I ran my first instance... (Really messy..)

Long story short... I need tips on running a tank and healer.

I've done Tank+DPS or DPS+Healer, but never Tank+Healer.

I am running a druid and priest.


Difficulties:
Targeting other party members outside of my druid
Managing cooldowns properly
Staying calm?

I have most of my macros and keybinds setup for keeping my toons up. Add in others who can pull aggro, and such...

What do you do? H
How do you have your macros setup?
Targeting Keybinds?


Generally what do you do, when you have to control the whole instance? Making the adjustment from DPS variations to Tank and Healer, is killing me.

best tip I can give in regards to healing instances....use target=targettarget and keep the boss targeted. If you have this on at least one of your macros you can cast it to heal whoever the boss is pounding on at that moment.

It doesn't help though if a clothie is getting pounded and then the tank gets agro back just as you cast, so for those situations you should also have 5 heal macros set up for healing each of party1-5 as well so you can single target heal without dropping your current target.

as for how to bind them when running only 2 characters in tank + healer mode, I'd likely set them up on the same keybindings as your tank has their tanking talents and have all the healers macros using a modifier such as shift. That way when you get in the thick of things and you need to cast a heal quickly you can just use shift+1 for example to heal party1 and then as soon as you let go of the shift modifier your tanks actions will start working again.

It will let you remain focused and not have to worry about moving your hands around during the action.

Of course, if you have a G11/13/15/19 keyboard or keypad then you can bind the first 5 buttons to your heal macros and have the g-key setup to send shift+1 etc in one press if that is easier for you then pressing the key combo and trying to remember what is what in the heat of battle...in fact it's how I run my healer.

I guess you control your tank directly, so Mousover healing is not an option.

First thing, that I find to be enough in 99% of cases, direct your heals o FocusTargetTarget. With you tank the focus, heals will go to whatever your tank's target is attacking (usually you tank himself).

In situations where this is not enough, you might want to have 5 different keys associated to the five group members to throw heals to the appropriate character. Use of modifiers will help keeping the number of used keys reasonnable.

Also, you need an addon that displays what your healer is casting on you tank windows. There are several options for that, I use "SimpleCastBar" or something like that (will check up name once at home).

I drive with my Tank, healer always targeting tank. Has macros for /tar partymembername /cast heal. Also has binds for individual heal.

This lets me spam heals on the tank, target a party member, heal them, or aoe heal them, or whatever.

The biggest thing you can do is simplify things as much as possible.

Use macros to reduce what you need to hit down to the minimum.

On my druid I am in the process of setting up two macros. One I will hit when I'm building up aggro,
the other I'll hit when I've got plenty of rage - so will add maul in. I may have a third for maxing out single target threat.

On your healer you need to be able to target each player easily.
Have 5 macros - that target different party members and that pops a lesser heal or renew on them. If these are always the same you can put names in - if your 3 dps is made up of random pugs then use party1,2,3,4,5 etc.
You can then press your other healing abilities to top them off, shield them etc. Make sure the keys that target your tank or your priest never change. Have the keys for your AOE heals available.

If the whole team takes aoe damage hit your aoe heal, perhaps a holy nova for a quick heal if they are in danger of dying then your longer cast for a bigger heal.

Other than that a lot depends on the ability of the other 3 players. If it's friends then having them hit the same target, and not over aggroing should make things easier. If you are pugging in the other 3 then you might have to be more forceful in encouraging them to let the tank build aggro, and to use their own abilities to drop aggro.

Oh I forgot - perhaps have a macro that targets either the tanks target if it's friendly or the target of the tanks target if it's not, so on bosses if the tank does lose aggro you instantly heal the player that's now getting beat on. (And it gives you the option of targeting a specific player on the tank to heal, which isn't ideal).

With a good group you'll find that the damage and healing are more predictable. Normally restricted to keeping the tank up and healing the odd player that's damaged - with rarer occassions of hitting aoe healing when AOE splash damage occurs.

EDIT: DAMN - Whilst typing this wall of text three other replies completely removed any need for my post. Sorry about that.

Is it easier to control the healer and just have the tank do his business? Or vice versa?


What I had done that run was use the F2-F5 for targeting party members for healing them.

Should I use modifiers instead? And have them directed as follows:

/cast [target=party 'x'] HEAL

Or continue to use the F keys? (On my tank I have those turned off to avoid involuntary target changes. I have the unit frames to highlight red if they aggro followed by:

Quote:

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#showtooltip Growl
/cast [target=mouseover] Growl
/assist [target=mousover]
/cast Growl

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But if they weren't targeting the mob that is attacking them, the taunt is wasted. (I can usually catch it if the mob runs past, but things happen ;))

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fef

I guess you control your tank directly, so Mousover healing is not an option..

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Depends what you box with ;) I drive with my tank and setup HKN to be able to mouseover heal from my tank's screen.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shaeman

The biggest thing you can do is simplify things as much as possible.
EDIT: DAMN - Whilst typing this wall of text three other replies completely removed any need for my post. Sorry about that.

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But I like your wall!

What are some good ways to practice this? I can easily predict myself and what kind of damage my priest will take. But add in the variable of a pug... And it's a whole different story.

Perhaps a priest isn't the best choice for learning this? When I gift the levels out, would a Paladin or Shaman be of better choice?

It is tough and I don't think a different healer is the answer.
You'll need to react no matter what the situation is.
I've probably healed most on a druid and wild growth is fantastic - but I also think a priest is very strong.
Prayer of mending with it's jumps to damaged players should help, and circle of healing.

- I think what you are doing is actually more difficult than 5 boxing.

With 5 boxing I have total control over all characters - I know my shaman are going to wait if i need aggro.
I know they are going to be targetting the character my tank is concentrating on (apart from when I forgot to put TAB on the do-not-pass list :) ) I know that I can whack their threat reduction ability too.

WIth pugs that goes completely out the window. If in a pug I would prioritise. Tank, Healer, dps that know what they are doing, muppet that pulls aggro/ causes problems last.

It sounds like you've got the tanking well under control, so I would probably suggest going on a few pugs as just a healer. The worse pugs the better :)

See what the bad things are - and what works to react to them. Then try and plan for being able to do that based on a macro.

e.g if an Idiot pulls aggro - do you target idiot, shield, renew, quick heal 90% of the time, in which case castsequence that.

IMO, driving with the tank is the easiest. The biggest thing I had to overcome was getting used to using keys to heal, even when I couldn't see what the healer was doing. Once you get familiar and see what you're able to easily heal through, it becomes trivial. I do the CoS gauntlet in 2 pulls now. Partly because my tank is well geared, partly because I've wiped on that enough to know I can't heal fast enough for 1 pull (wtb moar haste kkthks). So just remember it's a learning experience, you're already doing the best thing you can do, which is come here and see how others are doing it.

Are you tanking with a bear? I posted my tanking macro in Fur's mega macro thread if you need something thats spammable so you can focus on watching your HP, heals, or whatever else.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shaeman

It is tough and I don't think a different healer is the answer.
You'll need to react no matter what the situation is.
I've probably healed most on a druid and wild growth is fantastic - but I also think a priest is very strong.
Prayer of mending with it's jumps to damaged players should help, and circle of healing.

- I think what you are doing is actually more difficult than 5 boxing.

With 5 boxing I have total control over all characters - I know my shaman are going to wait if i need aggro.
I know they are going to be targetting the character my tank is concentrating on (apart from when I forgot to put TAB on the do-not-pass list :) ) I know that I can whack their threat reduction ability too.

WIth pugs that goes completely out the window. If in a pug I would prioritise. Tank, Healer, dps that know what they are doing, muppet that pulls aggro/ causes problems last.

It sounds like you've got the tanking well under control, so I would probably suggest going on a few pugs as just a healer. The worse pugs the better :)

See what the bad things are - and what works to react to them. Then try and plan for being able to do that based on a macro.

e.g if an Idiot pulls aggro - do you target idiot, shield, renew, quick heal 90% of the time, in which case castsequence that.

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Yeah, I should let the muppets die. But I still have my state of mind from raiding Sunwell (prenerf!) and being blamed if people die.

As far as roles go, I can do both very well solo. But together, and then worrying about pugs... Ugh!

I would be 5 boxing if I was back home with my PC. But I am on my laptop! :'(

The "Oh shit" button for [target=party2-5] is a good idea. I'll give that one a go.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Svpernova09

IMO, driving with the tank is the easiest. The biggest thing I had to overcome was getting used to using keys to heal, even when I couldn't see what the healer was doing. Once you get familiar and see what you're able to easily heal through, it becomes trivial. I do the CoS gauntlet in 2 pulls now. Partly because my tank is well geared, partly because I've wiped on that enough to know I can't heal fast enough for 1 pull (wtb moar haste kkthks). So just remember it's a learning experience, you're already doing the best thing you can do, which is come here and see how others are doing it.

Are you tanking with a bear? I posted my tanking macro in Fur's mega macro thread if you need something thats spammable so you can focus on watching your HP, heals, or whatever else.

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I'll take a look at your macro's now!

Cheers!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Khatovar

Depends what you box with ;) I drive with my tank and setup HKN to be able to mouseover heal from my tank's screen.

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I"m pretty interested in how you do this.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Khatovar

Depends what you box with ;) I drive with my tank and setup HKN to be able to mouseover heal from my tank's screen.

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You just gave me a reason to (seriously this time) try HKN.

( .... tanking on the main windows while triggering mouseover heals ... yummy ... )

I'd imagine HKN would be similar.

You need somewhere where you have your toon names.
Vuhdo can do it as a single addon, but Healbot or Grid (with GridCustomLayouts) + Clique works fine too.
You want it alphabetical, so its the same on every screen.
You also want them to be positioned as close to exactly the same as possible.

With InnerSpace (ISBoxer Toolkit) you set up a mouse repeating region.
There's a hotkey you set to bring up the GUI in game, Zanthor's post suggested Alt Ctrl /.

Drag the repeater region so it covers the entire Grid frame.
Any click you make in this region will be sent to the client(s) of your choice.

Using Vuhdo, Open RDX, Clique etc, set what happens on a Left Click, Right Click, Middle Click, Alt + Left Click etc.

With InnerSpace, you can check KVM mode on the repeater GUI, so a click in the repeater region is broadcast but doesn't change targeting on the toon that does the click.

Once the region is set up, it basically turns mouse repeating on, but only when you're within that specific region. At the same time, it only sends the clicks (and modifiers) to the clients you have selected.

From my understanding, if you wanted multiple toons to be able to broadcast their clicks, you'd need to set up regions on each.

I set up my F1-5 keys (disabling them on other toons) on my healer to cast heals on party members 1-5 with a cast sequence /cast hot /cast bigger heal. So basically 1 click of F3 to drop a hot on toon 3, if I hit it again it drops a big heal. If the party is taking ae damage I just rotate through F1-5 to give them all some hots. I have a full cast sequence on my F2 keys which is normally the tank being group leader which rotates through 4 heals (is a resto druid).

I use clique on my tank so if someone rips agro I middle click their toon in grid and it auto taunts on that person without changing target.

What is this "HKN"?

Oh and Clique sounds like great idea. :)

Here's a post with my script in it >clicky<

It's straight mouseover healing, no clicking, no mods outside of Pitbull to arrange the party frames {include self in party, list alphabetically}. Because of how it works, it's very modular. In fights where my tank takes a lot of damage and there's not a ton of AOE, I just swap my macros around. Or I can drop in LHW instead of Chain heal. I don't have to make any changes at all when I go from group to raid...my raid frames all sit in the designated area. And because it doesn't require me to click, it's fast. I just wave my little magic mouse over the frame and poof, all better.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Khatovar

Here's a post with my script in it >clicky<

It's straight mouseover healing, no clicking, no mods outside of Pitbull to arrange the party frames {include self in party, list alphabetically}. Because of how it works, it's very modular. In fights where my tank takes a lot of damage and there's not a ton of AOE, I just swap my macros around. Or I can drop in LHW instead of Chain heal. I don't have to make any changes at all when I go from group to raid...my raid frames all sit in the designated area. And because it doesn't require me to click, it's fast. I just wave my little magic mouse over the frame and poof, all better.

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Ty for posting this, I havn't used HKN just started boxing and tried keyclone on a recommendation of a in game friend who 5 boxes. I'll have to try it I was apprehensive at first of it tho becuse it seemed a lot more complicated.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vociferate

Long story short... I need tips on running a tank and healer.

I've done Tank+DPS or DPS+Healer, but never Tank+Healer.

I am running a druid and priest.


Difficulties:
Targeting other party members outside of my druid
Managing cooldowns properly
Staying calm?

I have most of my macros and keybinds setup for keeping my toons up. Add in others who can pull aggro, and such...

What do you do? H
How do you have your macros setup?
Targeting Keybinds?


Generally what do you do, when you have to control the whole instance? Making the adjustment from DPS variations to Tank and Healer, is killing me.

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I don't run with other people in my group much, but I do have a mechanism that works pretty well

I use something like:

/cast [target=focustarget,help] [target=focus] lesser healing wave

for my main healing macro. Focus is my tank. If my tank is targetting a friendly unit, it will heal them. If not, it will heal the tank. The only problem with this macro is lag. When you change targets (as you will when somebody needs a heal), there is a small period of time until the server updates the other client(s) about that change. If you hit the button before that update (around 1/3-1/2 second in my experience), you will heal the tank instead. Unfortunately, I only tend to use this when somebody's in trouble, so time is a factor, but I've adapted to the lag and just have learned to wait a little bit after switches.