It took us awhile, a very painful while, filled with more than 3 full nights of progression on him, and another 2 or 3 partial nights on him. But now he’s dead. Thank fckn god.

Here’s some tips on the fight from a resto perspective:

First off,…. I’m assuming you know the basics of the fight in the regular and heroic fight. Really the differences between the regular and heroic versions are minimal. In heroic there is a new kind of add, they look like little oozes. They don’t hurt players (as far as I can tell) but if they reach the boss he gets layers of his armor back, the armor that you are desperately trying get off Rhyo so you can kill him. Also, as in all heroic encounters, everything hits way harder. So avoiding the bad is absolutely key, aka the streams of lava and avoiding the AoE spasms off the Spark adds. Also, steering must be perfect. Not only to stay away from the little ooze adds, but you must not miss a volcano or you may as well just run into the lava to save yourself the repair bill. Also, as far as the steering goes, your dps had better be good, because if you don’t burn his legs fast enough (while steering through the streams of lava and into volcanos and kiting oozes of course), you won’t make the enrage (approx 5min). That said, I really don’t have any advice on the steering, except that he does get some kind of buff if you get him to go straight for a bit.

BTW, we two heal this for the extra dps.

Resto wise… Before the fight begins, right-click the clock below you mini-map and select “show stopwatch” (assuming you’re using the default UI from Blizzard). I move the little stopwatch to a convenient place, aka right above my Vuhdu. After you mount up and right as you pull, start the stopwatch. We set up in the middle of the little island on heroic (rather than handling the adds off to the side with me hiding my HoTness behind the tank, like we do on regular). So after I ride out, I stack my Faerie Fire on one or both of the legs, depending on the dps make up for the night (there’s not much to heal in the first 15-20 seconds of the fight anyway). I then cast a nourish to activate my mastery and lifebloom the tank. I also periodically cast thorns on the tank as well as the adds are coming out.

As I’m doing my best to heal and not stand in the lava, keeping barkskin handy for if I do, I keep an eye on my stopwatch. When the stopwatch hits 5 minutes, no matter how good or bad you’ve done with the steering and reducing the armor stacks, Rhyo will hit superheated if you’re still alive. At which point the damage will stack exponentially. So, when my stopwatch is between 1.20-1.40 min in, I pop Tranq, hopefully at raid damage worthy time (like Concussive Stomp). Also, I run tidy plates, so when I pop Tranq, if there are adds out I have to make sure the tank has picked them up or I will die instantly. Once Tranq is over, I pop Tree, (generally between 1.30-1.40min), again this isn’t for the damage necessarily (but when you’re two healing a heroic boss, there’s always damage). I do this so that no matter what, when we hit Superheated, I will have Tranq and Tree off CD. Popping Tree also helps with my mana somewhat since there’s no shortage of people to lifebloom, not to mention the extra armor from my form.

And as always, innervate early. Innervator2 is invaluable in a progression fight.

That’s really the only tips I have. I know that the Holy Pally sometimes throws a Hand of Salvation or Protection on me when I pop Tranq, but I don’t think he does that all the time.

It’s a really hectic fight. It can be really hard to see your feet between the adds rushing towards you (regardless of how fast the tank picks em up, they’re still on top of me even when they’re not hitting me), the little oozes cluttering my screen and the gizzilion streams of lava to avoid. Even with GTFO it can be really hard to see which way to run with so much going on and it is very easy to run into something worse than what you were standing in. And if you miss a volcano, there’s even more lava to avoid and it quickly becomes impossible. (I don’t even want to imagine doing it on 25man).

We for some reason had our best attempts on our first pull on him for the night, and the kill was a one shot (for that night). I’m not sure why that is. Possibly people steering over thinking things on later attempts maybe? IDK. Most of our problems I think were a combination of the steering and a dps balance between each leg and the adds. We also tend to only have one regular melee dps (so three total when the off tank switches to ret and the other healer switches to melee dps), that also may have been a problem because I think the constant white melee damage is easier on the legs than the burst of a caster every 1.5 seconds. But that’s just a theory, I don’t know if its true.

But he’s dead and that’s good. I think he dropped a heroic rogue dagger (we have no rogues), and the BiS Enhance chest which went to the hunter.

We did pull Beth on Heroic a couple times just to see….yeah didn’t make it very far so we switched it to regular. We worked on Heroic Baleroc for a little while and made some progress but then it was quitting tie, so we switched it to regular and the main tank FINALLY got his shield. Tomorrow night we try Domo on Heroic. That should be interesting. I hope we don’t try to 2 heal that.

And the next expansion is about Pandas? I don’t know about that either. KungFu Panda doesn’t seem like it belongs in Azeroth, but we’ll see. I’m half-expecting Blizzard to announce that they punked everyone with the Panda theme tomorrow.

Then I begin to rant. Mostly because my urge to write is brought forth from some frustration irking to get out. But really, I don’t want to rant. I don’t want to be a ranty person. But I just don’t know how else to get it out. What am I frustrated about? Well, without getting into details about my personal real world life, I like to be good at the things that I do. Like, really good. Which is ironic because my general stance on my self is to think that I suck at things. I know, self-deprecating isn’t sexy, and I really don’t know why I do it, but I do. But that aside, I try really hard to be a good player. I try to learn how to play my class, or at least that particular spec of a class, and if I don’t feel that I’m good at it, I can be really, really hard on myself.

Maybe it’s because I’m so good on my two “mains,” I have this unreasonable expectation that I should be good like that on my other toons, or more specifically other roles. What I’m really getting at is I know I am a good healer. I’ve been healing a very long time. I leveled (however painfully at times) my druid in the Dungeon Finder as a healer. Learning how to heal was hard. I remember it being hard. I remember dropping my healing spec a couple of times, putting my entire heals set in the bank, and vowing I’d never heal again. And then I’d be healing again a few days later.

And then there’s dps.

My very first level 80 (yes, I am a Wrath baby), was a pure ranged dps class. And, although there was some learning curve to that (set focus to the tank and hit what he’s hitting), and figuring out how to do max dps and such it was relatively simple.

At some point, I leveled my shaman (she was my 3rd or 4th 80, I’m not quite sure), and although ever so long ago I intended her to heal, I had had so much fun as enhance that it became her main spec, and really her only spec. Melee dps was a little harder compared to ranged in that setting focus to the tank and hitting what he was hitting is more important so I don’t get raped, but also, staying behind my target while not standing in bad and moving while the tank kites said target. And there always seems to be way more bad to not stand in melee. But these are skills I learned.

And then there’s tanking….yeah.

I leveled a second druid a couple of months ago, with her being a pure feral spec. I leveled her as a bear from 15-70 for the most part. And before her I had pretty much never tanked before. Bear tanking is hard I guess (I had nothing to compare it to at the time), and the way I did it was to individually click on each target (I don’t really trust tab), mangle or maul them and move to the next (I didn’t get swipe till lvl 30 something and even after I had it I didn’t feel like it did much). Demoralizing roar felt like it was my most “effective” AoE. Okay, maybe I was doing it wrong.

When the druid finally hit 85, I started doing heroics on her. Not only for gear and points, but for the Call to Arms bag. Some went okay….others not so much. At some point I stopped playing her and I haven’t really touched her since the last patch.

Then I leveled a paladin. It started out as a “know thy enemy” kind of thing. They’ve been a class that I don’t understand for a long time, mostly because I’d never really played one. Well, she hit level 15 and I just tanked her way to 50 really, really fast. (Ranged silence that hits 3 targets at level 10? Really? Bears don’t have a single target ranged silence at level 85.) But anyway, comparatively to the bear, paladin tanking was so faceroll.

Last week, I got her to 85, and again, I’ve been tanking heroics. Some regular heroics, even some trolls once she got more geared. And sometimes they go okay, and sometimes they just go so badly. Is it odd that I’d rather tank ZG than ZA? If only because the trash between the bear and the dragonhawk boss is so hard sometimes? And don’t even get me started on the actual dragonhawk boss.

I just want to be comfortable. I want to feel like I know what I’m doing rather than feeling if I don’t pull fast enough the “go-go” type in the group will vote to kick me. (Though I haven’t been kicked (…yet)). I’ve even had help but my brain just goes blank because all the paladin spells sound the same to me (Seal of What? Hand of What?). And then the helper gets frustrated cuz I just start doing worse. And I use tidy plates, and it seems I can’t do anything to make the bars turn green sometimes(meaning I have threat). So then I get more frustrated, which means I screw up more and…yeah. It just goes downhill from there. And then for a second, I think I have aggro, and the DK pops army.

Maybe I should avoid pugs? Scarily enough I’ve had more than one healer in half prot/half healing PvP gear. Other healers in more greens than blues. (Seriously get some gear out of a few more regulars first) Multiple dps in a troll that can’t break 7k (really, if you can’t do 12k in a boss fight you shouldn’t even be in a troll). And even in the regular heroics, some of the dps are just so clueless.

But for some other strange reason, I keep doing it, probably because on my healers I can heal through almost anything. Hell, a horrible pug actually makes healing on my druid interesting because she’s so over geared. Also, I get this sense of accomplishment when I know most groups wouldn’t have lived through that. Even as dps, between high numbers, purges and interrupts I know that I’ve had a real strong contribution to our survival through sticky situations.

On a tank, I want to be able to do that too. I want to be the reason we succeed, not fail. But then you get the people who pull for you, so before we even “get started” I have to use my taunts just to get initial threat, and they’re on cooldown for when I actually need them. Or healers who just leave group in the middle of the pull (a good pull, not like we’re about to wipe), do I pop all my cooldowns to stay alive on the pull before a boss? or do I just die. 

I know experience will help me. I know eventually I will learn how and when to pop CDs so that I can live through that. I almost lived through the entire last boss of Heroic Stonecore when the healer died in the first ten seconds (because they pulled the boss and the 3rd pack of mobs for the achievement without telling me first), only to die when the boss was at about 4%. And I don’t do too bad on boss fights, its trash that I suck at. Multiple mobs because apparently too many dps didn’t learn the “set focus to the tank and hit what she’d hitting” principle. (Should I be able to hold aggro against the AoE spamming DK in full 378s?) Or boss fights when they’re are lots of adds to pick up (damn you Dragonhawk boss with your thousands of adds and fire bubbles of death), sometimes I just get so overwhelmed and god forbid I “miss” when I throw my shield.

Why do I keep doing it? Well, the free bag is nice. Although it’s not really free, cuz you REALLY have to earn it with some of these pugs. I’m yet to get a mount in one of my paladin’s bags or even a decent pet. But the real reason is because I want to be good at it. And, also it’s a role that I really don’t know how to play and that keeps me interested.

I go back to the “I know I’m a good healer.” And the time or two (or 5 or 25), that I had bad experiences and never wanted to heal again. When the tank was yelling at me so badly in my first ICC trash run about what spells I was using as I was healing (mind you the 2nd healer in the group was completely useless so I was basically solo healing my first raid), that I started crying (there may have also been some PMS involved), and after that I vowed I’d never heal again. But I did. I do it in a raid too many nights a week. Two healing Heroic Rhyo even. Something way back when I didn’t even conceive was possible.

So, someday I will “get it” with tanking. 

So, as I sit here with no internet and really no power at all but the generator’s going for the moment, I thought I’d catch up with my writing in the Post Irene aftermath. Not much really happened here except lots of rain and wind, and oh, the total lack of power for god knows how long, hopefully not long, but where I live you can never tell. And also, apparently, we’ll be out of water soon too. In truth, I can’t even check the news or the internet to figure out what’s going on elsewhere, so I’m kind of at a loss.

Anyway, I know I’ve been a slacker with the writing lately. I’ve started a few posts but they’re saved to my WordPress account and well, I can’t get to them right now. But what I wanted to say is:

Killing Bosses is Fun!

So there was a total lack of drama in my druid’s raid group a couple of weeks ago and it just sort of disbanded. Which, well, worked out pretty well for me. I’d wanted to leave for a while but damn my loyalty, I hadn’t had the heart to. So, when it was announced that the group was going to dissolve (I was actually DCed at the time), I made a few whispers and quickly got picked up by another raid group. And I thought that it would be hard. Well, I really did.

The new group, which a week or so later, was also my new guild, is pretty hard-core. Schedule wise, anyway. I went from raiding 2 nights a week to 5. But also went from being 1/7 to 4/7 in one night. When I joined, they were doing Alysrazor on progression. I’m not sure how long they were wrestling with the fire bird (a week or so from what I gather from wowprogress.com), but after 3 or 4 nights of progression, we killed him. We went to Majordomo, face pulled him a couple of times at the end of the Alysrazor kill night, but then the next night, killed him after only 3 hours of work.

So, in about a week, I went from being 1/7 to 6/7! And now I’m wiping on Rag!

I’m supposed to work on Ragnaros tonight, but, well, if I have no power by then, I will be a no-show . But the raid leader does know that, and I know I’m not the only one on the East Coast. (And as I re-read this, I still have no power at 11pm, so I’ve been “dark” for over 12 hours now)

So, I’m gonna keep writing since the generator is still going….

I had started a post already on what I was writing above. But at the time it was when I had just started running with them. So, while I was excited, I was still nervous. Well, I still am nervous. I switched the druid and also my priest into their guild, leaving the rest of my army of alts in my old guild. Change is hard because its unexpected. I switched the druid in during the middle of the night where we ultimately killed Majordomo, and if I hadn’t their guild wouldn’t have gotten credit on the kill. I was going to anyway, I just didn’t know how to make the “leap.”

What I really like about this new group is that everyone seems to do their job. These Firelands fights, on 10man anyway, it seems imperative that everyone do their job and no one die. On Alysrazor, the kill ended up being dependent on whether or not people learned how to dodge the fire tornadoes (aerial view works best, btw). Not to mention the interrupts and the constant fire dodging of all kinds, and please don’t steal the healers feather while we’re two healing! And of course, whoever you’ve got up in the air had better be really good.

And on Majordomo, no one can be carried. If your dps isn’t high enough the healers will not be able to keep you up. And if your healers aren’t geared/good enough, well, it’s just not gonna happen. Both times we killed him all 3 healers were over 15k, with 2 of us close or over 19k.

This group also has decent leadership, cooldowns are called out and organized. They’re nice people but not boring either. Honestly, just the raid cooldowns being called out and organized is SOOOO refreshing. And I really didn’t even know paladins had so many raid cooldowns.

Also people contribute to the raid, both personally and as a group. The raiders gear up their toons, max their weekly VPs, do random trolls as a guild, (I now have the Amani War Bear on both of my raiding toons btw ) which was a major complaint I had with the old group. It would be the end of the tier, and members were still missing pieces for their main specs that they could buy with Valor Points….sigh. Also, it seems no one person is responsible for fish and cauldrons, you’re just supposed to put the mats they ask for in guild vault.

And if people screw up, they’re called out for it. Not in a mean way, and sometimes its just they never did that part before so obviously it warrants explanation, but if you’re not standing in the right place or dpsing the right target, you are promptly corrected. In my old group they just tip toed around people who stood in the bad or whatever else.

((OMG, having no internet suck! I can’t even look up strats for fights on the internet, or email anyone, or even check my new email))

So, now the generator is off again to save some for when it actually gets dark out. So, we’ll see how long my laptop battery’ll last for.

Even though I state this on my sidebar, for any strangers out there with sticky fingers, this is under a creative commons license. Mine. Leave it alone. ^^ Thank you.

…Synopsis?: This is an adventure story with some romance and spirituality. I really haven’t got far with that. I know there’s going to be some kind of spiritual and physical journey involved. Maybe more than one.

The World: Right now its a mostly renaissance base. This is still in the works. It also needs a name…

The Peoples: 3 races; (1) my spin on the Elves, (2) Dwarf-like little people called Earthens, and (3)humans. Of course humans like to divide into their own little groups, so the main sub-groups are human-nomads, human-farmers and human-townsfolk.

More About Peoples:

Elves: Stereotypically the most spiritual race in the world, they communicate with the Shaddai(their name for the creator) through nature. It is through the trees, streams and grasses that they receive their magic, and they always look to nature for guidance and wisdom.

Earthens: Stereotypically they do not worship the Great Creator, as He is commonly called. They do not believe he exists. They are fully devoted to material things. They build great underground cities connected by series’ of tunnels. They value money (especially gold) and fire. They hate the Elves with a passion.

Human-Nomads: I’m basing these guys off of what I know about native American tribes and nomadic gypsies combined. In this world the Nomads are generally warriors (though not aggressive until provoked) and they believe their strength, valor and abilities come from the Great Creator through animals. Each nomad usually find his or her “spirit animal” by the age of 12. This is said to be revealed to them through certain ceremonies that are not disclosed to anyone outside the tribes. (Meaning…I have no idea what they are right now.)

So, this is part one of “Novel Material?”. I figured this was enough for one post. I’ll do another one that has a little bit about some characters…once I develop them. I guess what I’m asking is (even though there’s not much here), what do you see? Novel Material?

Thanks guys!

Of course, that’s just not possible. But I would, if I could.

I’ve also power leveled a paladin (more of a know thy enemy type thing) to lvl 71 in the last week or so. My plan for her is: ONE} to learn about paladins so I can understand their abilities, bubbles and such from a raiding PvE perspective, as well as PvP perspective. TWO} to have a blacksmith, which I have never leveled to max on any toon (btw, blacksmithing is #2 on my pain-in-the-ass professions to level list, enchanting is #1), and THREE} to max another miner, so I can drop my enhance shammy’s mining and replace it with something useful that will help her dps (I’m yet to decide which profession yet, though strongly considering engineering).

Also, in the last week or two, I’ve been trying to finish Hyjal on all my toons to they can be ready for the Firelands dailies. Of course, I know that when the patch hits, there’s no way I can do dailies on 5 toons every day. Even if I had that kind of patience and time, I just don’t want to. But I do plan on doing the dailies on the two “main” raiding toons. And add to that the Flame Festival that hit yesterday, and I’m attempting to grind the holiday boss on four toons for the pet (the shammy got the pet last year), and the decision on whether or not to try and get the achievement or not on the shammy, mage, feral or priest, (the resto druid got it last year), I’m really hoping that the patch doesn’t hit next Tuesday.

All, side notes to the fact that I don’t want the patch to hit because I want Shattered World before they nerf it all to hell. I know I’m  good enough player for that, even if there is doubt that my raids are.

When the patch hits, I will also have to start grinding VPs on the resto druid and shammy again in heroics because I won’t be downing the Fireland’s bosses like I down the T-11 bosses, and I will actually need VP gear on them again.

So, Please Blizz, hold off the patch for another week or two. 

But here’s some highlights:

Basically I’m frustrated because I’m so sick of changes in my raiding group. As I’ve said before, I belong to 2 different groups, both in the same guild, one on my resto druid and one on my Enhance Shammy. And lately, both groups have been having such issues with attendance.

For the most part, it’s not people blatantly not showing up, most of these people we know are going to be gone. Some have disappeared mysteriously from the game. Some have had business trips (including raid leaders), one of our tanks goes and does his army reserve thing once a month. The shaman’s group has been having inconsistent healers. Which is odd, because they used to have too many healers….

Then, my other raiding group (the druids), is also in disarray. Our substitute bear tank has pretty much now refused to tank for us. He was supposed to be a fill in, but we just kept pulling him in. Our “original” pally tank has dissappeared from the game and no one has heard from him in weeks. We had finally replaced the sub bear with another pally, but well, he’d rather dps on his warrior. Okay. Now the dps DK takes over as a tank. Until, his work schedule changes and he leaves the group entirely. (shame, he was really good). So, then we’re back to reluctant pally and the sub bear. Well, the sub bear just wasn’t online at all during our raids this weekend. And did I mention our holy priest would rather come on his hunter? So our hunter switches to one of his tanks (he was supposed to be the ORIGINAL Cata tank, before the “original” MIA pally).

We also had a boomkin last night. I don’t even remember who he replaced. But then tonight, he came and tanked on his warrior. (After Magmaw, of course, because he was saved) It was discussed that he could tank permanently on his warrior but he is obligated to another group. Oh, and because the holy priest wants to come his hunter, we needed a 3rd healer, so a guildie came in on her shaman (yay, spell haste, something I never got before the boomkin appeared in our group).

Confused?

Yeah, me to.

Jump Ahead to Now….

Anyways, its happening again.

{{Meanwhile, it’s a week(?) or so before Firelands comes out and I really want to get Shattered World title on at least one of my toons, preferably the druid because I consider her my “main” and I do achievements on her. The shaman’s group downed Al’Akir on Friday and has started progression on Nefarian. So she’s 11/12, and I think we have a real shot of downing him next weekend. Sadly though, I don’t think my druid will kill either of her two remaining bosses (Al’Akir and Nefarian)}}

Our hunter/former holy priest/raid leader is having job issues and has not made our second night of raiding as of late. Last night we didn’t raid at all because of Mother’s Day, and tonight well, we were short. The hunter was known to be at work, but our paladin tank (/former hunter/former paladin tank/former bear tank), was also nowhere to be found. Sadly, no matter what toon he plays he is constantly late or doesn’t show at all. One of our healers was also absent. We found a replacement for the healer relatively quickly, but were still two short, one of them being a tank.

We’re supposed to be doing progression on an end boss. You can’t keep shuffling around the group on an end boss and expect to get anything done. Especially since one of the absent people (the hunter) is our kiter on Nef. (And that’s the part we need the most work on, but that’s a whole other post). 

So because the other group had downed Al’Akir a couple of nights ago, and it’s only a one tank fight, we decided to try to do Al’Akir, and just 9 man the Conclave of Wind.

For whatever reason, we couldn’t 9man Conclave of Wind. I don’t know why. My shaman has killed them like 50 times, but this group has only done it a few times. We end up bringing in a pug, and eventually the hunter gets home from work. We kill Conclave, and do some not-too-bad progression on Al’Akir.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, we find out that our rogue, aka the other raid leader, is leaving the group because of work/school stuff. This isn’t so bad, …..well, it is actually. He’s probably the most level-headed of us all, and is a phenomenal player as well as our best dps (as in high numbers AND plays intelligently, doesn’t stand in stuff, interrupts, uses all of his raid utilities, pops CDs to stay alive, and all in all knows how to play his character very well, etc.)

However, the DK who left the group a couple of months ago (because of work) is finally supposed to come back, so he can replace the rogue. Not with the raid leading, but as melee dps.

We’re then left with the hunter predicament. He can’t guarantee that he’ll ever be on time for our second night of raiding, but if we replace him, we’re out both raid leaders. (And not to mention the two dps related to him in the group will probably leave).

So, after some talking, we decide to change the schedule a bit to accommodate his job. Instead of doing 3 hrs on two nights, doing 4 the first night, and starting later the second night and only doing 2 hrs.

But then there is the issue of the often late, if they show up at all, paladin tank. We need a paladin in the group. If not for might, but for those damn bubbles. So now there is serious talk about replacing him. But our only option (besides recruiting outside of the guild), is this fresh 85 paladin that the sub healer from tonight has. Which means getting her geared, and her learning the fights from a tanking perspective. (Her tanking Magmaw the other night in the 3rd guild group was pretty rough ). I don’t know how an inexperienced, undergeared tank is supposed to tank Nefarian. But she does know all the fights, 10/12 anyway, with attempts as heals on the other two. But, I would personally like to have someone who WANTS to be there, rather than someone who shows up if they feel like it, which is our current situation. 

I guess I’m just really sick of change.

Did I mention that our boomkin/warrior tank, is now the main tank on his bear?

So the druids current group, just to make this a record, is:

• 3 Healers: Resto Druid (me), Resto Shammy, Disc Priest
• 2 Tanks: Bear and A Paladin (To be determined)
• 5 DPS: Mage, Warlock, Hunter, DK, Warrior

That’s what it is now, we’ll see what it looks like a month from now, or even next week….

I guess my point is that I’m just so damn sick of changes. I understand things come up, I understand people have lives, and children and spouses and such. But each group has had someone just disappear from the game (there was a holy priest who went MIA in the Shaman’s group too.) I know it doesn’t help that our guild is kind of short on tanks. And the ones we have are alt-o-holics. The shaman’s group was more or less consistent for a while, but the druid’s group keeps going though this reconfiguration…..

And every time I think its over, it happens again.

Supposedly this is one of the easiest Cata Heroic fights. I’m not saying that I disagree, but I’ve yet to kill the bastard. Last week, we consistently were getting him to the “stun” phase, with our best attempt at about 27%, with plenty of time left on the enrage timer. What was getting us was the damage during the stuns. So this week, I read some, and had a few ideas to handle the stuns.

My healing “team” has been consistent for the last month, after many, many changes and reshuffling to the raid groups. (I didn’t publish that rant.) So, currently, its myself (the resto druid), a disc priest and a resto shammy. Also, at some point when all this re-shuffling occurred, I became “Healing Lead.” I became the one in charge of calling out Cooldowns, and telling people who to Earth Shield and pop this on So & So and when. (On a side note, I guess my raid has finally realized that when they listen to me they die a lot less.) However, with this responsibility comes, well, stress and more responsibility. And, it also doesn’t help that since the Holy Priest switched to his hunter, he acts like he has never healed before.

Now, tonight, we go back to Heroic Halfus. I had read the strats to have your disc priest smite heal and made her respec to be able to. We had 2 prot pallys in our mix of 3 tanks (so 2 Divine Guardians for the Stuns), and the disc priest had the Glyph of Desperation (making Pain Suppression able to be cast while stunned). I had the plan of healing assignments to top certain groups up for the stuns. I even made up a batch of Volcanic Potions to pre-pot on the pull.

This would be great if we could’ve survived till the stuns.

Now, with all the reshuffling that’s been going on in this group, we have mostly the same people but in different roles. And even though the group has been more or less consistent for the last month, we have mostly been working on Cho’gal, with only banging out the 5 farm bosses in BWD, if that. So, the people in the new roles, haven’t been getting boatloads of points or gear. And not everyone tries during their non raid time to gear up their raid toons, with weekly heroics or troll epics (sigh). So, tonight, of our 3 tanks, 2 of them were in more blues than purples. Which may have been a huge part of our problem. We actually started making way more progress by putting the bear (see, more epics) on Halfus with him pre-potting agility potions for über mitigation, than trying to put one of the bubble factory tanks on him. Finally, after a night of wiping (3 hrs) on our “last” attempt, we got him to the stun stage again. Again, we wiped, but at least we finally got there. We then switched it to regular and killed him.

During all this, I start getting whispers. Now, I’ve been getting whispers. Something about me being the “Healing Leader,” I am now responsible for all things involved in healing, and everyone who heals. (Did I mention I have no people skills and this is why I play WoW?) The first set of whispers, earlier in the week, was about the disc priest’s spec, and how its more of a PvP spec and she’s not specced into Smite heal efficiently etc. So, okay, I think I fixed that. I haven’t actually looked at her spec, but I asked her to respec and she did. And honestly, even though I have a holy priest, I don’t play disc. So, I know very little about it except the basic spells.

In the same tone, even though I have a shaman, she’s enhance and I hate Shaman healing (ugh, cast times), so I know very little about Shaman healing other than the basic spells. So, the second set of whispers (between pulls of Heroic Halfus Healing Hell), is about the Shaman. How, her numbers are too low and I need to find a way for her to pick it up. As if Healing Heroic Halfus and having to call out all these CDs and figure out strats wasn’t stressful enough? (Did I mention I have no people skills and this is why I play WoW?) Now, I guess the disc priest has the luxury of hiding behind “absorbs” when her numbers are low. I pop tree on the pull and well, heal everyone, and pop tranquility shortly after, so of course my numbers are high. But I actually think the Resto Shammy has improved a lot in the last few weeks. Because I was honestly questioning her in the beginning. But last week, when I was doing 19.9k hps on Chimeron, she was right up there with me with 19.5k hps.

Tonight, however, while I was averaging between 15-19k hps (one time I broke 20K), the other two were barely breaking 10k, with the resto shaman doing 8-11k, sometimes as low as 6k and sometimes as high as 12k. Now, yes we were having problems. But as many people know, HPS is relative. But on Heroic Halfus, there should be so much damage that over healing (which I realize now I never checked, and that raid does not combat log ), isn’t that much of an issue. But it didn’t really feel like the Healing Olympics like ICC’s Blood Queen did. It seemed more like, OMG, OMG, can I keep the tanks alive, especially with tanks in more blues than purples. And, with stacks of that debuff on a tank, you can heal all you want, they just stop getting it. And honestly, my raid is so fail at healing circles, and I swear the more I ask them to stand in them, the more they run away from them, especially the ever so sensitive spirit link totem. And silly things like standing in Healing Rain would make her HPS go up. I think now I’m just rambling and making excuses.

And really, as the “Healing Leader,” does that mean I’m supposed to research other peoples specs and teach then how to play them? I don’t really think I should have to do that. But, am I supposed to?

I guess my whole point that started this rant (which I didn’t intend for it to be but it seems to have become one) is that I don’t know how to bring it up to the other 2 healers to step up their game. I’m good friends with the priest (she’s even one of my 5 readers) and have been in a couple guilds with the shammy and she gets very defensive when you ask her to do things. I more or less avoided the issue by going offline after the raid was over so the whispers didn’t start again.

(Did I mention I have no people skills and this is why I play WoW?) 

Resto PvE Talents

I switched to my Shammy, to check her out. Not much changed for her. She got the transfer from Improved Fire Nova to Seasoned Winds, which gives her an Elemental Resist for every spell she interrupts. Should be sweet on Halfus. I started doing the new quest chain, waiting for some more people to come online to queue for a new Troll Dungeon. I really like to dps a dungeon first before I try to heal, plus, I was kind of scared…. We started forming a group, right around the time I got my new panther cub pet. . We qed, and got Zul Aman.

2 and half hours later, we finished it. It wasn’t too difficult, in a group full of raid geared players, who were all on vent, and reading/discussing the strats before each boss. We had a lot of singled out deaths on trash. But the boss fights went pretty well, and we never actually wiped until the final boss. And even him, we got down after a few attempts. I finished the instance with two upgrades. And yes, there ARE mail agility bracers in the troll dungeons, and I also got the oh, so sweet, perfectly itemized head-piece with hit, mastery and an agility socket bonus off the final boss. So now my Shammy is in all purples .

Later on, I logged into my mage. I’m not an uber mage, she is an alt, but she’s fun to play. Most of the people on were in a raid, so I qed by myself for a troll random. (By the way, the dps wait was 8 minutes.) I get into Zul Gurub. This one is WAY harder than Aman. We wiped 6 times before we got to the first boss. And then wiped 5 more times on the boss. (the guy who does the mazes with poison that are impossible to see). Every time I got the string attached to someone else I died, didn’t matter how far away I was. (By the way, do not attempt to blink across the maze). It may have been the healer, something I hate to say ever, but the holy pally only had 82k mana buffed and was missing some gems slots. Finally the pug gave up and decided to go to the next boss. After a few deaths along way (Yay for Invis and mass rezz), we got to another boss who we downed after a couple attempts. After that I left group to run a random with a friend who had come online. 2 & 1/2 hours after entering an in progress Zul Aman, we got our VPs.

Some of these troll bosses are HARD. I went in on a toon in full raid gear, and managed to finish. But on a lesser geared toon, who NEEDS the gear, but doesn’t do bad dps, I was definitely having difficulty meeting the dps requirements on some of the fights. Not that I’m complaining. I do appreciate the difficulty. I was starting to get bored with “Regular Heroics.”  I guess I’m just shocked at the difficulty of some it (See, the evil green invisible maze). Then, last night, I qed for a random with two other dps, and the three of us got an in-progress Gurub on the final boss. 2 hours later, with several tanks and few healers, we downed him. One boss, 2 hours, and some re-spawned trash was all we killed. I felt like I was doing progression raiding.

So, today, I’m scared to attempt to run a Troll dungeon on the priest (who not only needs the gear, but she is my enchanter and I very much need Maelstrom crystals), especially since I can only heal on her, as my shadow dps is pretty sad. I decide that I’ll get her VPs from the “Regular Heroics” and after that I can get a VP upgrade and then maybe I’ll try to heal a Troll dungeon. (BTW, never-ending Chakra is AWESOME) Well, it appears all of the good players are doing troll dungeons. The “lower bracket” is now filled with baddies. I don’t usually say baddies. But if one of my dps was above 10k, it was amazing. Things died so slo w l y. And the tanks wanted to rush through everything so they could get their goodie bag at the end. One thing is for sure, after some of those pulls, my confidence in my ability to heal a troll dungeon has definitely gone up.

I did manage to heal a Regular Heroic as Call to Arms. I got 40 gold and an uncut red gem. Woo hoo. I’m not sure that was worth it. I’m assuming (hoping) you get more for the Troll dungeons.

Tomorrow I start raiding for the week. So, I’ll get to see how the actual patch changes work on my toons. I did find out that the nerf for DI is only on the damage side of it, not the healing, so my resto druid will remain hastily happy.