To Ward or Not to Ward?

[Taranwen]

I just recently started raiding with my defiler. Now im not a die hard 7 days a week raider and my guild isn't a raid guild so i find myself raiding in Pick-Up raids whenever im able. So as you can well imagine i end up in the MT group often and usually have a different MT with a different style. Some of them like to be pre-warded, some of them don't, some of them like me to 'soulward' at the beginning of a pull; other times i get "spoken to in harsh tones" for even thinking of using that AA ability on a pull. But almsot ALWAYS do i wind up with aggro and die almost immediately leading to high repair bills and frustration. Is there some key im missing? ..is it timing?...what ward should i use on a pull?...should i ward at all?...when is a good time to use Soulward?...and here's another interesting question...what to do when your not healing..halfway through the fight when the tank seems pretty much stable..which debuffs should i go after first?...or should i not bother and just save mana for when a heal may be needed. I'm so used to grouping and it seems that raiding with a  defiler is a whole new can of worms. all of my wards are Master1 and my big T7 heal is M2. Any advice from you raiding Defiler's out there would be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance~Churche Mouse

[cggerth]

First thing you should do before anything is tell your MT that you are warding.  I usually use my group ward and ST ward on raids before the pull.  Especially if it's a single target pull.  (if it's a group, or they are body pulling use extreme caution).  The group ward will give you a bit of protection if the taunt gets resisted.I believe the tanks have an intercede or something similar to that.  The MT should place that on you so if you do take a hit at the beginning, the tank will take it rather then you.  (or have another tank that's not the MT place it on you).  You will draw the aggro above any other healers since the ward is the first thing absorbed.  But again communication is key there.I debuff between heals.  If the MT is  taking heavy dmg, try and sneak the debuffs in when you can.  If the Mt is taking the dmg well and doesn't need many extra heals, you can let the druids do that healing and you can throw some debuffs at the mob.  Usually I go in a pattern, I throw up my ST ward, debuff the DPS then toss the bane ward procing spell.  I cast another ST ward, then cast the other 2 debuffs that debuff stats.  At that point I cast another ST ward, cast my forced cannibalize and manastone.  Cast ST ward, then start looking to refresh the debuffs for any that are dropping off.If the raid is going well and I have extra time, I will swap to my grizzlefazzle mace and toss in a few DoTs, then change back to start the ST ward, debuffs going again.  after a few successful raids you'll figure out a pattern you like.  (this is all for a fight going well)There are lots of other spells you have (like your spiritual circle, use that all the time.  Makes a huge difference)

[motogp]

If  you have a brigand in the group or raid. have them cast appeal for mercy on you before the pull

[Sokolov]

Keep your deaggro ready <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" />Diligent raid tanks should be able to keep aggro even on a pre-ward, but a resist, or a mis-timed taunt, can get you aggro.  Use that deaggro!  The Fear component won't hit epics, so it's a powerful raid tool without drawbacks like when you use it in a dungeon.Soul Ward on pull?  That seems dicey to me.

[Taranwen]

Thanks for the advice guys and gals. I'm sure as cggerth mentioned..i will find my own "groove" as i do a few raids. group ward on the pull seems to be the way to go and i might consider moving my deaggro to the first bar lol. Thanks again guys...if theres any more tactics keep em coming...i love to hear about strategies that work <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Blumfield]

<div><p>When dealing with a new tank, send him a tell and ask him if he wants to be pre-warded, and ask him to inform you if he needs to body pull anything so you can cancel your wards.  Most of the best tanks I've worked with generally want to be pre-warded.  Also, when prewarding, don't do it half-posteriored.  Stack the group ward with a single ward on yourself, and if you get aggro move to the tank quick so he doesn't have to run to you to grab the mob.  Then run back to wherever you're supposed to be.  </p><p>Often you can get aggro and survive--but if you get aggro more than a few times, the tank isn't taunting early enough and you should wait a bit to ward him.  If he's taking that long to taunt he's probably going to wipe the raid a few times with or without pre-wards, so don't worry about it.</p></div>

[Blumfield]

<p>As for soul ward on a pull--soul ward when the tank's health goes red.  Since you can only SW in combat now, to SW on a pull you'd have to wait for him to get aggro, then SW--if he doesn't land a taunt right away you're dead and the raid likely wipes, because you have no time to heal up.  Usually better to know it's a tough encounter and be prepared to cast SW with no notice, but only when necessary, IMO</p>The debuff to land first is your dps/attack speed one.  The name of it escapes me.  Always try to land that at least on the MT's target, since it's fairly quick cast and lasts awhile.  If you can get it on more than one mob in the encounter and still keep up with healing, all the better

[RustyB]

<p>target the tank and turn on your auto attack and you can soul ward.  regardless if you're in an encounter or not.</p><p>though I find soul ward at the start of and encounter a waste of a very powerful raid saver.  with coercive healing I can preward the tank for just under 7k (crits and Marr's proc can bring it over 7k)  so lets say you have 9500 hp  you're only missing maybe 1k from the soul ward.  so imo it really would be wasteful  and a touch on the overkill side  haha</p>

[knightofround]

I preward about 90% of the time. The 10% I don't is when I know there is going to be a nasty caster mob pull and my deaggro isn't up.Most peoples are fools for being afraid of prewards. Shamans can take a couple hits from most epic mobs as long as the druid/cleric are precasting their heals as well. The deaggro is very effective, and if your tank can't pull them off you...then you have a bigger problem.Prewards are critically important because they cushion the spike DPS at the beginning of a fight. It is worth it to the raid if you die from prewards so the tank lives long enough for debuffs to de-tooth the mob.What I've found works well is that I macro my soulward to /say so other healers can patch me up on the pull. When the MT sees the macro he casts his intercept on me. The key thing is to make sure you hit 100% health and have the group ward up exactly when the mob enters camp. It's really the only skill required to be a good MT shaman, is the timing of the prewards. Otherwise you're golden as a buffbot chaining the single+group wards, tossing in debuffs as fast as you can.

[knightofround]

As far as debuffs go, you only need to cast (in this order):AbasementUmbral trapFulginous SphereRuinous ImprecationJust slip in the top of the list whenever both of your wards are down. If you know its going to be a long fight, I'd put forced cannibalize at the #3 spot.Once all the spells are in and I've still got time between ward refreshes, I'll run into melee, turn on autoattack, and set up spiritual circle. Only after that will I throw in our other DoTs.I never use either of the two pure stat debuffs. They are a waste of both mana and casting time.

[Dendro]

So you use Ruinous Imprecation just for the noxious debuff (and don't use Putrefy because it debuffs wis rather than a resist?) So by that reasoning, Caliginous Corruption is also worthwhile, at least for multi-mob encounters

[Blumfield]

<cite>Dendro wrote:</cite><blockquote>So you use Ruinous Imprecation just for the noxious debuff (and don't use Putrefy because it debuffs wis rather than a resist?) So by that reasoning, Caliginous Corruption is also worthwhile, at least for multi-mob encounters</blockquote>Agree with the above debuff casting order.  And I use ruinous to toss in some DPS; the debuff portion of the spell has a fairly short duration.  I also stack the quick casting DoTs, and only worry about caliginous if the encounter is well in hand--long cast time on that puppy!

[Mimosa]

<p>Our tanks expect always, always, always to be pre-warded. Any one who didn't preward would very promptly find themselves moved out of the MT group, if not out of the raid!</p><p>As others have said, be ready with your de-aggro. The other thing I've found is to have completed the casting of both wards BEFORE the pull. If you're casting during the pull for some reason it seems more likely to pull more aggro. The tank should be taunting as soon as the mob/mobs are in range, and with some kind of hate increase on him, you shouldn't get aggro that often. If you do, the group ward gives you some protection too, so I always cast that first, on the advice of another defiler when I first started raiding.</p><p>For the easier raids (Labs/Lyceum), our tanks expect wards & reactives to stay up all the time. For harder raids, they'll give the whole raid a warning before pulls (incoming in 5 seconds, etc). That allows time for mystic to throw on bolster, troub to toss on JC, etc. Usually its only 5 seconds, though, so I've gotten a feel for the rhythm of things so that I can start group ward sooner, or just pretty much keep it up when it is refreshed if we're not moving or when we're in a zone that I'm unfamiliar with.</p><p>As far as debuffs, I personally do Bane of Protection first. Then pretty much the order given above. If I find myself with time to spare between wards and debuffs, then I throw on my dots unless its a long fight where I need to conserve power.</p><p>I've honestly never gone on a pickup raid though, so I suppose that could be different. There may be tanks that prefer not to be prewarded. I've just never met any of them <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /></p>

[Blumfield]

<cite>Nuadrae@The Bazaar wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Our tanks expect always, always, always to be pre-warded. Any one who didn't preward would very promptly find themselves moved out of the MT group, if not out of the raid!</p><p>As others have said, be ready with your de-aggro. The other thing I've found is to have completed the casting of both wards BEFORE the pull. If you're casting during the pull for some reason it seems more likely to pull more aggro. The tank should be taunting as soon as the mob/mobs are in range, and with some kind of hate increase on him, you shouldn't get aggro that often. If you do, the group ward gives you some protection too, so I always cast that first, on the advice of another defiler when I first started raiding.</p><p>For the easier raids (Labs/Lyceum), our tanks expect wards & reactives to stay up all the time. For harder raids, they'll give the whole raid a warning before pulls (incoming in 5 seconds, etc). That allows time for mystic to throw on bolster, troub to toss on JC, etc. Usually its only 5 seconds, though, so I've gotten a feel for the rhythm of things so that I can start group ward sooner, or just pretty much keep it up when it is refreshed if we're not moving or when we're in a zone that I'm unfamiliar with.</p><p>As far as debuffs, I personally do Bane of Protection first. Then pretty much the order given above. If I find myself with time to spare between wards and debuffs, then I throw on my dots unless its a long fight where I need to conserve power.</p><p>I've honestly never gone on a pickup raid though, so I suppose that could be different. There may be tanks that prefer not to be prewarded. I've just never met any of them <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /></p></blockquote>A lot of less experienced tanks who mainly work with druids and do heroic content don't figure out how to work with shamans until they've raided quite a bit.  I heard "never pre-ward!" more times than I can count when I was leveling up, as a noob.  An experienced tank will realise he wants pre-wards up and just expect to have to grab aggro within seconds of pulling.  The benefit of pre-wards far outweighs the risk.

[Cadori Seraphim]

Some good replies and suggestions but in my experience if you (consistantly) die when prewarding on a pull then the tank sucks lol.Resists happen and I find I get agro, very rarely tho, on incoming but I usually live through it as the tank I heal for rocks.

[Arielle Nightshade]

<p>I agree that prewarding is the way to go.  </p><p>One of the biggest reasons to have a Defiler in the MT group is to mitigate burst damage on the pull (and of course subsequently throughout each fight, but that first pull can often make or break said fight).   What gets through that is mitigated by Cleric reactives and then anything after that directly healed by the group druid.   If you are waiting to ward till after that first hit, a huge chunk of Defiler uberosity is lost in trying to catch up.  The slower timers of our spells make it so you feel like you are always behind the curve if you don't stop most of that initial damage before it happens.</p><p>A less experienced tank will not have the pinpoint accuracy of pulls that a better one will have, and might often prefer bodypulling to avoid social aggro.   If this is the case, and you are in their group, it's their responsibility to start taunting as soon as they possibly can.  If this means that they have to pull farther, or adjust their timing...well, it's all part of learning to work with other classes, IMO.</p><p>If you are doing mostly pickup raids - communication is vital to understanding what the tank is expecting from you.   I kind of have to wonder though:  How is it possible for someone to be able to tank a whole raid zone and never have ever grouped with a shaman before?  (rhetorical question there...)</p><p>My best advice though: Find a guild where you can have a bit of stability.  Going into a PuG raid and constantly getting your [Removed for Content] kicked isn't my idea of a good time.  GL with raiding though, if you find a group you like.  Raiding as a Defiler is a blast!</p><p>(I have 70 Warden, 70 Defiler, 70 Templar ...all raiders)</p>

[knightofround]

<div> <span class="genmed"><b><span style="color: #3333ff;">Dendro</span></b></span> </div> ,Yes, the main reason I cast Imprecation is for the debuff to noxious in addition to being one of our highest dps spells. No, caligious corruption is not worth casting IMHO, because very few classes have noxious AEs; it is only important to do single-target noxious debuff because of all the poison procing off of your scouts. Calig takes too much cast time, and does too little damage and debuff for it to be more useful than our other dots.On raids AE defensive debuffs are actually a bad thing, because the more you debuff the adds, the more dps your raid will be piling on the adds, which makes it more difficult for the tanks to hold AE aggro. (Its the exact opposite scenario for offensive debuffs)  Plus, AE defensive debuffs aren't *utilized* very much, as the duration will usually long expire before the mob drops.Usually, single target aggro is not a problem, so you want to make sure to debuff the primary target asap.

[Wilsco]

<p>Pre-Ward? A little redundant, know? Sounds like Cold-Ice. What the heck good is an after-ward? The whole principle and purpose of a ward is based on its being cast before damage is done. If you aren't going to ward before the damage comes then you might as well play something other than a shaman. </p><p>If you are dieing consistantly, make sure you have your resists up, portent on yourself and deaggro. If  that doesn't work, get a better tank. </p>

[AdamWest007]

or oxy-[Removed for Content]