You hear this joke all the time: “Oh the game has sound?” or “I haven’t had game sound on in years!!”. I know a LOT of folks play the game without the sound on, and I understand that the game does have a good deal of superfluous sound effects and/or sounds that really do not contribute to your gameplay. I have to admit that there is a certain amount of satisfaction hearing your Prayer of Healing go off, or the BWONG of a Prayer of Mending bounce, or the thwump, thwump, thwump of Penance… but does it really provide added benefit to your performance? No, probably not. Does it add to the immersion aspect of the game? Yep! However, the biggest benefit that audio cues can provide healers is likely boss mods and boss emotes.
At the moment, you really have a “all or nothing” for sounds. Yes there is some minor mixing capabilities in game for Music, Ambient, and Sound Effects, however if you are in a fight where you are grouped up you’ll hear a lot of spell effects, Power Aura notifications, your iTunes/Pandora playlist, as well as Vent/Mumble calls, there is a good chance your boss mod announces will be drowned out.
I recently have been using a in-game modification, Muted Sounds, that mutes combat sounds, enabling me to easily hear vent, boss mods sounds, and boss emotes. Before you say “Emotes are so RP!” The emotes are often very valuable, and key alerts to boss abilities… in fact, I didn’t truly appreciate how helpful those boss emotes were until I installed this Mod/Pack; many of the emotes provide really good predictive notice. (Not to mention the potential impact to ‘quality of gaming life’ to gamers who might have visual or hearing impairments)
I use these boss cues as well as spell alert sounds (off cooldown) to be another source of information that lets me respond to the game and boss mechanics— Muted Sounds simply filters out the unnecessary sounds and leaves me with the important ones.
This pack has already been updated for the 4.3 PTR, and I raided on the PTR with it installed. Give it a spin!
(Special thanks to Alas for getting me the mixer screenshot on the fly)
Flash Heal articles are a short, quick, and easy to understand posts. Flash Heal posts are meant to be less involved and detailed than a full article you are used to seeing here at Tales. Flash Heal posts are posts post that will give you some form of tip, trick, or gem of insight on anything from a spell to a boss mechanic. Got a suggestion for a Flash Heal post? Send us an email!
