Re-activating your WoW account, or interested in "Trying Before You Buy"?Greasing the Social Wheels: First Aid Training
Not familiar with what I mean by "Greasing the Social Wheels"? Check out my introductory entry on the topic first.
About First Aid
On World of Warcraft, First Aid is one of the three "secondary" professions that can be learned by all players of all classes, no matter their other professions. Fishing and Cooking are the other in this category which can be learned by all.
First Aid allows a player to turn cloth into bandages - progressively more powerful bandages as the player's First Aid level advances. Bandages can be used as one of the many ways to restore health more quickly than natural healing allows, but the special benefit of bandaging is that it can be used for in-combat healing as long as the bandager and bandagee are not being hit (a hit will stop the channelling of bandaged healing).
Why First Aid Is A "Wheel Greaser"
In a party situation, it's not always fair to depend solely on the healer to restore your health from battles. And, as a healer, sometimes it's nice to save your mana and still get a quick heal.
While you may be fortunate and end up with group after group where the healer has plenty of mana to heal the fight and is able to recover mana for the next battle without huge long delays for the group, it's what you do to "pull out the last stops" on or just after a really hard fight that helps define you as an A-Team player versus an Average Player.
And if you're a Warlock who likes to Life Tap to restore mana, you're losing an INSANE number of karma points with the A-Team members if you're not bandaging yourself up after Life Tapping between battles, at least until the healer says they'll gladly take over helping you out there.
How To Use First Aid As A Wheel Greaser
The main thing you're doing by using First Aid is saving the Healer (even if the Healer is you) mana and as a result, allowing the group to progress more quickly, reducing the number of "mana up" breaks the healer will need. Sometimes, however, you're backing out of a tough battle to bandage for a moment to save your life (so you can contribute more DPS to the fight afterwards) when the healer has been forced to focus solely on keeping the tank up.
Here are some simple habits you can execute between battles that will be noticed by the A-Team:
- Bandage yourself to full health after a battle has completed whenever possible
- Hunters, use bandages as extra healing on top of your Mend Pet ability
- Warlocks, use bandages to restore health after Life Tapping
- Anyone - bandage someone who needs it between battles
During battles, it's not often all that useful to use a bandage, because being hit cancels the streaming heal of the bandaging process and bandaging can only be done once every 60 seconds. However, if you are not being hit and are a DPS character that can back out of a battle for 10 seconds to apply a bandage, the extra time you give yourself to "live to DPS another day" could end up helping the team more than if you had stayed, fought, and died.
What's the quickest way to level up First Aid?
Now that you see one of the important reasons to level up First Aid, how do you get it to a reasonable level, quickly?
Personally, I like farming dungeons for my First Aid materials, but that's because I have a max-level toon. Two runs of Ragefire Chasm, Two of Dead Mines and then about 6 wings of Scarlet Monestary and I'm at 225 First Aid and ready to do the quest in Hammerfall to up the max to 300.
If you're starting a new toon, however, consider leveling up First Aid more naturally - take the Linen Cloth you find from humanoids from level 6 to the low teens and turn them into bandages, and as you advance your level, the cloth types will advance, too.
If you're around level 40, consider farming RFC (or the Alliance equiv) for your Linen Cloth, or taking out humanoids in that 6-12 level range in zones you used to play in. Wool Cloth can be found on the Razormanes in The Barrens but is also present in Dead Mines and Wailing Caverns in piles.
And of course, if the prices are good because there's a lot listed, buy some from the Auction House!
And yes, Wool Cloth is ALWAYS that expensive (more than Linen Cloth or Silk Cloth, at times more than Mageweave Cloth)... but that's another topic for another day!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!Related posts:
- Greasing the Social Wheels: Preparing For Dungeons
- Greasing the Social Wheels, An Introduction
- How To Join A PUG
Tagged as: dungeon leader guide, dungeon playing guide, dungeon training guide, Dungeons, Etiquette, first aid, first aid training, greasing the social wheels, guild etiquette, guildmaster guide, how to be a good guildmate, how to find a guild, how to make friends, instances, marked down on karma, party leader guide, pick up group, pugging, pugging strategy, raid leader guide, raider training guide, social guide, things to farm, Tips and Tricks
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I commented on this before in the introductory topic as i kinda read both and went back read and commented on the first post on the topic of "Greasing the Social Wheel". I like the topic i relate it in that its all perspective.
In relating it to First Aid just by the way i play i often when on dungeon runs heal others in party with my first aid Netherweave Bandages. I always have 2 full stack all the time. I do that to heal others inbetween the pulls after a pull when some need healing not topped off on health before the next pull. The thing is i'm a Paladin and i'm the Tank. I rarely ever use my Mana to heal after a pull as i really don't have that mana in the first place and after most pulls i'm usually the first one drinking. Sometimes i empty out my mana on healing everyone else then i drink because it will replace the full mana bar anyway. Often after i finish some on group still not topped on health by healer or for some other reason not sure why. So i just bandage them so were ready to go after. Its always funny when i do that as its usually a clothy or a non healing class but what's funny is i'm wondering to my self, don't those people carry bandages? Anyway i just bandage them so things can move along. Sometimes after a pull inbetween i often bandage myself even before the healer heals me then i see a few seconds later i get a heal. Bandaging myself saves the healer mana and all it cost me is bandage. I guess it shows some though as a Player in how you play and relate to others whether you helping heal someone else, healing the hunters pet which i've done many times or healing your self to save the healer mana so they dont have to spend all the time drinking recovering mana. In such cases a player does stand out in being prepared or having enough supplies to help out a group. Its no different to carrying enough water if your a mana user so your not know as the person always begging for water all the time.
Picking on locks eh?.. (grumble grumble)..
Nah, most of the good locks know that you have to warn healers about lifetap. I typically will say "only bother to heal me if you see me dip below 50%". I say this because I am affliction and I can easily drain back up to full health during a fight without seriously gimping my contribution. Also, Affy locks have the benefit of dark pact. Dark pact = love. Believe it, know it, acknowledge it. I have rarely been in a dungeon where I was told "get out void/succy/fel". So I am usually using my imp, for his massive stamina boost, and cause I drain all his mana whenever possible.
It is easiest to be careless if you run with healers you know. I have a few that will put 2 HoT's on me while I'm on full life and this is just understood.. Lifetap till you have full Mcgoo. But then there are healers that LOOSE THEIR MINDS over you dropping in HP. Firstly, I don't believe in lifetap in fights. I have only done it on rare occasions, and I only do it 1 time to get a big mana push. Quickly followed by drain life to get that life back. I have had healers tell me (when I was learning the ropes) "stop LT or I'll let you die". I'd love to say that affected me, but as a dps class I'm required, but at the expense of a healer/tank. So if tank needs your mana, give it to him.. You can res me afterwards (being affy, most of my damage comes from dot's anyway). A side note to all healers, ignore affy locks when they are dropping without being hit. We are just planning on draining back HP in a second, if you HAVE the mana, and don't mind.. throw us a HoT.. (low level is fine).
I have yet to run into a Warlock that pre-warns the Healer, but that would definitely fit into my definitions of acceptable behavior in a good group.
On my druid alt, the problem I run across with healing yourself (whether by bandage or healing spell) is that you can bet that as soon as your bandage or heal hits, the priest's heal will hit you a second before or after! So yeah, pretty much a waste of a heal. Does anyone have any strategies to deal with this?
My other comment is that I am usually really well prepared. I often bring mana pots to share with the healer and scrolls to share with the group. BUT, because I need to go to the bank and vendor to empty my bags and stock up on supplies (after being invited), I get hassled the whole time with summon requests. Only to get there, and I'm the only one prepared. *sigh*
Although sometimes party members ARE prepared. Because on my lvl 46 mage, I'll offer conjured food and water and people don't need it. If that was me I would take it. Especially because conjured food is pretty much free(as far as mana goes) as I conjure it ahead of time.