Gaming
 

Healer twinking guide

From WoWWiki

Contents

General tips for healers

Your mana - and mana regeneration - and stamina are everything, above spell/heal bonus (which is still nice to have some). Gear up to have a good survivability and place yourself high on the 'heal priority' list.

Be aware you will tend to pull a lot of aggro, both in and out combat. Hunters will always pick you, rogues will always chase you. Keep moving seems the advice, making priests and druids a nice pick.

Stick with the group. Sometimes your group does not tend to stick together. In both cases, identify if you have any tank. If no warrior paladin or druid around, this even might be a twink rogue. A tank-healer combo + some (ranged) DPS can be very effective in Battlegrounds (BG's). The concept of 'tank' is not limited to PVE!

Non-healers: stick with your healer. Make sure you know where he/she is and don't rush out of range expecting heals without your healer needing to maneuver in a dangerous position.

Any class with a heal button, whether healing spec'ed or not, must consider themselves a healer. Having a heal-mod/heal-addon installed will make life easier and help you identify friendly targets that are in need of a heal. So does pressing SHIFT-V (default mapping - View Friendly Health Bar) in lots of cases.

Choosing your class

Depending on your playstyle (healing-only or hybrid DPS/heal, melee or ranged etc) and talent tree you can pick almost any class you like, there is no class 'superior' above another, any healing class can have very good performance in a BG.

  • Priests. Moderate DPS. Good heal, shields and buffs. Moderate but effective CC.
  • Paladins. Hard to get / slow to kill. Good buffs and heal but lack of instant heal spells. Moderate DPS. Very low CC (stun).
  • Shamans. Nice heal but no instants, good DPS if spec'ed. Nice CC (Frost Shock / Earthbind). Good flag carriers (Ghost Wolf).
  • Druids. High survivability. Escape well from CC effects. Effective heal. Nice DPS. Low CC (root outdoor, charge)stun effects). Very good flag carriers.

Items that are of use

In general, the PvP rewards from WSG and AB are the best of its kind at this level. Focus your attention for gear on the items that are not rewarded. As healer, consider mana regeneration (spirit/int/stamina gear).

Dark Rune - Returns (a LOT of) mana in trade of some health. Very nice if you have a spare (unattended) second. Heal yourself after use (if it doesn't crit). Drops a lot in Scholomance.

Furbolg Form - Confuses the opponent and is a purgable buff. Ow, and its just fun too. Quest chain is (easy) soloable at ~lvl25.

Mystic Spellthread / Runic Spellthread - Silver Spellthread Golden Spellthread - Spellpower / healbonus and good stamina buff. Some people may even prefer the stamina of Clefthide Leg Armor but this is not recommended, since there are other ways to obtain stamina, but it's not easy to obtain a high spellpower/healbonus without the spellthread. Make note that this enchant cannot be applied on BoP items. Therefore, twinks will almost always have pants that are BoE. Keep your eyes open for such items on the auction hall.

Engineering

Various items from engineering are very usefull, both gear and consumable items (bombs). Engineering is considered a basic skill for twinks and is very recommended. Maximum engineering skill is capped by level. 150 for lvl19 and 225 for lvl29. Gnomes have a +15 engineering bonus, allowing craft/use of items up to engineering skill 240 (at level 29), unfortunately the gnome race provides no healing classes.

Lvl29:

  • Spellpower Goggles Xtreme - No stamina or spirit but a very good +21 spellpower bonus which is hard to obtain by other means.

Librams

The various librams allow enchanting of head and leg slots. A quest chain is involved that your level55+ main character can easily complete generally. The enchant can put put on BoE items, so you can enchant a BoE piece for your own twink. For BoP gear, you will have a friend do the questchain for you.

Most twinks will go for the libram of constitution. Keep your eyes open at AH, they are sold for anything between 40g and 200g (TBC inflation). Add 30g cost for delivering the quest, and a good afternoon to complete the quest chain. The other librams are generally a lot cheaper (2g-5g).

Gear that is enchantable with Burning Crusader enchants.

There are few items ingame that are 'levelless'. They (almost?) always are quest rewards. Such gear allows enchanting of any kind, ignoring the lvl35 requirement that was introduced with TBC enchants.

For level 29 there are a number of interesting items:

Level slowly

  • Do not try to level fast to 19/29, only to realize you missed a lot of items. In fact, you will have to go slowly and carefully with your XP. Go to battleground at lvl16/25, even if your gear is not complete or if you feel underpowered (which you are).
  • Ignore comments from lvl19's and 29's about your level. Just check, see what your performance is, what you (think) you need more, this can be stamina, intellect, mp5, or another talent tree.
  • Inspect other players.

Leveling slow and patiently till 19/29, going to battlegrounds on regular base, seems to be the best advise in an effort to create 'the perfect twink'.

Tips for limiting your XP

If you run into xp limits while trying to get that one drop, here are some tips:

  • Convert party to raid group
  • Wait outside instance or at a large distance untill its cleared. Only when booster is at the boss you need, come closer. Have loot set to group loot and your booster can loot it while you needroll the item. Be sure to be in range when the boss is killed (= XP from the boss)
  • You can actively try to reduce the amount of rested bonus by not logging out into town.
  • You can ask a high-level hunter or shaman to join you and kill all mobs using only pet or totems. By not casting direct spells or melee on the mob yourself, but only having totems or pets do damage, the mobs will not get tapped, and therefore you will not get any xp or loot. Using this method you can fully clear instances, getting only xp from the mobs or bosses you really need.

Leveling 1-19

Especially level19 twinks should plan their leveling carefully, as quests, discoveries and xp from instances easily cumulates. Once level 18, you will see how XP is in fact your enemy.

lvl1 - Scan the auction hall for lvl14-19 gear (or lvl20-29 gear) that interests you. Make sure your twink has cash and bagspace. Level your twink in started zone

lvl5 - Pick up mining. This will help you to level engineering at very reduced cost.

lvl 9-12 - This is probably one of the most time consuming. Walk Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor and try as obtain as many flight paths and discoveries as practically possible. * Darnassus * Ironforge * Stormwind * Theramore * Menethil harbor * Ratchet * Astranaar are minimum for a level19. Make yourself a little easier by finding a mage that will portal you to Shattrath, be sure to set your Hearthstone.

lvl15 - If you didn't already, level your First Aid skill to the maximum of lvl225.

lvl15-16 - Find group or boost to Wailing Caverns. Be sure to pick up the Glowing Shard and complete the quest chain for your Talbar Mantle. (Any twink should do this quest, also non-healers)

lvl16-18 - Find group or boost to Dead Mines

lvl17 - If you didn't already, level your engineering. Grind WSG.

lvl18 - Hang around in battleground for a while, grinding your first WSG rewards. Do not rush to level19. Be carefull on your XP, and double, triple check whatever gear or quest you might have missed. WSG rewards are lvl18 anyways, and chances are your final pants are not lvl19, so you might already apply your spellthread (or just don't care g that much).

Leveling 1-29

Level 29 twinks have it somewhat more relaxed on leveling, as they need significant more xp to level so have more spare. Be carefull though, and don't rush beyond the lvl28 either. Considering (a bit) twinking at level 18-19 so you have some WSG marks and honor for purchases at lvl28.

lvl25-27 - Run those quests chains:


As side note: You don't necessarely have to try to create 'the perfect twink' on your first twink alt. Leveling the first few levels is relative little work (afternoon upto 1 or 2 days) compared to other things you need to do to create this perfect twink, like level engineering (1-2 days), headslot enchant (afternoon), enough gold ('hundreds'), grind instances etc. You can consider to give your first twink a good 'best shot' learning the basics, organising everything etc, and make an alt for your 'perfect twink' after. This also allows you to spend a lot of time in battleground on your 1st, while slowly perfecting your 2nd twink.

Instances

It is recommended that you find a friend with the same interests as you. That way, you can help your friend to "boost" his/hers twink in instances, and your friend in turn will help you. You don't strictly need a lvl70 as main, although this is very recommended since twinking can costs quite some gold.

Also, twinks not necessarely always need (a lot of) boosts from high-level players. A level 29 twink can probably arrange runs to gnomeregan with players of his own level at ~lvl26-27, which is of course much more fun to do! Running your instances yourself with a group of your level allows you to complete quests, has a good chance on the 'good drops', and thus at least reduces the load on your friend to boost you for gear that didn't drop.

Make sure to install AtlasLoot.

lvl19 twinks:

lvl29 twinks:

Very Limited use: Shadowfang keep and Blackfathom Deeps.

Fishing

Pick up fishing and level it. Every sunday starting 14:00 go to Stranglethorn Vale and try to catch a rare fish. This will reward items like [Lucky Fishing Hat], [Nat Pagle's Extreme Anglin' Boots] that have a very good stamina attribute and the boots are enchantable with TBC enchants. See Fishbot 5000 for details on this quest.

Gurubashi Arena

The Gurubashi Arena arena in SV allows die-hard twinks to ultimately reward a [Arena Grand Master].

See also