I found an addon named healers have to die. This is the best and must be addon for large scale PvP like BGs (rated and random) and especially for Tol Barad. It is extremely simple. You must enable enemy name plates, and the addon places a big + sign on some of the nameplates. They are the healers. As a DD you shall target and kill them. Hell, even as a healer you should target them and interrupt, CC them whenever you can.
OK, I found a good addon, it should be a one-line addenum to a normal post like “The Pug just killed X boss”. Why is it a post? Because of the insane amount of QQ spreading in the forums because of it. 26 pages of QQ and more 26, oh wait 26 more, not over yet, 26 more. I'm sure there is more QQ on blogs and other forums. I’ve haven’t seen so much since Blizzard wanted people to post with their real names. All are crying that it kills their game, there won’t be any more healers in PvP! You know, cheap, ban it!
Considering that I’m only playing a healer and PvP a lot, shouldn’t I be crying with them? I mean I will definitely die more because of this addon than before. No. I actually love this addon and spam /rw in TB for everyone to download it. It made huge effect on our Tol Barad. Previously the horde was defeated. Now they are devastated. I mean they attack and we hold 3 bases most of the time. Or they can’t drive a siege because they are not promoted as they can’t kill a single one of us. Of course the honeymoon period will be over when hordies download this addon too, the battle will be more equal and the horde will be “just defeated” again. More defeated than they were before the addon.
Why does it help us win more? Because it has very disproportional effect on me (healer) and hordie healer for two reasons. First is skill/preparation. I dropped inscription (I have 600K gold anyway, no point milling for hours to have 700K), and got blacksmithing. Socketed resilience to every yellow slot, int/resi to red ones, and stam/resi to blue ones if they had a worthy socket bonus, providing me 560 resilience from gems and enchants. Upgraded my trinkets instead of other armors as they have the highest resilience upgrade, (340 instead of 300), and of course have 2x2p bonus, netting me 4330 resilience. I also play offensively, kind of “hey here I am, catch me” style and then hug the pillars while 3-4 melee are chasing me over my earthbind totem. Of course, at the end I die, unless we wipe them very fast. But by the time it happened we won that battle.
So, this addon made PvP healing much more skill-based. PvE healers standing in the back and casting are dead before they finished their second spell. So the horde random healers will be much more impared by this addon than we are. This addon made PvP damage dealing also much more skill based. The one who has enough brain to not charge some random hunterpet but stand back near a healer and peel from him worth much more now.
Secondly, being killed and forced to pillar hug while your HP is dropping and you barely cast a spell is not "fun". Babysitting healers is not fun either. So the players who "play for fun" will find it “terribly broken”, just as they wrote in the QQ forums, while play-to-win players will come happily, as we are winning. I can’t care less if I died the most in the whole TB, I only care about the win. Everything that increase the value of skill and make the fight less “fun”, make the macro stronger as the lured randoms worth even less. Occu’thar, you are so ours!
M&S can't think competitively. If something affects them negatively, they hate it. However they should look how it affected their competitors. If we decrease hunter DPS by 10% and every other DPS by 20%, that's clearly a hunter buff, but M&S will still fill the forums with hunter QQ as they only see their 10%. This macro is a small nerf to good healers, and big nerf to bad ones. So it's a buff for us. Download, spread, enjoy!
PS: if you want to PvP in a guild that has healers, DD know to peel and do rBGs every week (and in increasing amount), join. Of course after reading the rules.
OK, I found a good addon, it should be a one-line addenum to a normal post like “The Pug just killed X boss”. Why is it a post? Because of the insane amount of QQ spreading in the forums because of it. 26 pages of QQ and more 26, oh wait 26 more, not over yet, 26 more. I'm sure there is more QQ on blogs and other forums. I’ve haven’t seen so much since Blizzard wanted people to post with their real names. All are crying that it kills their game, there won’t be any more healers in PvP! You know, cheap, ban it!
Considering that I’m only playing a healer and PvP a lot, shouldn’t I be crying with them? I mean I will definitely die more because of this addon than before. No. I actually love this addon and spam /rw in TB for everyone to download it. It made huge effect on our Tol Barad. Previously the horde was defeated. Now they are devastated. I mean they attack and we hold 3 bases most of the time. Or they can’t drive a siege because they are not promoted as they can’t kill a single one of us. Of course the honeymoon period will be over when hordies download this addon too, the battle will be more equal and the horde will be “just defeated” again. More defeated than they were before the addon.
Why does it help us win more? Because it has very disproportional effect on me (healer) and hordie healer for two reasons. First is skill/preparation. I dropped inscription (I have 600K gold anyway, no point milling for hours to have 700K), and got blacksmithing. Socketed resilience to every yellow slot, int/resi to red ones, and stam/resi to blue ones if they had a worthy socket bonus, providing me 560 resilience from gems and enchants. Upgraded my trinkets instead of other armors as they have the highest resilience upgrade, (340 instead of 300), and of course have 2x2p bonus, netting me 4330 resilience. I also play offensively, kind of “hey here I am, catch me” style and then hug the pillars while 3-4 melee are chasing me over my earthbind totem. Of course, at the end I die, unless we wipe them very fast. But by the time it happened we won that battle.
So, this addon made PvP healing much more skill-based. PvE healers standing in the back and casting are dead before they finished their second spell. So the horde random healers will be much more impared by this addon than we are. This addon made PvP damage dealing also much more skill based. The one who has enough brain to not charge some random hunterpet but stand back near a healer and peel from him worth much more now.
Secondly, being killed and forced to pillar hug while your HP is dropping and you barely cast a spell is not "fun". Babysitting healers is not fun either. So the players who "play for fun" will find it “terribly broken”, just as they wrote in the QQ forums, while play-to-win players will come happily, as we are winning. I can’t care less if I died the most in the whole TB, I only care about the win. Everything that increase the value of skill and make the fight less “fun”, make the macro stronger as the lured randoms worth even less. Occu’thar, you are so ours!
M&S can't think competitively. If something affects them negatively, they hate it. However they should look how it affected their competitors. If we decrease hunter DPS by 10% and every other DPS by 20%, that's clearly a hunter buff, but M&S will still fill the forums with hunter QQ as they only see their 10%. This macro is a small nerf to good healers, and big nerf to bad ones. So it's a buff for us. Download, spread, enjoy!
PS: if you want to PvP in a guild that has healers, DD know to peel and do rBGs every week (and in increasing amount), join. Of course after reading the rules.
Denethal found this specimen. Nice!
18 comments:
Erm healers have to die has been around since wrath. It could announce in chat the healer as I recall, but I never spammed it, I just used it to target the healers out of a pack, get into their faces and try to chain cc them.
It works and is effective, but I am surprised its only just come to your (and the forums) attention.
A really good post I read quite a while ago on the topic:
http://cynwise.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/healers-have-to-die-and-the-pvp-addons-arms-race/
How does the addon 'identify' the healers?
Here's a thought from the playing for fun side: I'm a warrior and I've been loving this addon big time. Before I got it I had to squint and lose valuable seconds looking for a healer and then sometimes get the wrong target anyway.
Now I get a huge "kill this dude" mark. I don't even have to think anymore.
Also, I'm under the impression that play-for-fun-peeps are probably not playing healers. Healers can't pwn. So I was very surprised to see all the QQ you linked.
P.S. HHTD is also useful in PvE if you are doing some new content or can't be bothered to remember which ones of the bigass trash pull are healing the others.
HHTD marks those folks who cast healing spells – not healers. => all classes that can heal should throw a heal out in/before a large battle just to fuck the hhtd of the enemies up.
Healers Have To Die is a useful addon for novice pvpers, but I doubt experienced pvpers will care much for it. For one thing, it is extremely quick to identify healers in a fresh battleground/TB just by looking at player frames. See a paladin with over 25k mana? Healer. See a druid with over 25k mana who is not in boomkin form? Probably a healer. If you aren't sure just check enemy frames for hots. If you see hots you have identified a druid healer. See a >25k mana shaman with water shield and/or an earthshield somewhere? Shaman Healer. See a priest out of shadow form (and without Vampiric Embrace)? Healer. Of course 5 minutes into a battleground a quick check of the stats reveals healers as well. A key characteristic of good UIs is avoiding information overload, and forcing people to turn nameplates on (either enemy or friend) may contribute more clutter than it's worth for experienced pvpers.
But there is one more very important oversight of the mod. Not... all.. healers.. are.. created.. equal. I play unrated bg's every day and regularly see healer A with 125k health and 100k mana and healer B with 90k health and 60k mana. (Figures accurate as of May 2011). At the end of the battleground Healer A has probably contributed anywhere from 5 to 10 times more health healed than healer B. Healer B is actually a drain on the success of the team; if someone else was present instead it would help the team more.
This mod puts the same mark on both healers and inexperienced dps will not distinguish between which one is important to neutralize. On the other hand experienced dps will understand that cc'ing a 60k mana healer is not even worth the time it takes to cast (just kill him) while chaining cc's on the fully geared healer is often more successful than focus fire (unless the numerical advantage is supreme).
What I am saying is that even with this mod circulating skill will still carry the day. Mods like this narrow the gap between skilled players vs. unskilled, but the gap is still most assuredly there. Blizzard has been building features into the stock UI that lower the gap as well (power auras, raid frames), so they appear to support reducing the gap. As such I can guess that they will be supportive of this mod.
No one is born a good PVPer; skill is developed through experience, practice, and work. Instead of crying about this mod, I would like to see more people in battlegrounds and TB take personal responsibility for their own skill development.
@Bobbins
it looks for healer specific spells being cast as well as healing done
It will also alert you to the healers on your team so you can protect them.
Be carefull, I think I read some time ago that in the next patch (4.2) Blizzard is going to kill that 2*2 pvp set thing with resilience, it's not going to be acumulative.
(Some mmo-online fan can confirm this)
"HHTD marks those folks who cast healing spells – not healers. => all classes that can heal should throw a heal out in/before a large battle just to fuck the hhtd of the enemies up."
A lot of people don't know this, but you can set up HHTD using the addon's options to only mark once a certain amount of healing is done.
As Eric said HHTD is a great addon for novice players and in chaotic situations where you don't have any chemistry with the players around you but for established arena and RBG teams it's mostly just useless UI clutter.
@Unheilvoll: Yes, 4.2 will do away with the 2x2p resil bonus. But the new PvP gear will also be coming in 4.2 so it really doesn't matter if you're set up that way now as you will be replacing your gear anyway when the change takes place.
As an aside, this post has me thinking about my PvP game of choice - Planetside.
Okay, okay, a lot of people question the relevance of Planetside these days, but it is still the only place where you see nothing but pure, gear-agnostic PVP on a massive scale. With that in mind, I see the distinction of Gav's "fun havers" and the people playing to win each night.
Specifically, Planetside is about tactical goals: you need to take a base or blow up a generator, you need to capture a tower or limit enemy spawns. Even so, however, it still has a Kills/Deaths meter - how many have you killed over how many times you've died. "Fun" players watch their K/D - or players who are, for whatever reason, out there to simply do the grunt work of grinding down the enemies each evening.
"Tactical" players ignore K/D and work from visible goals: you might get killed four times and kill no-one, for instance, if you run out and hack an enemy AMS.. but enemy footsoldiers spawn from that AMS, and your hacking of it denies them that spawn point and sews confusion.
Without a doubt, the tactical play is both more fun and more useful to those that uncover it - but Planetside is unique in having a role for both "fun" and "tactical" players: without the "fun" players, you wouldn't have sufficient force to accomplish any of the major tasks; without the "tactical" players, the "fun" grind will inevetably grind to a halt as they run across tactically difficult situations.
WoW PvP is like anything else in the game; since it is not gear-agnostic, and its goals are both narrow and short-time-bound, it has a steep entry curve, a long learning curve (as you can only PvP in short spurts), and a gear grind that makes marrying tactics and "fun" difficult.
Unfortunately, like most activities, there's no room at the top for someone to graduate from "fun" to "tactical" in WoW - guys like you, Gev, somewhat rightly say that those who don't have the experience and gear should stay the hell away, as leaping into PVP has no space for those that can't already do.
You realize, of course, that it's a catch-22, right? How do you get the next generation of raiders and PvPers if you can't pull them in with a trial or two?
You guys want to see the game as almost a job - you rightly laugh at morons, but I think often you mistake 'slackers' for those who are trying to learn in an environment hostle to them for doing so. In this, I applaud the PuG - y'all take anybody that can afford it, and bully for you - but I still wonder how the 'rest of us' can enter into activities dominated by and kept to exclusivity by those who have determined that the unskilled need not apply.
Translating to the real world: there's a reason corporations have internships and training programs. WoW hasn't got one built in, or, if it does, the "hardcore" subsume it and make entry stupidly difficult.
Good Post. I have always thought that as a Healer in PvP the decoy method was a huge asset. The crying over this silly hand holder add on is amazing, and disturbing.
Stay out of TB if you can't PvP well enough to justify your spot on high pop server/peak hours? That's plain sense. (I can't PvP and I q up at 3 am sometimes, or if my friends are in there and report I'd be better than most of the team which is running around the roads...)
Can't ever learn to PvP if you're not dragging down your team in TB? That's the only way to get PvP experience? Really?
Stay out of PvE raids way beyond your skill? That's plain sense.
Can't ever learn to PvE this way? Because 5man content, solo practice, entry level raids, etc don't exist?
The PuG having boost spots is actually a great example of a training program. Gevlon realized long, long ago that people who have the desire to win, but lack the experience because they joined late, will have a hard time finding others at their level to team up and work their way up (the way the first raiders did).
Ideally, all these people would find each other, form into reliable 10 or 25 raiding groups, and progress at their own pace. Since they'd be lucky to find even 3 other genuine newbies (not M&S) that raid on their realm and at their times, ones that join the PuG get a shortcut! They don't have to slowly progress to the top with players of equal level, they can get carried and instantly see firsthand how bosses are farmed by competent players.
I have a guild that's something like a training program, but on a low pop server without a huge amount of advertising and no progress to boast of, it's been slow. We had hoped we'd find newbies, introduce them to raiding, bring them along and hold their hands a bit if they want, and form a raid group.
We did find genuine casuals and newbies, and these were great. Lack of experience doesn't stop a newbie from reading EJ or practicing on dummies, and this is what they did (thanking us for all the advice, for giving them a chance even though they were inexperienced, etc etc). The problem was all the "newbies" and "casuals" who wouldn't even set foot in a raid because they refused to gem/enchant/reforge their gear, or tried one raid then were disappointed that we wiped because they'd never been in a group that couldn't faceroll the content before.
None of my guild's actual casuals and newbies had a problem with learning to PvE while not getting heroic-mode guilds to carry them. They learned fine without any sort of begging or leeching. A couple are at the point they probably would do fine (skill-wise, if not schedule-wise) in hm guilds. They did have help (grouping for 5mans, advice about websites) from me and other experienced raiders in the guild, but I suspect they would've done fine without us as well, it would just have taken them longer.
Can't ever learn to PvE this way? Because 5man content, solo practice, entry level raids, etc don't exist?
5man content is a joke when compared to raids, grinding a dummy is useful only if you have no idea about your rotation (and does nothing for tank/healer) and entry level raids actually do not exist at this point. They will be introduced only at 4.2 with nerfs to Cata Tier 1.
Military opportunity.
People are crying because someone noticed healers are vulnerable. No matter how hard they cry, healers won't stop being a weak link.
Basically this means healers are unbalanced - they have too much power relative to their HP pools, which means effort spent killing one has a better return.
Of course it also proves that even regular people are very like morons. They obviously know what to do, or the addon wouldn't help healers die. ("Derp, why would I kill healers?") But, without a neon sign, they can't find a healer if their life depended on it.
Their toon's life does depend on it.
(When I see someone's health go up, I look for the guy standing at the back not attacking. Apparently, this is a rocket-scientist level skill. I may decide not to use HHTD to continue to practice my situational awareness.)
"The counterargument to “only baddies use Addon X” is “only baddies don’t use Addon X,”"
It is tragicomic to me when people fail at formal logic.
The counterargument is, as I used, "Only baddies have to use Addon X." Which is true - before HHTD, healers didn't die. End of story.
Though I haven't been playing lately. I'm looking forward to a HHTD BG because I like defending healers. Partially cuz I'm bad at it, so it's a challenge. But I normally haven't; I end up not contributing to the battle, because nobody attacks the healer.
"5man content is a joke when compared to raids":
Depends on gear. Remember the first week of cata, when 5man heroics were referred to as "5man raids"? Yeah. Troll heroics are still useful for checking out whether a newbie is ready for reg Halfus or Conclave.
You're also assuming that not only do you overgear the 5man content, you're also doing it with 5 people. As far back as the same month Cata came out, hunters were soloing heroic 5mans. They (with their pets) had to do all the tanking, healing, and dps'ing for every encounter. I don't play a hunter, but I imagine that not all of the bosses were a joke, and required some amount of skill and class knowledge.
"grinding a dummy is useful only if you have no idea about your rotation (and does nothing for tank/healer)":
Tank rotations are necessary for threat. To be able to do it on autopilot, so your attention can be focused on adds, kiting, interrupts, sidestepping fire, what your group is doing, boss timers, etc is important, just like it's important for dps. Some healing specs also have "rotations," and like good dps'ers, good healers interrupt their "rotations" to adjust to the situation but do need to remember their buttons.
Target dummies can also be useful after you've once learned to do your rotation in your sleep, if you change something (like your UI or hotkeys) so that you can no longer do it in your sleep. Especially when a patch changes your skill priority, or when you change keybinds, your muscle memory can work against what you should be doing, and you will have to retrain yourself. Dummies aren't just for people who never played a class before.
I also meant solo practice as increasing relevant skills on your own. For example, jumping onto pillars for Nefarian p2 is a joke for most people. Some people, like me, have a hard time at first and miss the pillar or jump into it (not onto it). Those people can go to any area with land next to deep water and practice jumping out of the water.
Another example, I learned that the WoW server interprets forward/back movement differently from strafe movement. To practice moving mobs, I found non-elites with fairly large hitboxes and practiced backing them up, kiting them forward, and rotating them in place. When I got low on health, I killed the mob, healed up, and pulled another to practice more. This way I was more prepared when tanking and moving around mobs in raid encounters.
These examples have nothing to do with target dummies, yet they also involved no other players. (They were fun, too. Compare to wiping 9 or 24 other people repeatedly while practicing these same skills--not so fun.)
"entry level raids actually do not exist at this point. They will be introduced only at 4.2 with nerfs to Cata Tier 1."
No, it will simply be "old content," just like these days ICC is "old content." I meant raids as in raid groups who plan to go no further than one boss per raid instance and are designed for entry level raiders.
Those newbies who weren't ready for Halfus, I brought to reg ICC10. If t11 will be 4.2's "entry level raid," then ICC is today's "entry level raid" and thus an entry level raid already exists.
Some socials roll healers, they are few, and far in between, but they do roll healers. This is an interesting group, because all their buddies are rolling DPS.
Anyway, the fact of the matter is, all social tanks and healers share a disdain for pug dps. The easier job the dps have, the angrier they get, as in their eyes they made a "helpful" move by speccing healer, and should be rewarded as such.
What they don't realise is that Blizzard will only take action against this if M&S DON'T attack the healer using this addon, as that will result in somebody yelling at them for their stupid actions. There is a reason why the healers get stirred up so easily, this is because they already feel inferior to dps. As a smart commenter said in your M&S vs Ninja post, a social feeling inferior is a very angry social.
I always healed in BGs and I'm sure anyone else who has done this is familiar with how it works: if the other side does not focus on you then your team wins (or it turns into a protracted stalemate as neither team will attack the other's healers). So in that sense, I can see why people want this addon.
But the fact is that this addon can't make up for play skill. One very good rogue or one pretty good warrior could kill me. But there were times when three or four rogues/warriors/DKs would all be trying to kill me at the same time and failing to do so. What are these people going to do if, when I get low on health, some paladin BoPs me? They are going to continue to swing for four or five more seconds, then realize they are getting immune messages and leave to do something else around the time BoP is wearing off anyway, then come back five seconds later when I'm at full health.
I'm not saying this addon isn't helpful. I just think it's pretty easy to overestimate how much of a difference it will make. Knowing to target the healer, and knowing who the healer is, don't do a lot if you can't execute when you get there. As a PvPer develops skill, they should be developing situational awareness at the same time as they develop better control of their character. You need both - and this addon only helps with one aspect of one of them.
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