The Queue: A puppy for you

Was someone talking about puppy pictures? Yes? No? Either way, it doesn’t matter, because I am breaking out the big guns of puppy pictures with the above pair of six-week-old basset hound puppies. Just try to top that, because you can’t. It just not possible.

But, really, give it a try because everyone loves puppy pictures.

You should be fine Mistweaving your way through LFR. You have a few things going for you here: LFR is a very forgiving healing environment and Mistweaver is very forgiving healing spec.

To heal LFR, all you really need is some unit frames that show you everyone in the raid. Default unit frames, custom unit frames, it doesn’t really matter: you just want to see when someone’s taking damage so you can throw a heal on them. (Some people like to be able to click on a player to cast heals, with addons like VuhDo or Clique, but I hate that kind of thing. Your mileage may vary, though.) In LFR, this is an unorganized free for all, with no one particularly responsible for anything: so when you see someone taking damage, you heal them. And while good healers will know the fight mechanics and be ready to heal damage they know is about to hit, in LFR you don’t have to be particularly aware of mechanics or even who’s tanking. If you see someone taking damage, heal them. That’s it. You’re not going to be the best healer following these methodology, but you’ll get by just fine in LFR.

I play a Mistweaver myself, and it’s my favorite healing spec because it has a skill for any healing situation. While the number of skills could be confusing for a newbie, you can pare things down significantly and still be a perfectly good healer. Remember, all you’re doing is looking for people who are low on health and casting heals on them. Even if you don’t use the perfect skills or time your cooldowns properly, you’ll still be getting healing done and that’s usually enough to get you through LFR. Here is a super pared down, LFR-friendly guide for you:

• Spec Mist Wrap, which lets you channel Soothing Mist — a channeled HoT that is applied on a target when you cast Effuse, Enveloping Mist, Vivify, or Life Cocoon  — while moving. Soothing Mist just keeps channeling, providing an endless stream of healing until you need to do something else. On low damage fights or trash pulls, you may just be able to start up Soothing Mist and sit back and eat popcorn while watching health bars.
• In LFR, you’re likely to be doing a lot of group healing: that’s Vivify, which heals your target and two other targets nearby.
• Effuse is a quick single-target direct heal. Use it when one person needs a quick top-off (or you want to start Soothing Mist channeling).
• Be sure to have cooldowns hotkeyed for emergencies. There aren’t a lot of emergencies in LFR, but if does be ready to throw your Life Cocoon shield on the tank or use Revival for raid-wide damage. I’m also a big fan of the Chi’ji talent, which is cast and forget (and also it’s just hilarious to watch Chi’ji running around).

Sure, you have more spells than that — a lot more spells than that — but you can honestly get through most LFRs with nothing more than Effuse and Vivify. If you’re not looking to learn to heal full-time, you don’t need to go down the rabbit hole of learning the entire spell repertoire — hotkey the important stuff and then keysmash your way to success. (But please do not try to follow this advice for more challenging healing.)

And if you get bored, Mistweavers can still kick and punch things. You won’t top the DPS charts, but you can always just play like DPS, with a few extra healing hotkeys. It’s unlikely to be a problem.

It starts today, and should be live by the time you read this! There’s not really much new this year, but Coren Direbrew’s loot has been upgraded to ilevel 880 (if you have anyone under 880) and you no longer need to be max level to queue up for him.

{PB}Whenever we have storylines that show the Alliance and Horde working together, there are usually complaints that we’ve lost the “war” in Warcraft. The franchise is built around the battle between these two factions, and sometimes that battle doesn’t really take center stage.

But I’m of the opinion that the endless war idea worked a lot better when Warcraft was a single player game. Today I have friends in both factions that I’d love to play with (and enemies in both factions I’d prefer to fight), and I wish the game would just let me do that. The faction war feels old and tired: it’s a story we’ve been playing for so long that I wonder why we all haven’t moved on to something dramatically new. For example, the Horde basically fell apart under Garrosh, with the Horde fighting amongst itself and the Alliance helping unseat Garrosh… but after that, it’s gone back to status quo of Alliance vs. Horde. Can’t we do something new? And don’t we have more important things to do with the endless parade of outside threats to Azeroth? Why do we just keep fighting each other?

I actually think Legion has done some interesting things, though. It’s showing faction animosity based on personal stories — specifically Genn and Sylvanas. That’s given us an Alliance vs. Horde story that hasn’t felt like we’re ignoring the threat of the Legion just to fight amongst ourselves for funsies. Both Genn and Sylvanas have their reasons for doing what they’re doing, and while they aren’t necessarily good reasons, they make more story sense than “it’s called Warcraft so we have to fight!” And despite their fight, the rest of our factions have been focused on bringing down the Legion… as we should be.

I’m curious to see what’s next, though. I think the nature of the game will prevent the kind of dramatic shift I’d like to see… but the factions are certainly due for a refresh, and with leadership in flux, now would be a good time to make a change.

Though this doesn’t exactly answer your question, I’m of the opinion that every race should be able to be a Druid just so we get more cute animal forms.

Though everything you’ve said is true, I think the timing is wrong for this year. We have Ana likely coming out next week on the 26th. She’ll probably be followed by Junkrat on October 17 or 24. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for a new Halloween-themed batch of heroes… though let’s hope for some cool skins.

And that’s all for now. While you’re leaving puppy pictures in the Queue, be sure to ask some questions, too, so Anne has something to answer tomorrow. I’ll see you back here next week!