Category Archives: Healing

Catching Up On My Feed Reader:

Taken from Righteous Orbs:

I had a fantastic time in a 5-man the other night because I pretty soon realised that the group boomkin was scared of efflorescence. I did extensive empirical testing. I’d throw a rejuv on him, followed by a swiftmend to trigger efflorescence, wasting heals shamelessly, of course, but in the name of Science! And it was perfectly possible that this was some dangerous boomkin equivalent of rabies – fear of effloresence, rather than fear of water. As soon as the green goo materialised under his feet he’d leap into the air as if he was going “holy shit, what is that?!” and desperately waddle away as fast as his feathers could take him.

I snorted so hard I just inhaled a lung full of Fanta.
Thanks Tam.

Go read the whole post please, it’s brilliant.

November 2, 2010Permalink 2 Comments

Two Weeks In, Over Halfway Through

I’m now halfway through my new guild Trial – 2 weeks in, 2 weeks to go.

Some nights I go in and I’m pleased with my performance.

Last night we wiped on heroic Marrowgar just once, which was a shame. And I may well have been partly to blame. I spent a lot of Wednesday night redoing my UI, and although I tried it out in a Wintergrasp that night, I don’t think I tested it thoroughly enough and had some quite severe problems – problems for me anyway.

Names weren’t big enough on the raid frames, and I’d tried to reimplement 3D Portraits (I use Pitbull for my frames as I like the class colour schemes for the entire boxes amongst other things), and my range fader wasn’t working.

This meant a lot of my heals didn’t land properly and things weren’t working at all. We did go on to down Marrowgar easily the second try, the raid (I was subbed out) went on to kill Deathwhisper on heroic, and then we did Gunship.

After that I was luckily out for the rest of the evening, which thankfully meant I could get my UI fixed. Range faders are now working, names are now big and I’ve got it showing my buffs/auras only, so I can track my rejuvs again etc.

My addon list is now greatly decreased and I’ve really started from scratch.

I now have:

Auctioneer Suite (on my bank alt only)
Postal – fantastic for opening mail when you have shed loads
Pitbull 4.0 – although I do miss 3.0 terribly I’m sure I’ll get used to 4
Decursive - curses to left click, poisons to right click. Perfect for Lady Deathwhisper etc
Power Auras – shows my Wild Growth, Swiftmend and Natures Swiftness cooldown, as well as a visual countdown of my battle res, a massive “you’re under 75% mana” rune symbol, and a symbol for missing flask/missing food.
GCD – recommended by Cranky, ideal for tracking WG and Swiftmend, especially the latter, which I used to hit before it was off CD way too often, wasting a click/GCD.
Button Facade – I almost went further and I tried kgpanels, but it was just too complicated for me. I do love how my buffs, debuffs and all my buttons have a lovely dary (I use the Onyx skin) on them, and a lovely gloss to them as well. I really really like this new addition.
SLDT – I’ve used fubar and broker in the past but this is my most favourite – clear text, tiny letters, no big black bar at the top, everything I need all in one easy line. Also another new addition.
Buffalos - I haven’t done much with this other than move my debuffs away from under my buffs to alongside them, in the middle of my screen at the top – slightly easier to see for me and they’re also framed with Button Facade which I like.
SexyMap – had this for ages, currently using the emerald dream skin. I really like the little touch of prettiness this gives my screen.
Clique – used alongside pitbull for my healing.
TipTac - I think that’s the name? Frames tooltips really nicely, plus it gives you this awesome feature of being able to see what people’s guild ranks are – there are some utterly brilliant ones.
Other’s of course include oRA2 and DBM.

That’s pretty much everything I’m using now so I’m quite pleased with the sleeker, glossier and more streamlined look everything has. I’m still not completely happy with my raid frames but to be honest I doubt I ever will be, I’m far too picky!

New guild wise, tonight we’ve got VoA and the weekly (Patchwerk for us), and then Ulduar 10 hard modes which I’m really really excited about.

Team this with the fact it’s Friday, I’ve got a quick half hour horse riding lesson tonight and then it’s the WEEKEND, my mood and things overall are definitely looking up.

Thanks,

Soph

July 9, 2010Permalink 5 Comments

Starting Your Brand New Druid

This is for you, Yanader!

I am certainly not the be all and end all of druid healing, or druids in general. In answer to the question “what stats does a feral druid use?” I just said, “err…dunno”.

I am, however, Flames’ only resto druid (main spec), and I do pride myself if not knowing EVERYTHING, knowing enough to know why I heal as I do and why things work like they do. But I don’t want to recycle what other, better people have written. I would rather try my best to compile all the possible, available resources for someone levelling up a druid at the moment.

So, here we go.

How do I level as a resto druid?

READ THIS. It is everything you’ll ever need, level by level.

I’m level 80, what gear do I need?

Druid Main’s guide to “what to do at 80” is an awesome place to start.

Slightly more recently, you might find Treebounds 3 part guide really useful for exactly what gear you’ll want to pick up from heroics.

One of my most favourite blogs (and the one I use for my gear list now), HoTs and DoTs have also done a guide for gearing up a fresh 80 resto druid.

I’m starting to raid, what gear do I need?

Here’s a haste specific gear list from Tree Haelz. They’ve also done a full gear list.

These two are the guides I use. This ten-man one is for frost badge gear, ten man raiding etc, and this 25 man one for a little in front of our progression curve but a lot of the 2nd/3rd choice slots are achievable for us.

I’ve always been a DPS. What are these “raid frames” you’re talking about?

The Murloc Parliament guide to add-ons for healers is quite frankly Made Of Win.

What the fuck are all these HoTs all about then?

Take a look at the “Think Like A Healer” series of posts from Looking For More.

For a quick and easy starter, try the Cheat Sheet at Revive & Rejuvenate.

Lisanna at Restokin gives a detailed guide of healing in Patch 3.3.

You know how I’m always whining about haste? Well read this article here to understand why.

Enjoy!

June 1, 2010Permalink 5 Comments

New Talent Trees! (DISCLAIMER: My Rubbish Opinions on Cataclysm ENCLOSED WITHIN (yes i mean spoilers))

ha, look at me and my epic title length.

Now, as we all know, I am not a serious druid blogger. I am rubbish at strats (I leave that to the fabulous Kae), I am in eloquent (unlike Beru), and I never really make much sense (unlike Keeva). So yea, if you want a proper opinion on the new talent trees, best go to them.

This is the Soph interpretation.

Here is the link to the talent tree as it stands now. I am…crap at talent trees. It would take me months and months to actually understand things enough to choose some adequate sensible talents, but there’s a couple of things I will point out.

I again draw your attention to Keeva, who does know what she’s talking about.

New talents and whatnot.

Tier 1:

Blessing of the Grove – 2/2 I would have thought, for all of us. Along with some of the pointless bits, it “increases the healing done by rejuvenation by 4%”. Not gonna knock that one am I?

The usual suspects are still present – the always ignored Furor, Nature’s Focus (pushback reducer).

Tier 2/3:

Here’s where things shift a little. Intensity (the mana regen one with the symbol that looks like a propeller) has gone, and Naturalist has replaced it as the precursor for Nature’s Swiftness. In the place of Naturalist in Tier 2, there is a talent called, “Perseverance”. It’s a 5 pointer, and each of the points reduces spell damage taken by 2%. One presumes this is a PvP thing really, but a reduction by 10% overall (against spell damage) is quite nice really.

No changes to Subtlety, or to Omen of Clarity, Natural Shapeshifter or Master Shapeshifter.

Tier 4:

No changes to Tranquil Spirit, or Improved Rejuvenation (although it does now include Swiftmend).

Tier 5:

Nature’s Swiftness has had no changes, and neither has Improved Tranquility, but Gift of Nature has disappeared. Improved Tranquility may become a necessary more than a skipped talent with the overall changes to the spell (raid-wide not party-wide).

Tier 6:

Here’s where things start getting confusing, ok? Previously Tier 6 contained Empowered Touch and Nature’s Bounty. Now it holds Living Seed, Nature’s Bounty and Fury of Stormrage.

Living Seed is now the pre-requisite for our lovely new talent Efflorescence, but it’s actual effect remains unchanged. The effects of Nature’s Bounty also remain unchanged, although it is now the pre-requisite for Swiftmend.

Fury of Stormrage. I don’t get this. I don’t….I don’t understand. Someone tell me what it’s for please?

Tier 7:

More messiness. Tier 7 now holds Swiftmend (no effect changes, costs less mana though) and Empowered Touch. Empowered Touch has moved down a tier, and has some weird effects about increasing Nourish and refreshing Lifebloom and…stuff, as well as the classical additional effects to HT. Logically, Living Spirit has gone.

Tier 8:

Ooo. Here’s where it get’s exciting. Tier 8 holds Efflorescence, Empowered Rejuvenation and Natural Perfection. Natural Perfection still reduces damage but without the crit bonus and has moved down from T7. Empowered Rejuvenation has a tooltip stating is also affects Swiftmend as well.

Efflorescence is brand new. It says, “When you critically heal with your Regrowth spell you also sprout a bed of healing flora underneath the target, healing all nearby friendly targets within 15 yards who stand on them for 10/20/30% of the amount healed by your Regrowth every 1 second for 7 seconds”. Ranks 2 and 3 also result in an increase of your spirit by 15%.

Now I cannot wait to see the visual affect, I love the term ‘sprout’ and I really would like to see this in action.

Tier 9:

Revitalize exists but in a totally new format – now it causes an automatic regen of 3% base mana when fully talented on crits of Lifebloom and Regrowth.

Tree of Life is obviously our biggie. Now, when we take it, we: have a 45 second period of time where we are shifted into tree form. The cooldown is 5 minutes. HoTs heal for 15% more, armor is increased by 200% and speed reduced by 30%. Rather vaguely it also says that “some of” our spells are “temporarily enhanced”. Talenting into Improved Tree of Life can reduce the cooldown by 90 seconds (making it useable what, 3-4 times a long boss fight?). Worryingly linked to some of the other odd-damage increasing talents we seem to have acquired, we also do 15% more damage when in ToL if we talent into Improved.

Interesting to see this!

Tier 10:

Gift of the Earthmother has undergone a complete revamp, it now (on Rank 1) increases the healing done by Tranquility on targets below 25% by 4%, increases the healing done by lifebloom by 2% and gives a insta-heal from Rejuvenation of 3% of it’s total effect over time. Ranks 2 and 3 increase spell haste (8% in total) and decrease the CD of lifebloom by the same amount.

Improved Barkskin no longer has a dispel affect, but otherwise remains unchanged.

Tier 11:

Wild Growth. Now has a 10 second cooldown up from 6, and has had it’s HoT roughly halved. The cooldown doesn’t bother me, but that’s a hefty swing of the nerf bat I feel!

Well.

That’s my thoughts so far. I’ve declined to talk about the Balance tree because the sections I would talent into are minimal, other the Celestial Focus no longer affecting haste. Plus, I feel like I’ve talked out my arse about talent changes for quite long enough!

May 6, 2010Permalink 3 Comments

Living life as a DPS, an officer and a stressed out Sophie

I seem to live in a whirlwind of ups and downs at the moment. One minute I’m all “woooo!” then the next minute I’m all “life sucks, I should just curl up in a ball and become a hermit and NEVER TALK TO ANYONE AGAIN EVER”.

It’s a wonder any of my friends still speak to me and that I haven’t driven my poor boyfriend loopy.

Anyway.

I’m slowly slowly working on building up a second ICC-10 run for Flames, using Petranne as my character. I need luck to be on my side and for instances to start dropping loot – the lovely pre-raid BiS crossbow seems to drop every day in Pit of Saron even though I got it on my first run, whilst nothing else that I need ever drops.

Although an unholy DK did win Nighttime a few days ago which sent me into a nerd rage.

I want to build us up a second ICC run. I want people to be able to raid with flames and to be able to get everything they need from us as a guild and a team. So I’m looking forward to building this up and hopefully getting on with stuff.

Yesterday we ran the usual 25 man raid. And I tried my most very hardest not to care – not to care when people stood in fire, not to care when people stood in the wrong place. It was actually quite good fun, being one of the mindless masses.

I may have been slightly vindictive and sniggered when people standing in fire died but ya know, they shouldn’t have stood in the fire!

No loot (again) but I’ve reached that sort of loot-level on Elsen where I can’t get many upgrades without progressing much further into ICC-25.

I’m one of the few people that still hasn’t won a mark of sanctification to upgrade my t10, despite Zal walking away with his second last night (grrrrr), and my missing upgrades are Marrowgar’s necklace, some vampire-y shoulders (or some BQL shoulders which are a more likely ten man drop – I’m going to be purchasing the t10 legs to swap out my t10 shoulders, as the non-tier shoulders are better than the sanctified tier shoulders, whereas the tier sanctified legs are Bis), Putricide’s belt, and Dying Light from Lanathel 25.

So, seeing as our 25 man progress is very very slow, and I expect we’ll be attempting Valrithia before BPC as the guild we raiding ally with haven’t managed BPC yet, my current only possible upgrades are 2 marks of sanctification for my head and legs, putricides ten man belt, marrowgars 25man neck and BQL’s ten man shoulders.

I’d like to point out I have been using the utterly amazing 25 man and 10 man guides from Hots and Dots to build up my BiS list.

So yes, that’s my irritable grumbles about loot finished.

So, the hunter.

I’m getting there! Yesterday the lovely Riccah ran ToC heroic with me (nothing dropped, boo hiss boo), and then we got FoS. And, glory upon glories, Nighttime dropped, so I now have 2 of those – my pre-raid BiS, and Needle-Encrusted Scorpion dropped too – one of the two pre-raid BiS trinkets. It’s satisfying seeing things progress slowly slowly, I now just need a better neck, shoulders, cloak, gloves, belt, feet, rings and one more trinket….

But! On the upside, all these things are drops from instances, so if I run the four instances every day, and now just chain run ToC normal until the Banner of Victory drops, I should be able to get us up and running with a second run weekly in another fortnight or so.

This DPS stuff is very different to what I’m used to though. I am seeing my numbers and my awareness slowly increase, and yesterday in VoA25, despite me being on my laptop touchpad, I was in the top 10. I’d like to be hitting 5.5k ish before I confidently move us into ICC but we’ll have to see – I don’t want to be the one letting the team down, basically.

I failed at my goal of getting my priest to 45. I actually spent 1k on her dual spec and then did nothing on her because I just don’t really like doing random instances. However now I am shadow specced I am tempted to go off into the wilderness and just pew-pew my way through the next 23 levels to 65. It isn’t until 60 that the levelling gets hard so really I just need to man up and stop bloody well complaining.

I feel slightly regenerated Warcraft wise, and then I think about work, and my heart sinks, or I think about the fact it’s still 9 days til pay day and the only money I have is the £20 I need to cash in on a scratchcard and my heart sinks even further!

This is life though, unfortunately, and this is my life for the next…18 months, whilst I pay off my debt and work to recover my credit rating.

A warning to all students, or new-to-being a student people out there. It may seem like free money – but let me tell you, it isn’t.

Being in debt is horrible. Really, really horrible. Having a crap credit rating is horrible, because nobody’ll lend you any money. So I have to spend the next 18 months of my life trying to recover from this brink, paying off a couple of hundred quid every month, so hopefully in 2 years time I am financially capable and trustworthy enough to get a mortgage.

Being grown up sucks, and being in debt sucks. It really, really does.

Just a warning to everyone out there, this £3250 hovers over my head continuously and permanently, so…just be careful.

And with that happy note, I move on to my next post!

Oh, and by the way. If you’re living in Britain, get off your arse and VOTE today.

May 6, 2010Permalink Leave a comment

My Frustrations

I haz them.

I’ve found the past 4 or 5 days really hard.

Monday and Tuesday I’ve been apathetic, lethargic and physically sick. Wednesday night I tried to take a night off, but ended up in the 25 man raid.

And I was utterly miserable. Someone deeply upset me by speaking to me like I was scum, due to me getting annoyed by people still essentially ‘standing in fire’ – not standing in the big massive red circle of Marrowgar’s hitbox, being way out of range (hunters are excluded here – I know the minimum range thing scales up and his hitbox is about the size of Mount Everest) and therefore getting impaled and not freed quickly because they were way out of the range of the melee DPS.

I had an awful night, and steadily got more and more frustrated and angry.

I took it out on the officer’s chat channel and the flames healing channel, so I apologise to Ricc and Zal, and of course to Nyo and Jaz that were taking the brunt of my anger and upset.

I’ve been told by the doctors that a mixture of stress and depression is causing me to be physically sick, so I’ve decided to take a week off life. I will not be doing anything I don’t want to do.

Anyway. DPS standing in fires. This all links back to a coherent point, honestly.

My hunter is progressing. The lovely Jaedia crafted the two ToC crafted bits of gear for me, so I have two bits of 245 (bracers and chest piece), and I pugged a few heroics yesterday. I had enough triumphs to buy my first piece of t9 – I went with the headpiece.

This opened up ToC 5 man and the ICC 5mans to me, and so yesterday the adorable Zalduun took me through Forge of Souls. I managed to grab Nighttime . He also took me through ToC heroic and we randomed and ended up with VH heroic, where I picked up some not-great-but-better-than-my-other boots. At the end of Forge of Souls I forgot to talk to Jaina though, so I’ve got to go and do it all again now. I’m sure Zal will come with me though….right? :D I really really want a new ranged weapon – there are a few available so I’m going to be repeat running stuff until they drop!

We also spent some time on the target dummies, and he helped me hone my rotation a bit more. I’m managing to hit 3.1k single target which I’m really quite pleased with, and it boosted me after a pretty horrible moment in Halls of Lightning – where I encountered my first nasty tank.

Now, I know people have told me I don’t need to do this, but I am cautious and I don’t want to cause people more difficulty or anguish than I do just by being in their general area, so I tend to say a few words when I zone in, apologising for my DPS and saying I am learning so please bare with me, etc etc. And so far, everyone’s been decent. Most people don’t reply, but I presume they’ve absorbed it, and a couple of people have been really, really nice.

But yesterday, we got to that bit in HoL where the big ymijar guys are, in patrolling twos, as well as the whirlwinding shorter chaps. So the tank pulled one pack at a time, which was fine, but then we ended up with one set of whirlwinders and one set of big guys, I got knocked backwards twice, and somehow, one of the other DPS died. Then another one died, and I was still alive but having so much trouble target switching, trying to work out if I should volley or not, when I saw the healer go down I panicked and feigned. It didn’t work, and I got killed. The tank then went down. None of the mobs were low health either – they were all still pretty high up.

The tank then said – can’t you at least do more DPS than me? – a universal statement to all three of us, as we’d all been hovering around 1.5 – 2k, and he was doing 2k DPS. He was in average ilvl gear of 240 – the rest of us, none of us were above 200 in average level.

I said – I’m sorry, I’m learning, I am trying my best but I’m new to DPS.

At which point he said – 2k is easy to do, you’re just useless.

So I dropped group and went and had a bit of a cry.

So yes. That was my first bad PuG experience.

One thing I did chat through with Zal on vent, whilst we were meandering through instances and whatnot, was how many things there are in this game that simply bork your DPS.

Yesterday, I got: impaled by the rhino guy in Gun’drak, feared in DTK, sword-ed by Svala in UK, frozen in fear by Ymiron, ghoul exploded by the Black Knight, knocked back, silenced and put to sleep!…pretty much every DPS stopping thing that can happen, happened.

This is what I have learnt (including what Zal explained to me):

1. Healing is different. Things that get put in my way as a healer are: damage pulses, damage spikes, tanks becoming unhealable, debuffs, adds hitting DPS, adds hitting me!

2. Things that get in my way as a DPS are: crowd control, silencing effects, FIRE ON THE FLOOR.

3. These things that affect DPS are irritating as a DPS. I struggle so much getting my numbers to an adequate level (although apparently 3.1k isn’t too bad for someone who doesn’t know what the smegging hell she’s doing), that I wish there wasn’t fire for me to move out of, or things to impale me, or mobs to silence me. Because I want to see that number go up! I want to be better than other people of my level, because I’m competitive and I want to succeed. I want to be able to provide my guild with an extra ICC-10 run every week, and I want to be able to do that on my hunter.

4. But if there is fire on the floor – god damn it I’m moving out of it. Some of these effects are unavoidable – for example: getting impaled by Gal’darah in Gun’drak. That’s the same as being bone spiked by Marrowgar – I have to wait until the phase has finished/I’ve been released before I can carry on doing damage.

But if there is a ghoul explosion happening near me in ToC – this is the same as Marrowgar’s cold flame. Even if it drops my damage down to 1k, I’m going to MOVE out of the way, because if I don’t move, a healer is going to cry.

This is all linking back quite nicely now, I feel.

What is the point, I wonder, in hitting 5 figure DPS numbers if you are standing in fire, standing out of range, standing in Deathwhisper’s death and decay, standing in rocket launches on the Gunship? (yea, the rockets are totally healable through but you get my general drift) Because what you are doing – what I am doing as DPS, what any DPS is doing by standing in the proverbial fire – is making things harder.

Now, I know that most people that are going to be reading this are bloggers themselves, or people who actively pay attention to their class and spec and whatnot. So I’m sure most of you have healed/DPSed/tanked/done all three at once – and so you’ll know what I mean by this, and because you know things from a different perspective, you know how it feels to be on the other side of the screen.

But there are DPSers out there, in raids, throwing out massive numbers and supposedly ‘performing well’, but they are ignoring strategies, standing in fire, standing in the wrong place, not moving all in order to hit higher numbers.

So yea – the boss goes down. But the boss goes down because me and 5 others are working our god damn arses off and throwing ourselves in front of the proverbial bullet to save your arse whilst you blissfully stand in Deathwhisper’s Death and Decay for three ticks because  you will have better numbers.

Is this me overreacting?

Yes.

Is my overreaction justified?

Yes.

Get out of the god damn fire.

April 30, 2010Permalink 4 Comments

Progression & Feeling Vindicated

Last night was a really, really good night.

We had no raid on Friday, we were a couple of people down, however on Wednesday we’d taken down Lower Spire and Wingus and Dingus (Festergut and Rotface for those not au fait with the lingo). So, last night, we cleared some trash and faced the Blood Prince Council.

And, we got him down.

WoWScrnShot_030710_204645

Our team was made up of 3 exceptional tanks (1 prot warrior, Grags, and 2 bears, Groulinis and Dhearic, Groul of which did an absolutely exceptional job of taking the shadow ball thingies), 2 healers (myself and Zalduun), and 5 DPS (Nyo (moonkin), Kabooms (the mage of the exploding strudels), Hammerhands (hunter), Rydia (Unholy DK) and Shamubar (a melee shammy – neither me or Nyo can remember whether that’s Elemental or Enhancement).

As Zal says, it was a stressful fight. We were all working our butts off, and a few things really helped us on our way:

  • There are 2 kinetic bombs on 10 man. Our first few tries we missed the second one, but once we realised there was two, our ranged handled them brilliantly.
  • You do not need a caster tank. Take a ‘real’ tank. It is doable with 5 DPS, and the fight wasn’t massively lengthy. The presence of a bear tank with 60k HP on made the pressure on us a lot easier, meaning we could safely…
  • Use two healers.

We had a great composition and a great raid, fantastic add management, fantastic tanking, people paying attention and it all came together, netting us the guild first Blood Prince Council kill, and also the BPC section of the meta-achievement.

Congratulations, Flames!

WoWScrnShot_030710_204246

We then, as one would do in this situation, moved on to Blood Queen Lana’thel. Who is spectacular. You know, I enjoy raiding. I love Flames, and I love my guildies. That’s why I love raiding.

But last night? I loved me. Those that know me will know I don’t have what could be ever called confidence in my own abilities. But last night, I rocked. I’ve actually changed how I raid recently. I’ve started paying a lot more attention, being a bit more serious about it all, possibly contributing a little more. And I do feel good for it. Last night was a prime example of that.

Now I know we have the buff. The buff is great. I am all for the buff, and every other blogger in the world has either complained or cheered the buff, so you don’t need my reasons too. I’m not a “serious” blogger in that sense.

So I know the buff certainly added towards last night’s performance, but I’m not going to let that detract from our awesomeness.

When the Lich King was defeated for the first time, and numbers started to be released on DPS figures, HPS figures and whatnot, I took interest.

Now, I’m competitive. I shouldn’t be – if I wanted to blast numbers, I should have rolled a paladin.

I’m comfortable with my niche. My synergy with Zal is awesome – we yin and yang, my HoTs cover the little spaces and his big blasts of light cover the big gaps. I’m used to my smaller numbers. It’s how things work. But Lana’thel is just…amazing. It is the most druid friendly fight I’ve ever seen, and cos of it, I felt like I could shine.

On the try where we actually got Lana’thel down to 10%, I was putting out 7.7k HPS. Now, when Paragon defeated the Lich King on 25man, their top output healer was putting out 4024 HPS. It made me think – I can do this, we can do this.

And I really hope we do.

I was on such a high.

I cannot wait until next week where we get to have another crack at her and hopefully get her down.

The second part of this post’s title is feeling vindicated. I’m the only druid main spec healer in our guild.

I don’t like Elitist Jerks – I’m not good with theorycrafting and numbers. To be honest, I suck at maths. I find the site confusing, complicated, lengthy and…full of obnoxious idiots. Ahem.

My research comes from blogs. I read so many druid blogs that I feel like it comes out of my ears sometimes. I find an idea. I look at that idea. I spend a long time reading everyones opinions on that idea. And then I follow it through.

And also, I have this obsession with socket bonuses. I don’t like grey text on my character sheet. I like my sockets to all make sense.

So. I read about the GotEM nerf. I didn’t understand it. But what I DID understand was that I needed a respec. Because I’d spent a long time working towards a system where I could get 5 rejuvenations into one Wild Growth cooldown. And I wasn’t quite there. So, with this change, I’d be even further away!

So, off to Moonglade I went. Me and the trainer had a chat, and I suddenly became the proud owner of the Celestial Focus talent. And then, the lovely druid bloggers of the world told me that there was this nice round number – 856 – that would mean that my spec could shift from this, back into points I liked having – like Living Seed. So I had something to aim for! So. I spent some money, I bought some gems, and I was at about 600 haste. So far away! I cried. But I’ve inched my way there, and with the purchase of my Vestments of Spruce and Fir, I passed that 856 number. Now, I was casting so fast, I barely had time to move across pitbull to my next person to cast again before the GCD had reset.

I was elated! However not a lot changed. Because our healing team works they way it does, although I personally noticed a change, I highly doubt anybody else did!

But Lana’thel, giving raid healers a chance to shine, allowed me to shine. It allowed me to say YES I am right for choosing this piece of gear and not having the 4set bonus (until testing proves me wrong, I won’t be investing. I favour the haste more than the crit, and to be honest although the 4pc may be fabulous for 25 man raiders, I already HAVE a rejuvenation on every single target almost all the time anyway, making it…a bit crap. FotP is about to embark on some 25 man raiding, and this may make me change my mind, but for now…no thanks), I am right for gemming as I gemmed to get my haste up, for choosing the spec I chose, for enchanting how I enchanted.

I felt proud of my research, I felt proud of myself and I felt proud of my character. That never happens, and I’m still elated and buzzed up today.

Long live haste, long live druid healers and long live feeling good about myself. I only wished it happened more often!

I know my druid, and I’m pleased about it. I just want to say, my eternal gratitude does go out to all the druid bloggers out there whose careful explanations, well written posts and fabulous drawings, because without them I’d have been left totally stranded.

March 8, 2010Permalink 3 Comments

“Hard” Ret Paladins And Hardline Healing

This started off as a comment response to Pew Pew Lazers! post “Angry priest is Angry” but I realised I actually wanted to blog about it anyway and it was getting far too long for a comment anyway…

A friend of mine dinged 80 on his bear on Saturday afternoon, and at first gear locked him out of all the random dungeon finder. However after we ran ToC normal twice and he luckily got the Black Heart, it bumped him up just enough to get into all the “old” instances.

I ran him through about 6-8 more on Sunday, just chaining it. We lost one or two people every run – dropping straight away. Every run we managed to get through without a wipe. I was dreading that bit with the stone slag guys in HoL, and he worked through it perfectly. His tanking was exceptional. Granted – the guy has had tanking experience on horde characters before – but I have to say healing him, a lovely, sound guy I get on with despite his 24k health was way more fun that tanking some over geared PuG dick who doesn’t pay attention to what I, as the healer, need. Like the guy in Utgarde Keep who pulled before I’d actually zoned in, I barely managed to save two of the DPS who luckily managed to finish the room off (as he’d decided to pull the whole first room); and then said “try healing the tank a bit. u knw, 3 lifeblooms and a rejuv plz”. I asked him if he’d known I wasn’t zoned in when he started, and he responded with; “yea lol”. I asked him whether I was expected to heal him through my loading screen, and whether he thought it was reasonable to pull in such a reckless manner – this is after he demanded a rez and I gave him one, despite the corpse run being seconds long (sorry Tam, I think I was in such shock by the dire pulling I still automatically felt the wipe was my fault and agreed to rez). He was on 5% health at this point, or whatever it is you return with after a rez, and he went; “lol yea like im gonna do now” and pulled the next pack, whilst on 5% health. I spam healed him up to full, literally speechless. I then healed him through two more packs, let him drop to low health, then bailed on the group (which was 4 guildies and me, might I add). This may have been the…cowardly/wrong/immoral thing to do but to be perfectly honest, he deserved it. I feel sorry for the DPS but I was not going to put up withat attitude of being “used” and of it being – I don’t know how to describe it. It was almost like he was under the impression he was the best tank in the world, and I’d never get another group afterwards.
That is one of those times I would rather sit through my debuff. He was rude, arrogant and inconsiderate. I would rather have my debuff than heal him through that, essentially encouraging his bad attitude, bad behaviour and general twatishness.

Anyway, back to me and Astrelle, my bear-buddy. I think in a way we’re just very lucky in that we gel very well as a tank healer team in the way that sometimes pairs do, but I really did have just a relaxing, enjoyable day as I do when I heal my other pocket tank who is in 4pc T9 and T10 shoulders.

One of the issues we actually had MORE than people dropping out were people seeing me – an overgeared healer – with an adequate-for-heroics geared tank and presuming they can pull all the aggro they want, and I won’t let them die.

I have had to mention to a couple of DPS – both ret paladins, not sure if that makes any difference – that if they keep pulling and dropping down to small amounts of health while we are running from one area to the other (CoS), or if they stand continuously in the Whirlwind on Skadi to increase their DPS because they’re having a competition with the mage, I will not constantly heal them.
I realise I’m being overly hardline here, but why should they, just because I am capable of healing their stupid LACK of Aggro Management, deal with this? It’s the arrogance. In CoS, after I asked the ret pally to stop bolting ahead to the next pack, (I think I said something along the lines of…The one in bear form is the tank, so please let him pull the packs) was “gogogo kitty bear!”.

I let my tank answer that one and then the paladin stayed in his proper place for a couple more waves. Then on the second boss guy, legged it over and pulled. There was a mixture of things. I was quite a long way away. We had ages left on the 25 minute timer. I could have saved him. I chose not to. He stopped pulling after that. Harsh but it worked.

In Pinnacle last night, another ret paladin decided he was going to take it upon himself to start pulling groups. I again asked him to follow the bear’s lead – not exactly difficult to tell who’s tanking if one’s in BEAR form, is it now. He responded with, “it’s ok, im pally, i’m hard, got bubble!”. I have pointedly left it in the format I received it, lax punctuation and all.

He then ran up the stairs from one level to another and aggroed a pack at the top. We – and when I say we I do genuinely mean all four other party members – were at the bottom of the stairs. He died.
The following conversation ensued in whisper between myself and ma tank;
Ast: Not so hard anymore is he?
Me: practically flacid.

I’m sorry, but he had it coming.

I told him I wouldn’t heal him if he carried on pulling without the tank. He stopped pulling.

Now. I could understand this if we had been moving slowly. But we hadn’t. Granted they weren’t speed runs under 10 minutes, but every instance we did we did in 20-30 minutes. That seems perfectly fine imho.

I don’t write many rant posts, I tend to simply ramble incoherently. So apologies for this rant post…normal service will be back shortly.

Sophx

January 12, 2010Permalink 6 Comments

Adventures with alts, and ICC

A few things I’d like to chat about today.
Firstly I’m going to blow my own trumpet about my progress with my alts.

I dinged 68 on my paladin on Friday, spent nearly 3000 gold and got her blacksmithing to 448/450. I’m sure I can, when Sapph herself reaches the upper echelons of the level 70s, make something to actually wear for those last two slots. What I discovered cost more than the materials themselves was the recipes. 15g a pop for a blacksmithing recipe I’m never going to use. I’m insane. I also levelled her enchanting quite a bit, and she is now 432/450 enchanting. Only a few points off the 435 I need to learn most major recipes and 60 odd dream shards burning a hole in my inventory. As soon as she is level 75 ish I will take her to Dalaran and spend a few on recipes for Elsen.

I went back to my hunter, finished off Un’Goro and headed to the Plaguelands (rather than Winterspring, which is my usual port of call). I only got her to level 51 as I spent all of yesterday running a friend through some heroics on his newly dinged bear. I haven’t quested in the Plaguelands for a long time though, so hopefully it will move OK speed wise once I actually start levelling her with intent. When she hits 52 I need to take her back to Ironforge and when I train her up I MUST remember to learn the next level of herbing. I can leave jewelcrafting to 60 like I did enchanting/blacksmithing with Sapph but there is really no point running by herbs I cannot pick as I level – I’m going to need them for my alchemy levelling anyway.

I also logged on to my priest for the first time in ages, did a few quests on her and took her to Stonetalon Peak – I didn’t level Sapph or Petranne here although it is where I levelled Elsen the first time, so it’s sort of new for me. She’s now level 23 and I’ll wait til she’s fully rested again before continuing. I don’t like playing her on normal xp – it’s simply too hard!

I spent my weekend wasting my time. Saturday I barely moved a level forward with my hunter but spent the day talking talking talking to a guildie which was awesome, and then on Sunday I just chain ran heroics all day. By the end of it I was, to be honest, exhausted. But at least I got a fair few done. I picked up the triumph helm for the first piece of my PvP gear, and also had enough honor to buy my Medallion of the Alliance.

Last night I embarked on a journey into ICC 10 for my first proper raid in ages. Flames successfully cleared the first quarter on Friday opening up the Spire. The place is spectacular graphics wise, really spectacular – I like it. The trash hits hard but is fun, the plague scientists are cool and I felt very smug standing at the back in tree form with Nyo next me while everyone zipped around the floor as a polymorphed ooze. Druids FTW.

The two dogs were also cool, Gluth was always one of my favourite bosses in Naxx – second only to Grobbulus who was my most favourite ever – and they are quite cute really. Fun little mini bosses.

Festergut was hard, and we didn’t get him down, but we had a good time doing it, it was a really good learning experience and when the healing came together at the end – we got him down to 13% on our best try, and I’m sure that next time we encounter him we’ll get him down.

We healing team was me and two paladins. In the first phase myself and one paladin stayed raid healing, Zal spammed the main tank. In the second phase I stuck to raid heals with the two paladins working on the main tank, and then in phase 3 it was a massive main tank spammage fest. If we hadn’t all gone oom, I’m pretty sure we would have got him down. The tries after that we started coordinating innervates, but unfortunately just didn’t quite get him squished. He is definitely “on notice”, as they say.
A big heads up to Rejuvo whose Festergut guide I kept checking for hints.

My God, my hands stink of diesel. I’ve got to get better at getting it in the car and not on my hands. It’s horrible. Why can’t I drive a petrol vehicle, it’s so much more nice smelling.

I hope everyone’s been enjoying the WoW Tourism posts. I realise my timing hasn’t been perfect on all of them but hopefully I’ll keep getting them posted.

Until later,
Sophx

January 11, 2010Permalink 2 Comments

Patch 3.3 Is Making Me All Reflective!

Everybody has been, and will be, blogging about how Patch 3.3 has affected them.

So, you know me, jumping on el’bandwagon. And as always, I’ve managed to go off on a tangent and ramble about something totally unrelated.

At the moment, my life means I can WoW a lot. My degree is on hold until my next unit starts up again in February, which will change this a lot, but at the moment I am free and easy time wise.

Patch 3.3 has all been good for me. Our first night in ICC last night was brilliant. Pushing against Marrowgar for two hours before defeating him with half the raid dead was absolutely brilliant. I know it sounds ridiculous but it WAS. I love this raiding so much more than ToC and it’s quick, easy clear. We had to work hard and fight hard to defeat him, and although Deathwhisper went down quicker it was also an incredibly enjoyable fight. I tweeted this morning, one of the big factors is how much I absolutely love our raiding team. All of us, my lazer chicken raid leader, tentacle faced (bahaha, knew I’d get a Draenei insult in here somewhere) best friend pally healer, exploding strudels making mage, death happy rogue (one death before we’d even started the instance)…the whole lot. I love them all and I love playing with them.

The new Dungeon Finder is also a massive success in my eyes. As a healer I join up and get grouped within seconds. When I group with Zal as my tank, we also get grouped up in seconds. I ran Oculus as a PuG the other day (LOVING the nerf) and got the timed achievement and the achievement for having tried out all three drakes. I just need the 3 void achievements now. I’ve had a couple of bad groups – over the weekend me and Zal ran Nexus with a hunter putting out 400dps.

I’ve also had some amazing groups. Consecutively on Saturday I had two groups with fantastic tanks and good DPS that just swooshed through a couple of runs in less than 30 minutes. My triumph badge total is going up and up, meaning I have managed to equip the priest I’m levelling with two bits of heirloom gear with more badges to spare for my other alts.

I enjoy the challenge of healing with unknowns, I feel like it’s pushing me a little harder and the different encounters, despite being easy at times, are difficult at others due to group composition and I am stretching myself. Plus, I’m getting loads of rewards. I am an achievement junkie, so this is reopening my access route to the red proto-drake, giving me access to a new vanity pet (I’m currently at bang on 50/100 PuG peoples).

The fact I have all this free time at the moment means I can grind to my hearts content. My Explorer’s League rep went into revered yesterday evening and my Frostborn is a way into honoured. Fantastic – more daily quest rep grinds obliterated.

When my degree starts again I am going to have to drop this constant heroicing, so ideally I’d like to grind enough badges over the Christmas period to have all the badges I need to equip my hunter with heirloom gear too (I need roughly another 80, as I don’t bother with the non-xp giving items).

However, I am a creature of habit and of routine, and I like having set things I do on set night. I like being able to say what I’m going to be doing each night. Mondays, for example, are my non-WoW night. I have my horse riding lesson.

Dessie - my STEED OF POWER!

Usually am too tired after it (adrenaline and endorphins and natural lows post energy rush and all that stuff) means I usually log on to chat but stick on some Rabbids Go Home (this is the best. game. ever. by the way) and while away the hours screaming at people til their clothes fall off, stunning dogs and collecting stuff in my shopping trolley of doom.

I’m not even joking. Please get this game.

Tuesdays are my friend-night. Me and a very good friend of mine hop on to vent and painfully slowly (because we spend more time talking and abusing each other than doing stuff) make our way through TBC instances, old school rep stuff and mount runs. It’s good because it’s some one-on-one time for us, I like working towards the achievements and I enjoy gaming with him.

Mount e-peen against each other outside Shadow Labs...

Wednesdays are raid night. We only embarked on our first raid to ICC last week and I don’t know how often I’ll get a slot, we don’t have quite enough for two ten mans but simply too many for one. I really have to fight for my place and I need to work on my healing. It was frankly weak last night. I need to train myself out of using Nourish and into working my other spells in. My overheal management is far, far better than it was, my HoTs are going to the necessary targets and I’m pleased with that. I just need to simply be putting out more HPS than I am doing at the moment. I was also quite pleased with my tank healing last night. We experimented on Marrowgar at concentrated healing and I was pleased with the simple fact I managed to keep my tank up for a fair long while. Anyway. That’s patch stuff, not routine stuff. Jeeze I can’t even write in order.

Thursdays are my quiet night in. If I get a slot, I’ll use Thursday to complete the weekly raid quest. If not, I expect for now they will revolve around levelling my alts (I finally got Sapph’s blacksmithing to 300 over the weekend so I can push her up to 60 and beyond.) I also collected enough badges to grab another heirloom piece for her, so she will have the 20% increased xp boost, rather than just the 10%. I would like to carry on levelling my hunter too, especially her professions.

Fridays are 25 man raid night. If I get a slot, that is. It will be interesting to see how difficult the 25man ICC is, certainly. I am a bit on and off about the 25 man raids. I realise that I need to go to get better gear and more experience, but I don’t particularly enjoy them, or at least I haven’t in the past. My own guild’s raid leader is taking over them rather than the raid leader from the other guild that 25s with us (we do joint raids) so I expect my enjoyment with sky rocket with that.

Saturdays are my Aaron night. I have recently introduced a real life friend to WoW, and in many ways he’s taken to it like a duck to water. He’s started a few characters and I’ve given him 150g on each of his new characters just to fiddle around with and his amazement at “that much money” makes me wish I could be that frugal!
We are levelling, RAF style, a druid (him) and a priest (Baeletha, mine) together. Because we’re only taking one night a week (if we’re both free) for this, it’s a slow process, but I’m enjoying seeing the world through someone’s totally new eyes.

One of them horrible caves with sprites in it takes you many deaths to clear!

And Sundays are the second night we raid. Again it comes down to whether or not I get a slot in the team, if not I have plenty of things to be working on.

Around this WoW schedule I find time to play Rabbids,
Rabbids!
play Team Fortress 2 (I prefer the Heavy character style…throwing myself in with a pocket medic and just slamming my way through bodies is very different to the quiet life of a tree I inhabit in WoW-land…
Heavy

My best friend also gets back from her three months working abroad on the 16th so I shall have to be fitting her in somewhere…

So.
If you’ve made it all the way to the end.
What are your aims for the Christmas period? Is anybody else as much a creature of habit as me?

Probably not…

Soph/Elsen x

December 14, 2009Permalink 2 Comments