Is fake healing a waste of time?
One tactic that I always assumed I would use with my priest was fake healing. As a warrior, locking out heals, even for four seconds, was crucial to taking a priest out. If the priest can stay alive until weakened soul wears off, it can mean the difference between a dead priest and a lost match. Now that I've been PVPing with my priest for a bit, I've tried to use this tactic with varying degrees of success.
Out the various interrupts that the different classes possess, fake healing is only effective against a handful. Obviously priest silence, rogue improved kick, improved counterspell, spell lock, silencing shot and probably some other ones that I'm forgetting have a built in silence component that you will suffer regardless of what you do, but some these special attacks and others also have an interrupt component that will lock out the school that was interrupted.
It is the interrupt effects that we try to avoid by fake healing. Out of all the interrupt effects, I would have to say that imp counterspell is the most devastating. Getting locked out for 8 seconds SUCKS and it's off the GCD. Faking out a mage counterspell is definitely worth it. For other interrupt effects I'm not so sure.
Earth shock is 2 seconds, no big deal really, although it is an a 6 second cooldown which means that you may not be able to get off a gheal before the next one is up if you get pushed back.
The two that I've been contemplating the most are rogue kick and warrior pummel. In my undergeared state, having a rogue or warrior on me is a serious situation. It's not a matter of _if_ I'm going to die but rather a matter of "how soon am I going to die?". If I can live long enough for my teammate to CC the attacker or kill one of the opposing players I've done a good job, if not, we usually lose. In this scenario I need to do everything I can to get myself some healing. For a while now I've tried drawing the pummel or kick with a fake heal. Basically I just cast half the heal and then move forward a little bit, trying to take into account the lag between what I see on my screen and what the enemy sees on his. Most of the time I fake with Flash Heal, probably because that's the spell I go to first out of habit, and what I've found is that most of the time the person simply doesn't bite.
Seeing as how with mortal strike on me, my flash heals heal for about 700-800 (maybe even lower) it just might not be worth the warrior's effort to pummel it. I know on my warrior I definitely try to pummel every heal I can, but it just seems that either I'm cancelling the spell out to early and they're not really seeing it, or they just don't care. I've had more luck with rogues and am able to draw the kick more consistently. Unfortunately rogues have several other ways to stop us from casting even without kick (and they don't need 25 rage or range like warrior int shout or intercept), so it's not exactly free heal time at that point. The problem with this is that while I'm wasting time pretending to heal myself I'm getting beat on and not actually casting any spells. This brings me to the point of indecision that I'm at now, is it better to just try and heal and take the interrupt, knowing that in 4/5 seconds I should have a decent chance at getting a heal off, or do I need to work on my technique a little bit (l2p)?
Another down side that I've noticed is that once an opponent sees you fake a heal and doesn't fall for it, they're going to be ready for it next time. Also lag can make it difficult to know when you've actually stopped casting and your opponent has attempted the interrupt. I'm sure we've all had a fake heal that we were sure worked only to end up seeing "FLASH HEAL INTERRUPTED". Quartz can help with the latter issue.
I've tried a couple of different tactics to help with the problem. First is that instead of casting a heal I cast Mind Control. Most people don't like being mind controlled and will attempt to interrupt it, and if it does get pummeled/kicked then you're free to try and get a heal off. This is a better idea in BE Arena where you can actually do something useful with an MC'ed opponent. Mind blast can work too. Also, instead of Flash Heal I've tried Gheal. A warrior might be willing to ignore a flash heal, but the same cannot be said for gheal, it's pretty much guaranteed to draw the interrupt.
On an unrelated not, I picked up my Veteran's Mooncloth Belt today, which is a pretty nice piece and once again replaces a piece of physician trash. Plus I don't have to enchant or gem it for once! Slowly but surely I'm building my gear on this character, but it's still going to be a while before I'm able to tank any decently geared warriors or rogues. I can dream can't I?
Out the various interrupts that the different classes possess, fake healing is only effective against a handful. Obviously priest silence, rogue improved kick, improved counterspell, spell lock, silencing shot and probably some other ones that I'm forgetting have a built in silence component that you will suffer regardless of what you do, but some these special attacks and others also have an interrupt component that will lock out the school that was interrupted.
It is the interrupt effects that we try to avoid by fake healing. Out of all the interrupt effects, I would have to say that imp counterspell is the most devastating. Getting locked out for 8 seconds SUCKS and it's off the GCD. Faking out a mage counterspell is definitely worth it. For other interrupt effects I'm not so sure.
Earth shock is 2 seconds, no big deal really, although it is an a 6 second cooldown which means that you may not be able to get off a gheal before the next one is up if you get pushed back.
The two that I've been contemplating the most are rogue kick and warrior pummel. In my undergeared state, having a rogue or warrior on me is a serious situation. It's not a matter of _if_ I'm going to die but rather a matter of "how soon am I going to die?". If I can live long enough for my teammate to CC the attacker or kill one of the opposing players I've done a good job, if not, we usually lose. In this scenario I need to do everything I can to get myself some healing. For a while now I've tried drawing the pummel or kick with a fake heal. Basically I just cast half the heal and then move forward a little bit, trying to take into account the lag between what I see on my screen and what the enemy sees on his. Most of the time I fake with Flash Heal, probably because that's the spell I go to first out of habit, and what I've found is that most of the time the person simply doesn't bite.
Seeing as how with mortal strike on me, my flash heals heal for about 700-800 (maybe even lower) it just might not be worth the warrior's effort to pummel it. I know on my warrior I definitely try to pummel every heal I can, but it just seems that either I'm cancelling the spell out to early and they're not really seeing it, or they just don't care. I've had more luck with rogues and am able to draw the kick more consistently. Unfortunately rogues have several other ways to stop us from casting even without kick (and they don't need 25 rage or range like warrior int shout or intercept), so it's not exactly free heal time at that point. The problem with this is that while I'm wasting time pretending to heal myself I'm getting beat on and not actually casting any spells. This brings me to the point of indecision that I'm at now, is it better to just try and heal and take the interrupt, knowing that in 4/5 seconds I should have a decent chance at getting a heal off, or do I need to work on my technique a little bit (l2p)?
Another down side that I've noticed is that once an opponent sees you fake a heal and doesn't fall for it, they're going to be ready for it next time. Also lag can make it difficult to know when you've actually stopped casting and your opponent has attempted the interrupt. I'm sure we've all had a fake heal that we were sure worked only to end up seeing "FLASH HEAL INTERRUPTED". Quartz can help with the latter issue.
I've tried a couple of different tactics to help with the problem. First is that instead of casting a heal I cast Mind Control. Most people don't like being mind controlled and will attempt to interrupt it, and if it does get pummeled/kicked then you're free to try and get a heal off. This is a better idea in BE Arena where you can actually do something useful with an MC'ed opponent. Mind blast can work too. Also, instead of Flash Heal I've tried Gheal. A warrior might be willing to ignore a flash heal, but the same cannot be said for gheal, it's pretty much guaranteed to draw the interrupt.
On an unrelated not, I picked up my Veteran's Mooncloth Belt today, which is a pretty nice piece and once again replaces a piece of physician trash. Plus I don't have to enchant or gem it for once! Slowly but surely I'm building my gear on this character, but it's still going to be a while before I'm able to tank any decently geared warriors or rogues. I can dream can't I?
posted by Elbows at 2:35 PM
1 Comments:
Nice post. I've read about people fake healing but personally (in 5s) there's so much other things going on that i'm trying to keep track of that I don't bother. Then again maybe i'm just not leet enough. :P
-Ryn
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