Cata instance healing: Marcro vs. Click regions.

[Atrocious]

I've been 5-boxing for a while now, but I'm having trouble with healing in the cata instances. I had no trouble healing my team in BC or WoTLK instances using repeater regions in conjuncture with HealBot. Also single boxing my Resto Druid in cata PUGs I have no trouble healing a group which does not necessarily know the strategy for a given instance.

After reading a lot of the posts, seems most use repeater region healing with some form of addon.

So I've come to the conclusion that I might be doing something wrong. Some of the cases I can think of are:
1. I cannot heal my 5 box group in the same manner as I would when single boxing a PUG. This can very much be the case as I rely a lot on lifebloom, regrowth and swiftmend. Only rarely I have to toss a Healing Touch. Sure if the tank isn't able to hold aggo, I have to toss a few emergency heals to other team members, but this mostly gets the job done.
2. I'm under geared. Not sure if this is the case, as avg. item level is high enough for Vortex Pinnacle, so the instances lower that this I should be geared for.
3. My dps might be too low and I'm unable to burn down mobs fast enough. The numbers I get are usually around the following: Pally 3.5Kish, Warlock 3.8-4kish, Mage 4-5kish, Shaman 3-3.5Kish.
4. I don't use CC. Planning on adding this to my setup, with my classes I should be able to CC at least two mobs.
5. Use a macro to heal most of the time, and use click region healing for spot healing.

I got a strong feeling that it's point 5 (and probably 4) that are my main problems. Which begs the question posed in the subject, do people use some form of hybrid methods for healing in Cata instances, or are everyone using repeater regions and an addon?

Anyone got any pointers?

My team is as follows:
Prot-Paladin (84)
Resto-Druid (84)
Fire-Mage (83)
Demonology-Warlock (83)
Elemental- Shaman (83)

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Janus]

Hey,

The numbers you posted in 3 are off. At 83, you should be able to pull 5-6k dmg. Have you tried your rotation on target dummies and tweaked it as much as you could? There is a good database of rotations for each class on these forums. CC is important but not in vortex pinnacle, not normal at least. You can burn everything down on normal without any CC. CC becomes important on heroic. Number 5 is what I found to be the best way to heal in cata. Assign a healing rotation for the druid that will target the tank, and repeater region heal your other toons in a pinch. I play a priest and so I rely a lot on AOE healing for group heals.

I hope the above helps

[Siaea]

ISBoxer + repeater regions + Clique works great for me. I have 2 regions set up, one for my holy pally and one for my moonkin in case the pally gets CC'd or does something stupid like stand in a fire.

Here's an older post of mine showing my simple/effective set up for heals:

Repeater regions + Clique (http://www.dual-boxing.com/showpost.php?p=309301&postcount=3)

Left Click = insta heal
Right Click = short heal
Shift+Left Click = long heal
CTRL+Left Click = cleanse/decurse

[Atrocious]

I have been tweaking my dps against the dummies, and reading a lot about rotations at elitist jerks, but it's been hard to know what numbers to target as most only list what damage they do at 85. So now I know what target I should be able to hit.

Thinking I might have maybe geared/reforged a bit wrong. Been going for Hit rating to push my chance to miss to 0 for all the listed levels in the tooltip.

Gonna work on setting up a tank heal macro today too.

Thanks for all the help so far.

[Ualaa]

On my druids, I'm using Grid + Grid Custom Layouts + Clique.
The custom layout is:

ToonA,ToonB,ToonC......ThroughToon47;NAME
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8;8/5;NAME;NR

I have a repeater region over the entire area.
So I can heal anyone in the raid who is within range.

All of my toons are listed in line one.
My grid is 8 columns wide, 5 rows deep.
Since I five box, and have every toon mentioned on line one, my five toons are alphabetically listed in Column One (far left).
The rest of the raid is in columns 2-8, again alphabetically listed.

[JackBurton]

right now i use a mix of both click/repeater.regions and macros with most of my macros based around

/cast [target=targettarget,nochanneling] Greater Heal
you can also use

/cast [@tank] Greater Heal

/cast [target=player1] Greater Heal (modifying the # as required)


I realy like these two addons because they give a nice color visual of who needs attention

Simple
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/heal-bot-continued.aspx

this is pretty much grid, healbot, and clique all in one addon. there is some nice youtube guides made by the author to help you customize it.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/vuhdo.aspx

What I'd like to hear from the community is for a healer what is the ideal placement of the frames other than the bottom center.

[Ualaa]

Position the frames where you can access them easily.
But where they don't get in the way of viewing the battle or boss/mobs.

I've had them immediately to the right of my chat window.
And bottom center of the screen.

[JackBurton]

Thanks Ualaa, you still mad about our druid nerfs?

[Ualaa]

All of the accounts are canceled.
The druid nerfs are listed as the reason for the cancellation.
With the note that I'll try whatever they end up doing, and renew if they remain fun to play.

I haven't bothered to play them since this was announced.
Aside from daily transmutes.
Kind of like, what's the point... getting whatever now will likely be a waste of time.

Have been leveling the Pallies (Exorcism/Holy Shock spam) very sporadically.
Tweaking their macros, to make them do what I want.
But the team is not nearly as fun as my ferals.
So don't really have a lot of a drive to play them.
Lower level questing is much faster, even without RAF they can do 12 levels in an afternoon of outdoor quests.

Have been doing the transmutes faithfully.
Still making 12k a day, on average.
Found a guy a bulk supplier of Volatile Life at a phenomenal price for my server, which helps a lot.

Have all the mats, including Vendor parts for Vial of Sands x5.
But not sure that I'll want them on the Druids, if their pvp is nerfed into the ground.

[Atrocious]

After tweaking my equipment a bit more, think I was going a bit too far on the hit with my previous reforging on my casters, I got my dps closer to the numbers Janus said I should expect. Not quite there yet, even with about iLvl 300+ on all toons. Also made a tank heal macro that gets spammed with my regular dps macros. Also switched to seal of insight on my pally which also helped a bit.

Progress so far is that I now actually make it to the first Stonecore boss, but I can't seem to take him down, keep dying everything he goes underground, but that is probably my own damn fault as I don't seem to be able to gather all the spawning spiders to my tank. Blackrock caverns went a bit better, got the first boss, but struggled with second, but with some practice I'll get her too.

Think I need to invest in a mouse with a few more buttons, that would probably also alleviate some of the healing problems I have with repeater regions.

Thanks for all the advice so far!

[Atrocious]

Just wanted to update you all, after more tweaking, I've now multiboxed Blackrock Cavern and Throne of Tides. Without wipes. :)

So if a dummy like me can do it, everyone can! Thanks again for all the help!

[MiRai]

Just wanted to update you all, after more tweaking, I've now multiboxed Blackrock Cavern and Throne of Tides. Without wipes. :)

So if a dummy like me can do it, everyone can! Thanks again for all the help!
Nice man, keep it up.

[Janus]

Congrats!

The first boss in The Stonecore is tricky. Actually, that entire dungeon gives me nightmares. The trick to avoid being hit or minimize damage in the underground phase is to clump your toons in a corner. This way if they're hit they won't bounce all over the place. Make sure to AOE heal them if they do. Your tank should be able to get aggro on most of the spiders this way

I made a movie of the normal dungeon when i was leveling there. Here it is :

http://www.youtube.com/user/GrindersInc?feature=mhum#p/u/1/64Z5etoUNO0

I hope you find it helpful

[Atrocious]

Nice, bookmarked and studied. :)

[Atrocious]

Still struggling a bit here with the higher dungeons, what should the dps be for dps classes at level 85 with iLevel 329ish gear? Got a feeling I'm lagging on the dps front again, as I am having trouble with Grim Batol and Halls of Origin. Havent tried the others as those two keep popping up every frigging time I try to do a random.

Gonna try do all the other dungeons by choosing specific today, just to see what I can do or not.