LFR Night

Tuesdays are always a big night for the guild.  It’s the night we do our scheduled LFR.  LFR has been awesome for Crits and I see that continuing through MoP.  Apparently last week when I was doing epic poetry analysis, there were about 15-19 people from the guild in LFR.  Last night we had similar numbers.  Close to 15 for the first half and over that for the second.  We actually provided both of the tanks and between 4 and 5 of the 6 healers as well and the rest were DPS.  

As usual it all went very smooth with no wipes.  We had a few people die here and there, but LFR has like 1 million battle rez so we got everyone back up and running.  I went in on Sousa to heal it, though I mostly stood around making comments in raid channel or else tossing pathetic lightning at the boss.  I figured with 5 other healers I would only need to heal during the really AOE heavy parts…you know, the parts where your FPS go to 4?  

We had a blast, it’s always more fun when you’re there with a bunch of people who will life grip you around or /cuddle you or do crafting professions during boss fights and trash.  We won some things and lost some things, but everyone has a good time, at least as far as I know. 

And I died on the Deathwing fight, apparently from standing where a tentacle spawns?  All I know is that I was probably making some rain and then I fell over dead and got an achievement.  I love LFR night. 

Firelands: A Noob Remembers

This past weekend I went with the guild group to Firelands, because there were some people missing and needed some warm bodies.  Sousa is my most geared toon though he is still toting around a few heroic level items.  I took him along to help heal and switch to DPS as needed.  

Having only done some trash on Rossini before, I had no idea what any of the boss fights were like.  I’ve read lots of blogs so I had some idea of a few things.  Like, I knew there were feathers on Alys and that there’s some cat/scorpion phase thing…and lots of spiders. 

Anyways, here’s my recap of what happened, according to Sousa.

Shannox – Heals!  OMG why do you guys keep running out of range!  So much fire on the ground.  Ouch.

Beth – Heals!  Spiders everywhere.  Stack on butt.  “I made some rain you guys!  I hope you like it!”

Rock dude? – There’s right leg and a left leg, tank them apart and he’ll fall down?  I don’t know, don’t get in fire?  “Heal everyone.”  Neat?

Alys – DPS!  Interrupt the druids!  Yay!  Tornadoes are fun!  

Fire demon guy? – DPS!  Don’t go by some crystals!  DON’T STAND BY THE DOOR!!

Domo – Heals!  Stack up!  Make rain!  Run out?  Too slow.  Try again, more rain!!  Pounced!  Hold hands!  Don’t hold hands!  She loves me, she loves me not!  So much rain making.

Ragnaros – DPS!  Okay, hammer smash, not by me…lava wave?  WTF?  Try again.  This time not lava wave death.  Don’t touch the hammer!  Good!  Stack up and AOE…wtf is AOE on an enhancement shaman?  Totems LOL?  Attack!  Death.  Game over for us.

So we ended up 6/7.  Not so bad for my second time ever in Firelands.  I’m pretty amazing with my rain making.  Just saying. 

But seriously, thanks to the guild for being patient with my noobness and my potentially crappy heals.  Having never healed a raid before on my shaman I wasn’t quite up to speed on what I should be focusing on and what I shouldn’t be.  In 5-mans for example, I almost never use chain heal because everyone is not holding hands and it hits like one person.  But in raids, everyone is holding hands!  I make way more rain than I should in a 5-man, so that was easy to do in the raid too.  It was a lot of fun healing with Kerick, because I knew she’d save us if I was busy floor tanking with Bocat and/or Grom.  I’m teasing!! 

Thanks again, good times and pretty dresses.

Elgar Gets Some Love/Hate

I decided to give Elgar a little play time.  Upon logging in, I realized that I had 3 pending rare items for archaeology and should maybe spend some time on that since I really haven’t in months.  As I flew around I kept a close eye on the Dungeon Finder waiting for the CtA:healer.  It usually pops at least once a night. 

As it was, CtA:healer popped up 4 times and I took advantage all 4 times, giving me a nice little break from the archaeology. 

Stonecore:  One wipe on Ozruk, the mage kept spellstealing the reflective debuff and I was paralyzed all 4 times before finally the tank went down from LOS.  We communicated the need to leave up the buff so I could reflect.  Next time, flawless.

Lost City:  Squisky tank, but manageable.  First boss, DK and melee shaman stand in the bad.  I am struggling to keep squishy tank up and get tossed into the pillar 4 times…yes, 4.  So the DK wasn’t getting much in the way of heals as there wasn’t really time to spare.  Sorry.  But after the fight he says “healer, you need to keep up with heals.”  I say, “Really?”  “Yes, really.”  I then say, “DK, you need to not stand in the bad.  Yes, really.”  The tank went on to defend me and there was probably a vote to kick me, but it didn’t pass.  I stuck it out for the goodie bag. 

BRC:  Corla, has anyone not done this?  All three DPS, “me!”  F—-  We wipe once, but they seem to get it.  Second time, lock goofs up his, but we’re able to hold it together, but the interrupts didn’t happen and we lose it.  Lock drops group, warrior DPS comes in, I take locks beam, we execute it perfectly.  Props to the rogue and hunter for never having seen it and figuring it out pretty quick.

What was the last instance???  Hmm, maybe I only did three.

Anyways, after archaeology and satchels, Elgar, Troutwort, and Rossini all ended up with a new mini-pet!  Elgar got the clockwork gnome, but also had a Captured Firefly and a Tourney Bear Cub in his bags!  Whee!  Trout got the firefly because he has a wasp pet that is the same model, and Rossini got the bear cub because so many of the others already had it.  So a good night for all!  Just a few more and Elgar will have enough JP to buy his T11 robes…yes, I’m behind the times!!  Still sporting that green wand though…

Why I Go Alone

There are people out there that probably haven’t run in a PUG…well, heck, maybe ever.  They would rather not run a dungeon than chance the inadequacies of the random player.  Not to defend the PUG, but I PUG nearly everything and find that 90%+ of my groups are successful with little or no real player error.  And if there is it’s usually not a totally big deal. 

I suppose that being the healer and having a little more control over the group helps as well.  I’m now to a point again where I am comfortable healing and even able to pull off some pretty awesome group saves. 

But there is one other reason that I PUG a lot on my healers.  And that reason is Call to Arms: Healer.  I won’t try to convince you any other way, than with pictures.

 

I Like Healing (Again!)

Okay, so it’s no secret to those that play with me or have to endure my horribly complaining about healing since Cataclysm, but I really didn’t like healing in Cataclysm.  I all but abandoned my beloved Elgar and his first healing experiences were horrifying. 

This has changed though.  And after finding a healer play style that fit me very well (Shaman), I grew more confident and the priest started to get some play time too.  I did quite a bit of healing over this weekend and now feel confident to heal heroics on both of them.  Tanks with some better gear since we’re at a new tier have only helped boost my confidence. 

I might not be healing the “correct way” or whatever, but I figure for what I’m trying to accomplish, it’s good enough.  I probably don’t have total gem optimization or even enchant maximized, but I’m no min/max person.  If I have enchants that make sense and gems that are the right stats, I figure that’s probably going to be pretty good.  Agility helps healers dodge right?  (I’m kidding!!)

Sousa doesn’t seem to have any real troubles right now, sometimes his AOE feels a little weak, but the trick there is to get everyone to stand in the healing rain–I love that spell, that is AOE awesometimes.  But there are times when I want to scream at the two ranged DPS standing “just” outside the ring and tell them to get into it–I swear they stand just far enough apart so it can’t hit them both–you guys, HOLD HANDS!!  But otherwise the shaman healing style is really suiting me.

The disc priest (Elgar) took a little more warm-up time for me to feel good about it.  I switched out of a smite spec so it’s more straight up healing like I remember before.  Here mana management is a little more key.  But again, lots of AOE and I feel I don’t have a good way to recover quickly, so I just have decided to tell myself it’s okay, they just need to be up again by the time the next AOE comes, it doesn’t have to be instant.  That I can handle.  Also, just like healing rain, trying to get people to run into the bubble can be frustrating!  Seriously, it’s large and golden, why would you run from something like that? 

Oh, speaking of running from things, here’s a good story, with a twist ending.  I was under siege by some of the adds on the first boss of Grim Batol during a PuG.  I’m on my shaman and don’t have a really good way to get them off of me.  I start to run toward my tank so they can grab them, and all the sudden there’s all this graphics everywhere, and I’m like oh crap, so basically I feel like I’m weaving my way over there, I drop earth elemental, but he dies quick (sad).  Through spam healing myself and the tank and (thank god) the DPS didn’t take damage, we live.  Afterwards the mage says, “Why were you running from all my AOE? I was trying to get them off of you!”

…

I thought I was trying to be killed.  I laughed and said that I didn’t realize who was doing it and was just trying to stay alive that I didn’t have time to see that the AOE was from you and not the fight.  We had a good laugh.  Then later, I fell off one of the bridges and died.  It was…fun.

The long story made short, is that it feels good to be capable of healing again and watch out for the cracks in the Grim Batol bridges, they are really slick.  Seriously.

Spamming Heals

The healing adventure continues.

After being able to heal Stonecore, even though I know I had a great tank, I have more confidence in my ability to heal other heroics as well…on my shaman.  I knew it would be one of those “practice makes perfect” scenarios, but I was pretty turned off from healing early in Cataclysm and didn’t even want to practice. 

I have started to run heroics as a healer regularly.  I usually see if guildies want to tag along now because I have a bit more confidence.  Bocat comes with me about 90% of the time.  I swear I should just invite her by default.  At least she’s one DPS I can count on! 

I ran Lost City last night and also Vortex Pinnacle.  Neither was too bad, but again, no weapon drop for me.  Sousa really needs a healing weapon BADLY.  The one thing that I still have trouble with is mana management.  Water shield helps, but I seem to lose it all the time and in the middle of combat get so caught up in other things that I forget to put it back on.  Lightning shield, when I am DPS-ing, can be glyphed to never drop below 3 charges from output.  I wish there was a similar thing for water shield…I might have to get an add-0n that will tell me when it falls off.  I’m pretty good at watching earth shield.  Anyways, like I said the biggest issue I have is mana.  I try using “Healing Wave” due to its cheap cost, but it heals for so little that it seems useless.  So I use greater healing wave at 5 times the cost.  This spell, at about 7400 mana burns out my mana pool in just 7 casts.  Sure there are procs that reduce its cost etc.  But man, I’m not sure what I should be using to get the healing output I need if I can’t spam that spell when I need to. 

It seems like it’s time to head out and find some good shaman healing guides.  There must be something I could be doing better.

Healing Again

The other day before I logged in after a weekend of fishing, I decided I’d check out some WoW news since I can’t read anything at work and it had been a long time.  With patch 4.2 I swear I was the last to know things and still don’t because I don’t get to read as much as I used to.  Anyways, I happened to see the news about  the world-firsts for heroic kills of Ragnaros on 10 and 25-man.  They had lists of the raid members and so I thought I’d check it out and click on the armory profiles of a few people..specifically to see if any of the priests were disc. 

As it turned out, two of the four were disc, one shadow, and one holy.  I took a look at the disc specs to see how they compared to me.  The first thing I noticed is that neither one was smite spec.  Hmm.  I took a look around to see where they put the extra points and basically could understand the logic behind the movement of the points.  This freed up some more points for holy and shadow as needed.  The last points seemed to be a matter of preference…reduced cooldown on shadowfiend vs. 1% haste or self heals.  So there was some flexibility there.  I decided that perhaps running smite-spec was part of the problem I was having with disc spec.  I would have trouble switching between the boss to smite and my party members when they would need direct heals or bubbles.  I’m sure there is an add-on that makes this much easier, but I don’t like add-ons that much, they always seem to clutter up things.  That’s just my opinion, and I haven’t found a healing add-on that I like. 

So I logged onto Elgar and decided to spend the 33g to change from a smite disc spec to a non-smite spec.  Then, what the hell, I better try it out.  I queued by myself for a normal dungeon.  Best not to take on more than I can handle.  I moved about my toolbars and got myself ready, I got a group almost immediately.  HoO.  F, I hate that place, and I always seem to get it.  I zone in and I’m in the middle of the beetle gauntlet towards flaming marrowgar.  The conversation goes like this:

Elgar:  Uh oh.
Tank:  What?
Elgar:  No offense, but I always get nervous when I come into a group as a healer in the middle of an instance.
DPS1:  The healer just left without a word.
DPS2:  Yeah, we don’t know why.
Elgar:  Okay.  Well, let’s do this.

It didn’t take long for me to start guessing why the healer left.  Aggro seemed to be all over the place as the mage and rogue were not attacking the same target as the tank.  It was not easy to keep everyone alive, bosses seemed to go much better.  The rogue and tank both stood in the flames on the fire elemental boss, fortunately on normal that won’t totally kill you.  It was sloppy.  But it gave me a chance to try healing with the new spec. 

Regardless of the sloppy play, it was much easier for me to heal without worrying about smite and archangel.  It felt more like “normal disc” I remembered from patch 3.0.  Going back to purely healing suits me much better, if there’s no healing needed, I’m okay just standing around or stopcasting greater heal. 

I later did a heroic with guild members, after feeling more confident, and that went pretty well.  Like Mohawk Troll, I tend to PUG over running with guildies because if things go badly, I can drop or get kicked without much consequence, but running with guildies has more weight to it, sure it’s supposed to be more “acceptable” but I hold myself to a high standard when healing and if I were to let a guildie die, even if it were their fault, I’d feel pretty bad about it.  A tank death probably means hours of crying*. 

So that went well and I feel better about the disc spec.  I may end up playing Elgar more now, he’s always been one of my favorites and best geared, but now he’s 3rd of the 85s and just doesn’t get to do much more than transmute.  It will be good to get him back in action now and then. 

* Not really, probably. 

Tearing It Up!

Sousa the shaman has hit 85!  Yay!  That makes #4, with two others at 83.

Playing the shaman is great fun, it’s really a class I can get into because it has everything I like in one of the three specs.  Though I have been doing enhancement for a long time now.  Enhancement is great fun and, as I previously posted, has such versatility that I feel unstoppable…well except for that quest in Uldum, where I forgot to use my cloaking device and the elites killed me.

Anyways, I finished up questing and did a few dungeons along the way.  My DPS was very solid in the 8-9k range however on some boss fights I could get it up to 11 or 12, which isn’t too bad for a level 84 with crappy weapons.  I felt completely confident in Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle to solo and lock out casters which were “lose”.  Interrupting the major spells and using the wolves to keep myself healed, I would toss everything I had at them to keep them off the healer and still able to maintain my own heals so as to not have the healer feel they needed to heal 2 tanks.  I still have to figure out Stonecore on that one boss with the reflect…I don’t get it as melee. 

But everything else was awesome.  And I would top the meters in most my dungeons and in one did 38% of all the damage for the instance, which impressed me since I sometimes feel like I’m just mashing buttons, but apparently, I’m doing something right!

So now that he’s 85, I would like to focus on him some more, getting gear and such, I’m really having fun with him, so I had been collecting all sorts of gear from questing along the way and got myself a healing spec.  I sorta set up my cast bars and hope it works out, the spells seem really great and hopefully I’ll be able to get the hang of it.  It doesn’t seem too bad actually.  And it looks like maybe I picked up the correct talents when compared to other shaman around Stormwind…I noticed one inconsistency, but I’m not sure how critical it is.  But I might try my hand at healing now and then to get some better queues.  I’ll probably try to finish up some reputation grinds before that though.  We’ll have to see how this plays out.  I’ve heard both good and bad things about shaman healers, so we’ll see.  I figure it can’t be any worse than Disc priest!

Hopefully I’ll get a chance to try one out before this weekend.  I’m heading fishing again this weekend so sorry WoW, I’ll be back Sunday evening!

Oh!  One last thing, Troutwort finally got his Green Proto Drake from his Oracle egg.  I’ve been diligently hatching an egg since Cataclysm on Trout so it’s about time.  That makes 5 Green Proto Drakes now.  Sibelius and Kalinnikov were the only level 80s never to get one, Sib went Frenzyheart since he has druid flight form, and I just don’t even know about Kalinnikov.  Ha!

Victim of Call to Arms

Dear Internet,

I have a confession, I am the person you were worried about.  The person driven by the Satchel of Mysterious Goods (or whatever its name is).  The person who queues for a heroic because they have run Baron so many times that the chance to get his mount outside of Stratholme is very desirable. 

So yes, I queued as a healer for a heroic because it was Call to Arms: Healer.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I have no business healing a heroic.  I am still adjusting to Cataclysm healing styles, working in more smites, etc.  I still seem to really have lots of trouble when melee in particular take lots of damage.  I always lose them first.  But anyways, another reason I shouldn’t be healing is that my gear is still lacking, though the computer says I’m geared for heroics, I still have three greens (gloves, wand, wrists) and I think only one epic (alchemy trinket).  I also am missing a few enchants.  I just hate enchanting gear that in one run (even a normal) could be replaced.  I just don’t seem to get lucky with drops!

I should do more questing to get rep up.  I’ll work on that soon.

So back to the story, so Elgar healed.  And much to my horror, it was HoO.  Now granted it could have been worse, I still have never been to SFK, so if that would have popped it would have been worse since I’ve never seen those fights, even as DPS–I can’t believe I’ve never been randomed to it, even on Rossini.  Anyways, the tank had 188k health.  That seemed like a lot.  So that was good, there was however, no CC used.  I lost the tank twice on trash, once on the first boss (we all died then, tank was last though), and once on one of the elemental bosses.  I felt like it wasn’t going well.  We skipped to the final boss, which was okay with me.  I was REALLY worried about being able to heal through the final boss when he does his mucho AOE.  But it went awesome.  I lost the hunter, but he was out of range.  PROTIP TIME:  Run toward your healer, not away.  But during the AOE everyone collapsed, hid under my PW:Barrier and I spammed AOE heals with PoM bouncing about.  Yay!  Cost a ton of mana, but I had shadowfiend ready once we were out of that attack and all was well.  I was REALLY excited and happy!  I figured if I lost the tank on trash, that was bad, but healing through that final HoO boss and one-shotting him was awesome! 

Ado congratulated me and said do it again!  I told him, it’s best to quit while you are ahead. 

It did feel good, I’m still not really confident in my ability to heal as things currently are.  But at least I know it’s not impossible!  I just need more practice and to really finish up questing/rep gear.  Normal dungeons give decent amounts of JP too, so I can use those to improve my areas of poor gear.

He’ll get there, he’s still my favorite toon, but there are many a day where I wish Elgar felt as good healing as I did in LK or BC.

Thanks for listening, Internet.  I promise not to recklessly join a queue for Satchels too often.

Inissor and Bizet

My lag last night was pretty high.  600-700 from server and another 500+ from home.  I am thinking that because my roommate must have been doing something on the internet as well our resources were getting eaten up.  And I’m on a wireless connection as well, so maybe that adds more lag too.

It got to the point where it was pretty noticeable, especially during the dungeon runs I was doing.

Elgar healed a normal Stonecore with some guildies.  It was totally fine, except that the first tank we had would charge in without CC and when the rogue would sap one of the guys that turns into the big rock dude, the tank would death grip that guy to him…  I attempted to kick him with a reason of “doesn’t understand sap”.  It failed.  I mentioned it in guild chat and two of the people in my group were from the guild and said “that was you?”  Apparently I come off as too nice to boot people?  This is not the truth.  I have initiated many a boot.  I don’t have time for crap like that.  I then did it a little while later, after he ran off to pull a boss when I was very far behind him still drinking from going OOM on trash.  Yes kids, it was THAT bad–I didn’t have time for smites because he was taking SO much damage.  Maybe he wasn’t tank spec’d?  Anyways, the second time I initiated I put the reason as “come on guys, seriously”.  It passed.  The second tank was great and I explained the last tank was breaking sap on initiation.  I figure people always like to know why they are coming into a group in the middle.

Anyways, then I did a guild only group heroic with Rossini, that went well, but the lag on my end was HORRIBLE.  But the all guild group made it go smoothly and quickly.  And Ado was nice enough to switch to survival spec so I had someone to put Dark Intent on because everyone else had no DoT effects.  I had enough Justice Points to buy something and replaced my pants since every other replacement would have caused me to lose hit.  I’m still not sure where I’m supposed to get hit from…  I cut some gems quick and logged out.

The lag was killing me at this point so I had decided to redeem some loot card codes I had and when on the website saw the “character recustomization” advertisement.  So I clicked and decided I would do a transfer of the BE warlock I have off of Dawnbringer where no one is to Drak’Tharon where some really awesome people are.  When he transferred over, his name Teufel was already in use, so he needed a name change.  Faced with being ill-prepared for naming a character, I looked at the other players on the server to see if there was any sort of theme:  Alfalfa and Troutorc.  So no.  I decided to use the old Repgrind trick of naming a character after another but spelling it in reverse.  And so the alter ego of Rossini was born as Inissor.  It works, sorta.  So away he went and I logged in a little bit to get his last two bars to hit level 32.  It was interesting, he did a quest and got an off-hand item which was BETTER than the staff he had, so now he has no weapon, just an off-hand.  Kinda lame.

I logged back in quickly to Winterhoof to check the lag scene.  Still bad.  So as I stared at the login screen I see the names of all my classical composer toons… Elgar, Rossini, Schubert, Kalinnikov, Mouret, Haydn, Sibelius… and then there are the two odd ducks–Troutwort and Borka.  I cannot rename Troutwort, his horrible name has a story and will live in infamy.  But Borka was on a whim and I don’t know why I never named him after a classical composer.  So I plopped another $10 down to Blizz and renamed him Bizet.  Though I tried other names first, Prokofiev and Holst were already taken.  I am sad though because I didn’t try Sousa.  D’oh!

So now aside from Trout, all those toons have classical composer names.  All bets are off for the other account though I sorta wish we had stuck with the original theme over on that account which was naming them after the Madison chain of lakes, which is where Wingra and Monona came from.  The others would have been Mendota, Waubesa, and Kegonsa.  Instead that account ended up with Linus, Tygerlily, Feuertig, and Floy.  All completely random names. 

I doubt I’ll be investing in name changes for them though.