Philosophy of Hellfire Healing

[Sparksparks]

With all the discussion of DPS vs Tanks in instances, I thought I would bring up one about DPS vs Healers. My cousin and I were running dungeons for leveling, I was tanking while my cousin healed, and we got warlocks several times, that would just hellfire until they died, and we thought this was hilarious. These locks got pissed and such. It didn't affect me as the tank, I had aggro just fine, but my cousin didn't feel like he should have to heal a lock if he's stupid enough to let the hellfire kill him. Is this the correct philosophy concerning hellfire and healing? Discuss.

[Jamber]

can a lock cancel hellfire if they start casting it? being a 10 sec channel, I don't know :\

[Schattenlied]

I believe that if Hellfire will be used, the warlock needs to let the healer know beforehand, and if they healer doesn't agree.... Use at own risk, and know the recovery from such is on the warlock not the healer.

can a lock cancel hellfire if they start casting it? being a 10 sec channel, I don't know :\

yes.

[Nangz]

If you are a warlock and you are hellfiring that is fine but when hellfiring if you are not watching

1. Your health
and
2. Your threat

then you fail. If you lose too much health you should stop as you will probably die ( you can still suicide yourself with hellfire) and if you pull threat it is way too much to ask for any healer to keep up you: a hellfiring aggro pulling warlock and the tank.

TL;DR

Hellfire, but if you drop below 50% health don't. Also don't hellfire if you have aggro. Hellfire or aggro one is bad enough. 2 is just dumb.

[Deleted]

I'd say it depends. If he lets himself die purely from hellfire damage... He's a moron. You should still be healing him, but if he sees himself getting dangerously low, he should stop doing it, assuming the healers has more important things to do or so.

But if he dies from getting to like 50%, then from mobs (and i don't mean overaggroing, just mobs doing random group-wide AoE or random targetted attacks), you're the morons, cos you didn't heal a member of your group that was doing his job perfectly fine.

Also, you're penalising him for his class mechanics. Same for life tap. Not healing that means you just want to be dicks, nothing else.

[Luuth]

What is Hellfire for if not to dps? I guess you should also let locks life tap themselves to death too. Should locks never use this spell because of the fact that it costs them health. I would think Blizz should take the spell out of the game if it serves no real function other than to make healers heal.

[halmotors]

What is Hellfire for if not to dps? I guess you should also let locks life tap themselves to death too. Should locks never use this spell because of the fact that it costs them health. I would think Blizz should take the spell out of the game if it serves no real function other than to make healers heal.

It's called having situational awareness. If you don't have the mental wherewithal to watch your health bar while using the ability, then don't use it because you're just a leech on the healer and the group in general.

As far as healing goes...I'll toss them a HoT and leave the rest up to them. If they want to burn themselves into the ground, great. I'm not going to keep them up if they can't cancel the fire just before they die, though.

[mcgenius]

yep some healers so dumb to be upset about healing a life tap ...don't kill yourself with it for your own benefit but chances are your not going to die so quick as to not get a heal unless they are some lazy crappy healer

[Azutael]

Well, if the healer has mana. Then by all means go ahead and use hellfire.
I'm leveling a char right now (rogue) and the healers are complaining that there isnt enough to heal pretty damn often even at low lvl's now.

Aslong as the warlock doesent overaggro, it should be fine. If he does, well then hopefully he/she learns a lesson.

[Deleted]

I can't think of any reason not to heal them. it speeds up the dungeons fuckloads (had a 2k dps lock at level 65 fx) and it's nowhere near hard or mana-consuming to keep them up trough it.

the whole "I won't heal you when you lifetap/hellfire" mentality is just lazy/bad healers who think they run the show. as a healer your job is to heal your group. and as long as people don't stand in fire for the whole fight the like, you're the one who fails if they die.

[cybermind]

I'm wondering if they are picking up Inferno as Demo and are allowed to run while channeling it. The standard way to break out of a channel like that would be to move or jump, which no longer cancels it. I guess they don't know about /stopcasting.

[Kesia]

If I have the mana and the tank isn't taking an insane amount of damage, I'll heal them.

If I'm busy healing somebody that's actually taking damage from a mob, they're on their own. Especially now that I can't just spam my fastest heal on the entire party.

99.9% of the time, DPS gets Healing Wave on my shaman or Heal on my priest - that's it. They shouldn't be taking enough damage fast enough to warrant my fast, expensive heal or my big, expensive heal.

[Deleted]

A simple HoT should be enough to keep a Hellfiring Warlock up as long as he isn't taking other damage. I agree that there is a point where the 'lock should think "hang on, I'm not getting any heals... I should probably stop this". So really, everyone was being incompetent or at the very best willfully stubborn.

You should realise that you and your cousin will be seeing more Warlocks using Hellfire since it now has talents in the Demo tree to make it worthwhile and actually throw them a heal so that your run can go faster.

There are three reasons why a healer wouldn't heal a warlock if they Life Tapped or used Hellfire:

1. Not possible, due to having to heal massive incoming tank damage or OOM.

2. Not capable, due to lack of competence.

3. Doesn't understand other classes abilities so will just refuse to synergise and be stubborn about it.

I suspect the answer in this case is either 2 or 3 since you found the whole thing extremely funny and didn't mention anything about you wearing unsuitable tanking gear or your cousin wearing unsuitable healing gear.

[krasgoth]

People don't die from hellfire, it's pretty much impossible to die from hellfire. It ticks for like, 700. If your healer isn't healing enough to save you from 700 hellfire ticks, you should fire them.

Now, if hellfire is pulling aggro and they're dying because of THAT, that would be a combination of fault between the tank not holding aggro and them for causing too much of it. But no one dies to channeling hellfire by itself.

[mistuhbull]

at 80 HF is ~500 DPS to the lock.

shut up and heal us, we are using it because it is the best AoE for Demo, if we were aff we would be using seed. But we are demo, so do your job and heal us.

[Munk]

the whole "I won't heal you when you lifetap/hellfire" mentality is just lazy/bad healers who think they run the show. as a healer your job is to heal your group. and as long as people don't stand in fire for the whole fight the like, you're the one who fails if they die.

Same mentality as a tank who wont taunt a mob they lost control of. Just bad players trying to act better than they are.

A tank or healer wouldnt think twice about a dps not attacking something because they didnt want to..... but yet that standard for some reason isnt reversable (when it should be). Regardless of the situational circumstances the basic premise of a 5m dungeon is that the tank is supposed to get hit by all the mobs preventing all possible damage on his party. The dps kill everything in sight, and the healer heals anything thats not topped off priority ususlly being Healer>Tank>dps (dead healer wont heal a tank, dead tank leads to dead dps).

I dont have a problem perse with hellfire except that locks also have a RoF which may or may not be as powerful (dont really know the coef's) but certainly doesnt cause damage, isnt used in melee range and prevents party damage in the form of self mutilation. If the tanks having no problem holding agro, and the healer is fine on both gcd's and mana then sure why not hellfire away but it would be no different than say a 3.0 ret pally hitting a 15k judgement and killing himself from the 5k recoil. You as the player know damn well what the recoil damage is and if you dont have the health to back it up dont cast it.

Yes the healer should be there to take care of it, but if they arent its not their fault at the end of the day. The only exception is that if the healer ISNT gcd locked healing the tank and uncontrollable party damage, or isnt strained on mana keeping up with the parties clearing pace then it would of course fall on the healer for simply not doing his/her job.

**edit** my post is assuming lower level players as that is often where this problem crops up.

[Martinussen]

Yes. if he is killing himself leave him. like dps's taking aggro. let them tank

or they should do like my brother. he uses voidwalker for shield so he can spam all he wants

altho... you might wanna throw him some heals

[krasgoth]

Same mentality as a tank who wont taunt a mob they lost control of. Just bad players trying to act better than they are.

A tank or healer wouldnt think twice about a dps not attacking something because they didnt want to..... but yet that standard for some reason isnt reversable (when it should be). Regardless of the situational circumstances the basic premise of a 5m dungeon is that the tank is supposed to get hit by all the mobs preventing all possible damage on his party. The dps kill everything in sight, and the healer heals anything thats not topped off priority ususlly being Healer>Tank>dps (dead healer wont heal a tank, dead tank leads to dead dps).

I dont have a problem perse with hellfire except that locks also have a RoF which may or may not be as powerful (dont really know the coef's) but certainly doesnt cause damage, isnt used in melee range and prevents party damage in the form of self mutilation. If the tanks having no problem holding agro, and the healer is fine on both gcd's and mana then sure why not hellfire away but it would be no different than say a 3.0 ret pally hitting a 15k judgement and killing himself from the 5k recoil. You as the player know damn well what the recoil damage is and if you dont have the health to back it up dont cast it.

Yes the healer should be there to take care of it, but if they arent its not their fault at the end of the day. The only exception is that if the healer ISNT gcd locked healing the tank and uncontrollable party damage, or isnt strained on mana keeping up with the parties clearing pace then it would of course fall on the healer for simply not doing his/her job.

**edit** my post is assuming lower level players as that is often where this problem crops up.

If you don't understand warlock mechanics, why are you posting this?

You're in the warlock forum suggesting demo locks use rain of fire instead of hellfire because it doesn't require you to be in melee range. C'mon now.

[Grimgore]

I was healing a 5 man group last night that had a Demo Lock in it who would Hellfire himself to death. Other than bosses, it was the only spell he'd use. Go stand on the tank, channel Hellfire. When the channel was over, if any mobs were still up, channel Hellfire again. I checked Recount at the end of the run and Hellfire made up 77% of the guys damage. He never used Metamorphosis once the entire run.

Anyways, I (playing Resto Druid) kept him up initially, but after I saw what he was doing I stopped, just curious to see wtf he was actually doing. Twice he Hellfire'd himself to death. He was taking some mild AoE dmg (maybe 2k/3 sec or something) and just channeled Hellfire until he died. I really wasn't sure what to make of it.

I ended up letting the guy die a couple more times just because I don't want to encourage bad players to continue playing bad. I *could* have kept him up easily, but I was just baffled at this playstyle and was curious to see if he actually WOULD kill himself if given the chance.

Anyways, please inform me. Is this a valid form of dpsing now for Demo Locks? If it's their top dps for trash packs, then I'll happily heal them through it. If it's just a lazy form of dpsing, I think I'll continue to let them die when I get grouped with them. I know it's not my responsibility to teach them to play, but in Cataclysm you are NOT going to be able to dps like that. I'd rather do my part to weed out these people now than to have to deal with them later.

[Ner zhul]

sometimes i feel that there is excessive lifetapping. the lock tapping when his mana is at 80% or higher is over kill. some locks do it every free global, when not needed. some locks will do it right after/before they take damage and almost kill themselves. some locks wont notice the hots on them, and wait til after the hot is over to tap, instead of just tapping and letting the hot heal them back up

tapping is either noticed or not. when a lock is bad ull notice it, when hes good u wont

same goes for hellfire... if hes bad ull have to spam heal him, if hes good u might not notice it at all

but hes responsible for taking damage just as much as ur responsible for healing him