The dark days of Pre TBC

[Ignus]

When I started really playing was the week of the naxx patch release. I was like "wha? I have no idea what any of these changes mean, and wtf is naxx? oh well, it looks kewl, guess I'll find out later"

I rolled pally as an alt to learn the game, was gonna roll blood elf mage when exp. hit. Ended up at 60 about 2 months before the scheduled release and got into a huhuran clearing guild eventually. I was 20/0/31 ret up until they released the new prot information. I was going to try to make ret pally work, but the sheer wall of hatred faltered my resolve, and I decided, upon seeing the new prot talents and abilities coming in 2.0, to learn everything about tanking, get tanking gear, and practice tanking. So I was pretty damn gimped for a couple transitionary weeks there, I do remember going to the 2.0 test realm and reaming scholo though, we pulled the entire room of those student things that required the pandora's box quest to actually kill normally or something, I was laughing my ass off at how ridiculously good it was.

But back in pre TBC, I healed in raids, it was the only thing ANY hybrid could do. RL's didn't want a hybrid, they wanted 2 specialists. Feral was on the level of ret, shadow was also on the level of ret, OOMkin was worse than it is now, basically any hybrid class that did not stay in their healing tree was dead weight.
That being said though, right before TBC came out paladins were the most ridiculously overpowered healers in the game. In naxx gear we could downrank to rank 1 flash of light becuase there was no downranking penalty at the time, and just spam that, which would heal for something like 2k damage. (and at the time, 8k life on a warrior tank was like OMG HAX.) so all you needed was a bunch of paladins casting a 40 mana spell that regenerated 1/4th of the tanks life every 1.5 seconds. and, since there was MP/5 and spell crit, along with free crit heals, basically it was impossible to run out of mana. I had a paladin in t3 spam FoL on me in ironforge to see what the t3 set bonus special thing did, and I was receiving ridiculous heals, and I swear, his mp bar moved one frame sliver every 15 seconds.

I love TBC so much though, hybrids are no longer second rate citizens, raid encounters are actually interesting, so much has improved so vastly to make the game completely playable. As the other guy was saying, coming back to the post TBC pally and seeing what they can do, you ask yourself if it's a different class entirely.

Also, there were like 5 active prot pallies on any given server max. Dorvan was apparently one of them. As he said, it was mostly 5 mans, and the gimpness of paladin tanking was beyond doubt.

[Worldie]

I hated huhu and still tops the hated list, but had to get thru her to get to the top of the list most fun fight in C'Thun.

My reminding of Huhuran was:

- You gain Innervate
- You cast Prayer of Healing
- You cast Prayer of Healing
- You cast Prayer of Healing
- You cast Prayer of Healing
- You cast Prayer of Healing
- You cast Prayer of Healing
- You cast Prayer of Healing
- You cast Prayer of Healing
...

(i player a NE priest before TBC)

[Shuv]

for braindead healing the award HAS to go to redHeart...install it, then spam your FoL button nonstop, switch up for HL when 3 or 4 people get below 60% health.

What this mod did was look at your priority list which you set by class and assign weightings to those classes. Then it would figure out who was more important to heal based one either # of health missing, # of health left, or % of health left...you pick which one. To top it all off, you could tell it how much overhealing % to allow. The mod would automatically select the appropriate rank of heal to cast for whichever spell you were trying to cast...AND it would automatically cancel casting if you hit the button again and someone else healed your target. We're talking spam a button all raid long and end up as top 3 or 4 effective heals with less than 2% overheal over the duration of an entire 40 man raid...

Maybe it's a good thing that those mods are no longer usable...I think I might have stopped playing if I was just spamming a button and waiting for my decursive list to light up for 4 hours every day for too much longer, but ah the memories.

[cdan]

DKP in 40 man content was also a lesson in patience. Probably got 1 drop in a couple hundred hours of raiding.

[Exodius]

Well, I am glad they took the majority of heal botting mods out of the game, and have also made encounters where the healers can't just stay still, Void Walker being a great example off the top of my head.

People still do use mods, decursive still exists, but it's now a macro program basically if I understand it right.

Grid will show you everyone's health, and can show you HoTs active on people...

But it does take skill as a healer in my opinion to be able to do your job well. Those mods are not doing anything that a player can't do, and you still need to actually target and choose a rank manually.

That's why I like healing... it's just I have come to love tanking more.

[Sabindeus]

for braindead healing the award HAS to go to redHeart...install it, then spam your FoL button nonstop, switch up for HL when 3 or 4 people get below 60% health.

What this mod did was look at your priority list which you set by class and assign weightings to those classes. Then it would figure out who was more important to heal based one either # of health missing, # of health left, or % of health left...you pick which one. To top it all off, you could tell it how much overhealing % to allow. The mod would automatically select the appropriate rank of heal to cast for whichever spell you were trying to cast...AND it would automatically cancel casting if you hit the button again and someone else healed your target. We're talking spam a button all raid long and end up as top 3 or 4 effective heals with less than 2% overheal over the duration of an entire 40 man raid...

Maybe it's a good thing that those mods are no longer usable...I think I might have stopped playing if I was just spamming a button and waiting for my decursive list to light up for 4 hours every day for too much longer, but ah the memories.

We used RDX for that.

But yeah it's a good thing they changed the UI mechanics to disallow that. It was dumb.

[Fridmarr]

for braindead healing the award HAS to go to redHeart...install it, then spam your FoL button nonstop, switch up for HL when 3 or 4 people get below 60% health.

What this mod did was look at your priority list which you set by class and assign weightings to those classes. Then it would figure out who was more important to heal based one either # of health missing, # of health left, or % of health left...you pick which one. To top it all off, you could tell it how much overhealing % to allow. The mod would automatically select the appropriate rank of heal to cast for whichever spell you were trying to cast...AND it would automatically cancel casting if you hit the button again and someone else healed your target. We're talking spam a button all raid long and end up as top 3 or 4 effective heals with less than 2% overheal over the duration of an entire 40 man raid...

Maybe it's a good thing that those mods are no longer usable...I think I might have stopped playing if I was just spamming a button and waiting for my decursive list to light up for 4 hours every day for too much longer, but ah the memories.

We used RDX for that.

But yeah it's a good thing they changed the UI mechanics to disallow that. It was dumb.

For the most part, I enjoyed healing for new content, but the flash spam just got absurd and when the content was on farm status, then it was brutal. I think Patchwerk was the straw that broke the camels back for me, once you killed him, that quickly became the most boring fight ever.

[Dragonzbane]

You missed another "great" UI feature they've since outlawed: Emergency Monitor-style addons. It was possible to bind a click or button to heal the top priority target every single time. Talk about braindead healing.

I never used a macro to cheat with the Emergency Monitor.

And I'll tell you what, EM was a godsend for me.
I got soooo bored group healing during AQ/Nax that I had to throw up the EM just to have something to do. I always pulled my group out and put it right next to the EM.

I always healed my group and tossed flash heals to the person third down on the list. I never bothered with the two worse people because healing them would usually lead to someone overhealing.


I tried everything I could to make healing interesting.

I had to set up competitions in my head to top the Cleanse meter and come in top 5 if not #1 in the Effective Healing Meter for a full raid night without healing "just rez'd" people. Up until 2.0 as 20/31 Ret I was usually able to.

[Lore]

I made it a point to automate as little as possible when I was playing my priest pre-BC. I had Decursive and main tank targets, that was about it. I used an emergency monitor for a while but got rid of it when I realized I was having more fun playing whack-a-mole on my raid frames.

[Dragonzbane]

I think Patchwerk was the straw that broke the camels back for me, once you killed him, that quickly became the most boring fight ever.

Flask of Distilled Wisdom
Nightfin Soup
...
Flash of Light
Flash of Light
...
Mana Pot
Flash of Light
Flash of Light
...
Dark Rune
Flash of Light
Flash of Light
...
Mana Pot
Flash of Light
Flash of Light
...
Nightdragon's Breath
Flash of Light
Flash of Light
...

[Suikano]

I made it a point to automate as little as possible when I was playing my priest pre-BC. I had Decursive and main tank targets, that was about it. I used an emergency monitor for a while but got rid of it when I realized I was having more fun playing whack-a-mole on my raid frames.

I did pretty much the same thing, I had a level 60 shadow priest in blues that I raided MC with occasionally, I used to regularly top healing charts despite being the worst geared priest out of 8, half of which had benediction and 6/8 prophecy or better. My experience with that guild is what led me to quit wow for another half year.

[fafhrd]

you guys are wet blankets, patchwerk was so much fun! once we finally figured how how HS worked (sigh @ all the wasted pulls we did with my pet as the puller...) veni coded up an rdx window and macros that would target the next or last HS targets for the healers.

still would be fun actually.

i never got around to asking, how was loatheb for healers? it seemed like it would be a nice change of pace, but also potentially very stressful.

[Dragonzbane]

Hmmm...

I was actually pretty lucky raiding.

The week I hit 60 I joined a casual raiding guild that allowed myself and one or two of the other Paladins to whatever. Us Ret guys got to Melee on trash unless it was really hard and Melee on any farmed bosses or fights that weren't Healing or Cleasning intensive. We made it through 2 kills on Huhu before we broke up.

I then joined a server #2 guild that was working on C'thun and Naxx. I stayed Ret but was only really allowed to melee the occasional trash mobs, like Gargoyles in Naxx and Noth. When 2.0 hit I spec'd Prot to try it out and ended up staying so the raid could have kings and so the others guys could spec Holy.

One or two weeks later while we were finishing up learning Thaddius our 3 guild MTs and a few other folks gquit to PvP and gear up for the EXP. We might not have made it to KT but we woulda hit the 4 horsemen at least.

[Lore]

veni coded up an rdx window and macros that would target the next or last HS targets for the healers.

Hence the reason why Months Behind > Scions of Destiny in TBC - no more RDX playing the game for you!

[fafhrd]

I used an emergency monitor for a while but got rid of it when I realized I was having more fun playing whack-a-mole on my raid frames.

Those were people's lives Lore, not a game of whack-a-mole >=(!