of Druid healing being better in this situation. We generally sit on the shaman CC hunter/healer, but you can switch. You also have great turtling possibilities, don’t be afraid to turtle and go for a pet kill. You should have a good 50-60% chance against an equally geared/skilled beastcleave.

Vs Elemental Shaman:

I’m not kidding, Elemental Shaman teams seem to be the biggest counter to RMD. Of all our losses, about 80% of them were against elemental shaman teams, mainly Ele/War/Pal and Ele/Hunter/Druid. If they have a vulnerable healer, try to drop him (as we did the Druid against the second named team). If not, go on the other member, as we had real problems stopping the shaman’s damage even fully tunnelling him.

Vs Castercleave:

If Warlock/Mage then go Warlock and control the others. If Warlock/Shaman go warlock again :P If Mage/Shaman then regrettably you’re on the shaman. Quite beatable to be honest, you have enough control to make their lives a pain. I’d even go as far as to claim that RMD was a soft-counter to most castercleave teams (although warlock/mage is the hardest due to their two long-duration interrupts).

Vs TSG:

Quite a difficult game to play (No game as RMD is easy though). You need to get sufficient control out early and sit on one of the melee, and switch with switched CC. If they manage to get both DPS onto any of you for >5 seconds you’re likely to lose. Even if it’s on the mage, blocking means no control while in block, which means you’re going to lose. RMD is, by and large, a control based comp.

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World of Warcraft, Arena, Priest, Shaman

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