Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related.

Ah, the hero healer. It reminds me of me. Have you been in a situation where it always seems to be that one same healer which steals the spotlight raid after raid? Its as if raiding groups can’t take down bosses without that one specific healer there. It gets progressively worse when that healer starts rubbing it in the faces of other healers whether directly or indirectly. Now don’t get me wrong. A healer should be proud of what they are capable of doing.

But there are a few problems when it comes to being a hero.

Hold off on the meters

It gets really annoying if I have to endure a druid or paladin (or some other) healer consistently showing off how much healing they’ve done fight after fight. There’s no reason to echo that stuff throughout the raid. Not unless there is a legitimate healing problem, at least.

(Note: Personally, I don’t hate meters or logs as I use them as a diagnostic tool to tweak and make any necessary changes.)

Complacency: a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc.

Dictionary.com

This is what will happen in the long run if this type of behavior continues unresolved. You get one guy who reminds everyone else how awesome he is, and guess what happens?

What your healers are thinking

The hero: I have to keep this performance up. If we don’t, we’re going to die. Look at these slackers! They’ve got nothing compared to me. If I don’t find a way to sustain my output, we’re all going to die. Look at that player? They’re trying to match my healing output but they’re using inefficient healing to do so. They’re going to run out of juice! I have to start sniping heals now because they can’t sustain it.

The other healers: Sweet, I can sneak off and take a quick smoke break. Not like the raid’s going to wipe or anything with the alpha healer in the room. He thinks hes all that, but I’m going to hammer out my strongest heals, efficiency be damned. Someone needs to keep his ego in check. Ah, why bother? We can obviously stop trying. He has us covered and we won’t have to work as hard anyway.

Having a hero healer might work fine when your organization is progressing through farm content. What happens then when you hit progression content? Reality is going strike you like cold water on a cat and you’ll be in for a rude awakening. Its nice for the rest of the healers to realize this early on. Its much better if that they don’t devolve to that point in the first place.

Healing in a raid is a team effort. There’s no other way around it. You cannot solo heal your way to victory in a 25 or a 10 player raid (unless you severely outgear the place and the other 9 players you work with are light on their feet at damage avoidance).

What this all boils down to ego. Yes, as a healer, you have a special job to do. Don’t let it get to your head. Stay grounded. Share your success instead of taking all the credit.

Because one day, you’re not going to be there. For whatever reason, maybe you’re sick, or you’re pregnant, or your house is on fire, you will have to miss a raid. Wouldn’t you feel more at ease knowing that your raid can get through that raid night without you? It sure as heck makes me sleep easier at night knowing that I can take a night off and prep for finals without worrying about it.

Nothing sucks more than having a raid called because “X” isn’t here.

How your leaders can resolve it

Reminders: Your healing lead or raid leader needs to send a strong reminder to the hero that they need to focus on their assignments. But make sure that their ability to heal the raid in a free for all fashion is an excellent skill to have and will come in handy in the event the raid attempt hits the crapper. There is nothing wrong with being clutch if the situation demands it. I’ve been in raids where I’ve died or other healers died, and the remaining healers were able to step it up and keep the rest of the raid alive long enough for a boss kill.

Shuffle assignments: In my guild, we run three simultaneous 10 mans. To promote team work, the decision was made at the beginning of the raid cycle to shuffle rosters around on a week to week basis. Healers were paired up with someone new every time. Tank pairings would be different. DPS players would get matched up with others. We did our best to balance the groups.

All groups were able to down all of the bosses (Usually within varying time frames). All the groups were able to eventually knock out Festergut and Rotface.

A nice side effect of shuffling healers like this is that it really magnifies what players are individually capable of. For example, if a different group struggled every week with noticeable difficult and one of the common factors was a specific healer, it can be readily identified and action can be taken.

How other other healers can handle it

Tolerance: Yes, it isn’t fun at all dealing with that sort of stuff. Nothing more irritating than a big headed ego. Ignore it and do your job. Relish in the fact that you did your job as asked and that you contributed on the boss kills and the attempts. Don’t let them get you down. Stick to what you know and play to the best of your ability. I can tell you that raid leaders would prefer to have dependable and reliable healers as opposed to cowboy ones who want to do their own thing.

Report it: If your leadership doesn’t know about it, let them know right away whats going on through your head. You shouldn’t have to deal with this crap and neither should the rest of your crew. It just might be that others feel the same but don’t care enough about it to bring it up. Lack of communication has destroyed more guilds than pre-nerf Kael’thas.

One final note, the healers in the guild should be encouraged to play to the best of their ability. That doesn’t mean that the toes of others have to be stepped on. If its plain as day that one healer is covering for others, find out why. If a healer is weak in one area, it needs to be identified and resolved with another player in their place. Sometimes it just boils down to using the sub-optimal healer for the job. I gave a movement heavy healing assignment to a paladin when in hindsight I should’ve done it myself.

You gotta do what is best for your guild.

In a forum thread discussing the recent prot warrior block changes and Warbringer nerf and the state of prot warrior DPS (it’s basically acknowledged as the lowest DPS among the tanks) Ghostcrawler chimes in that they intend to buff sustained prot DPS while reducing burst in PvP. However, he quickly comes back to point that at this stage in the expansion they don’t want to make any sustained mechanical changes and so, don’t expect one. The sustained DPS increase will come from buffs to existing abilities.

While I can understand the trepidation from prot warriors at this statement (no one is terribly excited about a buff to Devastate, not even me) it’s an unfortunate but valid point he makes here. You really don’t have the time to make drastic mechanical changes this far into the cycle. We might like a more drastic solution, but with Cataclysm looming on the horizon you don’t really want to see too much tinkering with the base mechanics.

Still, please don’t just buff Devastate. Please. I’m begging you here.

For a while I wasn’t sure if I’d continue playing World of Warcraft into the next expansion. I was by no means planning on giving up my gaming habit, but I really felt like I was ready for something new: either another MMO or one of the latest generation consoles. Many pros and cons were weighed, and I have decided to stick with WoW for at least one more expansion. It was a difficult decision for me but in the end it was the rocks that won me over.

Yes, the rocks.

You see, I am part of a small, but growing number of WoW players who collect rocks. For those of you who overlook this highly sophisticated hobby, I encourage you to give it some research. Blizzard has gone through great efforts to supply an expansive assortment of wonderful, prized rocks over the years and expansions. These items are really what separate World of Warcraft from other MMOs, by adding another dimension of enjoyment to the game.

Above you can see my treasured collection. Admittedly, not all of my rocks are 100% pure, but I am quite the sucker for derivative pieces. You’ll see exhibit d is actually a stone, but it holds a great deal of sentimental value to me.

For those of you unfamiliar with rock collecting, I’d like to point out exhibits a and c. These are Blizzard’s latest geologic additions to the game, added during The Wrath of the Lich King expansion. I feel they have both had a huge impact on rock collecting and Blizzard’s philosophy on it. You see, exhibit a, Rock, is the first of its kind in that it is extremely common. It’s so common that many elite rock collectors scoff at it, saying it is unremarkable. The same has been said about A Very Pretty Rock, which was criticized as “treading old ground.”

I personally disagree with these assessments, though. Previously, very few players were exposed to rocks as it was regarded as a pastime of the elite. Now though, because of these new WotLK rocks, many new players are being introduced to rock collecting for the first time and their influence on Blizzard is making many great changes and development to rock collecting. I think the brash comments from veteran rock collectors are just the result of feeling overwhelmed by the surge of new faces in the community. By the time Cataclysm comes out, I think we’ll all find that the increased interest in rock collecting will really help to innovate it to new heights. Archaeology, anyone?

That doesn’t mean we can’t revisit some more old favorites, though! Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I’m really excited for rumors about an Orphan Pet Rock that “looks sad.” If Blizzard is listening, I’m very interested in finding a companion to my prized Lucky Rock. Perhaps a Luckier Rock?

Whatever the future may hold, I am on the edge of my seat.

So, to all the pack rats out there: Blizzard has stated they plan to improve upon the backpack next expansion. What do you intend to fill it with? If you’re not a pack rat, are there any quirks or fun pastimes you’ve assigned to yourself in the game?

Welcome to another edition of Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that would like to say to warlocks: Look… even when we’re alone, we outnumber you.

We belong to the best class in World of Warcraft. I know this because I have a checklist. Do you want to see it? Too bad, you’re going to see it anyway:

• Access to enormous balls of flame: check
• Can solo ICC trash: check
• Can pull off wearing a dress and make it look sexy: check (see pic above)
• Has a wand (though two would be even pimper): check
• Can make a mean slushy: check
• Can create own strudel: check
• Can rock a pointy hat: chizzeck
• Can create more of self: check, check, and check. Oh, and one more check (also see pic above)
• Is not a warlock: check

You see? Mages meet every criteria on the checklist. The fact that I just made the checklist up is unimportant; the important thing to take away from this is that mages are, indisputably, the best class in this game.

But we aren’t perfect.

We make mistakes. Five of them, to be precise.

The introduction and ensuing popularity of random pugging has brought these miscues into sharp relief for me, and I have no doubt many of you have probably noticed a similar phenomenon: there are some terrible mages out there. This is unacceptable. We have the greatest class in the game, and I feel it is our sacred mandate to preserve it as such. Therefore, I present this list not as finger-pointing, but as a collection of solutions.

I’ve made every single one of these mistakes, in some cases with far more frequency than I can really justify. I’ve seen other mages make them. I’ve seen mages die because of them, and I’ve seen mages cause the death of the entire group because of them.

Most of these issues can be categorized under one or both of the following categories: Things that make life harder for the tank, and things that make life harder for the healer. We, as a class, and DPS as a general role, should always be actively avoiding making things more difficult for either tanks or healers. Always. Why, you ask? Why can’t we just concentrate on pew-pewing and leave the tanks and healers to do their own job? Well, the answer is two-fold:

First: You’re an idiot… for asking that, you’re an idiot.

And second: Tanks and healers keep your squishy hindquarters alive.

I’ve been lately leveling a lowbie tank through the old-world content, something I’ve never tried before. Tanking is an interesting thing. It makes you hate everyone else in the party. First it’s the priest who somehow runs out of mana every fight and forces everyone to wait while he drinks for a freaking eternity between each pull. Then it’s the hunter who rolled need on Jang’thraze the Protector last night in Zul’Farak and then refused to give it to you, even after you patiently explained to him that it was a pure tanking weapon and he had no business ever using it, ever, after which he asserted that he was six, which explained why he went the whole instance with his pet’s growl turned on and insisted on standing at the bottom of the steps during the pyramid event, prompting you to tell him to have his parents explain to him why a melee weapon with no stats and a defensive proc should go to the tank, and not the hunter, which of course leads to the kid dropping group with your low-drop-rate tanking sword still languishing in his stupid hunter inventory, which of course leads to an uncomfortable conversation with a GM in which you propose the idea of tracking the child’s IP address so you can go to his house and punch his dad in the face.

Seriously, tanking makes you hate everyone. So let’s not make the tank hate us, fellow mages. He is, after all, the only thing that stands between us and the giant monster with the teeth and the claws and the large stabby things.

Without further ado, the list:

1. Attacking the wrong target

The problem:

As a DPS class, your role in a group is to kill everything. I understand that. But issues arise when what you are killing and what the tank is tanking don’t overlap. In general, you want to be unleashing flaming death upon the tank’s target and only the tank’s target. Even if the tank is great at tanking multiple mobs, attacking the wrong one is only going to make things more complicated for him. At some point, chances are good that he’s eventually going to stop working so hard to keep you alive, at which point, you will soon cease to be alive.

The solution:

There are several methods for making it easier to stay on the tank’s target. One is to click on the tank, then hit the “F” key, or whatever you have “assist” keybound to, showing you exactly who the tank is currently targeting. But that can quickly become cumbersome. If you’re using the default UI, I suggest right clicking the tank at the start of the instance and selecting “set focus” from the drop-down menu. Then go into your options menu and turn on “show target of target.” For the rest of the run, you’ll have a nice unit frame showing you the tank’s target, which you can then click on whenever he switches to a new target.

If you use addons, something like Pitbull or X-perl can help tremendously, with their ability to customize unit frames. But perhaps the simplest solution is to set up a focus assist macro. Something like this:

/target focustarget

Then set the tank as your focus, bind that macro to a button that’s easy for you to hit, and you’re done. Every time you hit that key, you’ll instantly be targeting the right mob.

2. Generating too much threat

The problem:

We love to blow things up. It’s true. Blowing things up is our job. It’s what we do. We love to top the DPS meter, we love to see those juicy crits, we love to see health bars vanish and know that we were the cause of said health-bar-vanishing. But sometimes, we fall too much in love with our own destructive power. We put out so much damage so quickly that we out-threat the tank, and the mob he was trying to keep away from us lumbers over in our direction, tired of banging his claws against plate and shield and looking to bury them deep within our flimsy dress and soft wizard-flesh.

Sometimes, it isn’t even really our fault. Maybe the tank simply isn’t generating enough threat, or an AoE pull went horribly wrong. Either way, the problem is immediate and potentially deadly. You are a mage, and you are about to get struck, which of course means that you are about to die.

The solution:

We have two panic-buttons. The first is Invisibility. This is an aggro fade. It takes a few seconds to fully drop your threat to safe levels. If you realize your peril early enough, it can and will save your life. Then, when the mob leaves you alone and wanders (hopefully) back to the tank, you can simply click off the Invisibility debuff and resume your death-dealing.

The second is Ice Block. This isn’t so much a threat dump as it is a threat interrupt. It will keep you alive when death is imminent, but just know that when it fades, or when you click the Ice Block off, thinking you are safe, your threat has not gone down, and the mob may very well return to you. Unfortunately, the mob may also simply move on to whoever is next on the threat list, be it another DPS or the healer. When you Ice Block, you save yourself, but often set the mob loose on somebody else. It’s a handy panic button, but best only used as a last resort.

If both are on cooldown, you still have options. First and foremost, stop generating threat. That means stop casting. Second, don’t run away. The mob will catch you. In order to stay alive, you need the tank to pick your new admirer back up. Run toward the tank. That way he can notice your plight and save you from yourself.

A lot of mages like to use a thrid panic button, but this is often a mistake. Which brings us to our next issue…

3. Using Frost Nova at the wrong times

The problem:

As mages, we have a handy escape mechanism that we like to use when soloing: Frost Nova, then Blink. This gets us some distance and keeps the mob’s pointy parts away from our pasty mage skin. Unfortunately, this is generally a bad idea in groups. Oh, it can still keep us alive. But only us. See, the problem with Frost Nova is that it freezes a mob, and sometimes multiple mobs, in place. These mobs then turn to whoever happens to be standing within range and begins attacking them. Threat doesn’t matter. The tank can’t pick those mobs back up until your nova breaks because the mobs can’t move, and those mobs will simply turn on whoever’s closest. That often means the healer… who is probably too busy keeping the tank alive to notice he’s being smacked around until it becomes too late.

The solution:

There are times when using Frost Nova in a group is useful. Are you far enough away from everybody else that the rooted mob won’t be able to wreak any additional havok during the spell’s duration? Then maybe you can get away with using it and then running for the tank. There are also times when a tank may want you to nova a group of mob as they enter a room or something, at the start of a pull, for positioning purposes, but these times are rare and only useful if the group knows exactly what you’re up to.

The easy solution? Don’t bother with Frost Nova in groups.

4. Pulling, or attacking too early

The problem:

Mages shouldn’t pull. Oh fine, if the tank wants a sheep pull, go for it. But for the love of god, don’t cast before the tank pulls. In fact, don’t cast until well after the tank pulls. Here’s the major problem: Tanks need time to generate threat. Sometimes, as DPS, I think we just assume that once a tank has engaged a mob, he’s instantly got that mob locked on to him and has massive amounts of threat already generated. This is wrong.

Tanks need a bit of time to attack a mob and generate a solid amount of threat. Bear tanks and warrior tanks need to attack and be attacked to build up rage, which all of their threat-generating skills require. Even paladin and death knight tanks, who begin the fight with their resources largely intact, need time to go through a few global cooldowns and pick up all the mobs in a group. If you begin casting the instant a tank begins attacking a mob, you greatly undermine his attempts to grab everybody, causing aggro issues, positioning issues, and tank-hating-you issues.

The solution:

Wait for the tank to attack. Then count to three. heck, even two would probably work. Then attack. And don’t start every fight off with a giant Pyroblast crit of death, either. Build up to that.

5. Decursing

The problem:

Mages can dispel curses. But most of the time, we don’t.

We forget, I think. We spend so much time focusing on doing damage and only doing damage, that we forget that we have the ability to help out the healer immensely with just a second or two spent removing curses instead of topping the damage meter. Often the healer is busy keeping the tank alive, and can’t spare the global cooldown to remove a curse from a party member or two. By taking a moment to use Remove Curse on occasion, we take a massive weight off the healer’s shoulders, and can often save a life, possibly our own.

The solution:

Healers have the luxury (if you can call it that) of tunnel vision. They’re not hurling fireballs at anything. They’re usually staring at a healing addon, or a group of health bars, and they easily notice when somebody’s gotten cursed and needs a dispel. (Or if your healer is a priest or paladin, they simply can’t dispel curses.) Mages, on the other hand, tend to be watching the fight, staring at the mob they’re trying to send into the afterlife. We frequently don’t pay much attention to the folks around us, and often miss opportunities to remove a curse or two.

Addons can help. A combat text mod, like MikScrollingCombatText. can be configured to give you an alert when someone’s been cursed. My peronsal favorite is Decursive. This mod gives you an easy-to-manage display of the people in your party and their current status. When one of them gets afflicted with an ailment you can remove, Decursive will let you know, and allow you to remove it with a single click.

The bottom line is this: mages were given the ability to remove curses for a reason. That reason is because we’re awesome. Let’s use that ability.

That’s my list. What other mistakes do we make, mage community? And how do we avoid making them?
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We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Today’s edition is brought to you by Dan O’Halloran, your resident WoW.com managing editor and founder of the WoW class news aggregation site, The Daily Druid.

Feral cat guides on the internet seem harder to find than other spec guides, so I’ve collected a few here for those of you looking to claw faces with greater efficiency.

• WoW Wiki’s Feral DPS Guide: A very comprehensive guide for cat druids covering specs and glyphs, dps rotation, gear stat explanations, Rawr video walkthrough, enchants, gems, consumables and more.
• Melee hit table FAQ for feral druids: The Fluid Druid blog breaks down why cat druids need to hit the hit cap.
• Cat Druid best in slot gear list updated for Icecrown: Kalon has actually rated a long list of top items available to cat druids for each slot, but don’t we all just look at the best in slot and skip the rest?
• Best 3.3 non-tier cat gear: Kalon is at it again, this time listing the best gear you can get for the 5 tier slots if you don’t have new T10 gear, yet.
• Cat dps guide for Icecrown Citadel: Lower Spire: Jacemora gives a down and dirty bullet point listing of strats for each one of the ICC bosses.

Several people have told us via our feedback page that they have received theirWorld of Warcraft Official Magazine in the mail. Last month, we got to see the preview and now many subscribers already have them in hand.

The WoW Magazine is a quarterly publication that is available via subscription only. U.S. subscriptions begin at $39.95 for a year and subscriptions are available to other countries at different rates. Our tipsters have described the magazine as having a graphic novel feel to them.

Did you subscribe to the magazine? If so, have you received your copy? We would love to read your reviews in the comments if you have.

The WoW Insider Show podcast aired once again this Saturday, with me and my guest hosts Matthew Rossi and Colby Moore delving into reader emails and this week’s top stories on WoW.com. Thrill as we answer the age-old question of “Is it worth it to skip bosses in random heroics?” Marvel as we say it’s pretty okay for Blizzard to help out the police! Gasp as I forget to thank my cohosts at the end of the show and pull a Yakko Warner! Goodnight everybody.

As always, you can email us at theshow@wow.com with any questions or comments — we might even read yours live on the air.

Get the podcast:
[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.
[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.
[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.

There is some confusion as to whether/how the Dungeon Finder matches characters according to internal gear score. To the best of my knowledge, it actually attempt to create a discrepancy between characters’ gear, so that you’re likely to wind up with a few heavily geared members ‘carrying’ lesser-geared members. This is directly contrary to a claim I’ve seen circulating that the system attempts to match internal gear scores.

If the system doesn’t attempt to create disparate groups, it should, and if it does, I’m glad it does. It may be disheartening to see someone in your group in full blues or maybe even a couple greens, instead of the now-familiar suit o’ purples, but as some commenters pointed out in my post on Dungeon Finder bingo, we all started out in blues and greens at 80 (with the possible exception of some crafted gear and BoEs), and heroics were designed to be run with that gear. Where are the epics supposed to come from, for a pre-raid character?

Furthermore, a less-geared character might actually need some of the gear that drops in the ilvl 200 heroics (i.e. everything except CC, FoS, PoS, and HoR), which is a nice change of pace from the usual shardfest. It may take you a few extra minutes to farm your emblems, but PuGs are about more than just you: they’re about a group of people coming together to help each other out, and enjoy a dungeon.

The Feast of Winter Veil ends on Saturday, but we still haven’t had our It came from the Blog event. Let’s remedy that tomorrow:

• When: 11:00pm EST (8pm PST, 9pm Server) December 30, 2009
• Where: In front of Silvermoon on the Zangarmarsh realm (US)
• Who: Any level Horde character (bring your highest level for the most fun)
• What: We will be harvesting eggs, baking cookies, kissing strangers under the mistletoe as well other holiday festivities.
• How: Ask any It came from the Blog Lurker or Robinator for an invite to the guild

We will have extra eggs. So if you miss the bird-bashing in Silvermoon, we’ll meet you in Orgrimmar for the bribing of Greatfather Winter.

Questions? We answer most of them in our FAQ.

See ya there!

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment in this post by Friday, December 25, 2009, 12pm ET (noon). That’s it. Limit one entry per person and make sure you’re registered with a valid email address. We’ll be choosing one winner randomly from the entrants and contact them via email after the close of the contest.

Don’t forget to check back every day through January 2nd for new contests celebrating the Twelve Days of Winter Veil!